Animals have long been a source of inspiration, sustenance, and companionship, and poems about and for animals are among the oldest traditions across human cultures. This collection of contemporary poems adds to this ancient lineage, celebrating animals for their beauty and intelligence; empathizing over their suffering; and hoping for their future, which is entwined with our own. The presence of an animal is a gift. The loss of an animal is a grief. To share such feelings through poetry is to create a community of caring for the creatures that accompany us on Earth.

The Gift of Animals includes poems by some of today's most beloved poets, including Ellen Bass, Lucille Clifton, Michael Collier, Toi Derricotte, Rita Dove, Camille Dungy, Mark Doty, Nick Flynn, Jorie Graham, Joy Harjo, Terrance Hayes, Arthur Sze, Yusef Komunyakaa, Ada Limón, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Craig Santos Perez, Paisley Rekdal, and more.

Alison Hawthorne Deming is the author of five nonfiction books, including Zoologies: On Animals and the Human Spirit, and five poetry collections including Stairway to Heaven and Science and Other Poems, which won the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets; as well as the editor of Poetry of the American West and co-editor of The Colors of Nature. Her work also appears in the Norton Book of Nature Writing and Best American Science and Nature Writing. Deming served as poet-in-residence at the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens in Florida, where she curated a poetry installation, and as poet-in-residence at the Milwaukee Public Library and Milwaukee Museum where she curated a poetry installation along with programming shared by the two institutions. Recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, former Agnese Nelms Haury Chair of Environment and Social Justice, she is currently Regents Professor Emerita at the University of Arizona.