February 15, 2013
Award-winning poets and editors Fisher-Wirth and Street define ecopoetry as poetry that responds in some way to the burgeoning environmental crisis. By making the distinction between traditional nature poetry and ecopoetry, this groundbreaking anthology joins Bill McKibben's prose collection, American Earth (2008), which establishes the shift from traditional nature writing to environmental writing. Fisher-Wirth and Street begin with 31 historical poets (e.g., Whitman, Dickinson, Frost, Hughes) who explored the human-nature bond prior to the environmental movement. The 176 poets who follow, including such vital guardians as Wendell Berry, Lucille Clifton, Robert Hass, Mary Oliver, and Gary Snyder, along with Dan Beachy-Quick, Lucia Perillo, Srikanth Reddy, and Ed Roberson, explode any notion of a simplistic green message. Imagination, emotions, and convictions run high as each poem recalibrates our perception of life on earth. There is no anticipating the glorious spectrum of voices, settings, knowledge, wit, fury, and beauty. Poets draw from the wellsprings of spirit and science, everyday reality and mythic revelations. Ravishing, devastating, and uplifting, this is a mighty, conscionable, and defining anthology of vital poetry shaped by profound environmental intelligence.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)