Book description
Whether it is their caressibility, their demonstrably close kinship
with the most magnificent predators in the world, their flexibility
both moral and physical, their aesthetic sense of disposing themselves
in attitudes fit to drive a sculptor to despair, their ability to come
and go in utter silence, their courage when cornered, their nice
judgement in knowing when to turn and flee - all these things have
inspired poets to feel privileged in sharing this fragile planet with
enigmatic creatures who know so much that we do not.' - Maurice Craig
Cats are universally revered, worshipped and feared, evoking love and
fascination in their hosts and companions. This delightful anthology
of poems about cats, from the eighth-century Pangur Ban to the
present, encompasses both the arcane and the familiar, the simple and
the satisfyingly subtle. Cats and their Poets contains work by
seventy-five writers, from Philip Sidney, Christopher Smart, Cowper,
Keats, Rosetti, Dickinson and browning, through to Yeats, Don Marquis,
Strachey, Sackville-West, Graves, MacNeice, Stevie Smith, Gavin Ewart,
Hughes, Gunn, Silkin, Longley, Mahon, Ni Chuilleanain, Thomas Lynch
and Vikram Seth. There are translations from Heine, Baudelaire,
Verlaine, Mallarme, Valery and Apollinaire. These wonderful poems,
selected and introduced by one of Ireland's most respected men of
letters, say as much about their enigmatic creators as they do of
their mysterious muses. They will surprise, illuminate and comfort the
reader in equal measure.
