Urban Nature: Poems About Wildlife in the City

by Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Emily Hiestand

With poems from more than 130 emerging poets, this book celebrates the nature found firmly ensconced in the urban jungles, from salamanders to horses. Original.

Genres: Poetry, Anthologies

272 pages, Paperback

First published June 27, 2000

About the author

Laure-Anne Bosselaar grew up in Belgium, and moved to the United Statesin 1987. Fluent in four languages, she has also published poems in French and Flemish. She is the author of The Hour Between Dog and Wolf (with an introduction by Charles Simic), and of Small Gods of Grief, which won the Isabella Gardner Prize for Poetry for 2001. Her third book, A New Hunger, was selected as an ALA Notable Book in 2008.
Among other publications, her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The Washington Post, AGNI, Georgia Review and Harvard Review as well as in numerous anthologies. One of her poems won the National Poetry Contest, sponsored by I.E. magazine. She is also the recipient of a Pushcart Prize.
Laure-Anne is the editor of four anthologies: Night Out: Poems about Hotels, Motels, Restaurants and Bars; Outsiders, Poems About Rebels Exiles and Renegades; Urban Nature: Poems about Wildlife in the City; and Never Before: Poems about First Experiences.
She and her husband, poet Kurt Brown, translated the work of Flemish poet Herman de Coninck: The Plural of Happiness (Field Translations Series).
She was awarded a Fellowship at the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference, was a Writer in Residence at Hamilton College and at the Vermont Studio Center, and was awarded the McEver Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech in 2008. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and at the Low Residency MFA Program at Pine Manor College. She lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

(wnc) Reading slowly, savoring. Bosselaar's taste seems to match mine awfully well, at least so far, at about 1/2. For example, why have I never heard of Dana Gioia who created the marvelous phrase "promiscuous wind" before?
............
I do want to point out, though, that not all of them have 'wildlife' in them. Very few encounters with raccoons & peregrines, actually. More like how a list of items seen includes a pigeon, or a carp, or a manzanita. Plenty of trees.

I also still wonder, about 2/3 through, about the organization. Supposedly it's by theme/subject, but I opine that system only works idiosyncratically for the editor. I think chronology or geography would have worked better, at least for me.
............
Ok done. Yup, definitely want to reread - probably buy, so I can read at leisure. I love libraries, but due dates, not so much.

From "The Dogs of New York" by Lee Meitzen Grue:

As I lean, gazing out the window
of the diner on Amsterdam Avenue, taut
leashes pull peopled umbrellas
down the rainy street.

From "To the Sun" by Tom Sleigh:

oh blinding father, enemy of blight
who drives to the shade, give us this hour
to hang by the river and pass around the wine
until our minds buzz like hives of honeyed light.

From "Christmas Shopping" by Carter Revard:

what happens when
even credit cards have failed you and
that whole huge building full of wantables
which everybody's furiously buying for their loved
ones doesn't have what you want, and so we
came back out ...

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book because I am an urban naturalist, and the cover caught my eye while looking for another book on the selves. I am very happy that the book fairies led me to it.

The book took longer to read than I had expected, but that was largely because I found myself slowing down to appreciate the words, the images, the feelings, the ideas evoked by these poems.

It is obvious that Bosselaar put a great deal of thought and attention into the creation of the book, and for that I send her happy, grateful thoughts and energy. I was impressed with the range of poems and topics covered by this collection. I also really enjoyed that the book asks me, the reader, to examine my ideas of nature and how that word, that concept, is defined, and where I fit into nature.

For me, the only drawback was too many critters were getting smushed by cars or eaten by owls. But, I have to admit I think my amygdala had a part in this view; we of course respond more emotionally and strongly to life-or-death situations than to more benign events, so the poems with these situations would have stuck more in my mind. In fact, I suspect that if I took a more objective look at the volume I would find that the book not only balanced these poems with less perilous ones, it likely had more of the latter and fewer of the former than I would have guessed.

Overall, I very much enjoyed reading the poems in this book and the thought and care that went into the selection and curating (is that the right word for poems?) of the poems. I am very happy that the book fairies helped me find it.


Note: I gave this book a full review because this book was published by Milkweed Editions.

I used to give full reviews for all of the books that I rated on GR. However, GR's new giveaway policies (Good Reads 2017 November Giveaways Policies Changes) have caused me to change my reviewing decisions. These new GR policies seem to harm smaller publishing efforts in favour of providing advantage to the larger companies, (GR Authors' Feedback) the big five publishers (Big Five Publishers). So, because of these new GR policies from now on I will be supporting smaller publishing efforts by only giving full reviews to books published by: publishing businesses outside the big five companies, indie publishers, and self-published authors. This book was published by one of these smaller publishing efforts so I have given it a full review.

[Octavia Cade · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a great idea for a book! Bosselaar, the editor, has collected together a number of poems about city life. Specifically, city wildlife, and if you're expecting from that a bunch of poems about pigeons, well... you'd be right. There are a bunch of poems about pigeons here, and a lot of other birds, from sparrows to raptors. And trees, and potato bugs, and roadkill. I have to say, my favourite poem here, by a significant margin, was one of the poems about roadkill. It's by Gail White and it's called "Dead Armadillos" and I don't know whether I should say "Don't judge it by the title" or not, because it is indeed about armadillo roadkill, which does not strike me as the most poetic of subjects, perhaps, but it is also a catchy name, and represents a poem far less simplistic than that title might indicate.

Often, nature poems tend to the larger scale, and the grander subject. Numinous thing, like daffodils in the Lake District and so on. Many of the poems here have a harder, more sardonic edge; there is not a lot of romanticism going on here. There is a sense of real affection, though, even if it needs dusting down a little from the gulls in trash heaps and the odd dead rat. That makes it worth reading, I think.

[A · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anthologies can be uneven, as is this book of poetry by a myriad of authors. The introduction was thoughtfully written, and reminded me to re-read Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. It was interesting to think that one can recognize places by their descriptions, freeways, street names, etc. which might be familiar to one who has been to that particular city.

[Rebecca Rolnick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for my Urban Literature of Nature class at ESF.

[K LF · Rating 5 out of 5]

first poetry book in years.

beautiful, lyrical and a great reminder of the human experience.

[Scott Woods · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having always mused over the matter of why so many poets write poems about nature when most modern poets live in cities (or at least in non-rural settings), it was refreshing to discover this book. It is a strong collection of poets mostly writing in their voices about their experiences (most importantly) as we suspect they truly are. A collection like this also allows for the inclusion of some creatures that don't always get their just due in nature poetry, like roaches, or old stand-bys in new allocations (like horses pulling collection wagons or in the city zoo...you get the idea).

A strong collection with a nice breadth of styles and voices, and a fair sense of humor bubbling just beneath the surface. Highly recommended, especially if you think all poetry these days is either loud and political or soft and pastoral navel-gazing.

[Jacquie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am working on an urban wildlife display for work and I really enjoy educating residents of urban areas about the wildlife they can find in their backyards. I expected this one to be a collection of fun poems about urban wildlife, and for the most part it was. But there were also a lot of whiny poems by city-dwellers who think nature is gross and people need to stop whining about urban sprawl. Bleh. I have zero time for people like that. Go read an ecology book and rid the world of your stupidity, please. Some of them made me so angry I scrawled comments in the margins.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall a solid collection although I preferred the first two sections which focus on the human landscape and the personification of nature to the latter sections which deals directly with the natural environment and specific animals.

[M Delea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely one of my favorite poetry anthologies!