May We Learn from the Earth: Nature Poems and Reflections on the Environment

by Robert J Tiess

Overview

Following his acclaimed debut, The Humbling and Other Poems, Tiess delivers clear, captivating, and compassionate poetry contemplating Earth and nature.

From the opening poems, we become reacquainted with the natural realm, where we may muse on mountains, reflect on rivers, philosophize in forests, and celebrate creation everywhere.

As we journey into Earth, the Beautiful, studying its rivers, canyons, trees, and fields, we learn and grow more mindful of the environment, ecology, and eventually Earth, the Besieged.

Insightful, inspiring, and impassioned with a lyrical love of life, this timely and truthful collection can be enjoyed by nearly everyone, from budding poetry enthusiasts and nature lovers to environmental champions and beyond.

In hopes of encouraging environmental interest and awareness, the author offers optional reading content, including a series of brief but thought-provoking essays meditating on nature, a concise glossary of Earth terms, reading suggestions, and more for readers to discover and explore.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798986179568
Publisher:	Robert J. Tiess
Publication date:	07/14/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	280
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Recognized for crafting clear, creative, and compelling poems, Robert J. Tiess has been writing and publishing poetry since the 1980s, and he's been working at popularizing poetry and promoting literature since the 1990s.Robert is a SUNY New Paltz graduate, where he earned his degree in English Literature, and he is a lifetime resident of New York State, where he has enjoyed a fulfilling career in public library service.In 2022, his critically-acclaimed debut poetry collection, The Humbling and Other Poems, became available in print and electronic editions.

Table of Contents

Part I: The Poems

To Earth, Old Friend

From Carefree to Caring

If Only

Earth Education

Among Wild Things

Birth of an Ecopoet

Earth Learner

Chapter 2: Where Knowledge Buds

Sequoia Wisdom

Flora, Restorative

To the Susquehanna River

Symposium of Life

Ecology 101

Lavender Ambition

Ecclesiastes of the Earth

Chapter 3: Reading Natural Histories

Millenary Evergreen

Attribution

Ascent

Efflorescence

Mostly Water

Breathing

At One's Disposal

Continuance

Colorado River Wisdom

Chlorophyll

Emerging World

Freeform

Grace

Chapter 4: Animal Academies

Ornithology

Blue Warbler

In Search of Animal Spirits

Jurassic Tableau

At the Bird Feeder

Bestiary

To the Ants

Red-Tailed Hawk

Meerkats

Flight School

Caterpillar

Butterfly Sight

Symbiosis in the Sea

Interdependent Independence

Flightpaths

Arias

Hibernation

The Hummingbird as Instructor

Milkweed to Monarchs

Owl Optics

Bear Bistro

Accord

Whale Song

Chapter 5: Natural Philosophies

Observing Orders of the World

Apologies

Evergreen Friend

Mirror of Eternity

Gaia's Alive

Earth Verses

The Earth Is Perfect...

Disembodied

Release

Sapling

Fledgling

Natural Arts

Genealogy of Breathing

Bracing Rays

Wisdom of the Mountains

Chapter 6: Through Roots of Truth

Forest of Momentary Gold

From Guesthouse to Greenhouse

Fulcrum

Unrestrained

Maternal Earth

Course of Nature

Facing the Gorgon

Overcoming

Bryce Canyon

Ever So Briefly

Mound

Burgeon

Arrayed

To Irises

Toward the Wisdom Tree

Along the Shore of Surety

Cathedral Woods

Chapter 7: Between the Teachings of the Trees

The Dawning

Reclaimed by Nature

Nature's Wordless Verses

Place

Sapwood

The Last Tree Standing

What the Tree Said

Vital Deadwood

Dewdrop

Sustenance

Of Moss and Metaphor

Towards Tolerance

Yielding

Revolutionary Nature

The Tiller's Tale

The Improbable Rose

Chapter 8: Terrestrial Teachers and Sky Schools

American Falls

Crash Course

The Geode's Secret

Conceit

Dispatch

Resemblance vs. Reality

Shells

Anonymous

Dramatic Irony

Rock Concert

To an Onion

Corolla

Whole

Scope

Walden's Nowhere

Absorption

Deliquesce

Resolve

Cryogenian

Mass of Life

Annals

Unopposed

Salvage

Chapter 9: Land Lectures and Water Courses

To Be More Like the Waterfall

Drowning or Diving

Reach

Currently

Endurance

Painting Earth

Bankrupt

Green Space

Oceanography

Family Circle

Lake Meditations

Picturesque

Hydrologic

Above

The Steady Flowing

One

Chapter 10: The Perennial Education

Inception

What's Not Here

Ode to the Ordinary

Winter Solstice

Naturally

Garden Promise

Reclamation

Renewal

Nature Study

War on Nature

Agreement

Growth Rings

Garden of Early Delights

Spiraling

Branches of Knowledge

Thank You Note

To Future Students of the Earth

Part II: Essays

About the Author

Also by the Author

Editorial Reviews

06/26/2023

Tiess’s second collection of timely, urgent “ecopoetry” and essays, following last year’s debut The Humbling, could serve as an expansive syllabus for a course on the Earth amid its ecological and climate crisis and why its preservation matters. The instructor, though, is not necessarily the poet. That role belongs to “Gaia,” Mother Earth, and all her creations: the Susquehanna River, the Colorado Rockies, Sequoia trees, hummingbirds, meerkats, bears, butterflies, and all the other natural wonders in Tiess’s poems that impart the wisdom Tiess has learned by paying the Earth attention. As Tiess writes in his introduction, “Earth, as a university, remains forever open, extending its lessons to anyone who would attend.”

Yet its lessons offer “organic truths'' that are difficult to accept; “with knowledge comes the weight of worlds,” Tiess writes in “From Carefree to Caring”, and he doesn’t mince words in “Earth Education” when the speaker calls on humanity—“alumni of oblivion”—to “examine your calamities.” Though stark and often brutal in their confrontation of humanity’s role in environmental disaster, Tiess’s poems and essays are rooted in hope that by shifting humans’ collective attention from themselves to their environment, they can “resurrect what’s dying to be borne again,” and create a balanced, symbiotic world.

The principal challenge of ecopoetry, which seeks to “maintain a consciousness of Earth while engaging environmental considerations more directly,” is to make nature’s complex system of responses to human activity accessible and digestible for all types of readers, and Tiess’s May We Learn From the Earth ambitiously meets that challenge and goes further. With his back matter of related digital, literary, and scientific resources, readers inspired to continue their education under the tutelage of Earth and her advocates have an entry point to “rethink relationships and practices with nature,” and perhaps “in some small or substantial way” “save the world.”

Takeaway: Ecopoetry and prose urging humanity to shift attention from the self and toward the Earth.

Comparable Titles: Ann Fisher-Wirth and Laura-Gray Street’s The Ecopoetry Anthology, Juliana Spahr’s “Gentle Now, Don’t Add to Heartache.”

Production grades Cover: A- Design and typography: A Illustrations: N/A Editing: A Marketing copy: A

BookLife Reviews