A Dream in Which I Am Playing with Bees: Poems (Walt McDonald First-Book Series in Poetry)

A Dream in Which I Am Playing with Bees is a collection of poems made of natural imagery, queer metaphors, personal observations, and historical circumstances surrounding honeybees. In the aftermath of a fictional bee extinction, these poems are presented to the post-bee reader as "artifacts." These are poems in hindsight. Playing with Bees positions poetry in hindsight to contemplate poetry's "natural" inclinations towards building alternative worlds through earthbound metaphors. Whether in a line or an entire premise, none of the poems could think, speak, or see in the same way if bees--and the relations they make possible--suddenly disappeared. Like any natural resource, the bee is a wellspring of possibility. Essential. Fragile. Causal. And like any animal, the pollinating bee has enabled a diverse phylum of phrases and myths that humans trade to express our most hard-to-name feelings. What changes about our imaginations after a peg in the environment is removed? What could disappear from our minds, our fantasies, and our self-descriptors, if nature is no longer a mirror? Consider a museum of language. As artifacts, these poems are the residue of a dead species--but they are also the offshoots of a playful, abundant, delicate ecosystem. Playing with Bees covets what's left. At the bottom of everything, we find the fragments an ecologically intact dream; an apocalypse in reverse.