William Wordsworth’s ‘To a Skylark’, W.B. Yeats’ ‘Leda and the Swan’, Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘The Moose’, D.H. Lawrence’s ‘Bat’, Marianne Moore’s ‘Elephants’, William Blake’s ‘The Tyger’, Gerard Manley Hopkins’ ‘The Windhover’, Thom Gunn’s ‘The Snail’, Seamus Heaney’s ‘Otter’, John Donne’s ‘The Flea’, Christopher Smart’s ‘My Cat Jeoffry’, and ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ all find a place in this eclectic celebration of the earth’s creatures, ranging from childhood rhymes to canonical classics, from Homer to Ted Hughes. Compiled by the celebrated poet Paul Muldoon, whose bestiary shows that we are ‘most human in the presence of animals’, whether tame or wild, common or exotic, mammal or reptile, real or imaginary, the anthology brims with beastly delights and is a must-read for animal lovers of every age. ‘The Faber Book of Beasts is a generous and intelligent round- up of old favourites, new juxtapositions, and poems we mightn’t know about … Will set heads shaking, as well as nodding with pleasure.’ Independent ‘Animals bring the best out in us [and make] the best art … Elephants, skunks, otters, hedgehogs and hippos feature in Muldoon’s menagerie; how charming it is to observe how they nuzzle along together in his engaging anthology.’ Irish Times
ISBN 13: 9780571195473
Author: Paul Muldoon
