Beasts of Eden

Lifting each rock, / we felt its weight in our palms, / closed our eyes / until a name arose…. Even as a child, as the first poem in Beasts of Eden reveals, Michael Beadle took upon himself the joyous burden of naming even the all-too-often unnamable things of this world. In this new collection, Beadle lures us into a realm of fact and fantasy, of history and myth, where we are all—at once—both native and stranger, neighbor and trespasser. With senses so alert to the sounds, the tastes, the textures, the sights, and smells of this world, nothing escapes the fresh wit and seasoned wisdom of this big-hearted poet. Here is a poet who wields a magician’s pen that is both worldly and colloquial, as at home in the past as it is in the present. Give yourself—and everyone you love—the gift of this beautiful new collection. —Cathy Smith Bowers, former Poet Laureate of North Carolina and author of The Collected Poems of Cathy Smith Bowers