The Thunder Mutters: 101 Poems for the Planet

by Alice Oswald (Editor)

Taking for her subject our human planet, or what Robert Lowell called 'this sweet volcanic cone', Alice Oswald has chosen 101 poems which map the border between the personal and natural worlds. Including poems by William Barnes, Robert Frost, John Clare, Gerard Manley Hopkins, W.H. Auden, Stevie Smith, Ted Hughes, Hugh MacDiarmid, John Ashbery and many others, The Thunder Mutters: 101 Poems for the Planet casts its net worldwide; historically and geographically, engaging restlessly with the many-centred energies of the natural world.

Genres: Poetry, Anthologies, Nature, Environment

Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Alice Oswald (born 1966) is a British poet who won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002.

Oswald read Classics at New College, Oxford, has worked as a gardener at Chelsea Physic Garden, and today lives with her husband, the playwright Peter Oswald (also a trained classicist), and her three children in Devon, in the South-West of England.

Alice Oswald is the sister of actor Will Keen and writer Laura Beatty.

In 1994, she was the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award. Her first collection of poetry, The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile (1996), won a Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) in 1996, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize in 1997.

Her second collection, Dart (2002), combined verse and prose, which tells the story of the River Dart in Devon from a variety of perspectives. Jeanette Winterson called it a "... moving, changing poem, as fast-flowing as the river and as deep... a celebration of difference... " . Dart won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002.

In 2004, Oswald was named as one of the Poetry Book Society's Next Generation poets. Her collection Woods etc., published in 2005, was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year).

In 2009 she published both A Sleepwalk on the Severn and Weeds and Wildflowers, which won the inaugural Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize.

In October 2011, Oswald published her 6th collection, Memorial.

Reviews

[Carla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alice Oswald's gathering of 101 poems for the planet begins with her dedication of the 'restless poems' to the rake. "The poems come in drifts. They don't pronounce any one ecological message. Their work is to tinker with our locks, thereby putting our inner worlds in contact with the outer world - a deep, slow process that used to be the remit of the rake." And then the reader can wade into the drifts. I did read them through from beginning to end and I stepped out and in at different points as well, pre-reading and reading again.

All of the poems tinkered with my locks. I paid attention, feeling toward that point when "a kind of porousness or sorcery" brought "living things unmediated into the text." So hopeful to believe that language can evoke such moments.

[The Book Witch · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection of poetry set in and around nature. Here there are poems by Emily Dickinson, Seamus Heney, Robert Frost, and more. If you are looking for a poetry collection with big themes in the natural world from various authors with different formats, different lengths and so on, this is worth looking into.

For me, this is closer to a 4.5 star, which is still a very high rating. There were so many poems in this collection that I loved, and some poets I will definitely be looking into. But there were some strange poems here and there, like one which was by John Clare that was just bird sounds, and I'm sure there is some meaning to these poems that I am missing, but my impression was 'huh?'. Beyond that, there were some poems I genuinely did not like, and that is okay. You don't need to like every poem in a poetry collection. But there were more poems that fit into those two categories than I would like.

Overall, I enjoyed this, and I do recommend looking into it.

[Emily Simpson]

a fantastic anthology that introduced me to many poets that i will continue to read from.

favourites:

* chamber music xxxv by james joyce
* to paint the portrait of a bird by jacques prévert
* the eighth elegy by rainer maria rilke
* fist of summer, lovely sight by anonymous
* riley by charles causley
* heatwave by john burnside
* from an abandoned work by samuel beckett
* landscape by paul verlaine
* from briggflatts by basil bunting

[Harry · Rating 4 out of 5]

An anthology of poetry about the planet. Some about the sea, the weather, animals etc. Some old (Homer), some new and some written in Middle English (Chaucer). Great to just dip into and carry around in a pocket for that idle moment.

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

An unusual and interesting selection of poems, and although there are some US poets included, it is a very English collection.

[T · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fine book of fine nature-themed poems. The selection is loosely multi-cultured and the poems are loosely themed, spanning across centuries. And although Oswald dispenses with Romanticism for the most part (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats etc...) she does feature some worthy unsung and underrated poets in lieu. My main gripes were: the lack of contemporary (eco) poems/poets; the lack of works by female poets - 3.5 stars.

Actually, I have one more gripe. The overtly anthropocentric 'blurb' on the back cover describes the book's subject as "our human planet". Firstly, it is not "ours" - we belong to, and are beholden, to it. Secondly, it is not "human"- we just get to coexist here, for a time.

[Pippa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This anthology has some great poems in it, but overall I found it too dense. (Perhaps because of a lot of very long lines, or a lot of enjambment, which gives the same effect). I do poetry readings, and I can't quite put my finger on it, but this is not one I would take if I was going to do a reading (unless it was to read just one poem). In a sense this is perhaps because it succeeds in what it sets out to do. It is like thunder rumbling around in the sky... so maybe I am being unjust, giving it just three stars. There were some new treasures, and some classics, so do try it for yourself!

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful selections of poems, makes you love the world just a little bit more.