Veer

In Veer, award-winning poet Cole Swensen examines the everyday world through a lens that shifts perception, offering surprising, sometimes zany perspectives on things we often take for granted. These poems challenge the presumption that “nature” is an “other,” suggesting instead that we all—animal, plant, mineral—are seamlessly fused in the joint project of living.

A few years ago, Swensen returned to her native California and found herself in a much closer relationship with trees, wind, an...