Poets Denise Newman and Hazel White won a grant to collaborate with the UC Botanical Garden in Berkeley. Then they created a massive collaboration. “Poetry is often so nearly silent, floating on the page, unseen and unheard by the vast majority of people, even those who read. I sense in Newman and White the desire to break down the barriers between poetry and the world, to get out there and chat, even as they undertake brainy inquiries about the nature of beauty and how a seemingly innocent activity, like collecting plants, can conceal human power dynamics.”