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Zusatztext "A warm! witty! and wise collection . . . This anthology gathers genuine! artful verse . . . Good literary stuff to accompany a single malt by the fire. Buy a copy for the study and another to be battered in your angling grip." -- Gray's Sporting Journal Informationen zum Autor Edited by Henry Hughes Klappentext "An anthology of poems from around the world and through the ages on the subject of fishing"-- From the Foreword by Henry Hughes I have been fishing and reading all my life, and the strands of those experiences have braided lines strong enough to hold just about anything that swims. As a boy, plying the waters off Long Island and imagining the creatures that swam below, I thrilled to the bite and pull of the line, wild with fascination and desire when a brassy porgie or silver snapper flashed into view below the dock. Men stepped off boats with huge bluefish and stripers, told stories of even bigger fins and broken lines, tides and depth, sharks and birds, storms and wrecks. There were always mysterious forces at work, and beneath these forces always more fish. I feel them now, primitive pulses from the earth's first living element — leviathan and minnow, grey lugs and sparkling jewels, from shimmering shallows and deep, dark places — luring us to connect. The poetry in this collection explores all angles of angling, that is, fishing with hook and line for food and for pleasure. Here are wild tales of sporting adventure, lush descriptions of nature, the most practical advice, and the deepest meditations on the meaning of life. From ancient Greece and China to last Friday at the lake, from the very young to the very old, the span of time and water here is enormous. The Old Testament mentions fishing with a hook, as do many Roman writings. Ovid tells us to keep casting in life because we never know where and when a fish may strike. Martial warns us to stay out of the ruler's pond. Timeless quandaries, indeed. Christianity has take the fish for one of its guiding symbols, and several poets allude to Christ's promise to make his disciples "fishers of men." Fish rise throughout East Asian literature as well. In China's Tang and Song dynasties, writers Wang Wei, Du Fu, and Zhu Dunru explore fishing as an escape from the stresses of a demanding civilization and as a means to enlightenment through Daoist and Buddhist contemplations of nature. Poet anglers from China, Korea, and Japan also used fishing as an excuse to avoid work, write poems, and have a few drinks with friends, giving an ancient pedigree to the long-standing tradition of angling companionship, later celebrated in British salmon songs and American catfish serenades. Fishing can be a solitary, serenely peaceful activity in the heart of nature; it can also be a social event along the crowded banks of a river or aboard a beer-splashed party boat. Although angling has developed well beyond the need to catch something to eat, sport fishing remains one of the few ways people in the twenty-first century can participate — if only occasionally and recreationally — in the catching and killing of their food. Although I admit the price per pound nets no savings, nothing pleases me more than chasing salmon and steelhead in Oregon's coastal bays and rivers. The pleasures rise with misty mornings, cast after cast, a new lure, a new spot, a long troll, fresh bait, consideration, persistence, and luck. And if I catch and keep a legal fish or two, they are cleaned, prepared, and cooked or smoked to the delight of family and friends. Like many of the poets in this collection, I feel tremendous satisfaction in this kind of complete fishing . Plato called fishing an "acquisitive art," but after a day on the water we acquire more than fish. The sixteenth-century Korean poet, Song Chong'won, says the best way to understand how to live is to "fish without catching any." Th...
