Maurice Riordan

Described in its subtitle as an anthology provoked by Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, this nonetheless contains mostly poems written independently of that book. In fact, only eighteen of the 120 or so poems were commissioned. The underlying idea was that Rachel Carson's writing combined meticulous science, passionate advocacy and lyricism. The anthology is a kind of tribute to her influence on our way of seeing and experiencing the world, the fruitful erosion of the gap between science and poetry over the last half century. The result is a dynamic collection of 'nature poems' with edge. There's a passionate argument for vegetarianism by John Dryden ('Take not away the life you cannot give; / For all things have an equal right to live'), a denunciation of hunting by Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1626–73), and a whole lot of excellent stuff. As anthologies go, this is among the liveliest I've read, probably because in it the poems--rather than being showcased as representative of something or the best of something else--become a kind of conversation in which it's wonderful to participate, if only as a listener. Robert Frost crisply describes a doomed moth; Robert Burns addresses a disturbed mouse; John Clare tells sonorously about badger bating, Yeats meets a squirrel, Lawrence chucks a log after a snake, Les Murray grunts pig-words. No one is trying to get elected. I've never been able to read Shelley's 'Ode to the West Wind', but in this company I stayed wide awake the whole way through.The book reminds me why I read at all.… (meer)