Not Just Us - Eleanor Berry

The poems of Not Just Us reflect on the poet's encounters and relationships with non-human fellow animals―on her brief encounters and extended relationships with animals both domestic and wild. They seek to know better those "others [that] inhabit / this place we call ours," to imagine how those others see us, "how manifold the world would be // without us." Through daily life in a rural home, through travel, through craftspeople's renderings and scientists' studies, the poet meets badger, alpaca, eland, turkey vulture, pygmy owl, coral polyp, dog, and pig. These poems recognize humans as "animal[s] in haberdashery," acknowledge non-human animals as kin.