The Giant Book of Poetry Read online

  A Song in the Front Yard

  The Boy Died in my Alley

  Robert Lowell (1917 – 1977)

  Reading Myself

  Keith Douglas (1920 – 1944)

  Vergissmeinnicht

  Howard Nemerov (1920 – 1991)

  Gyroscope

  Money

  Snowflakes

  Hayden Carruth (b. 1921)

  Little Citizen, Little Survivor

  Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)

  A Summer Morning

  Philip Larkin (1922 – 1985)

  An Arundel Tomb

  Talking In Bed

  This Be the Verse

  James Dickey (1923 – 1997)

  The Heaven of Animals

  The Sheep Child

  Alan Dugan (1923 – 2003)

  How We Heard the Name

  Love Song: I and Thou

  Denise Levertov (1923 – 1997)

  Consulting the Oracle

  From a Plane

  Lisel Mueller (b. 1924)

  Imaginary Paintings

  Reader

  Silence and Dancing

  The Story

  Widow

  Roberto Juarroz (1925 – 1995)

  Any movement kills something

  Donald Justice (1925 – 2004)

  American Sketches

  In Bertram’s Garden

  Carolyn Kizer (b. 1925)

  Bitch

  The Ashes

  Robert Creeley (1926 – 2005)

  Heaven

  I Know a Man

  I’ll Win

  Old Days

  Place (“There’s a Way out”)

  Thanksgiving’s Done

  Galway Kinnell (b. 1927)

  St. Francis and the Sow

  James Wright (1927 – 1980)

  A Blessing

  Beginning

  Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

  Irving Feldman (b. 1928)

  The Dream

  Donald Hall (b. 1928)

  My mother said

  Names of Horses

  The Porcelain Couple

  Philip Levine (b. 1928)

  Belle Isle, 1949

  Sweet Will

  Anne Sexton (1928 – 1974)

  Her Kind

  from The Death of the Fathers: 2.How We Danced

  With Mercy for the Greedy

  Thom Gunn (1929 – 2004)

  Still Life

  The Reassurance

  Dan Pagis (1930 – 1986)

  Conversation

  Izet Sarajlic (b. 1930)

  Luck in Sarajevo

  Gary Snyder (b. 1930)

  Axe Handles

  What you should know to be a poet

  Derek Walcott (b. 1930)

  Love after Love

  Miller Williams (b. 1930)

  Listen

  Etheridge Knight (1931 – 1991)

  The Idea of Ancestry

  The Warden Said to Me the Other Day

  Tanikawa Shuntaro (b. 1931)

  A Rudimentary Explanation of an Ideal Poem

  from With Silence My Companion

  From My Father’s Death

  The Naif

  Adrian Mitchell (b. 1932)

  A Puppy Called Puberty

  Heberto Padilla (1932 – 2000)

  Landscapes

  Alden Nowlan (1933 – 1983)

  An Exchange of Gifts

  It’s Good To Be Here

  Weakness

  Richard Shelton (b. 1933)

  The Bus to Veracruz

  The Stones

  Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) (b. 1934)

  “Wise I”

  Rutger Kopland (b. 1934)

  Natzweiler

  Mark Strand (b. 1934)

  Eating Poetry

  Keeping Things Whole

  Reading in Place

  Paul Zimmer (b. 1934)

  Zimmer’s Head Thudding Against the Blackboard

  David R. Slavitt (b. 1935)

  Titanic

  C.K. Williams (b. 1936)

  My Fly

  The Dance

  Gail Mazur (b. 1937)

  In Houston

  Diane Wakoski (b. 1937)

  George Washington and the Loss of His Teeth

  Robert Phillips (b. 1938)

  Instrument of Choice

  Charles Simic (b. 1938)

  Country Fair

  Fork

  Northern Exposure

  Prodigy

  The Old World

  Margaret Atwood (b. 1939)

  Manet’s Olympia

  Miss July Grows Older

  Variations on the Word Sleep

  You Fit Into Me

  Seamus Heaney (b. 1939)

  A Dream of Jealousy

  Clearances

  Punishment

  ReQuiem for the Croppies

  The Haw Lantern (Dedication)

  Ted Kooser (b. 1939)

  At the Office Early

  Selecting a Reader

  David Budbill (b. 1940)

  Dilemma

  The Three Goals

  Thomas M. Disch (b. 1940)

  The Cardinal Detoxes: A Play in One Act

  Robert Pinsky (b. 1940)

  Shirt

  Billy Collins (b. 1941)

  Budapest

  Forgetfulness

  Introduction to Poetry

  Nightclub

  Not Touching

  Passengers

  Purity

  Questions About Angels

  Toi Derricotte (b. 1941)

  Allen Ginsberg

  Stephen Dobyns (b. 1941)

  Tomatoes

  Eamon Grennan (b. 1941)

  Detail

  Gerald Locklin (b. 1941)

  Late Registration

  Jack Myers (b. 1941)

  Jake Addresses the World from the Garden

  Nancy Vieira Couto (b. 1942)

  Living in the La Brea Tar Pits

  Stuart Dybek (b. 1942)

  Brass Knuckles

  Maroon

  B. H. Fairchild (b. 1942)

  The Dumka

  Tom Hennen (b. 1942)

  Soaking Up Sun

  The Life of a Day

  David Huddle (b. 1942)

  Holes Commence Falling

  Louis Jenkins (b. 1942)

  A Place for Everything

  William Matthews (1942 – 1997)

  A Poetry Reading at West Point

  Onions

  Sharon Olds (b. 1942)

  I Go Back to May 1937

  Once

  Quake Theory

  Satan Says

  The Pope’s Penis

  The Promise

  The Space Heater

  Dave Smith (b. 1942)

  Pulling a Pig’s Tail

  Wreck in the Woods

  Sharon Bryan (b. 1943)

  Beyond Recall

  Philip Schultz ((b. 1945)

  The Answering Machine

  Ronald Wallace (b. 1945)

  Thirteen

  Tom Wayman (b. 1945)

  Did I Miss Anything?

  Adam Zagajewski (b. 1945)

  Electric Elegy

  Moment

  Andrei Codrescu (b. 1946)

  Defense of the meek

  Two fragments from Three Types of Loss, Part 3

  Larry Levis (1946 – 1996)

  The Poem You Asked For

  Brian Patten (b. 1946)

  Party Piece

  Maura Stanton (b. 1946)

  Living Apart

  Lorna Goodison (b. 1947)

  Birth Stone

  Kaylin Haught (b. 1947)

  God Says Yes to Me

  Yusef Komunyakaa (b. 1947)

  Blackberries

  Camouflaging the Chimera

  Facing It

  Ode to the Maggot

  Heather McHugh (b. 1948)

  What He thought

  Agha Shahid Ali (1949 – 2001)

 
; The Dacca Gauzes

  Mark Halliday (b. 1949)

  Get It Again

  Population

  Robert Hedin (b. 1949)

  The Old Liberators

  Joyce Sutphen (b. 1949)

  Living in the Body

  Bruce Weigl (b. 1949)

  What Saves Us

  Claribel Alegria (b. 1950)

  Documentary

  Charles Bernstein (b. 1950)

  Of Time and the Line

  Jorie Graham (b. 1950)

  Salmon

  Michael Pettit (b. 1950)

  Driving Lesson

  Brigit Pegeen Kelly (b. 1951)

  The White Pilgrim: Old Christian Cemetery

  Timothy Russell (b. 1951)

  In Simili Materia

  Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill (b. 1952)

  Ceist na Teangan (The Language Issue)

  Sean O’Brien (b. 1952)

  Rain

  Shu Ting (b. 1952)

  Assembly Line

  Mark Irwin (b. 1953)

  Woolworth’s

  Richard Jones (b. 1953)

  Certain People

  Leaving Town after the Funeral

  The Bell

  Wan Chu’s Wife in Bed

  Robert Kinsley (b. 1953)

  A Walk Along the Old Tracks

  Mark Turpin (b. 1953)

  Before Groundbreak

  Don Fargo & Sons

  Jobsite Wind

  Pickwork

  Poem

  Waiting for Lumber

  Kevin Hart (b. 1954)

  The Room

  Molly Fisk (b. 1955)

  Intrigue

  On the Disinclination to Scream

  The Dry Tortugas

  William Roetzheim (b. 1955)

  Response to Emily Dickinson’s “Wild Nights—Wild Nights!”

  Fading into Background

  Stretch Marks

  Opera Season

  Shadow Friends

  Dean Young (b. 1955)

  Only One of My Deaths

  Mark Cox (b. 1956)

  Geese

  Style

  Jim Daniels (b. 1956)

  Wheels

  Gu Gheng (1956 – 1993)

  Ark

  Li-Young Lee (b. 1957)

  Eating Together

  Persimmons

  Julia Kasdorf (b. 1962)

  What I Learned from My Mother

  Ruth L. Schwartz (b. 1962)

  The Swan at Edgewater Park

  Patience Agbabi (b. 1965)

  Transformatrix

  Kate Clanchy (b. 1965)

  War Poetry

  David Berman (b. 1967)

  Snow

  Jackleen Holton (b. 1969)

  American History

  Free

  Jane Flanders (b. 1984)

  The House that Fear Built: Warsaw, 1943

  Appendix A Notes on Meter

  Index by Author

  Index by Title

  Index by Subject

  Index to Translations

  Index of First Lines

  Index Pointing To Audio CD

  Index Pointing From Audio CD

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  This book started out as a flurry of yellow sticky notes. I was new to poetry and as I devoured hundreds of books of poetry over a four year period, I pasted yellow sticky notes on those poems I especially liked, along with jotted notes about my reaction to the poem. Eventually I decided to organize these into a single document to make it easier for me to find a particular poem I was interested in. It was a very small step from that document to this book.

  A poetry book is commercially not the most practical book to write, and a broad based anthology such as this one is, perhaps, the least practical of the poetry books. So why do I think there’s a place for this book in the market? I see two primary readers for this book. I believe that for a reader relatively new to poetry (as I was a few short years ago), this is a great first book of poetry. It includes a broad cross section of poetry in terms of time written (classic versus modern versus contemporary), poetic form, and author nationality (although there is an emphasis on authors writing in English). In addition, because this book collects together many of the best loved poems of all time I view it as a good bedside companion for all poetry lovers.

  I’ve included brief notes on many poems in the footnotes on each page. Each footnote includes the form of the poem, defines any unusual words, and where helpful for understanding, includes a brief note on interpretation. Poetic meter is covered in an appendix to this book, and the notes on form use terminology from that appendix.

  The criteria for being included in this book are three-fold. First, I must have been exposed to the poem somewhere. I’m certainly aware that there are a large number of wonderful poems, and poets, not represented here simply because I have not yet had the pleasure of discovering their work. In those cases, I can only beg forgiveness and hold out the promise of future editions. Second, I must have liked the poem. There were no committees here, just a single editor. This means that the book will be filled with a lot of poems that are the style of poetry that I as a reader enjoy. To the extent that your taste in poetry is like mine, you will agree with my decisions. To the extent that your taste in poetry is unlike mine, you will disagree. Fortunately, my personal taste tends to be relatively broad so you are likely to find a good selection of poetic styles and subjects. Finally, the owner of the rights in the poem must have been willing to grant me the right to reprint the poem.

  To better understand what I feel makes a poem good, and thereby to better understand my criteria for inclusion in this book, we need to turn to a document I wrote called “The Level Four Poetry Manifesto.”

  Level Four Poetry Manifesto

  Poetry can be thought of as operating at four levels.

  Level One: A poem should communicate clearly to the reader at the denotative level. In other words, with even a casual reading of the poem, a non-sophisticated reader should understand this surface message. The poem should offer something to the reader at level one in payment for their time reading the poem. For example, this might be an interesting story, a memorable image, a surprise ending, or a shared emotion. Multiple readers of the poem should agree on the Level One message of the poem. Level One deals with the concrete. Level One makes the poem successful for the non-skilled reader.

  Level Two: A poem should communicate subtly to the reader at the connotative level, creating a desired mood within the reader. This is accomplished through poetic techniques such as word choice with attention to connotative meaning, imagery, and music. Music may include meter, rhyme, consonance, assonance, and attention to the emotional message of various consonants, vowels, and phonemes. Level Two is focused on the skilled reader of poetry, but adds to the enjoyment for non-skilled readers as well.

  Level Three: A poem may offer a separate, “hidden” message to the reader through the use of metaphor or similar techniques. In other words, all or part of the poem may represent something deeper in meaning than the surface description. The Level Three message should be recognizable to the skilled reader, and should be obvious to the non-skilled reader when it is pointed out.

  Level Four: Level Four poetry uses a symbol to offer a separate, “hidden” message to the reader. Metaphors may be symbols, but symbols are not necessarily metaphors. The use of symbols in Level Four poetry has both literal and representative meanings and the representative meaning is flexible with the reader able to fill in the specific meaning that applies most closely to their personal life.

  Let’s look at an example of a successful Level Four poem, Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.” Here’s the poem.

  Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

  And sorry I could not travel both

  And be one traveler, long I stood

  And looked down one as far as I could

  To where it bent in the undergrowth;

  Then took the other
, as just as fair,

  And having perhaps the better claim,

  Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

  Though as for that the passing there

  Had worn them really about the same,

  And both that morning equally lay

  In leaves no step had trodden black.

  Oh, I kept the first for another day!

  Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

  I doubted if I should ever come back.

  I shall be telling this with a sigh

  Somewhere ages and ages hence:

  Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

  I took the one less traveled by,

  And that has made all the difference.

  On Level One, it’s a pleasant story about a walk through the woods. It’s an enjoyable poem without delving any deeper into it than this. On Level Two he uses very clear descriptions of the woods and the paths (imagery), meter (iambic tetrameter), and rhyme. On Level Three the path and woods are a metaphor for the narrator’s life. Finally, on Level Four the fork in the path is a symbol representing (quoting HowardM2 on the Poetry Free For All Bulletin Board): “a choice between two equally desirable alternatives one of which must be given up in order to have the other.” As a symbol, this would obviously apply to many readers and would be personalized to represent individual choices they have had to make during their lives.

  Notice that the poem can be appreciated by a reader at any level without any awareness that it is operating at a higher level, but that the more carefully one studies the poem the more meaning is discovered. This is the mark of a successful poem within the Level Four manifesto. All of the poems in this book are successful at levels one and two, most go to level three, and many go to level four.

  The heart of the Level Four Manifesto is that each level builds on the previous levels, and levels should not be skipped if a poem is to be successful. I say this fully recognizing that some very well known poets have intentionally skipped levels and that many well known poets and poetry journals gravitate toward poetry that skips Level One. For example, Gertrude Stein often skipped Level One and focused on Level Two. Many schools of poetry skipped Levels One and Two and jumped directly to Level Three. However, I would argue that this skipping of levels is exactly why the general readership of poetry shrank during most of the Twentieth Century. New readers of poetry need to begin reading and appreciating a poem at level one, then level two, then level three, and finally fully appreciating it at level four. I believe that all poems that last hundreds of years will operate on Levels One and Two, that most will also operate on Level Three, and that many will operate on Level Four. Similarly, I believe that poets should begin writing at Level One, then add level Two, then Level Three, then Level Four.

  Meter is an important concept in fully enjoying poetry, whether you are reading it aloud or silently, but fully understanding and appreciating poetic meter can be somewhat intimidating to the new reader. I’ve included notes on meter in Appendix A for those readers that are ambitious.