Imagining the Earth

Poetry and the Vision of Nature

Title Details

Pages: 264

Trim size: 6.000in x 9.000in

Formats

Paperback

Pub Date: 11/01/1996

ISBN: 9-780-8203-1847-9

List Price: $36.95

Related Subjects

LITERARY CRITICISM / Poetry

Imagining the Earth

Poetry and the Vision of Nature

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  • Description

A landmark work in the burgeoning field of literary ecology, Imagining the Earth explores the ways in which our attitudes toward nature are mirrored in and influenced by poetry. In the work of some of our most widely read poets, says John Elder, one can discern a resurgent vision of humanity in harmony with the rest of the natural order.

To show us the power of poetry to identify, interpret, and celebrate a wide range of issues related to nature and our place in it, Elder uses numerous examples of works by Gary Snyder, Wendell Berry, A. R. Ammons, Denise Levertov, and William Everson. Elder places these poets within a cultural tradition flowing from William Wordsworth through Alfred North Whitehead, T. S. Eliot, and Robinson Jeffers, and uses their poems to illuminate the relationships between culture and wilderness, imagination and landscape, and science and poetry. Elder's commentaries are interlinked with two remarkable essays in which he describes his ow

About the Author/Editor

JOHN ELDER is Stewart Professor of English and Environmental Studies at Middlebury College. He is the author or editor of numerous books, including Reading the Mountains of Home and Nature Writing (coedited with Robert Finch).