Cats and Their Poets

Whether it is their caressibility, their demonstrably close kinship with the most magnificent predators in the world, their flexibility both moral and physical, their aesthetic sense of disposing themselves in attitudes fit to drive a sculptor to despair, their ability to come and go in utter silence, their courage when cornered, their nice judgement in knowing when to turn and flee – all these things have inspired poets to feel privileged in sharing this fragile planet with enigmatic creatures who know so much that we do not.' – Maurice Craig Cats are universally revered, worshipped and feared, evoking love and fascination in their hosts and companions. This delightful anthology of poems about cats, from the eighth-century Pangur Ban to the present, encompasses both the arcane and the familiar, the simple and the satisfyingly subtle. Cats and their Poets contains work by seventy-five writers, from Philip Sidney, Christopher Smart, Cowper, Keats, Rosetti, Dickinson and browning, through to Yeats, Don Marquis, Strachey, Sackville-West, Graves, MacNeice, Stevie Smith, Gavin Ewart, Hughes, Gunn, Silkin, Longley, Mahon, Ni Chuilleanain, Thomas Lynch and Vikram Seth. There are translations from Heine, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Mallarme, Valery and Apollinaire. These wonderful poems, selected and introduced by one of Ireland's most respected men of letters, say as much about their enigmatic creators as they do of their mysterious muses. They will surprise, illuminate and comfort the reader in equal measure.