商品簡介
In Bestiary, Stephen Mitchell has collected animal poems from many ages and many cultures. He includes excerpts from ancient masterpieces like "The Hymn to the Sun" by Pharaoh Amen-hotep IV, The Book of Job, and The Book of Psalms; haiku by Basho, Buson, and Issa; poems by Milton and Smart, Blake and Burns, Whitman and Emily Dickinson, Hardy and Hopkins. And since the animal poem attains its full richness and depth in the twentieth century, he has included extensive selections from its greatest modern masters, Rilke, D. H. Lawrence, Marianne Moore, Ponge, and Neruda, as well as poems by Yeats, Frost, William Carlos Williams, Jeffers, Elizabeth Bishop, and James Wright. This is a book of passionate and humorous encounters with the vibrant world of animals. It is also a book about loving the earth. In our time, when selfishness and greed have placed this whole planet on the endangered species list, we particularly need the vision of our great poets. When we read them, we learn that every creature on earth is a treasure and a delight to the heart that contemplates it with undivided attention.