The ancient and enduring bond between humans and animals has been a primary source of literary inspiration from earliest times. Poet and critic Nadya Aisenberg has selected from the store of twentieth - century poems those that most tellingly explore this relationship The sixty-six poems in this unique collection reaffirm the deep connections between the human psyche and the animal kingdom.As always, great poetry gives expression to the most powerful and elusive of human sentiments -- such as the sense of wonder, of longing, of simultaneous likeness and otherness we feel in the presence of animals. "Our imaginative relationships with animals," Nadya Aisenberg observes, "are expressions of the perpetual human desire for self-knowledge." Through We Animals, Ms. Aisenberg enlarges our vision of ourselves and of our potential for reconciliation with the natural world.Among the poets represented in We Animals are:Wendell Berry -- D.H. Lawrence -- William Carlos WilliamsGary Snyder -- Rainer Maria Rilke -- Denise LevertovCzeslaw Milosz -- Tomas Transtromer -- Robert Bly -- Ikinilik Philip Levine -- Adrienne Rich -- Pablo Neruda -- Robert Frost Igpakuhak -- Marianne Moore -- W.H. Auden -- Hart CraneWallace Stevens -- Theodore Roethke -- James WrightW.B. Yeats -- A.R. Ammons -- Richard Wilbur -- Ted Hughes Cavafy -- Robinson Jeffers -- Delmore SchwartzElizabeth Bishop -- Maxine Kumin -- Mark Strand -- Octavio PazGalway Kinnell -- Jorge Luis BorgesNadya Aisenberg holds a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Wisconsin, and has taught at Wellesley College, University of Massachusetts, Tufts University, and Clark University. She is founder and current editor of Rowan Tree Press in Boston, and a founder of The Alliance for Independent Scholars in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her publications include three books of poetry, the Were Strangers. Her poetry has also appeared in Ploug Review of Books, Partisan Review, and Antioch Review.