Sea Poems

Throughout history, poets have felt the ancient pull of the sea, exploring the full range of mankind's nautical fears, dreams, and longings. The colorful legends of the sea-pirates and mermaids, phantom ships and the sunken city of Atlantis-have inspired as many imaginations as have the realities of lighthouses and shipwrecks, of icebergs and frothing foam and seaweed. This marvelous collection includes classics old and new, from Homer and Milton to Plath and Merwin. Here are Tennyson's seductive sea-fairies next to Poe's beloved Annabel Lee. Here is Coleridge's darkly brooding "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" alongside the grandeur of Shakespeare's "Full Fathom Five." And here is Masefield's "I must go down to the seas again" alongside Cavafy's "Ithaka" and Stevens's "The Idea of Order at Key West." In the wide variety of lyrics collected here-sonnets and sea chanteys, ballads and hymns and prayers-we feel the encompassing power of our planet's restless

Editor Bob Crew is a writer and sailing enthusiast.

“The more I sit with these poems, the more they resonate with me and with universal patterns and themes—existential inquiries, loneliness, spiritual doubts.” —Green Mountains Review To Make Room for the Sea reckons with the notion that nothing in this world is permanent. Led by an introspective speaker, these poems examine a landscape that resists full focus, and conclude that “it’s easier to love what we don’t know.” “I hold this leaf I think / you should see, but I can’t quite / say why,” Adam Clay writes, as he navigates a variety of both personal and ecological fixations: disembodied bullfrog croaks, the growth of his child, a computer’s dreaded blue screen of death. The observations in To Make Room for the Sea convey both grief for the Anthropocene and hope for the future. The poems read like field notes from someone who knows the world and hopes to know it differently. On the precipice of great change and restructured perspective, Clay’s poems linger in “the second between taking in a vision and processing it,” in the moment when the world is less a familiar system and more a palette of colors and potential. To Make Room for the Sea delights as much as it mourns. It looks forward as much as it reflects. Deft and hopeful, the poems in this collection gently encourage us to take another look at a world “only some strange god might have thought up / in a drunken stumble.” “That’s the magic of this book—the way Adam Clay, line after line, enacts the mind on the page.” —Maggie Smith “Draws from an impressive repertoire of forms to tease out complex questions regarding time, epistemology, and memory.” —Publishers Weekly

Poems of the Sea is an anthology of classic poetry that celebrates the sea; from the power of a stormy ocean to ships and sailors and beaches strewn with shells. Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, pocket-sized classics with ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition features an introduction by author Adam Nicolson. For generations, poets have taken inspiration from ocean mists and rugged coastlines to conjure up adventures on the high seas and joyous days at the seaside. From Emily Dickinson’s morning dog walks by the shore, to the river running through Sara Teasdale’s sunny valley, and from Walt Whitman’s fish-filled forests, to the silent ships passing in Paul Laurence Dunbar’s dark ocean, there are poems here for every reader to enjoy.

A latest collection of poetry explores broad and specific themes ranging from nature and art to shoes and the tangerine.

Poems feature kites, sea shells, a day at the beach, sand, seagulls, and more.

A wonderful anthology of poetry celebrating the British coastline and life above and below the deep blue sea. Verses from our best-loved authors – such as WB Yeats, RL Stevenson and Rudyard Kipling – are accompanied by beautiful illustrations of idyllic days at sea, haunted shipwrecks and tempestuous storms. Sea shanties and siren's songs sit alongside the classic song from The Tempest and Coleridge's 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' in this beautiful anthology of the mystical world beaneth the waves.