AAAA by Heidi Lynn Staples

Poetry. Ecopoet Heidi Lynn Staples asks, in the poems of A**A*A*A, "How can one proactively fashion one's awareness to invoke a rapturous wonder reckoning with a rapacious plunder?" Referring to an indigenous name for the land we call Alabama--Albamaha--Staples undertakes, often with her young daughter, a two-year anthropological and psychological interaction with the Mobile Bay Watershed. These poems index human encounters with the region's heritage--an area dubbed by biologists as America's Amazon--and, it is hoped, they contribute to conservation efforts by helping to inspire what physicist Jane Bennett calls "ethical generosity." Using type, icons, symbols, and whimsy, Staples layers a visual element into her urgent poems.