Preserve, Susan Kolodny's second collection, was inspired by encounters with wildlife and humans in the preserves of Southern Africa. Brooks Haxton writes, "Noted with such vivid precision, the individuality of each of these animals, and of each of the human encounters, awakens the deepest attention. Kolodny has turned her imagination to the fundamental work of survival, survival of the heart and mind, and of the living world that sustains us. These poems move me to tears." Elizabeth Robinson writes, "In these poems, awareness has an animating grace…". And Susanne Dyckman: "...this is a precise poetry, one in which we are asked to 'always newly see….'" Kolodny's vividly and accessibly conveyed encounters in the parks of Botswana and Zambia gain poignancy because many of the animals she observes and takes delight in are increasingly endangered as is their world and our own. Whether she is writing about a rhino beetle or an elephant, she is, as Janet Holmes remarked about Kolodny's first collection, After the Firestorm (Mayapple Press, 2011), "… a brilliant observer of the natural world…." This second book, Robert Thomas notes, "…becomes a Preserve she creates to save a world whose survival is at risk."
