WORLD of WONDERS

IN HER NEW ESSAY COLLECTION, PUBLISHED BY MILKWEED EDITIONS IN SEPTEMBER, POET AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL TURNS HER CREATIVE POWERS OF ATTENTION, PLAY, OPENNESS, AND LOVE TO A WORLD OF MAGIC AND IMAGINATION OUTDOORS, CULTIVATING THE FAMILY GARDEN AS A LOVE LANGUAGE THAT CONNECTS ALL OF US.

- ROSS GAY

I was introduced to Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s work on a long drive from New Jersey to Maine, while tagging along with my friend Patrick Rosal, who was joining Adrian Blevins, Tyehimba Jess, and Gibson Fay-LeBlanc for a reading for From the Fishouse, the wonderful online audio archive of emerging poets started by Camille T. Dungy and Matt O’Donnell. Patrick had a stack of books with him—this was 2005, I think—and one of them was Aimee’s first book, Miracle Fruit (Tupelo Press, 2003). Needless to say I loved it. A couple of years later, spring 2007, Indiana Review editor Abdel Shakur and I invited Aimee, along with Patrick and Tyehimba and Aracelis Girmay, out to read at Indiana University, where I teach, for what was maybe—no, what was definitely—the best reading ever. I know, I know, there have been a lot of those. But this was one of them. We sang Billy Ocean. Everyone in the Waldron theater in Bloomington, Indiana, sang Billy Fucking Ocean. “Suddenly,” I’m pretty sure it was. Like I said: best reading ever.

Aimee and I became fast friends after that, writing (actual) letters, sharing work, the whole thing. In 2007 her second book, At the Drive-In Volcano, was published by Tupelo Press, and in 2011 we shared a book party at Cave Canem for her third book, Lucky Fish (Tupelo Press), and my second, Bringing the Shovel Down (University of Pittsburgh Press). Not too long after that we collaborated on a chapbook of epistolary poems about our gardens called