What do you turn to when you have a crossroads experience? Editor Sara Barkat turned to poetry.
In a pivotal moment of personal connection with nature, while the world seemed burning with pandemic fever and climate fire, she gathered this anthology of ecopoetry with vision and care. When you hold the collection, it’s like cradling a rare crystal that focuses longing, love, tenderness, hope, and a wish for the world to keep turning… in unutterable ways. The words in this collection sing to you more than speak. The images invite you more than opine.
Arranged to mirror the experience of an orchestral piece-with repeating refrains of Teasdale and Hopkins, Earth Song unfolds its lyric moments for you through a wide range of voices. Historic. Modern-day. Cross-cultural. Global-with many poems in beautiful translation. The collection includes both emerging poets and greats like Neruda, Berry, Hirshfield, Darwish, Dickinson, McKay and Merwin.
Leaving off anger, which is the single emotion that many people have come to associate with environmental concern, this collection puts forth a vision more nuanced, more poignant. Like an irresistible piece of music, it will draw you to embrace your care for the world-starting so simply: celebrating life moment by small moment.
**Full List of Poets Featured in Earth Song**
Scott Edward Anderson, Crisosto Apache, L. L. Barkat, Sara Barkat, Wendell Berry, Kimberly Blaeser, William Blake, Robert Burns, Jennifer Chang, Briceida Cuevas Cob, Jack Cooper, Mahmoud Darwish, Emily Dickinson, Louise Erdrich, Forugh Farrokhzad, Jennifer Elise Foerster, Robert Frost, Mary Elizabeth Frye, Martha Greenwald, Jennifer Grotz, Thomas Hardy, Jane Hirshfield, Tony Hoagland, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Major Jackson, Emily Pauline Johnson, P. K., Irakli Kakabadze, Laura Kasischke, Jan Kaus, John Keats, D. H. Lawrence, Li-Young Lee, Si-Young Lee, Luljeta Lleshanaku, Kate Seymour Maclean, Rick Maxson, Janet McAdams, Claude McKay, W. S. Merwin, Sandra Fox Murphy, Pablo Neruda, Michelle Ortega, Anne M. Doe Overstreet, Peter Payack, Lola Ridge, Hermit Tai Shang, Dave Smith, Wallace Stevens, Rabindranath Tagore, Sara Teasdale, Wyatt Townley, Tomas Transtroemer, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Gerald Vizenor, Walt Whitman, Will Willingham, Elizabeth Woody, William Wordsworth, William Butler Yeats.
