In A Green Shade is Rick Benjamin's latest attempt to bring increased attention to connections between human and much-more-than-human worlds, in poem-snapshots that document both multi-cultural human and ecological realities, collapses of various kinds, as well as a visceral and vibrant sentience which can't help sustaining itself. These poems link the local and mundane miracles of daily living to both the global and mystical possibilities that come with living on this planet "in the winters of this climate" (Adrienne Rich, from "Power"). Like Sharon Olds, but without her microscopic powers of observation, he has always longed to believe in what he is seeing.
