Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences

The bestselling author of the Earthsea trilogy, The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed presents a collection of short stories and poems that takes the reader into a magical, whimsical world where the line between human and animal is quite different from our world. Winner of the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.
Contents:
"Come into animal presence / Denise Levertov --
Buffalo gals, won't you come out tonight --
Three rock poems: Basalt --Flints --
Mt. St. Helens/ Omphalos --
Mazes --
Wife's stories --
Five vegetable poems --
Torrey pines reserve --
Lewis and Clarke and after --
West Texas --
Xmas over --
Crown of Laurel --
Direction of the road --
Vaster than empires and more slow --
Seven bird and beast poems --
What is going on in the Oaks --
For Ted --
Found poem --
Totem --
Winter downs --
Man eater--
Sleeping out --
White donkey --
Horse camp --
Four cat poems --
Tabby Lorenzo --
Black Leonard in negative space --
Conversation with a silence --
For Leonard, Darko, and Burton Watson --
Schrodinger's cat --
"Author of the Acacia seeds" and other extracts from the journal of the journal of the association of Therolinguistics --
May's lion --
Eighth elegy, from "Duino elegies" of R.M. Rilke --
She unnames them.


"A spirited, gracefully polemical introduction and the final story, "She Unnames Them", frame this collection of fiction and poetry, placing it in a natural but unsentimental light. These are not really "talking animal" stories: they are about human apprehension of natural creation (including rocks and plants) and the relations this apprehension governs; or, how communication makes communities. Seven of ten stories and seven of 19 poems having already been published, while a couple of pieces read like working drafts. Among the best pieces is the title story; like many of the others, it works its effect through a reversal of the usual (human) point of view."--Library Journal.