Polycene

In late 2025, New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman described a new era--the Polycene--characterized by the increasingly complex interplay of powerful forces: AI, climate change, global economics, and geopolitics. These forces accelerate within a highly interconnected system, demanding that humanity address complexity at a planetary scale. In AI and the Crisis of Control (2026), Russell E. Willis explored the consequences of artificial intelligence on this transformation, providing a framework for how leaders can reclaim responsibility in the Polycene era. Now, in Polycene: Poetry of Our Age, Willis examines this emerging age from within--in ordinary moments: a scattering of birds, a drying reservoir, a remembered storm. Landscapes shift. Language strains. Systems of power and patterns of belonging reveal themselves in fragments: wind, water, memory, migration, and the quiet weight of human choice. What emerges is a portrait of an age shaped not by a single force, but by many--each amplifying the others, an age lived as background noise until it becomes impossible to ignore. Written across years of quiet attention, the poems of Polycene gather what argument and analysis cannot fully reach. They do not explain these forces. They listen to them.