Hunter, J. Paul; Alison Booth; Kelly J. Mays;
The Norton Introduction to Poetry, Eighth Edition
W. W. Norton & Company 2002-05 (Paperback, 672 pages $59.65)
ISBN 9780393978209 / 0393978206
topics: | poetry | anthology
The poems are wonderful; they seem to have been chosen so as to appeal to the broadest possible audience. The very first few, e.g. Tally Stick and Love Poem, are fresh and eager and draw you in. The themes unfold slowly. Whether as a text or simply reading for pleasure, a wonderful book!
Here from the start, from our first of days, look: I have carved our lives in secret on this stick of mountain mahogany the length of your arms outstretched, the wood clear red, so hard and rare. It is time to touch and handle what we know we share. Near the butt, this intricate notch where the grains converge and join: it is our wedding. I can read it through with a thumb and tell you now who danced, who made up the songs, who meant us joy. These little arrowheads along the grain, they are the births of our children. See, they make a kind of design with these heavy crosses, the deaths of our parents, the loss of friends. Over it all as it goes, of course, I have chiseled Events, History--random hashmarks cut against the swirling grain. See, here is the Year the World Went Wrong, we thought, and here the days the Great Men fell. The lengthening runes of our lives run through it all. See, our tally stick is whittled nearly end to end; delicate as scrimshaw, it would not bear you up. Regrets have polished it, hand over hand. Yet let us take it up, and as our fingers like children leading on a trail cry back our unforgotten wonders, sign after sign, we will talk softly as of ordinary matters, and in one another's blameless eyes go blind.
I want to write you a love poem as headlong as our creek after thaw when we stand on its dangerous banks and watch it carry with it every twig every dry leaf and branch in its path every scruple when we see it so swollen with runoff that even as we watch we must grab each other and step back we must grab each other or get our shoes soaked we must grab each other
The house is so quiet now The vacuum cleaner sulks in the corner closet, Its bag limp as a stopped lung, its mouth Grinning into the floor, maybe at my Slovenly life, my dog-dead youth. I've lived this way long enough, But when my old woman died her soul Went into that vacuum cleaner, and I can't bear To see the bag swell like a belly, eating the dust And the woollen mice, and begin to howl Because there is old filth everywhere She used to crawl, in the corner and under the stair. I know now how life is cheap as dirt, And still the hungry, angry heart Hangs on and howls, biting at air. from The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov. © U. Chicago Press http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2004/06/25
Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come: Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Love's the boy stood on the burning deck trying to recite `The boy stood on the burning deck.' Love's the son stood stammering elocution while the poor ship in flames went down. Love's the obstinate boy, the ship, even the swimming sailors, who would like a schoolroom platform, too, or an excuse to stay on deck. And love's the burning boy. ---blurb 483 poems total, 101 new to this edition. Accompanied by audio CD containing 33 poems read aloud, in the voices of W. H. Auden, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Frost, Li-Young Lee, Robert Lowell, Adrienne Rich, Anne Sexton, Wallace Stevens, Dylan Thomas, Derek Walcott, and Richard Wilbur, Yeats, and others.