Of the two, I liked “Ode to the Air” better—political poetry often puts me off a bit, though I don’t know exactly why—it’s certainly an interesting genre. Nothing much in the Americas poem really grabbed me, but I did enjoy in “Air” the interplay between the air and the speaker, and the way the speaker complained about water and light selling themselves out. So air refuses to be contained, instead romping all around with the narrator,
bringing down the flowers
of the apple tree
entering through windows,
whistling.
I was reading when the cats came to visit to help me watch the birds, the window open; “let’s go / where a new spring / is flowering,” the narrator told the air and me and Juno and Sylvie, and we watched the birds and felt the air together.
