Sue’s Reviews > If Bees Are Few: A Hive of Bee Poems > Status Update

interesting collection of poems ranging from classical (Virgil) to modern classics (Whitman, Dickinson, Yeats, and more) and also some prose-poems. Subjects range from the romantic buzzing bees amid beautiful flowers to hive die-off. I found many favorites, most completely new to me. The book is dedicated to increasing awareness and funds for maintaining bees...and our future.

from Their Faces Shall Be As Flames: That was the spring the bees disappeared, we didn't know where they went, where they'd gone, where they were going, it was a/ rapture of the bread, only the young, the weak, the freshly, dead left behind, a rapture of the bees... is this then the true/ rapture, was the one true God after all a god of bees, and now she is taking them home...

There are poems from famous poets (Neruda, Mandelstam, Dickinson) and more modern prose poems lamenting hive die-off. And a poem entitled "Happiness," that left me smiling at its images of a bear sated and drunk on honey.

such a mixture of poems...likely something for everyone who enjoys poetry. There are some I have to read again immediately to capture the full meaning. metaphor aplenty here as well as singular life of bees themselves.

mixture of poems, some quite traditional, set in a garden, while others seem to be from the view of the bees themselves. Still others only tangentially refer to bees. My favorites so far are those that combine nature with a touch of the mystical or other, or even a bit of whimsy.