Book Review - Tigers In Red Weather, by Ruth Padel - © 2006

Tigers In Red Weather, by Ruth Padel - © 2006

Ruth Padel, the great-great granddaughter of Charles Darwin, is a prize winning British poet, fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Zoological Society of London, and chair of the UK Poetry Society.  She has taught Greek at Oxford and opera in the Modern Greek department at Princeton, excavated Minoan tombs on Crete, presented a BBC series on Hans Christian Andersen, and sung in the church choir of St. Eustache, Paris.  In addition to her acclaimed poetry, she has published bookson ancient Greek religion, rock music, Greek myth and masculinity, and how to read contemporary poetry.

“ – vibrant, lyrical, sad, yet in the end a spark of hope”, George Schaller, director of science for Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society, and author of The Last Panda and The Serengeti Lion

Tiger Drinking at Forest Pool

Water, moonlight, danger, dream

Bronze urn, angled on tree-root: one

Slash of light, then gone.   A red moon

Seen through clouds, or almost seen.

Treasure found but lost, flirting between

The worlds of lost and found.  An unjust law

Repealed, a wish come true, a lifelong

Sadness healed.  Haven, in the mind,

To anyone hurt by littleness.  A prayer,

For the moment saved: treachery forgiven.

Flame of the crackle-glaze tangle, amber

Reflected in grey milk-jade.  An old song

Remembered, long debt paid.

A painting on silk, which may fade.

                                                               Ruth Padel

and in this great book Ruth writes poetry in prose of her quest throughout the great world of Asia in thick jungles, steamy mangrove swamps and mountain heights from India to Russia, for that elusive animal once known as the soul of Asia, and for that elusive need of human life for nature and wilderness with survival in and of it all.