Definitive and daring, The Ecopoetry Anthology is the
authoritative collection of contemporary American poetry about nature
and the environment--in all its glory and challenge. From praise to
lament, the work covers the range of human response to an increasingly
complex and often disturbing natural world and inquires of our human
place in a vastness beyond the human.
To establish the antecedents of today's writing, The Ecopoetry
Anthology presents a historical section that includes poetry written
from roughly the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Iconic
American poets like Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are followed by
more modern poets like Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Ezra
Pound, and even more recent foundational work by poets like Theodore
Roethke, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Hayden, and Muriel Rukeyser. With
subtle discernment, the editors portray our country's rich heritage and
dramatic range of writing about the natural world around us.