Why We Go to Zoos

Chris Knight is managing editor of the Canadian HR Reporter.

Noah Leznoff’s poetry illustrates that while our species is still
animal, it is also much more.

One poem in this collection (“Scissors, Rock, Paper”) concerns a
father’s fears of harm coming to his young daughters: “daily I must
kiss them each a hundred / times, enclose myself around them, / smell
them, / lick them, / count their generous fingers / and snug them into
their own beds with / butterflies and monkeys.” The title poem paints
a sensual picture of two captive whales making love in their tank, in
front of a startled visitor: “and she’s wriggling / her goddess
backside, shaking her cetaceous / booty, rolling / like a cloud.”

“Land of a Million” has to do with a nation of poets who scribble
on bathroom walls as well as in “bus shelters, in doughnut shops ...
[and] against mall mirrors.” Poems may come from the soul, but, as
this collection suggests, they are found in even the grubbiest of
locations.