Field Days: An Anthology of Poetry [Paperback]

Common Ground (Organization) (Author), Angela King (Editor), Susan Clifford (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1999

Meadows and fields exist at the boundary where human endeavors meet the natural world. The poems in this collection are drawn from across centuries of a literary tradition that uses the pastoral landscape as setting for exploring complex and timeless questions about that encounter between human and non-human existence.
The poems were chosen as lyrical celebrations-or in some instances, eulogies-for fields, and for the old way of life that fields represent. Some of the poets evoke lullabies out of childhood memory; others beat archetypal time to the rhythm of work: plowing and sowing, haying and threshing. More recent poems document the increasingly uneasy coexistence of people and fields, witnessing the grim effects of development and careless use of once fertile hillsides and meadows.
This anthology brings together the work of more than ninety poets, ancient and modern, including:
Wendell Berry
William Blake
Robert Graves
Seamus Heaney
John Keats
Denise Levertov
Sylvia Plath
Christina Rossetti
Walt Whitman

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Common Ground is a nonprofit organization that seeks to inspire people to remember the richness of everyday landscapes and to renew our emotional engagement with places as we learn to take better care of them. Visit the Common Ground website for more information (www.commonground.org.uk).

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Green Books (January 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 189013225X
• ISBN-13: 978-1890132255
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,421,571 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding anthology of poetry drawn from "Common Ground"., May 8, 2000

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Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Field Days: An Anthology of Poetry (Paperback)

Field Days is an outstanding anthology of poetry drawn from the pages of Common Ground. These paeans of lyrical celebration are arranged alphabetically and represent the combined works of more than ninety poets, both ancient and modern. From John Keats, William Blake, and Walt Whitman to Sylvia Plath, Robert Graves, and Seamus Heaney, here are poems that inspire, celebrate and document the complex and timeless aspects of human experience amidst pastoral landscapes and agricultural settings. Brockhampton: The land was too wet for plowing; yet it is done./Even the stones of the ridges lie sulky and brown./The roads are a slide of mud. The wet sky/Is blank as the chink of the hawk's perfect eye./A blink before the dark comes down/Drops the peregrine sun./The land glows like an awkward face./Broken posts, by which sheep graze/Shine pale as growing wood./Above, the last crow's wings/Cannot frighten from my blood/The stubborn light of things. Alison Brackenbury.