The Elephants Are Asking

Karen Neuberg’s the elephants are asking is a brave, moving plea and testimonial, a sonorous cry out to the world to save the planet from the calamitous effects of climate change on all living things. These poems speak deeply from a bereft heart, with luminous words that have an urgency to save and breathe life into the wrath of decay, the human toll on the earth, “Whatever remains / will glow in the / dark bone by bone.” The poet’s eye noticing the indelicate erosion of all the things in our natural world, and all that we hold most dear.  These wise, cautionary tales, map the trajectory of a corrupt and fool-hearty world and warn: “Information pours and pours burying us beneath ourselves.” Neuberg challenges us with an intrepid call to arms—to confront and implore us to look, act and begin to pick up the pieces to save our world, to lovingly protect the sacred places.

    —Cynthia Atkins, author of In The Event of Full Disclosure