Writing on Water

Water and its multifaceted relationship to humans, as portrayed by a wide range of writers and photographers.

Water links all aspects of our existence. From the politics of watersheds to the romance of turtles climbing up from the sea to the beaches, from Leonardo da Vinci to Octavio Paz, from death at a hot spring to the practicalities of liquidation, the writings in this collection reflect on many aspects of the human encounter with water. The book contains some science, a few plans for managing and protecting water, and plenty of stories, poems, essays, and artwork. The writers include Bob Braine, Robert Grudin, Wilson Harris, George Keithley, David Morse, Octavio Paz, physicist Sidney Perkowitz, Eva Salzman, Ted Steinberg, and Peter Warshall, editor of Whole Earth magazine. Photographers include Cyril Christo, Adam David Clayman, Monique Crépault, Helen M. Ellis, Sally Gall, Margaret McCarthy, Kristin Ordahl, Jerry Uelsmann, and Marie Wilkinson. This is the second in a series of Terra Nova books from MIT Press, which aim to show that environmental issues are cultural and artistic as well as practical and political.

Musician and philosopher David Rothenberg is the author of Why Birds Sing, Bug Music, Survival of the Beautiful, and many other books, published in at least eleven languages. His more than twenty CDs include One Dark Night I Left My Silent House and, most recently, Berlin Bülbul and Cool Spring. He has performed or recorded with Pauline Oliveros, Peter Gabriel, Scanner, Elliott Sharp, and Suzanne Vega. Nightingales in Berlin is his latest book, CD, and film. A 2019 Safina Center Fellow, he is Distinguished Professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Marta Ulvaeus is former Associate Director of Terra Nova projects at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.