River Poems

A uniquely international anthology that explores the power and beauty of rivers through poems from around the world and through the ages. AN EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY POCKET POET.

Rivers were the arteries of our first civilizations-the Tigris and Euphrates of Mesopotamia, India's Ganges, Egypt's Nile, the Yellow River of China-and have nourished modern cities from London to New York, so it's natural that poets have for centuries drawn essential meanings and metaphors from their endless currents.

In this collection, British poets from Shakespeare and Wordsworth to Ted Hughes and Alice Oswald mingle with American voices ranging from Native Klallam verses and the haunting African-American spirituals "Deep River" and "Roll, Jordan, Roll" to Walt Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," Emily Dickinson's tersely erotic "My River runs to thee," and Langston Hughes' sonorous evocation of identity in "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," and the work of more recent poets including Gary Snyder, Mary Oliver, and Natasha Tretheway. Poems from ancient Babylon and Egypt, and from India, Nepal, Japan, China, Thailand, France, Germany, Russia, Serbia, Chile, Mexico, the Congo, and Nigeria round out this global celebration of the rivers of the world.