In the first country of places

This book integrates poetry and psychology to explore how people shape their childhood place memories and self-identities in conformity with their philosophies of nature. Drawing upon written work and original interviews, the book describes uses of memory through the perspectives of five contemporary American poets: William Bronk, David Ignatow, Audre Lorde, Marie Ponsot, and Henry Weinfield.

These authors describe their relationships with nature and childhood in the context of major Western traditions of philosophy and religion. Each poet confronts the Western image of an alien nature within which histories of individuals are insignificant, and three poets elaborate alternative versions of connection with nature and their own past.

The book closes by suggesting how the practice of psychology may assimilate principles of phenomenology and hermeneutics that point to a new paradigm of connection with childhood and with nature.