like a dark flame burned

my minds’s petty length.

 I’m tired of human clamor,

smudge and clutter of the world.

Who wants to go on

governed by the same rude horns,

 the demagogues, the rabble?

Anne Coray is unapologetic in her attempts to bring the plight of the environment to the masses. Her words are forthright, her language is clear—but Coray’s poems are not to be mistaken as easy. Bone Strings is a harrowing, magnificent, and morbid examination of Alaska’s jeopardized wilderness.