Given that insects far outnumber us (there are about 200 million insects for every human), it is no surprise that there is a rich body of verse about the creeping, crawling, flying, and stinging creatures with whom we share the planet. Many cultures have centuries-old traditions of poetry about insects. In China, where the noblewomen of the Tang dynasty kept crickets in golden cages, a multitude of songs were written in honor of these 'musical insects.' The Haiku masters in Japan were similarly inspired, though they ventured into less appealing insects such as flies, fleas, and mosquitoes. In the West, poems about insects date back to the ancient Greeks and insects frequently appear in European literature from the 16th century onwards. The poets collected here include Donne, Marvell, Keats, and Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Christina Rossetti, as well as Elizabeth Bishop, Mary Oliver, Ted Hughes, Paul Muldoon, and Alice Oswald. In translation, poetry is included from - among others - Meleager, Du Fu, Ivan Turgenev, Victor Hugo, Paul Valéry, Pablo Neruda, Antonio Machado, and Xi Chuan. Bees, butterflies and beetles, cockroaches and caterpillars, fireflies and dragonflies, beetles and glow-worms - the miniature creatures gracing these pages are as varied as the poetic talents that celebrate them.
