If he tries—if he holds his mind / In place and wills it—he can almost believe / In something larger than himself rearranging / The air.
-- Speaker (“Hill Country”)

Importance: In this quotation, the third-person narrator describes the way that a scene of nature can be so overwhelming that even God might believe in a higher power. These lines are important in the collection’s motif of nature as a site of the divine, and also in its investigation of the relationship between humanity and the environment.

They plundered her youth, then moved on. / Those awful, awful men. The ones / Whose wealth is a kind of filth.
-- Speaker (“The World Is Your Beautiful Younger Sister”)

Importance: These lines, from the end of “The World Is Your Beautiful Younger Sister,” provide a crucial link between several destructive human behaviors, uniting them into one theme. This poem’s title signals to the reader that the misogynistic men it describes can also be read as an allegory...