Can Poetry Save the Earth?: A Field Guide to Nature Poems

Felstiner, John

ISBN 10: 0300137508 / ISBN 13: 9780300137507

Published by Yale University Press, 2009

Seller Inventory # mon0000669298

Synopsis:

Poems vivifying nature have gripped people for centuries. From ancient Biblical times through the present day, poetry has continuously drawn us to the natural world. In this thought-provoking book, John Felstiner explores the rich legacy of poems that take nature as their subject, and he demonstrates their force and beauty. In our own time of environmental crises, he contends, poetry has a unique capacity to restore our attention to our environment in its imperiled state. And, as we take heed, we may well become better stewards of the earth. In forty brief and lucid chapters, Felstiner presents those voices that have most strongly spoken to and for the natural world. Poets - from the Romantics through Whitman and Dickinson to Elizabeth Bishop and Gary Snyder - have helped us envision such details as ocean winds eroding and rebuilding dunes in the same breath, wild deer freezing in our presence, and a person carving initials on a still-living stranded whale. Sixty colour and black-and-white images, many seen for the first time, bear out visually the environmental imagination this book discovers - a poetic legacy more vital now than ever.

About the Author: John Felstiner is professor of English, Stanford University.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Can Poetry Save the Earth?: A Field Guide to...
Publisher: Yale University Press
Publication Date: 2009
Binding: hardcover
Condition: Good