Favorite Poems of the Wild: An Adventurer's Collection by Bushel & Peck Books

Favorite Poems of the Wild: An Adventurer's Collection Reviews

• 
  Jenny

  A lovely nature-themed anthology of poetry, full of Dickinson. Coleridge, Wordsworth, and others.
• 
  Ryan

  As a poet who largely, though not exclusively, writes about the natural world—most frequently about the tallgrass prairie in which I live—I am always attracted to naturalist poetry. So, when I learned of this collection via Goodreads, I sought it out immediately. Obtaining the book from the library was an ordeal. My local didn’t carry it, and both my first and second interlibrary loan requests fell into cyber obscurity. Finally, after a third attempt, the ILL coordinator responded that the book was unavailable via ILL, but that they were purchasing it, and I was first on the list. I picked up this slight volume and immediately noticed three things: First, there was no editor’s hand involved; second, all the poems were of an age as to be in the public domain; and, three, and perhaps because of the second point, many poets had two, three, and even four works in a book of only 36 poems.
  
  I’m not sure whose favorites Favorite Poems of the Wild these are, except perhaps the accounting department’s (like darkness, public domain works are cheap), nor who the adventurer is meant to be, but, I suspect, upon learning that the publisher, Bushel & Peck, is a children’s publishing house, the adventurer is meant to be a child, perhaps one making a foray into poetry for the first time. That explains why the works herein are shallow, simple, straightforward, mostly rhyming, and lacking in emotional heft or depth of any kind: they say what they are then describe what they say they are. When Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees” has made it into a collection—“I think that I shall never see / A poem as lovely as a tree.”—you know just where you’ve found yourself. Few are good poems, certainly not the best each poet has to offer (Kilmer excluded, who probably never wrote a better one), and none are offensively bad, simply forgettable. There are two notable exceptions, occupying the last slots in the book (intentional?): D.H. Lawrence’s “The Mosquito,” which is weird and paranoid and aggressive, and Robert Frost’s “Birches,” which, though wrapped in a warm memory of youth, at least conveys a sense of feeling and emotion. In each, the writer is in the poem, and, without that, there’s nothing to bring me into the poem.
  
  If Favorite Poems of the Wild is meant for kids, what I think about it is irrelevant. But if it is meant for kids and kids alone, it should be more explicit about saying so. While it might appeal to children, nothing herein will appeal to adult poetry lovers. Nor will it make converts of anyone who has advanced beyond elementary school. Quite the contrary, there is every reason to believe it would only serve to confirm for most why they loathe poetry in the first place.
• 
  Madi Bullock

  A good collection of poems about nature and adventures outdoors.