Literature, 9/e, the most popular introduction of its kind, is organized into three genresFiction, Poetry, and Drama. As in past editions, the authors' collective poetic voice brings personal warmth and a human perspective to the discussion of literature, adding to students' interest in the readings. An introduction to a balance of contemporary and classic stories, poems, and plays. Casebooks offer in-depth look at an author or clusters of works, for example Latin American Poetry. Authors Joe Kennedy and Dana Gioia provide inviting and illuminating introductions to the authors included and to the elements of literature. Coverage of writing about literature is also included. For those interested in literature.
FICTION
1. READING A STORY
Fable, Parable, and Tales
W. Somerset Maugham, The Appointment in Samarra
* Aesop, The North Wind and the Sun
Bidpai, The Camel and His Friends
Chuang Tzu, Independence
Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, Godfather Death
Plot
The Short Story
John Updike, A & P
Writers on Writing: John Updike, Why Write?
2. POINT OF VIEW
William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily
* Anne Tyler, Teenage Wasteland
James Baldwin, Sonny's Blues
* Eudora Welty, A Worn Path
Writers on Writing: James Baldwin, Race and the African American Writer
3. CHARACTER
Katherine Anne Porter, The Jilting of Granny Weatherall
Katherine Mansfield, Miss Brill
* Tobias Wolff, The Rich Brother
Raymond Carver, Cathedral
Writers on Writing: Raymond Carver, Commonplace but Precise Language
4. SETTING
Kate Chopin, The Storm
Jack London, To Build a Fire
T. Coraghessan Boyle, Greasy Lake
Amy Tan, A Pair of Tickets
Writers on Writing: Amy Tan, Setting the Voice
5. TONE AND STYLE
Ernest Hemingway, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place
William Faulkner, Barn Burning
Irony
* O. Henry, Gift of the Magi
Ha Jin, Saboteur
Writers on Writing: Ernest Hemingway, The Direct Style
6. THEME
Stephen Crane, The Open Boat
* Alice Munro, How I Met My Husband
Luke 15: 11-32, The Parable of the Prodigal Son
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Harrison Bergeron
Writers on Writing: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., The Themes of Science Fiction
7. SYMBOL
John Steinbeck, The Chrysanthemums
Shirley Jackson, The Lottery
Elizabeth Tallent, No One’s a Mystery
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
*Writers on Writing: Shirley Jackson, Reactions to "The Lottery"
8. EVALUATING A STORY
* Yiyun Li, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
WRITING EFFECTIVELY
* Writers on Writing: Yiyun Li, “What I Could Not Write about Was Why I Was Writing”
9. READING LONG STORIES AND NOVELS
Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
Writers on Writing: Franz Kafka, Discussing The Metamorphosis
10. CRITICAL CASEBOOK: FLANNERY O'CONNOR
Flannery O'Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Flannery O'Connor, Revelation
* Flannery O'Connor, Parker’s Back
Flannery O'Connor on Writing
Flannery O'Connor, An Excerpt from “On Her Own Work”: The Element of Suspense in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”
Flannery O'Connor, On Her Catholic Faith
Flannery O'Connor, An Excerpt from “The Grotesque in Southern Fiction”: The Serious Writer and the Tired Reader
Flannery O'Connor, Yearbook Cartoons
Critics on Flannery O'Connor
Robert Brinkmeyer Jr., Flannery O’Connor and Her Readers
J. O. Tate, A Good Source Is Not so Hard to Find: The Real Life Misfit
Mary Jane Schenck, Deconstructing "A Good Man Is Hard to Find"
* Kathleen Feeley, The Mystery of Divine Direction: “Parker’s Back”
11. CRITICAL CASEBOOK: 3 Stories in Depth
Edgar Allan Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart
Edgar Allan Poe on Writing
Edgar Allan Poe, The Tale and Its Effect
Edgar Allan Poe, On Imagination
Edgar Allan Poe, The Philosophy of Composition
Critics on “The Tell-Tale Heart”
Daniel Hoffman, The Father-Figure in “The Tell-Tale Heart”
* Scott Peeples, “The Tell-Tale Heart” as a Love Story
* John Chua, The Figure of the Double in Poe
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper
Charlotte Perkins Gilman on Writing
* Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Why I Wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper”
* Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Whatever Is
* Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Nervous Breakdown of Women
Critics on “Yellow Wallpaper”
Juliann Fleenor, Gender and Pathology in “The Yellow Wallpaper”
* Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Imprisonment and Escape: The Psychology of Confinement
* Elizabeth Ammons, Biographical Echoes in “The Yellow Wallpaper”
Alice Walker, Everyday Use
Alice Walker on Writing
* Black Women Writers in America, Interview by John O’Brien
* Alice Walker: “I Know What the Earth Says, ” Interview by William R. Ferris
Critics on “Everyday Use”
Barbara T. Christian, “Everyday Use” and the Black Power Movement
* Houston A. Baker and Charlotte Pierce-Baker, Stylish vs. Sacred in “Everyday Use”
* Elaine Showalter, Quilt as Metaphor in “Everyday Use”
12. STORIES FOR FURTHER READING
Chinua Achebe, Dead Men's Path
Anjana Appachana, The Prophecy
Margaret Atwood, Happy Endings
Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Jorge Luis Borges, The Gospel According to Mark
Willa Cather, Paul's Case
John Cheever, The Five-Forty-Eight
Anton Chekhov, The Lady with the Pet Dog
Kate Chopin, The Story of an Hour
Sandra Cisneros, House on Mango Street.
Ralph Ellison, Battle Royal
Gabriel García Márquez, The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World
* Dagoberto Gilb, Look on the BrightSide
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown
Zora Neale Hurston, Sweat
Kazuo Ishiguro, A Family Supper
James Joyce, Araby
Jamaica Kincaid, Girl
Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies
D. H. Lawrence, The Rocking-Horse Winner
Bobbie Ann Mason, Shiloh
Joyce Carol Oates, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried
Tillie Olsen, I Stand Here Ironing
* Octavio Paz, My Life with the Wave
Leslie Marmon Silko, The Man to Send Rain Clouds
* Helena María Viramontes, The Moths
POETRY
13. READING A POEM
William Butler Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innisfree
Lyric Poetry
D. H. Lawrence, Piano
Adrienne Rich, Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers
Narrative Poetry
Anonymous, Sir Patrick Spence
Robert Frost, “Out, Out—”
Dramatic Poetry
Robert Browning, My Last Duchess
Writers on Writing: Adrienne Rich, Recalling "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers"
William Stafford, Ask Me
William Stafford, A Paraphrase of "Ask Me"
14. LISTENING TO A VOICE
Tone
Theodore Roethke, My Papa’s Waltz
Countee Cullen, For a Lady I Know
Anne Bradstreet, The Author to Her Book
Walt Whitman, To a Locomotive in Winter
Emily Dickinson, I like to see it lap the Miles
Benjamin Alire Sáenz, To the Desert
Weldon Kees, For My Daughter
The Person in the Poem
Natasha Trethewey, White Lies
Edwin Arlington Robinson, Luke Havergal
Ted Hughes, Hawk Roosting
* Suji Kwock Kim, Monologue for an Onion
William Wordsworth, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
Dorothy Wordsworth, Journal Entry
James Stephens, A Glass of Beer
Anne Sexton, Her Kind
William Carlos Williams, The Red Wheelbarrow
Irony
Robert Creeley, Oh No
W. H. Auden, The Unknown Citizen
Sharon Olds, Rites of Passage
John Betjeman, In Westminster Abbey
Sarah N. Cleghorn, The Golf Links
* Edna St. Vincent Millay, Second Fig
* Joseph Stroud, Missing
Thomas Hardy, The Workbox
For Review and Further Study
William Blake, The Chimney Sweeper
* David Lehman, Rejection Slip
William Stafford, At the Un-National Monument Along the Canadian Border
H. L. Hix, I Love the World, As Does Any Dancer
Richard Lovelace, To Lucasta
Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum Est
Writers on Writing: Wilfred Owen, War Poetry
Student Essay, Word Choice, Tone, and Point of View in Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz"
15. WORDS
Literal Meaning: What a Poem Says First
William Carlos Williams, This Is Just to Say
Marianne Moore, Silence
Robert Graves, Down, Wanton, Down!
John Donne, Batter my heart, three-personed God, for You
The Value of a Dictionary
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Aftermath
John Clare, Mouse’s Nest
J. V. Cunningham, Friend, on this scaffold Thomas More lies dead
Kelly Cherry, Advice to a Friend Who Paints
Carl Sandburg, Grass
Word Choice and Word Order
Robert Herrick, Upon Julia's Clothes
Kay Ryan, Blandeur
Thomas Hardy, The Ruined Maid
Richard Eberhart, The Fury of Aerial Bombardment
Wendy Cope, Lonely Hearts
For Review and Further Study
E. E. Cummings, anyone lived in a pretty how town
Billy Collins, The Names
Anonymous, Carnation Milk
* Kenneth Rexroth, Vitamins and Roughage
* Gina Valdes, English con Salsa
Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky
Writers on Writing: Lewis Carroll, Humpty Dumpty Explicates "Jabberwocky"
16. SAYING AND SUGGESTING
John Masefield, Cargoes
William Blake, London
Wallace Stevens, Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock
* Gwendolyn Brooks, Southeast Corner
Timothy Steele, Epitaph
* E. E. Cummings, next to of course to god america i
Robert Frost, Fire and Ice
Clare Rossini, Final Love Note
* Jennifer Reeser, Winter-proof
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Tears, Idle Tears
Richard Wilbur, Love Calls Us to the Things of This World
Writers on Writing: Richard Wilbur, Concerning "Love Calls Us to the Things of This World"
17. IMAGERY
Ezra Pound, In a Station of the Metro
Taniguchi Buson, The piercing chill I feel
T. S. Eliot, The winter evening settles down
Theodore Roethke, Root Cellar
Elizabeth Bishop, The Fish
Anne Stevenson, The Victory
Charles Simic, Fork
Emily Dickinson, A Route of Evanescence
Jean Toomer, Reapers
Gerard Manley Hopkins, Pied Beauty
About Haiku
Arakida Moritake, The falling flower
Matsuo Basho, Heat-lightning streak
Matsuo Basho, In the old stone pool
Taniguchi Buson, On the one-ton temple bell
Taniguchi Buson, I go
Kobayashi Issa, only one guy
Kobayashi Issa, Cricket
Haiku from Japanese Internment Camps
Suiko Matsushita, Rain shower from mountain
Neiji Ozawa, War forced us from California
Hakuro Wada, Even the croaking of frogs
Contemporary American Haiku
Etheridge Knight, Lee Gurga, Penny Harter, John Ridland, * Garry Gay, Adelle Foley, Jennifer Brutschy, Connie Bensley, A Selection of Haiku
For Review and Further Study
John Keats, Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art
T. C. Hulme, The Image
Walt Whitman, The Runner
* William Carlos Williams, El Hombre
Chana Bloch, Tired Sex
Robert Bly, Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter
* Rita Dove, Silos
Louise Glück, Mock Orange
Billy Collins, Embrace
John Haines, Winter News
Stevie Smith, Not Waving but Drowning
Writers on Writing: Ezra Pound, The Image
Student Essay, Elizabeth Bishop's Use of Imagery in "The Fish"
18. FIGURES OF SPEECH
Why Speak Figuratively?
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Eagle
William Shakespeare, Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Howard Moss, Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?
Metaphor and Simile
Emily Dickinson, My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Flower in the Crannied Wall
William Blake, To see a world in a grain of sand
Sylvia Plath, Metaphors
N. Scott Momaday, Simile
Emily Dickinson, It dropped so low – in my Regard
Craig Raine, A Martian Sends a Postcard Home
Other Figures
James Stephens, The Wind
Margaret Atwood, You fit into me
John Ashbery, The Cathedral Is
George Herbert, The Pulley
* Dana Gioia, Money
* Charles Simic, My Shoes
For Review and Further Study
Robert Frost, The Silken Tent
* April Lindner, Low Tide
Jane Kenyon, The Suitor
Robert Frost, The Secret Sits
A. R. Ammons, Coward
Kay Ryan, Turtle
* Heather McHugh, Language Lesson, 1976
Robinson Jeffers, Hands
Robert Burns, Oh, my love is like a red, red rose
Writers on Writing: Robert Frost, The Importance of Poetic Metaphor
19. SONG
Singing and Saying
Ben Jonson, To Celia
Anonymous, The Cruel Mother
* William Shakespeare, O Mistress Mine
Edwin Arlington Robinson, Richard Cory
Paul Simon, Richard Cory
Ballads
Anonymous, Bonny Barbara Allan
Dudley Randall, Ballad of Birmingham
Blues
Bessie Smith with Clarence Williams, Jailhouse Blues
W. H. Auden, Funeral Blues
Rap
Run D.M.C., from Peter Piper
For Review and Further Study
John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Eleanor Rigby
Bob Dylan, The Times They Are a-Changin'
* Aimee Mann, Deathly
Writers on Writing: Paul McCartney, Creating "Eleanor Rigby"
20. SOUND
Sound as Meaning
Alexander Pope, True Ease in Writing comes from Art, not Chance
William Butler Yeats, Who Goes with Fergus?
John Updike, Recital
William Wordsworth, A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal
Emanuel di Pasquale, Rain
Aphra Behn, When Maidens Are Young
Alliteration and Assonance
A. E. Housman, Eight O’Clock
* James Joyce, All Day I Hear
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The splendor falls on castle walls
Rime
William Cole, On my boat on Lake Cayuga
James Reeves, Rough Weather
Hilaire Belloc, The Hippopotamus
* Ogden Nash, The Panther
William Butler Yeats, Leda and the Swan
Gerard Manley Hopkins, God’s Grandeur
Fred Chappell, Narcissus and Echo
Robert Frost, Desert Places
Reading and Hearing Poems Aloud
Michael Stillman, In Memoriam John Coltrane
William Shakespeare, Full fathom five thy father lies
Chryss Yost, Lai with Sounds of Skin
T. S. Eliot, Virginia
Writers on Writing: T. S. Eliot, The Music of Poetry
21. RHYTHM
Stresses and Pauses
Gwendolyn Brooks, We Real Cool
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Break, Break, Break
Ben Jonson, Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt tears
Sir Thomas Wyatt, With serving still
Dorothy Parker, Résumé
Meter
Max Beerbohm, On the imprint of the first English edition of The Works of Max Beerbohm
Thomas Campion, Rose-cheeked Laura, come
Edna St. Vincent Millay, Counting-out Rhyme
* Jacqueline Osherow, Song for the Music in the Warsaw Ghetto
A. E. Housman, When I was one-and-twenty
* William Carlos Williams, Smell!
Walt Whitman, Beat! Beat! Drums!
David Mason, Song of the Powers
Langston Hughes, Dream Boogie
Writers on Writing: Gwendolyn Brooks, Hearing "We Real Cool"
22. CLOSED FORM
Formal Patterns
John Keats, This living hand, now warm and capable
Robert Graves, Counting the Beats
John Donne, Song (“Go and catch a falling star”)
Phillis Levin, Brief Bio
The Sonnet
William Shakespeare, Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Michael Drayton, Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part
Edna St. Vincent Millay, What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why
Robert Frost, Acquainted with the Night
Kim Addonizio, First Poem for You
* Mark Jarman, Unholy Sonnet: Hands Folded
Timothy Steele, Summer
A. E. Stallings, Sine Qua Non
* R. S. Gwynn, Shakespearean Sonnet
The Epigram
Alexander Pope, Sir John Harrington, Robert Herrick, William Blake, E. E. Cummings, Langston Hughes, J. V. Cunningham, John Frederick Nims, Stevie Smith, Brad Leithauser, Dick Davis, Anonymous, Hilaire Belloc, Wendy Cope, A selection of epigrams
W. H. Auden, Edmund Clerihew Bentley, Cornelius Ter Maat, Clerihews
Other Forms
Robert Pinsky, ABC
Dylan Thomas, Do not go gentle into that good night
Robert Bridges, Triolet
Elizabeth Bishop, Sestina
*Writers on Writing: A. E. Stallings, On Form and Artifice
23. OPEN FORM
Denise Levertov, Ancient Stairway
E. E. Cummings, Buffalo Bill ’s
W. S. Merwin, For the Anniversary of My Death
William Carlos Williams, The Dance
Stephen Crane, The Heart
Walt Whitman, Cavalry Crossing a Ford
* Ezra Pound, Salutation
Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
Prose Poetry
Carolyn Forché, The Colonel
* Charles Simic, The Magic Study of Happiness
Visual Poetry
George Herbert, Easter Wings
John Hollander, Swan and Shadow
Terry Ehret, from Papyrus
Dorthi Charles, Concrete Cat
Found Poetry
Ronald Gross, Yield
Seeing the Logic of Open Form Verse
E. E. Cummings, in Just-
Carole Satyamurti, I Shall Paint My Nails Red
* Alice Fulton, Failure
Writers on Writing: Walt Whitman, The Poetry of the Future
24. SYMBOL
T. S. Eliot, The Boston Evening Transcript
Emily Dickinson, The Lightning is a yellow Fork
Thomas Hardy, Neutral Tones
Matthew 13:24-30, The Parable of the Good Seed
George Herbert, The World
* Edwin Markham, Outwitted
* John Ciardi, A Box Comes Home
Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
Christina Rossetti, Uphill
* Christian Wiman, Postolka
For Review and Further Study
William Carlos Williams, The Term
Ted Kooser, Carrie
* Jane Hirshfield, Tree
Jon Stallworthy, An Evening Walk
Lorine Niedecker, Popcorn-can cover
Wallace Stevens, Anecdote of the Jar
Writers on Writing: William Butler Yeats, Poetic Symbols
25. MYTH
Robert Frost, Nothing Gold Can Stay
D. H. Lawrence, Bavarian Gentians
William Wordsworth, The World Is Too Much with Us
H. D., Helen
Archetype
Louise Bogan, Medusa
* John Keats, La Belle Dame Sans Merci
Personal Myth
William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming
* Gregory Orr, Two Lines from the Brothers Grimm
Diane Thiel, Memento Mori in Middle School
Myth and Popular Culture
Charles Martin, Taken Up
* Andrea Hollander Budy, Snow White
Anne Sexton, Cinderella
Writers on Writing: Anne Sexton, Transforming Fairy Tales
Student Essay, The Bonds Between Love and Hatred in H. D.'s "Helen"
26. POETRY AND PERSONAL IDENTITY
Sylvia Plath, Lady Lazarus
Rhina Espaillat, Bilingual / Bilingüe
Culture, Race, and Ethnicity
Claude McKay, America
Samuel Menashe, The Shrine Whose Shape I Am
Francisco X. Alarcón, The X in My Name
* Amy Uyematsu, Deliberate
Judith Ortiz Cofer, Quinceañera
Yusef Komunyakaa, Facing It
Gender
Anne Stevenson, Sous-Entendu
Emily Grosholz, Listening
Donald Justice, Men at Forty
Adrienne Rich, Women
For Review and Further Study
Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Learning to love America
Andrew Hudgins, Elegy for My Father, Who Is Not Dead
Alastair Reid, Speaking a Foreign Language
Philip Larkin, Aubade
Writers on Writing: Rhina Espaillat, Being a Bilingual Writer
27. TRANSLATION
Is Poetic Translation Possible?
World Poetry
Li Po, Drinking Alone Beneath the Moon (Chinese text)
Li Po, Moon-beneath Alone Drink (literal translation)
Li Po, translated by Arthur Waley, Drinking Alone by Moonlight
Comparing Translations
Horace, “Carpe Diem” Ode (Latin text)
Horace, “Carpe Diem” Ode (literal translation)
Horace, translated by Edwin Arlington Robinson, Horace to Leuconoe
Horace, translated by James Michie, Don’t Ask
Horace, translated by A. E. Stallings, A New Year’s Toast
Omar Khayyam, Rubai (Persian text)
Omar Khayyam, Rubai (literal translation)
Omar Khayyam, translated by Edward FitzGerald, A Book of Verses underneath the Bough
Omar Khayyam, translated by Robert Graves and Omar Ali-Shah, Our Day’s Portion
Omar Khayyam, translated by Dick Davis, I Need a Bare Sufficiency
Parody
Anonymous, We four lads from Liverpool are
Wendy Cope, From Strugnell’s Rubaiyat
Hugh Kingsmill, What, still alive at twenty-two?
Bruce Bennett, The Lady Speaks Again
Gene Fehler, If Richard Lovelace Became a Free Agent
Aaron Abeyta, thirteen ways of looking at a tortilla
Writers on Writing: Arthur Waley, The Method of Translation
28. Poetry in Spanish: Literature of Latin America
Sor Juana
Asegura la Confianza de que Oculturá de todo un Secreto
Translated by Diane Thiel, She Promises to Hold a Secret in Confidence
Presente en que el Cariño Hace Regalo la Llaneza
Translated by Diane Thiel, A Simple Gift Made Rich by Affection
Pablo Neruda
Muchos Somos
Translated by Alastair Reid, We Are Many
Cien Sonetos de Amor (V)
Translated by Stephen Tapscott, One Hundred Love Sonnets (V)
Jorge Luis Borges
Amorosa Anticipación
Translated by Robert Fitzgerald, Anticipation of Love
Los Engimas
Translated by John Updike, The Enigmas
Octavio Paz
Con los Ojos Cerrados
Translated by Eliot Weinberger, With Our Eyes Shut
Certeza
Translated by Charles Tomlinson, Certainty
Surrealism in Latin American Poetry
Frida Kahlo, Two Friedas
César Vallejo, La Cólera que Quiebra al Hombre en Niños
César Vallejo, translated by Thomas Merton, Anger
Contemporary Mexican Poets
José Emilio Pacheco, Alta Traición
José Emilio Pacheco, translated by Alastair Reid, High Treason
* Francisco Hernández, Bajo Cero
* Francisco Hernández, translated by Carolyn Forché, Below Zero
* Tedi López Mills, Convalecencia
* Tedi López Mills, Convalescence
Writers on Writing
Octavio Paz, In Search of the Present
Writers on Translating: Alastair Reid, Translating Neruda
29. RECOGNIZING EXCELLENCE
Anonymous, O Moon, when I gaze on thy beautiful face
Grace Treasone, Life
Emily Dickinson, A Dying Tiger – moaned for Drink
Rod McKuen, Thoughts on Capital Punishment
William Stafford, Traveling Through the Dark
Wallace McRae, Reincarnation
Recognizing Excellence
William Butler Yeats, Sailing to Byzantium
Arthur Guiterman, On the Vanity of Earthly Greatness
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias
Robert Hayden, The Whipping
Elizabeth Bishop, One Art
W. H. Auden, September 1, 1939
Evaluating Famous Poems
Walt Whitman, O Captain! My Captain!
Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus
* Paul Laurence Dunbar, We Wear the Mask
Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee
Writers on Writing: Edgar Allan Poe, A Long Poem Does Not Exist
30. WHAT IS POETRY?
Archibald MacLeish, Ars Poetica
Dante, Samuel Johnson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Thomas Carlyle, Thomas Hardy, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Mina Loy, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, J. V. Cunningham, Elizabeth Bishop, Jorge Luis Borges, Octavio Paz, William Stafford, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Bly, Some Definitions of Poetry
Ha Jin, Missed Time
31. TWO CRITICAL CASEBOOKS: EMILY DICKINSON AND LANGSTON HUGHES
Emily Dickinson
Success is counted sweetest
* I taste a liquor never brewed
Wild Nights – Wild Nights!
I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain
I'm Nobody! Who are you?
* I Dwell in Possibility
The Soul selects her own Society
Some keep the Sabbath going to Church
After great pain, a formal feeling comes
This is my letter to the World
I heard a Fly buzz – when I died
I started Early – Took my Dog
Because I could not stop for Death
The Bustle in a House
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant
Emily Dickinson on Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson, Recognizing Poetry
Emily Dickinson, Self-Description
Critics on Emily Dickinson
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Meeting Emily Dickinson
Thomas H. Johnson, The Discovery of Emily Dickinson’s Manuscripts
Richard Wilbur, The Three Privations of Emily Dickinson
Cynthia Griffin Wolff, Dickinson and Death (A Reading of “Because I could not stop for Death”)
Judith Farr, A Reading of “My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun”
Langston Hughes
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
Mother to Son
Dream Variations
I, Too
The Weary Blues
Song for a Dark Girl
Prayer
End
* Ku Klux
Ballad of the Landlord
Theme for English B
Subway Rush Hour
Sliver
* As Befits a Man
Harlem [Dream Deferred]
Langston Hughes on Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain
Langston Hughes, The Harlem Renaissance
Critics on Langston Hughes
Arnold Rampersad, Hughes as an Experimentalist
Rita Dove and Marilyn Nelson, Langston Hughes and Harlem
Darryl Pinckney, Black Identity in Langston Hughes
Peter Townsend, Langston Hughes and Jazz
Onwuchekwa Jemie, A Reading of "Dream Deferred"
32. CRITICAL CASEBOOK: T. S. ELIOT’S “THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK”
T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Publishing “Prufrock”
* Ezra Pound, Letters to Harriet Monroe on “Prufrock”
The Reviewers on Prufrock and Other Observations: 1917-1918
* Unsigned, Review from Times Literary Supplement
* Unsigned, Review from Literary World
* Unsigned, Review from New Statesman
* Conrad Aiken, Divers Realists
* Babette Deutsch, Another Impressionist
* Marianne Moore, A Note on T. S. Eliot’s Book
* May Sinclair, Prufrock and Other Observations: A Criticism
T. S. Eliot on Writing
* T. S. Eliot, Poetry and Emotion
* T. S. Eliot, The Objective Correlative
* T. S. Eliot, The Difficulty of Poetry
Critics on “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
* Christopher Ricks, What’s in a Name?
* Philip R. Headings, The Pronouns in the Poem: “One,” “You,” and “I”
* Maud Ellmann, Will There Be Time?
* Denis Donoghue, One of the Irrefutable Poets
* Burton Raffel, “Indeterminacy” in Eliot’s Poetry
* John Berryman, Prufrock’s Dilemma
* M. L. Rosenthal, from “Adolescents Singing
33. POEMS FOR FURTHER READING
Anonymous, Lord Randall
Anonymous, The Three Ravens
Anonymous, The Twa Corbies
Anonymous, Last Words of the Prophet (Navajo Mountain Chant)
Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach
John Ashbery, At North Farm
* Margaret Atwood, Siren Song
W. H. Auden, As I Walked Out One Evening
W. H. Auden, Musée des Beaux Arts
Elizabeth Bishop, Filling Station
William Blake, The Tyger
William Blake, The Sick Rose
Eavan Boland, Anorexic
Gwendolyn Brooks, The Mother
Gwendolyn Brooks, the preacher: ruminates behind the sermon
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways
Robert Browning, Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister
Geoffrey Chaucer, Merciless Beauty
G. K. Chesterton, The Donkey
Lucille Clifton, Homage to my hips
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan
Billy Collins, Care and Feeding
Hart Crane, My Grandmother's Love Letters
E. E. Cummings, somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
* Marisa de los Santos, Perfect Dress
John Donne, Death be not proud
John Donne, The Flea
John Donne, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
John Dryden, To the Memory of Mr. Oldham
T. S. Eliot, Journey of the Magi
Louise Erdrich, Indian Boarding School: The Runaways
B. H. Fairchild, A Starlit Night
Robert Frost, Birches
Robert Frost, Mending Wall
Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Allen Ginsberg, A Supermarket in California
Thom Gunn, The Man with Night Sweats
Donald Hall, Names of Horses
Thomas Hardy, The Convergence of the Twain
Thomas Hardy, The Darkling Thrush
Thomas Hardy, Hap
Robert Hayden, Those Winter Sundays
Seamus Heaney, Digging
Anthony Hecht, Adam
George Herbert, Love
Robert Herrick, To the Virgins to Make Much of Time
Gerard Manley Hopkins, Spring and Fall
Gerard Manley Hopkins, No worst, there is none
Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Windhover
A. E. Housman, Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
A. E. Housman, To an Athlete Dying Young
Randall Jarrell, The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
Robinson Jeffers, To the Stone-cutters
Ben Jonson, On My First Son
* Donald Justice, On the Death of Friends in Childhood
John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn
John Keats, When I have fears that I may cease to be
John Keats, To Autumn
* Ted Kooser, Abandoned Farmhouse
Philip Larkin, Home is so Sad
Philip Larkin, Poetry of Departures
Irving Layton, The Bull Calf
* Denise Levertov, The Ache of Marriage
Philip Levine, They Feed They Lion
* Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Riding into California
Robert Lowell, Skunk Hour
Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress
Edna St. Vincent Millay, Recuerdo
John Milton, How soon hath time
John Milton, When I consider how my light is spent
Marianne Moore, Poetry
Frederick Morgan, The Master
Marilyn Nelson, A Strange Beautiful Woman
Howard Nemerov, The War in the Air
* Lorine Niedecker, Poet’s Work
Yone Noguchi, A Selection of Hokku
Sharon Olds, The One Girl at the Boys’ Party
Wilfred Owen, Anthem for Doomed Youth
Linda Pastan, Ethics
Robert Phillips, Running on Empty
Sylvia Plath, Daddy
Edgar Allan Poe, A Dream within a Dream
Alexander Pope, A little Learning is a dang’rous Thing
Ezra Pound, The River-Merchant’s Wife: a Letter
Dudley Randall, A Different Image
John Crowe Ransom, Piazza Piece
Henry Reed, Naming of Parts
Adrienne Rich, Living in Sin
Edwin Arlington Robinson, Miniver Cheevy
Theodore Roethke, Elegy for Jane
Mary Jo Salter, Welcome to Hiroshima
William Shakespeare, When, in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes
William Shakespeare, Not marble nor the gilded monuments
William Shakespeare, That time of year thou mayst in me behold
William Shakespeare, My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun
Louis Simpson, American Poetry
David R. Slavitt, Titanic
Christopher Smart, For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry
William Jay Smith, American Primitive
Cathy Song, Stamp Collecting
William Stafford, The Farm on the Great Plains
Wallace Stevens, The Emperor of Ice-Cream
Jonathan Swift, A Description of the Morning
* Larissa Szporluk, Vertigo
Sara Teasdale, The Flight
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Dark house, by which once more I stand
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses
Dylan Thomas, Fern Hill
John Updike, Ex-Basketball Player
Derek Walcott, The Virgins
Edmund Waller, Go, Lovely Rose
* Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road
Walt Whitman, I Hear America Singing
Richard Wilbur, The Writer
C. K. Williams, Elms
William Carlos Williams, Spring and All
William Carlos Williams, To Waken an Old Lady
William Wordsworth, Composed upon Westminster Bridge
James Wright, A Blessing
James Wright, Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio
Mary Sidney Wroth, In This Strange Labyrinth
Sir Thomas Wyatt, They flee from me that sometime did me sekë
William Butler Yeats, Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop
William Butler Yeats, The Magi
William Butler Yeats, When You Are Old
* Bernice Zamora, Penitents
34. LIVES OF THE POETS
DRAMA
35. READING A PLAY
A Play in Its Elements
Susan Glaspell, Trifles
Writers on Writing: Susan Glaspell, Creating Trifles
Student Essay, Outside Trifles
36. MODES OF DRAMA: TRAGEDY & COMEDY
Tragedy
* Christopher Marlowe, A Scene from Doctor Faustus (in which Faustus sells his soul to the devil; Act 2, Scene 1)
Comedy
David Ives, Sure Thing
Jane Martin, Beauty
*Writers on Writing: David Ives, On the One-Act Play
37. CRITICAL CASEBOOK: SOPHOCLES
The Theater of Sophocles
Staging
The Civic Role of Greek Drama
Aristotle's Concept of Tragedy
The Origins of Oedipus the King
Sophocles, Oedipus the King (Translated by Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald)
The Background of Antigonê
Sophocles, Antigonê (Translated by Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald)
Critics on Sophocles
Aristotle, Defining Tragedy
Sigmund Freud, The Oedipus Complex
E. R. Dodds, On Misunderstanding Oedipus
A. E. Haigh, The Irony of Sophocles
* David Wiles, The Chorus as Democrat
Patricia M. Line, Antigonê's Flaw
Writers on Writing : Robert Fitzgerald, Translating Sophocles into English
38. CRITICAL CASEBOOK: SHAKESPEARE
The Theater of Shakespeare
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Plays
A Note on Othello
William Shakespeare, Othello, the Moor of Venice
The Background of Hamlet
William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
The Background of A Midsummer Night’s Dream
William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream
Critics on Shakespeare
A. C. Bradley, Hamlet's Character
Rebecca West, Hamlet and Ophelia
Jan Kott, Producing Hamlet
Joel Wingard, Reader-Response Issues in Hamlet
W. H. Auden, Iago as a Triumphant Villain
Maud Bodkin, Lucifer on Shakespeare's Othello
Virginia Mason Vaughan, Black and White in Othello
Anthony Burgess, An Asian Culture Looks at Shakespeare
* Claire Asquith, Shakespeare’s Language as a Hidden Political Code
Germaine Greer, Shakespeare’s “Honest Mirth”
Linda Bamber, Female Power in A Midsummer Night's Dream
Writers on Writing: Ben Jonson, On His Friend And Rival William Shakespeare
Student Essay, Othello: Tragedy or Soap Opera?
39. THE MODERN THEATER
Realism and Naturalism
Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House (Translated by James McFarlane)
Writers on Writing
* Henrik Ibsen, Correspondence on the Final Scene of A Doll’s House
Tragicomedy and the Absurd
Milcha Sanchez-Scott, The Cuban Swimmer
Writers on Writing: Milcha Sanchez-Scott, Writing The Cuban Swimmer
Student Essay, Helmer vs. Helmer
40. EVALUATING A PLAY
Writing an Evaluation of a Play
Judging a Play’s Greatness
Checklist: Evaluating a Play
Writing Assignment on Evaluation
41. PLAYS FOR FURTHER READING
Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman
Writers on Writing
Arthur Miller, Tragedy and the Common Man
Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
Writers on Writing: Tennessee Williams, How to Stage The Glass Menagerie
42. NEW VOICES IN AMERICAN DRAMA
* Rita Dove, The Darker Face of the Earth
Writers on Writing
* Rita Dove, The Inspiration for The Darker Face of the Earth
Beth Henley, Am I Blue?
Writers on Writing
Beth Henley,What’s in a Title?
David Henry Hwang, The Sound of a Voice
Writers on Writing: David Henry Hwang, Multicultural Theater
Terrence McNally, Andre's Mother
Writers on Writing: Terrence McNally, How to Write a Play
* August Wilson, Fences
* Writers on Writing: August Wilson, A Look into Black America
* WRITING (ALL NEWLY REVISED)
43. WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE
Start by Reading Actively
Robert Frost, Nothing Gold Can Stay
Planning Your Essay
Prewriting: Discovering Ideas
-Brainstorming
-Clustering
-Listing
-Freewriting
-Journaling
-Outlining
Developing a Literary Argument
-Purpose
-Audience
-Topic
-Thesis
-Argument
-Organization
-Checklist: Developing an Argument
Writing a Rough Draft
Sample Student Essay, Rough Draft
Revising
Checklist: Revision Steps
Some General Advice on Rewriting
Sample Student Essay, Final Draft
Using Critical Sources and Maintaining Academic Integrity
The Form of your Finished Paper
Spell-Check and Grammar-Check Programs
Anonymous (after a poem by Jerrold H. Zar), A Little Poem Regarding Computer Spell Checkers
44. WRITING ABOUT A STORY
Start with Active Reading
Thinking About the Text
Preparing to Write: Discovering Ideas
Writing a First Draft
CHECKLIST: WRITING A ROUGH DRAFT
Revising
CHECKLIST: REVISION
What’s Your Purpose? Some Common Approaches to Writing About Fiction
Explication
Sample Student Essay (Explication)
Analysis
Sample Student Essay (Analysis)
The Card Report
Sample Student Card Report
Comparison and Contrast
Sample Student Essay (Comparison and Contrast)
45. WRITING ABOUT A POEM
Getting Started
Reading Actively
Robert Frost, Design
Thinking About a Poem
Preparing to Write
Writing a First Draft
CHECKLIST: WRITING A ROUGH DRAFT
Revising
CHECKLIST: REVISION
Some Common Approaches to Writing About Poetry
Explication
Sample Student Essay (Explication)
Randall Jarrell, On Frost’s “Design”
Analysis
Sample Student Essay (Analysis)
Comparison and Contrast
Abbie Huston Evans, Wing-Spread
Sample Student Essay (Comparison and Contrast)
How to Quote a Poem
Robert Frost, In White
46. WRITING ABOUT A PLAY
Reading a Play
Some Methods of Writing About Drama
Explication
Analysis
Comparison and Contrast
Card Report
Sample Student Card Report
A Review
Sample Student Drama Review
How to Quote a Play
47. WRITING A RESEARCH PAPER
Getting Started
Choosing a Topic
Finding Research Sources
Finding Print Resources
Using Online Databases
Using Visual Images
CHECKLIST: USING VISUAL IMAGES
Finding Reliable Web Sources
CHECKLIST: FINDING SOURCES
Evaluating Sources
Print Resources
Choose Web Sources Carefully
CHECKLIST: EVALUATING SOURCES
Organizing Your Research
Refining Your Thesis
Organizing Your Paper
Writing and Revising
Guarding Academic Integrity
Papers for Sale Are Papers that “F”ail
A Warning Against Internet Plagiarism
Acknowledging Sources
Quoting a Source
Citing Ideas
Documenting Sources Using MLA Style
List of Sources
Parenthetical References
Works Cited List
Citing Print Sources in MLA Style
Citing Internet Sources in MLA Style
Sample Works Cited List
Endnotes and Footnotes
Sample Student Research Paper - Page xxxx
Concluding Thoughts
Reference Guide for Citations
48. WRITING AS DISCOVERY: KEEPING A JOURNAL
Sample Student Journal Entry
49. WRITING AN ESSAY EXAM
50. CRITICAL APPROACHES TO LITERATURE
Formalist Criticism
Cleanth Brooks, The Formalist Critic
Michael Clark, Light and Darkness in "Sonny's Blues"
Robert Langbaum, On Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess”
Biographical Criticism
Virginia Llewellyn Smith, Chekhov's Attitude to Romantic Emily Toth,
The Source for Alcée Laballière in “The Storm”
Brett C. Millier, On Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art”
Historical Criticism
Hugh Kenner, Imagism
Joseph Moldenhauer, "To His Coy Mistress" and the Renaissance Tradition
* Kathryn Lee Seidel, The Economics of “Sweat”
Psychological Criticism
Sigmund Freud, The Nature of Dreams
Gretchen Schulz and R. J. R. Rockwood, Fairy Tale Motifs in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”
Harold Bloom, Poetic Influence
Mythological Criticism
C. J. Jung, The Collective Unconscious and Archetypes
Northrop Frye, Mythic Archetypes
Edmond Volpe, Myth in Faulkner's "Barn Burning"
Sociological Criticism
Georg Lukacs, Content Determines Form
Daniel P. Watkins, Money and Labor in "The Rocking-Horse Winner"
Alfred Kazin, Walt Whitman and Abraham Lincoln
Gender Criticism
Elaine Showalter, Toward a Feminist Poetics
* Nina Pelikan Straus, Transformations in The Metamorphosis
Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Freedom of Emily Dickinson
Reader-Response Criticism
Stanley Fish, An Eskimo “A Rose for Emily”
Michael J. Colacurcio, The End of Young Goodman Brown
Robert Scholes, “How Do We Make a Poem?”
Deconstructionist Criticism
Roland Barthes, The Death of the Author
Barbara Johnson, Rigorous Unreliability
Geoffrey Hartman, On Wordsworth’s “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal”
Cultural Studies
Vincent B. Leitch, Poststructuralist Cultural Critique
Mark Bauerlein, What Is Cultural Studies?
* Camille Paglia, On Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper”