Which are the best bestiary poems available in 2019?
We spent many hours on research to finding bestiary poems, reading product features, product specifications for this guide. For those of you who wish to the best bestiary poems, you should not miss this article. bestiary poems coming in a variety of types but also different price range. The following is the top 7 bestiary poems by our suggestions:
Best bestiary poems
1. Bestiary: Poems
Feature
Graywolf PressDescription
Donika Kelly's fierce debut collection, longlisted for the 2016 National Book Award and winner of the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize
I thought myself lion and serpent. Thought
myself body enough for two, for we.
Found comfort in never being lonely.
What burst from my back, from my bones, what lived
along the ridge from crown to crown, from mane
to forked tongue beneath the skin. What clamor
we made in the birthing. What hiss and rumble
at the splitting, at the horns and beard,
at the glottal bleat. What bridges our back.
What strong neck, what bright eye. What menagerie
are we. What we've made of ourselves.
--from "Love Poem: Chimera"
Across this remarkable first book are encounters with animals, legendary beasts, and mythological monsters--half human and half something else. Donika Kelly's Bestiary is a catalogue of creatures--from the whale and ostrich to the pegasus and chimera to the centaur and griffin. Among them too are poems of love, self-discovery, and travel, from "Out West" to "Back East." Lurking in the middle of this powerful and multifaceted collection is a wrenching sequence that wonders just who or what is the real monster inside this life of survival and reflection. Selected and with an introduction by the National Book Award winner Nikky Finney, Bestiary questions what makes us human, what makes us whole.
2. Bestiary: Being an English Version of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Bodley 764
Feature
Boydell PressDescription
Bestiaries are a particularly characteristic product of medieval England, and give a unique insight into the medieval mind. Richly illuminated and lavishly produced, they were luxury objects for noble families. Their three-fold purpose was to provide a natural history of birds, beasts and fishes, to draw moral examples from animal behaviour (the industrious bee, the stubborn ass), and to reveal a mystical meaning - the phoenix, for instance, as a symbol of Christ's resurrection. This Bestiary, MS Bodley 764, was produced around the middle of the thirteenth century and is of singular beauty and interest. The lively illustrations have the freedom and naturalistic quality of the later Gothic style, and make dazzling use of colour. This book reproduces the 136 illuminations to the same size and in the same place as the original manuscript, fitting the text around them. Richard Barber's translation from the original Latin is a delight to read, capturing both the serious intent of the manuscript and its charm. RICHARD BARBER has written many books on the history of and life in the middle ages, from his Somerset Maugham Award-winning The Knight and Chivalry, by way of biographies of Henry II and the Black Prince, to an anthology of Arthurian literature from England, France and Germany, Arthurian Legends, and an account of the historical Arthur, King Arthur: Hero and Legend.3. A Ted Hughes Bestiary: Poems
Feature
Farrar Straus and GirouxDescription
Ted Hughes was a great man and a great poet because of his wholeness and his simplicity and his unfaltering truth to his own sense of the world. Seamus Heaney
Originally, the medieval bestiary, or book of animals, set out to establish safe distinctionsbetween them and usbut Ted Hughess poetry works always in a contrary direction: showing what man and beast have in common, the reservoir from which we all draw. In A Ted Hughes Bestiary, Alice Oswalds selection is arranged chronologically, with an eye to different books and styles, but equally to those poems that embody animals rather than just describe them. Some poems are here because, although not strictly speaking animal, they become so in the process of writing; and in keeping with the bestiary tradition there are plenty of imaginary animalsall concentratedly going about their business.
In Poetry in the Making, Hughes said that he thought of his poems as animals, meaning that he wanted them to have a vivid life of their own. Distilled and self-defining, A Ted Hughes Bestiary is subtly responsive to a central aspect of Hughess achievement, while offering room to overlooked poems, and to those that have the wildest tunes.
4. Bestiary: An Anthology of Animal Poems
Description
In this treasury of passionate and humorous encounters with the vibrant world of animals, Stephen Mitchell has collected animal poems from many ages and many cultures. He includes excerpts from ancient masterpieces like, The Hymn to the Sun by Pharaoh Amenhotep IV, The Book of Job, and The Book of Psalms; haiku by Basho, Buson, and Issa; poems by Milton and Smart, Blake and Burns, Whitman and Emily Dickenson, Hardy and Hopkins.
5. Bestiary: An Illuminated Alphabet of Medieval Beasts
Feature
Used Book in Good ConditionDescription
A collection of twenty-six medieval myths, stories, and legends, from amphisbaena to ziphius, is embellished with vivid illustrations, fascinating details, a pronunciation guide, maps, and a bibliography.6. A Ted Hughes Bestiary (Faber Poetry)
Description
Originally the medieval bestiary or book of animals set out to establish safe distinctions - between them and us - but Hughes's poetry works always in a contrary direction: showing what man and beast have in common, the reservoir from which we all draw.Alice Oswald's selection is arranged chronologically, with an eye to different books and styles, but equally to those poems that embody animals, rather than just describe them. Some poems are here because, although not strictly speaking animal, they become so in the process of writing; and in keeping with the bestiary tradition there are plenty of imaginary animals - all concentratedly coming about their business.
The resulting selection is subtly responsive to a central aspect of Hughes's achievement, while offering room to some wonderful overlooked poems, and to 'those that have the wildest tunes.'
7. A Bestiary
Description
Literary Nonfiction. Essays. Winner of the 2015 Essay Collection Competition, Selected by Wayne Koestenbaum."Rarely have I come across tenderness, venom, and fire held so intimately, so exquisitely, as in Lily Hoang's A BESTIARY. This book would be impressive enough as a collection of finely-forged fragments, but as it weaves itself into an even more impressive whole, my hat came off. Lily Hoang writes like she has nothing to lose and everything at stake."Maggie Nelson
"A BESTIARY is a work of great subtlety, precision, intelligence, daring, and emotive keenness. It seems completely contemporary (by which I mean that it is unlike anything I've read and that it makes me want to change my own writerly procedures). With head-long, reckless, improvisatory gestures, Lily Hoang prompts us to rethink what literature today can dare to aspire to. Her intellectually magnanimous book's position on the threshold between recognizable 'literature' and some other vanguard form of performance/utterance made me feel happy and stimulated and dizzy (in a rapturous way) while I was reading it."Wayne Koestenbaum
"The most perfect use of fragmentation, myth, language, fairytale, and terrible beauty that I have ever seen in my life. I'm swooning. My faith in what writing can be has been restored."Lidia Yuknavitch
Recent Comments