Amazon.com: The River's Voice: An Anthology of Poetry (9781890132699): Common Ground, Susan Clifford, Angela King: Books

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2000

Rivers are an inexhaustible source of metaphors and meanings, linking us with numberless generations who have paused to wonder at the paradox of constancy and flow. Poetry has a special capacity to convey the elusive qualities of running water, its magical transformations, its correspondences with life's meanderings, and the particular qualities of actual streams and rivers. While in recent years some rivers have been cleansed and restored, so that they are healthier now than at any time since the industrial revolution, other rivers are under assault from the impacts of modern society--chemical pollution, the lowering of water tables, erosion of banks and stream beds, and flooding due to global climate change, as well as destruction of plant and animal habitat. In this book, more than 180 poems create a chorus of older voices (Shakespeare, Blake, Wordsworth, Dickinson) and new, from both sides of the Atlantic, including Margaret Atwood, Seamus Heaney, A. R. Ammons, Adrienne Rich, Randall Jarrell, William Carlos Williams, Gary Snyder, Wendell Berry, Andrew Motion and Elizabeth Bishop.

#outer_postBodyPS { display: none; } #psGradient { display: none; } #psPlaceHolder { display: none; } #psExpand { display: none; } Rivers are an inexhaustible source of metaphors and meanings, linking us with numberless generations who have paused to wonder at the paradox of constancy and flow. Poetry has a special capacity to convey the elusive qualities of running water, its magical transformations, its correspondences with life's meanderings, and the particular qualities of actual streams and rivers. While in recent years some rivers have been cleansed and restored, so that they are healthier now than at any time since the industrial revolution, other rivers are under assault from the impacts of modern society--chemical pollution, the lowering of water tables, erosion of banks and stream beds, and flooding due to global climate change, as well as destruction of plant and animal habitat. In this book, more than 180 poems create a chorus of older voices (Shakespeare, Blake, Wordsworth, Dickinson) and new, from both sides of the Atlantic, including Margaret Atwood, Seamus Heaney, A. R. Ammons, Adrienne Rich, Randall Jarrell, William Carlos Williams, Gary Snyder, Wendell Berry, Andrew Motion and Elizabeth Bishop.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The Water Diviner by Dannie Abse
River by Karen Fleur Adcock
Water by Karen Fleur Adcock
The Water Below by Karen Fleur Adcock
Flat Rock by Archie Randolph Ammons
If Anything Will Level With You Water Will by Archie Randolph Ammons
River by Margaret Atwood
Vermilion Flycatcher, San Pedro River, Arizona by Margaret Atwood
River Profile by Wystan Hugh Auden
The Estuary by Patricia Beer
The Water Diviner by Patricia Beer
First Day Of September by Frances Bellerby
The Porch Over The River by Wendell Berry
The Springs by Wendell Berry
Gentle Brent, I Used To Know You by John Betjeman
Waterspout, 1853 by Ruth Bidgood
Waterfalls by Elizabeth Bishop
To Memory by William Blake
The Spring At Chedworth by Alison Brackenbury
The Banks Of Nith by Robert Burns
In Avon by John Burnside
Scotland In An Oxford Landscape by Olivia Byard
To My Mistress Sitting By A River's Side by Thomas Carew
The Brook by Hayden Carruth
Watercourse by John Cassidy
Sibard's Well by Charles Stanley Causley
The Ford by John Clare
Round Oak And Eastwell by John Clare
Rustic Fishing by John Clare
Forest Pools by Leonard Clark
Water Meadows by Leonard Clark
St Winefride's Well by Gillian Clarke
Valley by Gillian Clarke
Inscription For A Fountain On A Heath by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Sonnet To The River Otter by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Lothian Burn by John Stewart Conn
A Two-seater Privy Over A Stream by David Constantine
In The Backs by Frances Crofts Darwin Cornford
Repose Of Rivers by Harold Hart Crane
Downstream Effects: River Stour by James Crowden
The Dowser by James Crowden
Springhead At Fontmell Magna by James Crowden
The Fisherman by Martyn Crucefix
Heaven by Michael Cullup
Not Drinking Water by Peter Dale
Vignette: 1 by Keki N. Daruwalla
Vignette: 2 by Keki N. Daruwalla
Green River by Donald Davie
The Thames by John Denham
Like Rain It Sounded Till It Curved by Emily Dickinson
The Bait by John Donne
Net And River by Maura Dooley
River People by Joan Downar
Where Stour Receives Her Strength by Michael Drayton
River by Carol Ann Duffy
Who Carved A Bird And A Fish by Carol Ann Duffy
Above All Rivers Thy River Hath Renown by William Dunbar
Hungry Thames by Helen Dunmore
Tay Bridge by Douglas Dunn
Bridge by Geoffrey Fraser Dutton
The River's Tent Is Broken: The Last Fingers Of Leaf by Thomas Stearns Eliot
The River by Peter Fallon
Rising Damp by Ursala Fanthorpe
Water Everywhere by Ursala Fanthorpe
Abstracted Water by Roy Fisher
Birmingham River by Roy Fisher
A Brook In The City by Robert Frost
Boundaries by John Fuller
At The Sand Creek Bridge by James Galvin
How Shy The Attraction by James Galvin
Culvert by Roger Garfitt
Beside The Wye by John Greening
Huntingdonshire Eclogues by John Greening
An Offering by John Greening
River History by Lavinia Greenlaw
The Salmon Leap by Christopher Murray Grieve
The Soaking by Ivor Gurney
Water Colours by Ivor Gurney
Thames by Michael Hamburger
On Sturminster Foot-bridge by Thomas Hardy
Under The Waterfall by Thomas Hardy
The Poet As Spirit Of The River by Michael Hartnett
The Wounded Otter by Michael Hartnett
Anahorish by Seamus Heaney
The Riverbed by Seamus Heaney
River Song by John Heath-stubbs
Angler by Adrian Henri
To Dean-bourn, A Rude River In Devon, By Which ... He Lived by Robert Herrick
Kingfisher by Phoebe Hesketh
The River Idle by Phoebe Hesketh
Guests Of Silence by Jeremy Hooker
Penmaen Pool by Gerard Manley Hopkins
A Shropshire Lad: 50 by Alfred Edward Housman
An Eel by Edward James Hughes
Drouth End by Paul Hyland
Watering Place by Paul Hyland
Well Water by Randall Jarrell
Water Music by Elizabeth Jennings
River Rising In India by Jennifer Joseph
Charing Cross by David Herbert Lawrence
The Third Thing by David Herbert Lawrence
Sands Of The Well by Denise Levertov
Rivers by Peter Chad Tigar Levi
Behind The Waterfall by Hilary Llewellyn-williams
Mother Anthony's by Hilary Llewellyn-williams
To The River Charles by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Spring Tide by Michael Longley
The Charles River: 1 by Robert Lowell
Dipper by Norman Maccaig
Gray Wagtail by Norman Maccaig
Kingfisher by Norman Maccaig
The Banished Gods by Derek Mahon
Heraclitus On Rivers by Derek Mahon
The Factories, Bathing In The Moscow River by Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam
The Kingfisher by Andrew Marvell
The River Meadows: 59 by Andrew Marvell
The River Meadows: 60 by Andrew Marvell
The River Meadows: 61 by Andrew Marvell
Sweet Thames Flow Softly by Francis Xavier Mathews
The Launch by Paul Mills
Rivers Arise; Whether Thou Be The Son by John Milton
Eels At Night by Robert Minhinnick
Sap by Robert Minhinnick
Springs by John Montague
Flood by Blake Morrison
Now The Children Are Old Enough by Andrew Motion
October by Iris Murdoch
Brian Boru's Well by Richard Murphy
Beck by Norman Nicholson
Five Rivers by Norman Nicholson
To The River Duddon by Norman Nicholson
Definition Of A Waterfall by John Ormond
Salmon by John Ormond
Otter Out And In by Alice Oswald
River by Alice Oswald
Shadwell Stair by Wilfred Owen
Liffey Water by William Oxley
The Twist In The River by Katherine Pierpoint
In Imitation Of Cowley: 3. The River by Alexander Pope
Long Nanny Burn by Katrina Porteous
Team Gut by Katrina Porteous
Hundred River by Neil Powell
Along Almost Any River by Jeremy Halvard Prynne
Floods by Craig Raine
The Names Of The Sea-trout by Tom Rawling
Torridge Salmon by Tom Rawling
Concord River by Adrienne Cecile Rich
Riverine by Lawrence Sail
A Day On The River by Vernon Scannell
There Is A Willow Grows Aslant A Brook by William Shakespeare
The Question by Percy Bysshe Shelley
The River God by Florence Margaret Smith
Fording The Flooded Goldie River by Gary Snyder
River In The Valley by Gary Snyder
So Went He Playing On The Watery Plaine by Edmund Spenser
Dockland by Bernie Steer
The River Of Rivers In Connecticut by Wallace Stevens
A River by Anne Stevenson
Where Is The Scared Well, That Bore My Name? by Jonathan Swift
The Trout Map by John Orley Allen Tate
The Song Of The Brook by Alfred Tennyson
The Brook by Philip Edward Thomas
The Mill-water by Philip Edward Thomas
The Watchers by Philip Edward Thomas
The River by Ronald Stuart Thomas
Wide O'er The Brim, With Many A Torrent Swell'd by James Thompson
At Dunkeswell Abbey by Anthony Thwaite
Hudson River School by Charles Tomlinson
Ruskin Remembered by Charles Tomlinson
Sevenside by Charles Tomlinson
River by Michael Vince
The Wye Below Bredwardine by John Powell Ward
The Stream (1) by Robert Wells
Two Rivulets by Walt Whitman
The Voice Of The Rain by Walt Whitman
Symphony In Yellow by Oscar Wilde
A Flowing River by William Carlos Williams
Mists Over The River by William Carlos Williams
Sonnet by Sheila Wingfield
Ballade To A Fish Of The Brooke by John Wolcott
Bathing by William Wordsworth
Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 by William Wordsworth
Derwent River by William Wordsworth
On The River Avon, Near Stratford by David Wright
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

About the Author

Common Ground is a nonprofit organization that seeks--through model projects, exhibitions, publications, and events--to inspire people to remember the richness of everyday landscapes, to savor the symbolism with which we have endowed nature, and to renew our emotional engagement with places as we become involved in their care. The River's Voice accompanies Field Days, an anthology of poems about fields and meadows, and Trees Be Company, an anthology of poems about trees. Visit the Common Ground website.