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Informationen zum Autor HENRY HUGHES is a poet, essayist, and professor of English at Western Oregon University. A winner of the Oregon Book Award, he is also the editor of the Everyman's Library collections The Art of Angling: Poems about Fishing and Fishing Stories . Klappentext An anthology that explores the power and beauty of rivers through poems from around the world and through the ages. AN EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY POCKET POET. Rivers were the arteries of our first civilizations—the Tigris and Euphrates of Mesopotamia, India’s Ganges, Egypt’s Nile, the Yellow River of China—and have nourished modern cities from London to New York, so it’s natural that poets have for centuries drawn essential meanings and metaphors from their endless currents. In this collection, British poets from Shakespeare and Wordsworth to Ted Hughes and Alice Oswald mingle with American voices ranging from verses by the indigenous Klallam people and the African-American spirituals “Deep River” and “Roll, Jordan, Roll” to such recent poets as Gary Snyder, Mary Oliver, and Natasha Tretheway. Walt Whitman’s iconic “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" and Emily Dickinson’s tersely erotic “My River Runs to Thee" stream alongside poems from ancient Babylon and Egypt. Contributions from India, Nepal, Japan, China, Thailand, France, Germany, Russia, Serbia, Chile, Mexico, the Congo, and Nigeria round out this celebration of the rivers of the world. Includes: • “My River Runs to Thee" by Emily Dickinson • “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” by Langston Hughes • “Ol’ Man River” by Oscar Hammerstein II • “The Golden Boat” by Rabindranath Tagore • “The River God” by Stevie Smith • “The River Bends but the Water Does Not” by Buddhadasa Bhikkhu • “The Niagara River” by Kay Ryan • “Amazon” by Pablo Neruda Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Leseprobe Foreword by Henry Hughes It was our first river trip together, falling in love and maybe afraid of falling as we slid the wooden drift boat down the icy ramp into Oregon’s Siletz River, running cold and clear through the dripping dark vault of basalt and towering evergreens. Chloë pointed out gray dipper birds walking underwater, acrobatic otters, and rolling Chinook salmon; and I rowed, avoiding mossy rocks and overhanging snags, reading the gravelly bends and blue chutes. We talked and gazed, anchoring in a turquoise pool under a golden stand of alder to cast our flies. “This feels like a poem,” Chloë said. Her observation reflects an ancient confluence of water and words. Rivers were the arteries of our first civilizations—the Tigris and Euphrates of Mesopotamia, India’s Ganges, Egypt’s Nile, the Yellow River of China—and have nourished modern cities from London to New York, so it’s natural that poets have for centuries drawn essential meanings and metaphors from their endless currents. Rivers teem with symbolic significance: they have long been ritual sites for funerals and baptisms, for deaths and rebirths; they slake our thirst, nourish our crops, and provide us with food, transportation, and power. This collection of poems honors the geographic and cultural legacies of rivers, “Loving them all the way back to their source,” as Raymond Carver vows. “Hymn to the Nile,” from the second millennium BCE, hails the life-giving Egyptian river: “If the Nile smiles, the earth is joyous.” Fifteen hundred years later, the Old Testament prophet, Ezekiel, reminds us that “wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live.” Concurrently in China, the Dao De Jin affirms that “The highest good is like water / Nourishing all things.” Water settles in low places, co...
