This unique collection of poems from diverse contemporary voices offers a range of perspectives on humans' complex relationship with animals, celebrating and bearing witness to the lives of animals both wild and domestic.
Animals have long been a source of inspiration, sustenance, and companionship, and poems about and for animals are among the oldest traditions across human cultures. This collection of contemporary poems adds to this ancient lineage, celebrating animals for their beauty and intelligence; empathizing over their suffering; and hoping for their future, which is entwined with our own. The presence of an animal is a gift. The loss of an animal is a grief. To share such feelings through poetry is to create a community of caring for the creatures that accompany us on Earth.
The Gift of Animals includes poems by some of today's most beloved poets, including Ellen Bass, Lucille Clifton, Michael Collier, Toi Derricotte, Rita Dove, Camille Dungy, Mark Doty, Nick Flynn, Jorie Graham, Joy Harjo, Terrance Hayes, Arthur Sze, Yusef Komunyakaa, Ada Limón, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Craig Santos Perez, Paisley Rekdal, and more.
About the Author
Alison Hawthorne Deming is the author of five nonfiction books, including Zoologies: On Animals and the Human Spirit, and five poetry collections including Stairway to Heaven and Science and Other Poems, which won the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets; as well as the editor of Poetry of the American West and co-editor of The Colors of Nature. Her work also appears in the Norton Book of Nature Writing and Best American Science and Nature Writing. Deming served as poet-in-residence at the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens in Florida, where she curated a poetry installation, and as poet-in-residence at the Milwaukee Public Library and Milwaukee Museum where she curated a poetry installation along with programming shared by the two institutions. Recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, former Agnese Nelms Haury Chair of Environment and Social Justice, she is currently Regents Professor Emerita at the University of Arizona.
Praise For…
A thought-provoking collection of poetic gems that will inspire and remind readers of the importance of connecting with the natural world.—Library Journal, starred review
This gorgeous collection of encounters feels like an antidote to species loneliness, providing a multi-faceted lens on our desire for communion with the more-than-human world.—Robin Wall Kimmerer, from the foreword
If we know how to see, the world of animals can be a gift that opens us to other worlds. From praise, to grief, to companionship, the poems here teach us to see other worlds and keep wonder alive. They bend language to get us beyond our all too human selves. —Ron Broglio, author of Animal Revolution
[A] rare treasure that you will want to give to all your friends, even as you keep a copy close beside you. Brilliantly selected and meaningfully arranged, the poems unfold one after another – perfectly observed, rambunctious, hilarious or heartbreaking, astonishing, revelatory or mysterious, loving. —Kathleen Dean Moore, author of Earth’s Wild Music
A fascinating treasure trove of the most surprising (re)connections to oysters, flamingos, snakes, and a whole lyrical host of other dazzling heartbeats that beat the same as ours, no matter how many chambers.—Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of World of Wonders and Bite by Bite
A gorgeous collection that embraces the joy, tragedy, and necessity of our relationships with the rest of the animal world.—Michelle Nijhuis, author of Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction
