This Art: A Copper Canyon Ares Poetica Anthology

by Michael Wiegers (Editor)

Overview

The centuries have changed little in this art,
The subjects are still the same.—Kenneth Rexroth

Why poetry? What is poetry and why do people write it and read it? Why, as Dana Levin has written, "this urge to making a scrapbook of stars"?

Every poet, by accident or design, has responded to "Why poetry" by writing a poem about poetry (an ars poetica). Whether these poems focus on the personal, political, or philosophical, each recognizes that our world is more complicated than a direct statement.

As Marvin Bell has written, "Writing is all and everything." This anthology of poems about the art and life of poetry—which draws widely from Copper Canyon’s 30-year backlist of poetry books—proves him right.

Poets write out of love and longing:

Lord, let me live / long enough to dare /a love poem —Cyrus Cassells

Poets confront suffering:

since we will always have a suffering world, we must also always have a song.—David Budbill

And poets write in order to live fully:

We all stumble into ourselves /like this, fitting our fingers to the shape of letters,/ while the page gallops out of our reach—Rebecca Seiferle

Only poetry lasts.—Ho Xuan Huong

Michael Wiegers is the Managing Editor at Copper Canyon Press.

CONTRIBUTORS Included: [box]
Kay Boyle,
Olga Broumas,
Hayden Carruth,
Norman Dubie,
Han Shan,
Jim Harrison,
Carolyn Kizer,
W.S. Merwin,
Jane Miller,
Kenneth Rexroth,
Ruth Stone,
Anna Swir

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781619321168
Publisher:	Copper Canyon Press
Publication date:	06/01/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
File size:	838 KB

Table of Contents

	Introduction	xiii
	Art Class	3
	"Once I got a postcard"	4
	Always on the Train	5
	On the Subject of Poetry	6
	Geo-Bestiary #X	7
	The Allure of Forms	8
	365 Poems	9
	Poetry	10
	Voices (an excerpt)	12
	What We Need Words For	14
	Georgi Borisov in Paris	15
	Speech Alone	16
	Ars Poetica	17
	Thoughts on a Night Journey	19
	The Purchase	20
	You Can Start the Poetry Now, Or: News from Crazy Horse	21
	The Useful	23
	Love Poem	24
	These Poems, She Said	25
	Poetics	26
	Writing Class	28
	Why do poets write?	30
	In Hiding	31
	A Woman Writer Does Laundry	32
	"To write more"	33
	Learning a Dead Language	34
	California	36
	By the Rivers	38
	After Our War	40
	August 22, 1939	41
	What Issa Heard	45
	Drinking Alone on a Spring Night	46
	Word Drunk	47
	Epiphany	48
	A Physics of Sudden Light	49
	Writing the Poem	51
	Homage to the Word-Hoard	52
	The Book of Questions #XXI	54
	From My Notebook	55
	Hacedor	57
	Theory and Practice in Poetry	58
	Loading a Boar	60
	Imperfect Poetry and Meaningless Poetry	61
	To No One in Particular	62
	Ars Poetica: A Stone Soup	64
	The Impossible Indispensability of the Ars Poetica	66
	Who I Write For	68
	Still Another Day #xxviii	71
	Dedicated to You	72
	Sounds of the Resurrected Dead Man's Footsteps (#2)	74
	Poetic Voice	76
	I Can't Write a Poem about Class Rage	77
	Comment on this: in the real scheme of things, poetry is marginal	79
	Ars Poetica	80
	Somebody Consoles Me with a Poem	82
	Some Part of the Lyric	84
	A Tao of Poetry (an excerpt)	85
	On Exploration	86
	Cucina	87
	Ars Poetica	88
	Poetry Reading at the Varna Ruins	89
	Instructions to Be Left Behind	90
	Poem without Music	92
	Parable of the Voices	94
	Recording the Spirit Voices	95
	Poem	96
	Ars Poetica	97
	Going Back to the Convent	98
	#69	99
	Poets	100
	Poets	102
	Early Spring East of Town	103
	I Know How Every Poet	104
	Braided Creek (an excerpt)	105
	An Introduction to My Anthology	106
	They Say	107
	For the Seventh Day	108
	Poems	109
	Singing Aloud	110
	Poetry Reading	111
	The Meaning of Life	112
	Waiting	114
	The Story of the End of the Story	117
	Poetry is verdant	118
	Revisionist Poem--Octavio Paz	119
	Do Not Speak Keresan to a Mescalero Apache	120
	Because the Eye Is a Flower Whose Root Is the Hand	121
	Night Seasons	122
	Our Mother Talks about Metaphor	124
	The Moon Is a Diamond	125
	Ars Poetica	126
	And It Came to Pass	127
	The Ambassador	129
	What Keeps	130
	The Word Between the World and God	131
	Erasing Stars	132
	Morning Star	133
	Daily ritual	134
	At Seventy-five: Rereading an Old Book	136
	Stories Are Made of Mistakes	137
	Daddy Out Hitch-Hiking At 3:00 a.m.	140
	On This Side of the River	141
	The Magician-Made Tree (an excerpt)	143
	Photovoltaic	144
	Homage to Life: Jules Supervielle	146
	The Snow and the Plum--I	148
	The Snow and the Plum--II	148
	Country Scene	149
	The Last Poem in the World	150
	About the Poets	153
	About the Editor	165