Poems About White House Pets," (“because it was fun to research this aspect of American history”) and "Feel the Beat!: Dance Poems That Zing from Salsa to Swing," (“because it was a ...

Black flowers, black flowers. These umbrellas, these "black flowers," offer a passing refuge from the rain, and Justice's poems offer similar refuge from worn-out ways of seeing and imagining.

Pinsky brings this sense of his origins into “Jersey Rain,” from our April 2000 issue. In the poem, he imputes a sort of magic to the rain of his native state: ...