A rich, delicious treasury of nature poems from around the
world—from the pastoral beauty of ancient times to the
modern era’s destruction of living things.
The year 2011 marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of New
Directions, and what better way to celebrate than to dive
into the diversity of its poets reveling in the wonders and
joys of nature. Arranged chronologically by each poet’s
birth, Birds, Beasts, and Seas showcases the work of over
one hundred and twenty poets from the U.S. and abroad,
culled from the New Directions library. Beginning with
ancient Chinese, Greek, Roman, Inuit, Japanese, Indian, and
Persian poets, then dipping into the Troubadours and the
Renaissance, the collection gradually blossoms into a
constellation of poets from the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, and into our present. Sappho, Neruda, Baudelaire,
Rimbaud, and Lorca mix with Anne Carson, Inger Christensen,
Coral Bracho, and Gu Cheng. Poems cross cultures, link, and
converse in paeans to nature and its elegies; in nature’s
dangers, mutabilities, and sanctuary; in its myths and
scientific revelations. Also highlighted are translations by
such luminaries as Samuel Beckett, John Dos Passos, T. S.
Eliot, and Robert Lowell. Hidden jewels of nature await your
discovery.