Robert Atwan
Published: 2004-06-15
Total Pages: 104
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A Dream of Summer collects some forty evocative poems by English-language writers on the experience and joy of summertime. Illustrated throughout with pen-and-ink drawings of all things summer, this volume focuses on the sensuality of summertime and the varieties of summer experience. It is a love letter to the sultry heat, crashing thunderstorms, endless days, and short, mild nights. Gathered here is work by illustrious poets of the past, among them William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Thomas Campion, and Alfred Lord Tennyson, as well as more contemporary artists like Louise Gluck, Nikki Giovanni, Langston Hughes, and Charles Simic. Renowned poet Mary Oliverthe most important American poet writing today on the individual's experience of the natural worldcontributes an introduction, musing on this most enchanted and favored of seasons. Other contributors include Yusef Komunyakaa, Sharan Strange, Galway Kinnell, May Sarton, Yvor Winters, John Ashbury, Louise Bogan, Wallace Stevens, Denise Levertov, Robert Hayden, Derek Walcott, Marge Piercy, and many more.