The Poem The Garden And The World

How an early modern understanding of place and movement are embedded in a performative theory of literature How is a garden like a poem? Early modern writers frequently compared the two, and as Jim Ellis shows, the metaphor gained strength with the arrival of a spectacular new art form—the Renaissance pleasure garden—which immersed visitors in a political allegory to be read by their bodies’ movements. The Poem, the Garden, and the World traces the Renaissance-era relationship of place and movement from garden to poetry to a confluence of both. Starting with the Earl of Leicester’s pleasure garden for Queen Elizabeth’s 1575 progress visit, Ellis explores the political function of the entertainment landscape that plunged visitors into a fully realized golden world—a mythical new form to represent the nation. Next, he turns to one of that garden’s visitors: Philip Sidney, who would later contend that literature’s golden worlds work to move us as we move through them, reorienting readers toward a belief in English empire. This idea would later be illustrated by Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queen; as with the pleasure garden, both characters and readers are refashioned as they traverse the poem’s dreamlike space. Exploring the artistic creations of three of the era’s major figures, Ellis argues for a performative understanding of literature, in which readers are transformed as they navigate poetic worlds.

In 15 poems, Wong records some of the many dreams--from the familiar to the outlandish and everywhere in between--that she or her friends have had. With Paschkis's paintings, which reflect the glowing colors of dreams, these nighttime visions create a garden, tempting to explore and evocative of dreams of our very own. Full color.

From the RHS comes this celebration of the garden, spanning the centuries and the globe. From the Garden of Eden to small backyards, from scented memories to bonfires and neighbours' rights, from suggestive slugs to paranoid palm-house gardeners, the poems burst out in a biodiversity of fun, exotic beauty and earthy philosophy. There's something for everyone, with a glorious array of gardening classics, perennial favourites and more recent contributions from Dorothy Parker, Sylvia Plath and John Agard. Each poem is illustrated with a botanical print, a hand-coloured or black and white engraving, or a watercolour drawing - all from the remarkable collection of botanical art at the Royal Horticultural Society's Lindley Library, acknowledged as the world's finest horticultural library. Together they create a colourful collection to invigorate gardening enthusiasts, delight landscape-lovers and inspire armchair gardeners everywhere.

Late in life our most revered poet delivers a verdant collection that rivals the best from his storied career.

A collection of poems evoking the world and feeling of childhood.

Poetry. Winner of the 2017 Richard Snyder Prize in Poetry. "Poems by Michael Moos often occupy a liminal space at the edge of the garden about which he so often writes, that edge beyond which wildness begins, a wildness which Moos is not afraid to evoke in his poems. These poems are themselves gardens, spaces where human nature and the natural world can have conversations that are at once sacred and profane. 'What is thirst for, if not for talking to God?' Moos writes. He could just as well have written instead of thirst, river, heron, tree, cricket, moon. These conversations that occur within the space of a Moos poem can be about God, loss, love, longing, ecstasy, solitude, bitterness: all the ancient topics that poems have responded to forever. In THE IDEA OF THE GARDEN, Michael Moos brings a distinctly contemporary sensibility to subjects of timeless importance. What more could we ask from a poet?"--Jim Moore