This is the second volume of a trilogy (the first was <i>The Plum Flower Dance</i>) in which Weaver analyzes his life, striving to become the ideal poet. In <i>The Government of Nature,</i> Afaa Michael Weaver explores the trauma of his childhood—including sexual abuse—using a "cartography and thematic structure drawn from Chinese spiritualism." Weaver is a practitioner of Daoism, and this collection deals directly with the abuse in the context of Daoist renderings of nature as metaphor for the human body.