No ecological system is without conflict. Uncomfortable Ecologies is an exploration of relationships and their tenuous nature. Levinson explores the domestic and wild, the macro and the micro, the familiar and the other, the objective and the confessional. These poems seek to uncover vulnerabilities within ecologies as a bridge to a new level of understanding and intimacy.
The speaker parallels the irreparable losses faced in our environment due to habitat destruction and climate change with the challenges of families facing poverty and addiction. Trees shatter in extreme weather, oceans rinse a family of their dreams, wolves protect one another by inflicting pain. But the pain is punctuated by moments of visceral tenderness, a bird in a hand, the velvet of a bee. Difficult choices made for the sake of love. The very heart of this book is the belief that our disconnection from nature is a disconnection from each other. The heart of this book is grief and loss, but the hope of this book is healing.