First, paperback
Publication Date: July 15, 2025
Publisher Marketing: In his thirtieth book—and fifth poetry collection—beloved naturalist and writer Robert Michael Pyle returns with poems and prose that wriggle, shimmer, and sing. Swimming with Snakes is full of the vitality, humor, reverence, and wisdom that mark Pyle’s decades-long devotion to the wild and near-at-hand. From slugs and thrushes to human intimacy and planetary grief, these pages celebrate both the transcendent and the tangible. With an eye trained by science and a voice honed by wonder, Pyle maps a terrain where butterflies, memories, and snakes in swimming pools co-exist with quiet heartbreak and delight. Pyle writes: My only hopes for Swimming with Snakes are to sweeten your life a little with the tellings, and to encourage your own close attention to and care of the other ones we are so privileged to live among.
