Aileen Cassinetto presents the Co-Editor’s Introduction to
The Nature of Our Times: Poems on America's Lands, Waters, Wildlife, and Other Natural Wonders, edited by Luisa A. Igloria, Aileen Cassinetto and David Hassler
A Poets for Science anthology and companion to the first national assessment
of U.S. lands, waters, and wildlife
(Paloma Press / Poets for Science / United by Nature / Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University, 2025)
The idea for The Nature of Our Times had first taken root more than a year and a half ago. During preparations to present the anthology Dear Human at the Edge of Time as a companion to the Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5) at the American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) Annual Meeting in San Francisco, Jeremy Hoffman (co-editor with Luisa A. Igloria and me) remarked that our project “could live on well beyond AGU.” As a climate scientist and NCA5 lead author, Jeremy was advocating not just for the anthology and the innovative website that was developed by David Hassler and the Poets for Science/Wick Poetry Center team, but also for poetry as a pathway to participation in climate science. And he was right. Our project did live on beyond the conference, and gave rise to another initiative. It was at the AGU that Allison Crimmins, Director of the Fifth National Climate Assessment, nudged me toward a new biodiversity survey taking shape, but it wasn’t until a month later that I was able to revisit the idea.
“They should’ve sent a poet,” says Jodie Foster’s character, scientist Ellie Arroway, as she gazes at a celestial event in the 1997 film Contact. I must admit I also wouldn’t exactly be rolling out verses at that very instant, but poetry does have a way of compressing and heightening meaning with wonder and the full weight of human experience. About a month after AGU23, I reached out to Phil Levin, Director of the National Nature Assessment (NNA) then based out of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the first thing he said was that he was “very aware and a big fan of the Dear Human work”! After our initial meeting, Luisa and ecologist Tessa Francis, who was the Chief of Staff of the NNA, came on board, and together we explored ways we might collaborate. Luisa and I then drafted a publishing plan, with Luisa coming up with the brilliantly conceived title for our new project. David joined our editorial team soon after, and the rest seems to be writing itself into history. We presented an expanded project framework to Dr. Levin that includes an anthology, a living archive, and post-publication programming integrated into the Poets for Science initiative to foster conversations beyond the print and digital space. The Nature of Our Times officially came to life with the launch of our website last summer, hosted by Wick Poetry Center and designed by Alex Catanese for Each+Every. Our digital gallery continues to be a repository and an active record of what was saved, what was lost, and how. We gather stories of a changing natural world to contribute to our nation’s collective understanding of nature’s benefits and help guide future efforts to protect and restore it.
I know a thing or two about ecological belonging. Growing up surrounded by water, I came to understand that in those waters, belonging meant being part of a living web that was held together by cycles, movements, and ancient relationships. My own human bonds, which have remained unbroken across oceans, have anchored me within the diasporas of a new country. Building a relationship with the land I came to, however, took some time.
When I set out on a coast-to-coast train journey with my sister twenty years ago, I knew it was a chance to explore our adopted home as well as who we were becoming in the context of land and time. Our route took us across the Mississippi, upward toward the Rockies, past river valleys, alongside desert plains. Scattered throughout were remnants of frontier history. Continuing westward along foothills and miles of farmland, the final stretch carried us past rail yards and patches of salt marshes, into suburbs near the continent’s edge.
I’ve lived in the U.S. long enough now to understand its ecological and historical layers but not so long that I take them for granted. Over the past two decades, nature has become an ally in easing my displacement. It helped me grow new roots, and gifted me with a sense of place. As neighborhoods around me became more urbanized, I’ve supported efforts to protect open space that balances urban growth. Meanwhile, in my extended family, a new generation is coming of age even as our traditions and shared stories continue to grow. I recall my grandparents telling me that when they first settled in the area over 50 years ago, Silicon Valley was just starting to transform into tech campuses but was mostly still orchards. My grandmother kept a garden, and from her I learned to grow produce like green beans for dishes like adobong sitaw. Beans love the sun and are planted in late spring, taking root within one to two weeks.
Growing from seeds isn’t always so simple, though. It needs the right mix of elements to thrive in the same way that the work of poets has a way of unfolding with slow and unshakable force. Editing an anthology of this scale can be very intense. Like an epic rail adventure, steering this project meant balancing curatorial intent and poetic engagement where each poem acts as witness in articulating both grief and wonder in our human and more-than-human worlds. Which is why I’m grateful for Luisa and David, my friends and co-editors, who brought rigor and humor to our work as we explored our changing relationship with the natural world through poetry.
In the midst of a complex and rapidly evolving national landscape where nuance, imagination, and language stand as cultural necessities, the nature of our times demands more than just our survival. It calls for joy which is our most profound act of resistance. Like anything built on an idea, may this anthology, along with the national assessment of U.S. lands, waters, and wildlife it supports, continue to be a living, evolving resource, always connected and faithful to the lives it was meant to serve.
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Aileen Cassinetto is a 2021 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow and winner of the 2025 Foley Poetry Prize. The co-founder of Paloma Press and author of An Immigrant’s Guide to Navigating Borders and Bodies of Water (2025), she is also co-editor of Dear Human at the Edge of Time: Poems on Climate Change in the United States (2023) and The Nature of Our Times: Poems on America’s Lands, Waters, Wildlife, and Other Natural Wonders (2025).
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