Close to fifty people gathered for another remarkable evening of poetry and discussion Tuesday, as Poetry at the Albany Library continued with another blockbuster anthology taking center stage: Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry. 

Edited by poet and San Francisco State creative writing professor Camille Dungy, this anthology has been rocking the literary and academic world since its publication last December, and the Albany event was no exception.

While nature writing has long existed as a literary category, it has generally been viewed as a white category and, as Dungy explained in her introduction of the evening, black poets’ writing about nature has been “seen more through other lenses” – often pigeonholed as being about the minority experience and excluded from the nature genre.

Tuesday’s reading featured three poets – former California Poet Laureate Al Young, St. Mary’s College MFA graduate Cynthia Parker-Ohene and Dungy – reading selections from the anthology’s 93 writers,  then taking questions from the crowded room.

“Poetry is not just some frilly thing,” Young said in his opening remarks, describing how we can change the nature of reality by “naming things, using the power of words.”

He then read a poem by Marilyn Nelson about George Washington Carver – who was not just a peanut-grower, but a brilliant botanist – and one of his own poems, about the tiny all-black village in Mississippi where he grew up, and where nature was ever-present.

Parker-Ohene read a couple of her own poems, one of which was inspired by her first trip to Ghana, and a poem called “Southern Sun” by Margaret Walker, which detailed the desire to have the leisure to appreciate nature’s beauty.

This poem again raised the specter of the race/nature-poem divide, reminding us that a certain degree of basic comfort may be a requirement for a writer to focus on nature, a topic that could seem almost indulgent.

After Dungy read several poems from the anthology, the discussion began full-force; in response to a question about lyrical versus narrative styles, the panel tackled the issue of where the “I” belongs in poetry, or if it belongs at all. 

At one point, Dungy held the book open to illustrate the inclusion of experimental poems, displaying a piece about the Middle Passage in which words were arranged at angles across the page, echoing the bodies of slaves falling down to the ship’s floor during the sea crossing.

A question about the role of nature in urban life prompted Parker-Ohene to talk about growing up in New York City, about block parties and trips to Central Park, and a broader interpretation of nature as one’s relationship to the world in general. Dungy responded to the same question by reading a poem about lice – a reminder that nature is not always beautiful.

The youngest audience member, Dungy’s five-month-old daughter Callie, reminded us gently that it was time for a break, and there was a long list of poets eager to step up to the open mic, as well: Berkeley City College instructor Sharon Coleman had brought her poetry class to the reading, and many others came from near and far.

Marvin Spector, 71, of Berkeley, called the Albany series the best place to read in the Bay Area, noting the pleasantness of the room, and the perks of microphone and podium, which many readings don’t have. 

John Rowe, 46, a former Albany resident who now lives in El Cerrito, agreed that it was a special place; he had come to the reading in its original incarnation, when it was run by former children’s librarian Julie Winkelstein. 

Local notables in the audience were Albany’s Poet Laureate Christina Hutchins and former Albany Mayor Allan Maris, who remarked that he loves to hear how poets find new ways to express familiar things.

There was much new expression in the vigorous open mic that ensued, with nature poems, slam-style poems, singing – and finally, as the reading ran overtime, a suggestion that the event be “taken out to the parking lot” for continuation. 

Earlier in the evening, Al Young had described poetry as being like a midwife, helping new ideas be born into the world. If this is true, the library’s Edith Stone Room has become quite an impressive delivery room.