Poetry Comes Up Where It Can [Paperback]

Brian Swann (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 168 pages
• Publisher: University of Utah Press (February 24, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0874806445
• ISBN-13: 978-0874806441
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,770,092 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An impressive compendium of nature/environmental poetry., September 7, 2000

By 

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

This review is from: Poetry Comes Up Where It Can (Paperback)

Drawn from the pages of The Amicus Journal (a quarterly publication of the Natural Resources Defense Council), the poets and poetry selected by Brian Swan for Poetry Comes Up Where It Can reflect the common them of struggling with issues of nature and the environment during the final decade of the millennium. Windfall: Eating an apple, I think of Emerson/in another railroad berth/traveling to another Chautauqua. This time,//maybe it's summer, he's passing/apple orchards in Ohio where/he half dreams a bumblebee//sipping nectar--in it belly, a mite/glows with mite joy. In the mite's belly,/other living things the size of atoms//climb mountains...but he's tired/of revelation. It's certain the cosmos/is an orchard, or tree, or single bee//bearing the whole apple future, & Boston,/from one field to another,/& bearing him. He'll lecture this audience//to find & live the secret of any windfall,/to try, for god's sake, to love//that which is obvious, & themselves.

5.0 out of 5 stars Nature and Man, January 29, 2011

By 

Green Cat (Payette ID USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Poetry Comes Up Where It Can (Paperback)

This is my favorite poetry book of all time. I don't read a lot of poetry but I love nature and everything in here speaks straight to my heart - the tension between our human existence which inevitably exploits the natural world, and love and awe for the natural world that surrounds us even as we compete in and with it. Small landscapes where we can see small gardens of beauty, immense landscapes that are not so much beautiful as self-possessed and powerful. Except that now we know humans have reached the point of altering these landscapes without even being aware of their existence. So we need to be aware. And try to be more care-ful. Think. On a more personal level, the poem The Dog, I read often when remembering my own dogs now passed - "There is everything in his eyes. Everything. Packs of wolves fleeing across the frozen waves . . . In dreams, he is running free And his people stream behind him like flags, like wind tossed rags Who will catch up with him When he gets where he is going, When he once more Knows what he has always known."

5.0 out of 5 stars Read and Think, March 18, 2010

By 

T. Rehfeldt "Amateur Classic Scholar" (Northern, WI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Poetry Comes Up Where It Can (Paperback)

Poetry Comes Up Where It Can
Brian Swann, ed.

This is an excellent collection of poems with an environmental or nature theme. They originally appeared in _Amicus_Journal_, a publication of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Brian Swann has made the selection. All of the poems are good, some are really excellent. I found some old friends here: Wendell Berry, Denise Levertov, Pattiann Rogers, Mary Oliver. I also found some unknown to me but will be in future reading, for example, Reg Saner and John Smelcher. There is a goodly collection of Mary Oliver's work, which is always excellent. But for added interest there is a fascinating and thought provoking foreword by Oliver. Her poems and the foreword are worth the price of the volume. Every thing else is a bonus including the delightful decorations.