Poems On Nature

See how animals behave through the seasons, and the cycle of trees and plants, from the first blossoms of spring through to the stark winter wonderland in December. 12 inspiring poems from Joe Coelho, paired with folk art from Kelly Louise Judd give this book year-round appeal.

A book-length poem about how an American Indian writer can’t bring himself to write about nature, but is forced to reckon with colonial-white stereotypes, manifest destiny, and his own identity as an young, queer, urban-dwelling poet. A Best Book of the Year at BuzzFeed, Interview, and more. Nature Poem follows Teebs—a young, queer, American Indian (or NDN) poet—who can’t bring himself to write a nature poem. For the reservation-born, urban-dwelling hipster, the exercise feels stereotypical, reductive, and boring. He hates nature. He prefers city lights to the night sky. He’d slap a tree across the face. He’d rather write a mountain of hashtag punchlines about death and give head in a pizza-parlor bathroom; he’d rather write odes to Aretha Franklin and Hole. While he’s adamant—bratty, even—about his distaste for the word “natural,” over the course of the book we see him confronting the assimilationist, historical, colonial-white ideas that collude NDN people with nature. The closer his people were identified with the “natural world,” he figures, the easier it was to mow them down like the underbrush. But Teebs gradually learns how to interpret constellations through his own lens, along with human nature, sexuality, language, music, and Twitter. Even while he reckons with manifest destiny and genocide and centuries of disenfranchisement, he learns how to have faith in his own voice.

The poems in Poems on Nature are divided into spring, summer, autumn and winter to reflect in verse the changes of the seasons and the passing of time. Part of the Macmillan Collectors Library series, featuring expert introductions for your favourite classics. This edition features an introduction by Helen Macdonald, author of the international bestseller, H is for Hawk. Since poetry began, there have been poems about nature; it’s a complex subject which has inspired some of the most beautiful poetry ever written. Poets from Andrew Marvell to W. B. Yeats to Emily Brontë have sought to describe the natural environment and our relationship with it. There is also a rich tradition of songs and rhymes, such as ’Scarborough Fair’, that hark back to a rural way of life which may now be lost, but is brought back to life in the lyrical verses included in this collection.

365 poems celebrating nature and the changing seasons. This is the perfect bedside companion for any nature or poetry fan, featuring famous odes from big-name poets alongside unsung poems from less-well-known writers. Each poem is chosen to chime with the natural world through the seasons. Spring is a time of hope, a season of new life with William Wordsworth's daffodils, John Clare's lambs and Christina Rossetti's birdsong. Summer shifts into a time of leisure with long idyllic holidays in the countryside. According to Henry James, the two most beautiful words in the English language were 'summer afternoon', a sentiment echoed by Edward Thomas and Emily Dickinson. John Keats, William Blake and W. H. Auden are the poets we associate with autumn and this is possibly the most poetic season. The natural world, and the human one, hold onto the last lingering memories of summer before they turn to face the oncoming hardships of winter. Amy Lowell and George Meredith perfectly frame this time of year with their silver-fringed leaves and crimson berries. Winter can be savoured in poetry, rather than endured; bleak grey days are transformed into a world of glittering frost and snow-blanketed landscapes. Even in the darkest days life continues and soon we can turn our attention to the rebirth of spring. A wonderful collection of poems that help mark the daily turn of the seasons and all the rituals marking the significant moments of the year, from Candlemas to Christmas.

An anthology of poetry that traces the history of poetry's changing relationship to nature, featuring the work of over 140 poets.

Jane Yolen and Jason Stemple join forces again in this new winning combination of poems and photos. Water possesses reflective qualities, creating fascinating patterns and doubled images that allow us to see things in new ways. Celebrated writer Jane Yolen and photographer Jason Stemple capture these natural beauties in twelve thoughtful poems and breathtaking pictures in this winner of the John Burroughs Nature Books for Young Readers Award. Watery reflections provide an appropriate backdrop for Jane's musings on nature, such as a raccoon swimming with his reflected self, the water-jagged legs of a snowy egret, and the double danger of a hungry alligator at the edge of a swamp. Jason's photographs offer whimsical peeks at the natural world we rarely chance to see. This artistic collaboration gives readers a unique opportunity to contemplate their world.

The first anthology to focus on the rich tradition of Canadian nature poetry in English, Open Wide a Wilderness is a survey of Canada’s regions, poetries, histories, and peoples as these relate to the natural world. The poetic responses included here range from the heights of the sublime to detailed naturalist observation, from the perspectives of pioneers and those who work in the woods and on the sea to the dismayed witnesses of ecological destruction, from a sense of terror in confrontation with the natural world to expressions of amazement and delight at the beauty and strangeness of nature, our home. Arranged chronologically, the poems include excerpts from late-eighteenth-century colonial pioneer epics and selections from both well-known and more obscure nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers. A substantial section is devoted to contemporary writers who are working within and creating a new ecopoetic aesthetic in the early twenty-first century. Don McKay’s introductory essay, “Great Flint Singing,” explores in McKay’s inimitable way the thorny issues of Canadian poets’ representations of nature over the past 150 years. Focusing on key texts by Duncan Campbell Scott, Charles G.D. Roberts, Earle Birney, Dennis Lee, and others, the essay traces Wordsworthian influences in a New World context, celebrates Canadian poets’ love of natural history observation, and finds a way through a rich and contradictory tradition to current trends in ecopoetics.

"When words in verse are paired with the awesomeness of nature, something magical happens ... Lewis curates [a] ... poetic celebration of the natural world in this ... collection of nature poems. From trickling streams to deafening thrunderstorms to soaring mountains, discover ... photography ... paired with contemporary (such as Billy Collins), classics (such as Robert Frost), and never-before-published works"--