Product Description

This wide-ranging collection is an anthology of contemporary eco-poetry. The poems testify to the modern violation of the natural order but also sing the diverse beauty of the earth. They celebrate wildlife, the seasons, wilderness and the way in which our lives are in constant creative or destructive play with the whole of nature. Many contemporary poets, defying all current literary fashions, are writing an eco-poetry of great precision, power and lyrical elegance; a poetry to take the environmental agenda of the 21st century into the imagination. The poets featured include Wendell Berry, Sujata Bhatt, Eavan Bolan, John Burnside, Gillian Clarke, Kevin Crossley-Holland, Dana Gioia, Thom Gunn, Seamus Heaney, Jeremy Hooker, Grevel Lindop, Michael Longley, Jem Poster, Kathleen Raine, Peter Redgrove, Jeremy Reed, Carol Rumens, Penelope Shuttle, Gary Snyder, Pauline Stainer, John Heath-Stubbs, George Szirtes and George Tomlinson.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #230716 in Books
• Published on: 2002-09-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Customer Reviews

Essential reflections for our ecological age
This is an excellent and, given its subtitle (A Resurgence [journal] anthology of contemporary eco-poetry), surprisingly wide-ranging collection of poems centred around a number of connected ecological themes. It's intelligently divided up into sections - for example `Naming Gaia'; `Our Sick Planet'; `The Living World'; and `The Search for Enlightenment' - which allows the reader to explore a particular angle in depth via some twenty or so short reflections. There are contributions from a number of major established poets - Kathleen Raine, Anne Stevenson, Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley and John Burnside, to name but a few of those anthologised here - alongside lesser-known writers like Isobel Thrilling and Ted Walter, whose work (to my mind) stands comparison with the best of them.

In a collection of nearly 180 poems, there is inevitably some unevenness. Some poems come across as quite distractingly polemical (notably Dana Gioia's 'A California Requiem'), and don't work quite as well as others that balance out the polemic with poetic images (compare Gioia's poem with, for example, the menacing final image of Anne Stevenson's `The Fish are all Sick'). But these are minor quibbles with what is a delightful and rich collection, offering many potential starting points for reflection in our ecologically-threatened age.