<p>Written in pandemic, Rick Benjamin's <em>The Mob Within the Heart</em>, is a poetic witnessing: of illness and loss, of harm to the more-than-human sentient world, of cultural, familial ' political conflict, and of deep, enduring, lasting love-of people, ' of the planet ' everything on it. In this book, it is all happening at the same time: Covid and Black Lives Matter; praise of all sentient life, while also testifying to the damage already done; a fracture-defying inter-connectedness among loved ones, and other "families" (biological, chosen, messed up ' made). Benjamin's work is a series of snapshots occurring at once, a commitment to train attention in as many different directions as possible in this particular moment. As Dickinson says in her own poem, <em>it's a crowded heart, but one with a beat no laws can touch</em>, ultimately asking, simply, just the best of us, or, at the very least, so much more.</p><p><br></p>