The Flower Seeker: An Epic Poem of William Bartram
By Philip Lee Williams. 454 pages.

William Bartram’s Travels, published in 1791, remains a seminal book for understanding the American South, its flora, fauna, and people. Now, acclaimed poet and novelist Philip Lee Williams, who has known Bartram’s work almost since childhood, has written what will surely be acclaimed as one of the finest long poems ever to come out of the South. The Flower Seeker is an epic poem that follows the young William Bartram on his journey in the American South and during his old age in his father’s gardens. It is truly a southern Odyssey, using techniques of fiction and poetry to get deeply inside one of the most remarkable men ever to strap on a pair of boots in America. Written in twenty-four cantos, the book digs deep into the mind and heart of Bartram, who was also an acclaimed visual artist and naturalist. The Flower Seeker begins with an unusual but regular stanzaic form but quickly changes as Bartram changes during his four-year ride on horseback around the South. Following in the shadows of other epic poems such as Ezra Pound’s Cantos, Paterson of William Carlos Williams, or The Maximus Poems by Charles Olson, The Flower Seeker is a dazzling compendium of poetic devices and approaches. In it, Williams uses the Travels as the basis for an expanding and imaginary universe that describes Bartram’s interior world as much as the one he rode through. Long, complex, and yet immensely readable, The Flower Seeker packs an intellectual and emotional punch like few other long poems in the American tradition. It is surely destined to become an enduring classic of Southern and even American literature.

Bartram's Living Legacy: The Travels and the Nature of the South
Edited by: Dorinda G. Dallmeyer Artist: Philip Juras. 566 pages (color plates).

More than two centuries have passed since the publication of William Bartram’s Travels in 1791. That his book remains in print would be notable enough, but Bartram’s work was visionary. It fostered the development of a truly American strain of natural history. His writings transcended scientific boundaries to deeply influence Coleridge, Wordsworth, and other Romantic poets. And his text continues to ignite the imaginations of Southerners who love nature. Bartram’s ability to marry science with poetry ensured Travels a worldwide audience for the last 200 years. William Bartram was a cultural historian, too, carefully recording the way in which the Indians used the land along with the changes wrought by European settlers. Being on the road with Bartram involves cliffhanger encounters with dreadful weather, charismatic predators, and even deadlier humans. And throughout the book, Bartram reveals a deep spiritual connection to nature as a manifestation of divine Creation. Bartram’s holism lays the foundation for major themes of modern nature writing as well as environmental philosophy. In this unique anthology, for the first time Travels is joined with essays acknowledging the debt Southern nature writers owe the man called the “South’s Thoreau.” We hope this book will introduce a new generation of environmentally minded Southerners to Bartram’s timeless work, not only standing on its own but also interpreted through passionate, personal essays by some of the region’s finest nature writers. Rather than wallowing in nostalgia for the long-gone world Bartram describes, this anthology provides us with a starting point for reconstructing and reclaiming the natural heritage of the South.