We Beg to Differ: An Anthology for Peace

In William Carlos Williams’ lovely poem “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower,” he writes: “It is difficult to get news from poems / but people die every day for lack / of what is found there.” This anthology of local poets contains “difficult news,” but it also includes some wonderful poems. Luke Breit and Traci L. Gourdine have assembled the area’s finest poets—and in greater Sacramento there are a lot, including the city’s current and former poet laureates. José Montoya’s “They Sent Men to Match Mountains” reminds us that all war has local origins, and Heather Hutcheson’s “On the Verge of War” shows the personal implications of residing in a nation at war. Whatever your politics, these poems work as art, as Diane Di Prima reminds us in one of her selections: “The natural object is always / the adequate symbol.”