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Through a Green Lens: Fifty Years of Writing for Nature
By an early age, Robert Michael Pyle discovered that he had a greater facility with words than with numbers. In high school, he found he could get good grades and win essay contests by relying on words alone. But he wasn’t really moved to write until a powerful experience in the summer of 1965 brought his pen together with his passion for the natural world, and he wrote his first heartfelt essay.
That essay began a life path devoted to natural history, nature conservation, and language—and how they all meet in the literature of the land. Working in a succession of far-flung jobs in biological conservation, teaching, and field research, Pyle eventually gave up a regular paycheck in favor of a freelance existence devoted to his mutual passions for nature study and writing. All along, he wrote, and wrote. To date, he has written twenty books and hundreds of essays, stories, papers, and poems. But it is the occasional prose—the deeply personal essays that explored and indulged his immediate fascinations—that make up this selection of never-before-collected testimonies.
Arranged by decade, Through a Green Lens presents a sampling of Pyle’s work over fifty years, from that first heartfelt essay, written on mountain motel stationery in 1965, to a book foreword written in 2015. Culled from notable magazines and contributions to edited collections, these essays range across broad topical, geographic, and textual territory. They grow out of near-lethal English brambles, vacant lots and ditches in suburban Denver, and railroad yards of the industrial Northeast.
From commentary to criticism, polemic to profile—from the lyrical to the elegiac— Through a Green Lens demonstrates the qualities for which Pyle’s work is clarity, readability, sharp wit, undiluted conviction, and good-natured tolerance. Pyle’s half-century-long view, acute and uncommonly attuned to the physical world, gives readers a remarkable window on the natural setting of our life and times.
That essay began a life path devoted to natural history, nature conservation, and language—and how they all meet in the literature of the land. Working in a succession of far-flung jobs in biological conservation, teaching, and field research, Pyle eventually gave up a regular paycheck in favor of a freelance existence devoted to his mutual passions for nature study and writing. All along, he wrote, and wrote. To date, he has written twenty books and hundreds of essays, stories, papers, and poems. But it is the occasional prose—the deeply personal essays that explored and indulged his immediate fascinations—that make up this selection of never-before-collected testimonies.
Arranged by decade, Through a Green Lens presents a sampling of Pyle’s work over fifty years, from that first heartfelt essay, written on mountain motel stationery in 1965, to a book foreword written in 2015. Culled from notable magazines and contributions to edited collections, these essays range across broad topical, geographic, and textual territory. They grow out of near-lethal English brambles, vacant lots and ditches in suburban Denver, and railroad yards of the industrial Northeast.
From commentary to criticism, polemic to profile—from the lyrical to the elegiac— Through a Green Lens demonstrates the qualities for which Pyle’s work is clarity, readability, sharp wit, undiluted conviction, and good-natured tolerance. Pyle’s half-century-long view, acute and uncommonly attuned to the physical world, gives readers a remarkable window on the natural setting of our life and times.
- GenresNatureNonfictionEssays
304 pages, Paperback
Published October 1, 2016
3 people are currently reading
64 people want to read
About the author
Robert Michael Pyle
47 books68 followersRobert Michael Pyle is a lepidopterist and a professional writer who has published twelve books and hundreds of papers, essays, stories and poems. He has a Ph.D. from the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University. He founded the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation in 1974. His acclaimed 1987 book Wintergreen describing the devastation caused by unrestrained logging in Washington's Willapa Hills near his adopted home was the winner of the 1987 John Burroughs Medal for Distinguished Nature Writing. His 1995 book Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide was the subject of a Guggenheim Fellowship.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
abandoned
August 18, 2018After making it to page 81, I've resigned this one to the "not finishing" pile. I think I was expecting something more anecdotal and less academic. To be sure, there are some storylike essays about Pyle's experiences, but most of the essays/articles I read had a more sermon-esque tone to them - which is fine, if that's what you're in the mood for. Perhaps at a different point in life, I'll try reading it again.
February 7, 2020
Some more great writing from RMP! The problem with essay collections (especially from someone with as long a career as Pyle) is that most of them have been published before, and if you’re a big RMP fan, chances are you’ve already read a good chunk of those included in this collection. So check the table of contents first! 😊
April 15, 2017
It was so hard to read. I'm not a biologist so I didn't get it.
October 17, 2016
I love Mr. Pyle's writing. He always tells a story, no matter his subject. This collection of essays covers fifty years as a naturalist, a scientist and a writer. Thank you and kudos, Robert Michael Pyle.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews