This is a comprehensive study of Darwin's Legacy for religion, ecology
and the arts. In Darwin's Bards John Holmes argues that poetry can
have a profound impact on how we think and feel about the human
condition in a Darwinian world. Including over 50 complete poems and
substantial extracts from several more, Holmes shows how poets from
Tennyson and Browning, through Hardy and Frost, to Ted Hughes, Pattiann
Rogers and Edwin Morgan have responded to the discovery of evolution.
Written for scientists, philosophers and ecologists, as well as poets,
critics and students of literature, Darwin's Bards is a timely
intervention into the heated debates over Darwin's legacy for religion,
ecology and the arts. The book will appeal to readers for its discussion
of the existential implications of Darwinism, for its close readings of
poetry, and for the reprinted poems themselves.