Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
A unique anthology of poems--from around the world and through the ages--that celebrate trees. AN EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY POCKET POET. For thousands of years humans have variously worshipped trees, made use of them, admired them, and destroyed them--and poets have long chronicled the relationship. Poets from Homer and Virgil to Wordsworth, Whitman, and Thoreau, from Bashō and Tu Fu to Czeslaw Milosz and Seamus Heaney have celebrated sacred groves, wild woodlands, and bountiful orchards, and the results include some of our most beloved poems. Robert Frost's "Birches," Marianne Moore's "The Camperdown Elm," Gerard Manley Hopkins's "Binsey Poplars," and Zbigniew Herbert's "Sequoia" stand tall beside Eugenio Montale's "The Lemon Trees," Yves Bonnefoy's "The Apples," Bertolt Brecht's "The Plum Tree," D. H. Lawrence's "The Almond Tree," and A. E. Housman's "Loveliest of Trees." Whether shown being planted or felled, cherished or lamented, towering in forests or flowering in backyards, the protagonists of the poems collected here are splendid specimens of these majestic beings we share the earth with.