Poems to Read: A New Favorite Poem Project Anthology

by Robert Pinsky, Maggie Dietz

Overview

A unique anthology by the editors of the bestseller Americans' Favorite Poems.

Poems to Read is a welcoming avenue into poetry for readers new to poetry, including high school and college students. It is also meant to be a fresh, valuable collection for readers already devoted to the art. This anthology concentrates on the actual pleasures of reading poems: hearing the poem in your voice, bringing it to other people, musing about it, taking excitement or comfort from it, wandering with it or—as in the Keats letter quoted in the Introduction—having it as a starting post. Many of these 200 poems are accompanied by comments from readers of various ages, regions, and backgrounds who participated in the Favorite Poem Project. Included are poems by John Donne, Walt Whitman, William Butler Yeats, Langston Hughes, Elizabeth Bishop, Gwendolyn Brooks, Seamus Heaney, Allen Ginsberg, and Louise Glück, to name a few. The editors offer their own comments on some of the poems, which are arranged in thematic chapters.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393010749
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	06/17/2002
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.60(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Maggie Dietz is the Favorite Poem Project's director. She lives in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.

Robert Pinsky is the award-winning author of over twenty volumes of poetry. He served as United States poet laureate from 1997 to 2000, during which time he founded the Favorite Poem Project. He teaches at Boston University and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	xxi
	Introduction	xxiii
Chapter 1	There Was a Child Went Forth
	My Father	3
	Sestina	4
	The Game	6
	Dreamtigers	8
	To My Dear Children	9
	Boy Breaking Glass	10
	Frost at Midnight	12
	My Grandmother's Love Letters	15
	Story for Margarita	17
	Coastal	21
	Little Brown Baby	23
	Once by the Pacific	25
	Time	26
	At the Railway Station, Upway	28
	The Self-Unseeing	28
	Follower	30
	Blackberry-Picking	31
	Spring and Fall	33
	Ode I.9 / To Thaliarchus	35
	Dreams	36
	A Flower Given to My Daughter	37
	You Were Wearing	38
	Venus's-flytraps	39
	The Catch	41
	The Piano	42
	My Childhood-Home I See Again	43
	Silence	47
	August, Los Angeles, Lullaby	48
	Adventures of Isabel	51
	Autobiographia Literaria	53
	Alicante Lullaby	54
	The Lice Seekers	55
	Child on Top of a Greenhouse	56
	The Land of Counterpane	57
	There Was a Child Went Forth	59
	On the Beach at Night	61
	The Turtle	63
	Night Light	65
	The Song of Wandering Aengus	66
Chapter 2	Either Whom to Love or How
	Just Walking Around	71
	To My Mother	72
	A Bouquet	73
	The Shampoo	75
	Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand (Sonnets from the Portuguese 6)	76
	Now Winter Nights Englarge	77
	The Bandaged Shoulder	78
	Somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond	79
	Wild Nights--Wild Nights! (249)	80
	If you were coming in the Fall (511)	81
	Song	82
	Three sorts of serpents do resemble thee (Idea 30)	84
	The Love I Gave You Once	85
	To Earthward	87
	Dust of Snow	88
	A Broken Appointment	89
	Misery and Splendor	90
	Love (III)	91
	To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time	92
	Oh, when I was in love with you (A Shropshire Lad 28)	93
	Life Is Fine	94
	His Excuse for Loving	96
	My Picture Left in Scotland	97
	Love Song	98
	Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)
	The Definition of Love	99
	Ballad	101
	From the Journals of the Frog Prince	102
	Tonight I Can Write	104
	Steps	106
	Love Letter	108
	To Helen	110
	"No, Thank You, John"	111
	To Atthis	113
	Let me not to the marriage of true minds (Sonnets 116)	115
	My true love hath my heart and I have his	116
	Love after Love	117
	Natural History	118
	I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing	119
	Still Life	120
	The Act	122
	He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven	123
Chapter 3	The Forgetful Kingdom of Death
	Thoughts of Death	127
	I have of sorwe so grete woon	128
	The Watch	129
	The Heart asks Pleasure--first--(536)	130
	I heard a Fly buzz--when I died--(465)	130
	Death, be not proud, though some have called thee (Holy Sonnets 10)	132
	The Poet Goes about Her Business	134
	You that seek what life is in death (Caelica 82)	136
	Death	137
	To Daffodils	138
	To an Athlete Dying Young	139
	The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner	141
	A Contemplation upon Flowers	142
	The Bolt	143
	On Seeing a Hair of Lucretia Borgia	145
	Janet Waking	146
	Elegy for Jane	148
	Fear no more the heat o' the sun	149
	Question	150
	And Death Shall Have No Dominion	151
	The Death of a Toad	153
	The Last Words of My English Grandmother	154
Chapter 4	In Durance Soundly Caged
	Mad Tom's Song	159
	As I Walked Out One Evening	162
	Nurse's Song (from Songs of Innocence)	165
	Nurse's Song (from Songs of Experience)	166
	The Grey Monk	166
	First fight. Then fiddle. Ply the slipping string ...	168
	Bitter Fruit of the Tree	169
	Waiting for the Barbarians	171
	Incident	173
	After great pain, a formal feeling comes--(341)	174
	Belinda's Petition	175
	Nothing Gold Can Stay	176
	The Red Poppy	177
	Frederick Douglass	178
	Binsey Poplars	179
	90 North	181
	King of the River	183
	1910	186
	For the Union Dead	188
	Not to Be Spattered by His Blood	191
	Resume	194
	Storm Warnings	195
	Richard Cory	197
	Her Kind	199
	(1) Like This	200
	(2) Like This	200
	The Emperor of Ice-Cream	201
	Reapers	202
	By the road to the contagious hospital	203
Chapter 5	Curled around These Images
	Filling Station	207
	Medusa	209
	At last we killed the roaches	211
	Pear Tree	212
	An Ox Looks at Man	213
	Plague of Dead Sharks	215
	Preludes	216
	Departmental	219
	In back of the real	221
	Yoko	223
	Considering the Snail	225
	The man pulling radishes	226
	To Autumn	227
	Let Evening Come	229
	First Sight	230
	In Houston	231
	Bring Me the Sunflower	233
	Those Various Scalpels	234
	The Village of Reason	236
	Archaic Torso of Apollo	238
	Ozymandias	239
	Spring	240
	Augusto Jandolo: On Excavating an Etruscan Tomb	241
	Five Dogs	243
	The Force That through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower	246
	The Yonder Tree	247
	Aboard at a Ship's Helm	250
Chapter 6	Alive with Many Separate Meanings
	The Path to the White Moon	253
	Dream Song 14	255
	To F--	256
	The Smile	256
	To see a World in a Grain of Sand	257
	"Do not be afraid of no"	258
	Ithaka	260
	Geometry	262
	How We Heard the Name	263
	Gascoigne's Lullaby	264
	from Faust, Part 2	266
	Prayer	268
	When all this All doth pass from age to age (Caelica 69)	269
	The Seventh	270
	On My Own	272
	Years of Solitude	274
	Pretty Blue Apron	275
	A Field of Light	278
	Quietness	281
	Proverbs from Purgatory	282
	Old Joke	285
	The Pleasures of Merely Circulating	287
	Of Mere Being	288
	A Contribution to Statistics	289
	from Gitanjali (35 & 39)	292
	Personals	294
Chapter 7	I Made My Song a Coat
	from Requiem	297
	Lament for the Makers	298
	Ars Poetica	299
	To John Keats, Poet, at Spring Time	301
	We play at Paste--(320)	303
	There is no Frigate like a Book (1263)	303
	A word is dead (1212)	304
	A Supermarket in California	305
	Get It Again	307
	Theme for English B	310
	The Secret	312
	What He Thought	314
	Incantation	317
	A Step Away from Them	318
	Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird	320
	Eating Poetry	323
	Dream On	324
	A Coat	327
	Notes	329
	Permissions	333
	Index	343

Editorial Reviews

When Robert Pinsky was named poet laureate in 1997, he made us all his corecipients. Tapping the poetic gifts and preferences of his fellow countrymen, he created Americans' Favorite Poems, a delightfully diverse anthology of accessible verse. In Poems to Read, Pinsky and coeditor Maggie Dietz offer a second batch of poetry to sharpen the mind and lift the spirits. Once again, the selections are eclectic, sometimes unexpected, and refreshing. Contributors range from Robert Herrick and Henry King to Jorie Graham and Frank O'Hara.

bn.com

The magic of [this anthology] is that they [is]...revelatory to both poetry beginners and longtime poetry readers.

Jeff Simon

A fresh take on the ever new pleasure of reading poems.... illuminating, energetic and very American.

Carol Muske-Dukes

Former U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky (Jersey Rain) founded the Favorite Poem Project during his tenure, resulting in an anthology (Americans' Favorite Poems) and other disseminations. Again with Project director Maggie Dietz, Pinsky follows up with another collection of poems selected by readers across the country. Poems to Read: A New Favorite Poem Project Anthology features works by a wide selection of well-known, mostly American and European writers from throughout the ages: Henry King, Rabindranath Tagore, Gwendolyn Brooks, J.W. von Goethe, Issa, Jorie Graham, Robert Herrick, Dionisio Mart!nez and Frank O'Hara are just a few of them. Arranged in quote-based categories like "I Made My Song a Coat" and "In Durance Soundly Caged," most pieces are preceded by brief comments from Poem Project participants engineers, doctors, consultants, police officers, human resource managers, high school students and others who share what the poems mean to them. (June) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

The Favorite Poem Project was founded by Pinsky in 1997 during his tenure as poet laureate. Some 18,000 respondents sent letters or e-mails about their favorite poems, which resulted in the anthology America's Favorite Poems and several videos. This new anthology includes poems selected by Favorite Poem Project participants and their personal comments. But it also includes poems chosen by the editors, along with their brief remarks. Although mainly populated by famous English and American poets (Chaucer, Shakespeare, Coleridge, Housman, Dickinson, Frost, Ginsberg, Ashbery), the book has many surprises, like Abraham Lincoln and the Nicaraguan poet Rub n Dario. This landmark publication belongs on the shelves of every library in America. Highly recommended for the breadth of its coverage and the depth of its commentaries. Daniel L. Guillory, Millikin Univ., Decatur, IL Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

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