Table of Contents
Preface xi
I Freedom 1
Introduction 3
"Why I Am Not a Painter" Frank O'Hara 12
"On Painting the Sistine Chapel Ceiling" (translated by Gail Mazur) Michelangelo 14
"Silence" Marianne Moore 15
"The Old Cloak" Anonymous 16
"Marriage" Gregory Corso 19
"Because I Could Not Stop for Death" Emily Dickinson 24
"Thoughts About the Person from Porlock" Stevie Smith 26
"Fine Work with Pitch and Copper" William Carlos Williams 29
"Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams" Kenneth Koch 30
"How We Heard the Name" Alan Dugan 31
"The Glories of Our Blood and State" James Shirley 32
"Adlestrop" Edward Thomas 34
"Upon Appleton House" Andrew Marvell 35
"A Description of the Morning" Jonathan Swift 63
"The Disappointment" Aphra Behn 64
"God's Grandeur" Gerard Manlet Hopkins 69
"Upon Nothing" John Wilmot 70
II Listening 73
Introduction 75
"On Love, on Grief Walter Savage Landor 82
"Betsabe's Song" George Peele 83
"The Pool" H.D. 84
"Eros Turannos" Edwin Arlington Robinson 85
"His Excuse for Loving" Ben Jonson 87
"My Picture Left in Scotland" Ben Jonson 88
"Upon M. Ben. Johnson" Robert Herrick 89
"For Margaret" Gerard Manley Hopkins 90
"Now Winter Nights Enlarge" Thomas Campion 91
"Tamer and Hawk" Thom Gunn 92
from "Songs to Joannes," I-III Mina Loy 93
"To Waken an Old Lady" William Carlos Williams 95
"An Old Man's Winter Night" Robert Frost 96
"To Earthward" Robert Frost 98
"Nature, That Washed Her Hands in Milk" Walter Ralegh 100
"The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm" Wallace Stevens 102
"Adam's Curse" William Butler Yeats 103
"The Soul Selects Her Own Society" Emily Dickinson 105
III Form 107
Introduction 109
"The Cruel Mother" Anonymous 117
"The Man of Double Deed" Anonymous 119
"My Prime of Youth Is but a Frost of Cares" Chidiock Tichborne 120
"Artfully Adorned Aphrodite" (translated by Jim Powell) Sappho 121
"To a Poor Old Woman" William Carlos Williams 123
"In Time of Plague" Thomas Nashe 124
"Sea Rose" H.D. 126
"A Question Answered" William Blake 127
from "Jubilate Agno" Christopher Smart 128
"You That Seek What Life Is in Death" Fulke Greville 132
"Elegy for Philip Sidney" Fulke Greville 133
from "Howl," II Allen Ginsberg 135
"Question" May Swenson 137
"The Negro Speaks of Rivers" Langston Hughes 138
"The Lullaby of a Lover" George Gascoigne 139
"Church Monuments" George Herbert 141
"During Wind and Rain" I Thomas Hardy 142
IV Dreaming Things Up 145
Introduction 147
"The Weed" Elizabeth Bishop 154
"Love Unknown" George Herbert 156
"The Burning Babe" Robert Southwell 159
"The Self-Unseeing" Thomas Hardy 160
"Captain Carpenter" John Crowe Ransom 161
"The Big Mystical Circus" (translated by Dudley Poore) Jorge de Lima 164
"The Shooe Tying" and "To God, on His Sicknesse" Robert Herrick 166
"Madame La Fleurie" Wallace Stevens 167
"Epitaph on a Hare" William Cowper 168
"Women" Louise Bogan 170
"Harlem Happiness" Sterling Brown 171
"When I Was Fair and Young" Elizabeth I 173
"Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night" Walt Whitman 174
"Nick and the Candlestick" Sylvia Plath 176
"The Phoenix and the Turtle" William Shakespeare 178
"David's Lament for Saul and Jonathan" Bible, Samuel 2 181
"Jabberwocky" Lewis Carroll 183
"The Lake Isle of Innisfree" William Butler Teats 185
"The Lake Isle" Ezra Pound 186
"The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter" EZRA Pound 187
"Methought I saw my late espoused saint" John Milton 189
from "A Woman Young and Old," IV: "Her Triumph" William Butler Yeats 190
"Ode to a Nightingale" John Keats 191
"Poetry" Marianne Moore 194
"On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" John Keats 196
Biographies 197
Acknowledgments 211
Permissions 213
Index 217
