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.