Note: A text version of this essay is available here.

Daniel Barnum is the managing editor of The Journal and a presidential fellow at the Ohio State University. Their poems and essays appear in or are forthcoming from West Branch, Hayden's Ferry Review, The Massachusetts Review, Pleiades, The Offing, and elsewhere. Their work is featured in Best New Poets 2020, and included as notable in Best American Essays 2020. Names for Animals, their debut chapbook, is now in its second printing from Seven Kitchens Press. Find them at: danielbarnum.net & @daniel_bar_none