Word: naturalist
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...hard to imagine a less overtly political poet than Heaney, 56, or one who has more thoroughly purged his language of the commonplace and banal. "Poetry is more a threshold than a path," he once wrote. From his first published volume, Death of a Naturalist (1966), onward, he has produced intense, lyrical works that seem suspended between contradictions--life and death, joy and grief, memory and loss. His imagery is radical, in the true, etymological sense of that word: "The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap/ Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge/ Through living...
Bass' book is a worthwhile read. His background in naturalist nonfiction makes his physical descriptions vivid. His own voice is strong: his calmness seeps into the reader's mind...
Early in 1842, Moses Kimball presented Barnum with "what purported to be a mermaid." Barnum, not quite certain himself what the creature truly was, gave it to a naturalist friend for confirmation of its mermaid status. In his autobiography, Barnum describes his friend's incredulous reaction: "He could not conceive how it could have been manufactured, for he never saw a monkey with such peculiar teeth, arms, hand & c., and he never saw a fish with such peculiar fins." However, the naturalist told Barnum it must be manufactured, not because he could prove it, but because he didn't "believe...
Demonizing the Alps, however, was far from universal. The naturalist Conrad Gesner, who climbed Mons Pilatus in 1555 to disprove its diabolic reputation, thought of the Alps as the "work of the Sovereign Architect." To 19th century Romantics, the Swiss mountains were symbols of virtue, and the herdsmen who dwelt there paradigms of primitive democracy. Thus the Alps through history have been rather like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates: you never know what meaning you'll find inside them...
Evidence of Sheldon's naturalist upbringing is said to be evident in his work--Atlas of Men, a coffee-table tome featuring hundreds of nude photos of the various somatotypes. The volume also contains epigraphs linking the different body types with animals...