Synopses & Reviews
Introduction: Feeling Older From Essays Montaigne "Death be not proud" John Donne "Timor mortis conturbat me" Anonymous From A Margin of Hope Irving Howe From "The Tower" W. B. Yeats From "Sailing to Byzantium" W. B. Yeats "Lines Written on the Eve of a Birthday" Kelly Cherry From Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift From Macbeth William Shakespeare From As You Like It William Shakespeare From "Sonnet on Turning Twenty-three" John Milton From "On Being Twenty-six" Philip Larkin From "On This Day I Complete My Thirty-sixth Year"George Gordon, Lord Byron From On Old Age Cicero From "Rabbi Ben Ezra" Robert Browning Letter to Malcolm Cowley Kenneth Burke From The View from 80 Malcolm Cowley "This is what human beauty comes to" Francois Villon From Satire X Juvenal From Epistolae morales Seneca From The Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer "The problem, unstated till now, is how" Adrienne Rich "It's true, these last few years I've lived"Adrienne Rich "One Art" Elizabeth Bishop From Self-Consciousness: A Memoir John Updike From "The Vanity of Human Wishes" Samuel Johnson "Dear Charles, My Muse, asleep or dead" Philip Larkin From "St. Mark's Rest" John Ruskin "Yes; I write verses now and then" Walter Savage Landor From "Used: The Mind-Body Problem" Kelly Cherry "As I Sit Writing Here" Walt Whitman "Queries to My Seventieth Year" Walt Whitman Letter to Malcolm Cowley Kenneth Burke "It Is Time" Laurence Lerner "Extempore Effusion Upon the Death of James Hogg"William Wordsworth From Childe Harold's Pilgrimage George Gordon, Lord Byron "The Old Familiar Faces" Charles Lamb Letter to Malcolm Cowley Kenneth Burke From "A Toccata of Galuppi's" Robert Browning From "Faithful Wilson" Thomas Hardy "The Facein the Mirror" Robert Graves "I Look into My Glass" Thomas Hardy "Growing Old" Matthew Arnold 19:32-39: 2 Samuel From "Girl from Samos" Menander "O sovereign my Lord! Oldness has come" Ptah Hotep "For when thou art angry all our days are gone": From The Book of Common PrayerFrom The Diary of Alice James Alice James "He who has lived sixty years": Egyptian Papyrus Letter to W. Morton Fullerton Henry James "My Picture Left in Scotland" Ben Jonson From Paradise Lost John Milton "Song" Christina Rossetti "Old Age" Buland Al-Haydari "What, then, is life if love the golden is gone?" Mimnermus Chorus, from Herakles Euripides From Oedipus at Colonus Sophocles "Jogger" Daniel Hoffman Letter to Pierre Moreno Colette "Last Housecleaning" Mark Van Doren From As We Are Now May Sarton 1:1-18: Ecclesiastes "Lebensweisheitspielerei" Wallace Stevens "One Life" Adrienne Rich "Dead Before Death" Christina Rossetti "Old Age" Yusuf Al-Khal "I Want You to Be Harsh" Tom O'Shea "I Haven't Lost My Marbles Yet!" Minnie I. Hodapp "The Old Player" Oliver Wendell Holmes From The Adventures of Huckleberry FinnMark Twain "Losing the Marbles" James Merrill "No" John Berryman "Resume" Dorothy Parker "Life Is Fine" Langston Hughes From The Coming of Age Simone De Beauvoir From Enjoy Old Age B. F. Skinner Letter to John Taylor Samuel Johnson From On Old Age Cicero "Provide, Provide" Robert Frost "I to my perils" A. E. Housman "He Never Expected Much" Thomas Hardy From The View in Winter Ronald Blythe From Enjoy Old Age B. F. Skinner "Resolutions When I Come to Be Old"Jonathan Swift From an interview Robertson Davies From Commonplace Book E. M. Forster "Poets" Kay Boyle "A Poem About Black Power" Kay Boyle "To His CoyMistress" Andrew Marvell From The Faerie Queene Edmund Spenser From Ainsi soit-il Andre Gide From Essays Montaigne "Defiance of Age" (Ode 11) Anacreon From Henry IV, Part I William Shakespeare From The Art of Growing Old John Cowper Powys "Sailing to Byzantium" W. B. Yeats From To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf From The Coming of Age Simone De Beauvoir "No coward soul is mine" Emily Bronte "Riches I hold in light esteem" Emily Bronte "The courage that my mother had" Edna St. Vincent Millay "Let No Charitable Hope" Elinor Wylie "Nadir" Elinor Wylie From a letter to Henry P. Bowditch William James From Journal Wu Yu-Pi "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" Dylan Thomas From his diary Henry James "The Decision" Theodore Roethke "Advice to the Old (including myself)" Kay Boyle "This high summer we love will pour its light" Adrienne Rich "Age and Light" Sappho From Hooked: Film Writing 1985-88 Pauline Kael From Commonplace Book E. M. Forster From Letters to Lucilius Seneca "Leaf after leaf drops off, flower after flower"Walter Savage Landor "Death stands above me, whispering low" Walter Savage Landor "Dying Speech of an Old Philosopher" Walter Savage Landor From Commonplace Book E. M. Forster From The Republic Plato From "From 'Oedipus at Colonus'" W. B. Yeats From "The Tower" W. B. Yeats "The Restored" Theodore Roethke From Letters Edith Wharton From an interview with Ronald Blythe Crossing-Keeper's Son From The Coming of Age Simone de Beauvoir "Yorkshire Wife's Saga" Ruth Pitter "The Envelope" Maxine Kumin From The Art of Being a Grandfather: "The Contented Exile" Victor Hugo "Georges and Jeanne" Victor Hugo "Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest" William Shakespeare"Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend" William Shakespeare "Then let not winter's ragged hand deface" William Shakespeare "Lo, in the orient when the gracious light" William Shakespeare "Against my love shall be, as I am now" William Shakespeare Letter to Hugh Walpole Henry James Letter Malcolm Cowley Kenneth Burke "When to the sessions of sweet silent thought"William Shakespeare "Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts" William Shakespeare "That time of year thou mayst in me behold" William Shakespeare "Dover Beach" Matthew Arnold "John Anderson My Jo" Robert Burns "Wish for a Young Wife" Theodore Roethke "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways" Elizabeth Barrett Browning "Life Begins at 80" Frank Laubach "The burden of an ancient rhyme" Walter Savage Landor From Anatomy of an Illness Norman Cousins "David and Solomon" James Ball Naylor John Betjeman Epigrams Richard Armour Epigrams Elder Olson Epigrams Dinner Speech Mark Twain One-Liners: Ninon de Lenclos One-Liners: Goodman Ace One-Liners: Joel Chandler Harris One-Liners: Casey Stengel One-Liners: Eubie Blake One-Liners: James Thurber One-Liners: Dwight D. Eisenhower One-Liners: Lawrence J. Peter One-Liners: John Gay "Crossing the Border" Ogden Nash "There Was an Old Man with a Beard" Edward Lear "There Was an Old Man Who Supposed" Edward Lear "Advice from a Caterpillar" Lewis Carroll From Volpone Ben Jonson From Watt Samuel Beckett Letter to Malcolm Cowley Kenneth Burke "Epigram XXVI" Walter Savage Landor "Doggerel by a Senior Citizen" W. H. Auden From Confucian Analects Confucius From Counsels and Maxims Arthur Schopenhauer From The Coming of Age Simone De Beauvoir From Self-Consciousness: A MemoirJohn Updike From StringQuartet #16 Ludwig von Beethoven "now does our world descend" e. e. Cummings From The Coming of Age Simone De Beauvoir "To Age" Walter Savage Landor (adapted from Psalms 144 and 90): Koved Funeral Prayer From Lives Diogenes Laertius From King Lear William Shakespeare From Autobiography Bertrand Russell "To Get the Final Lilt of Songs" Walt Whitman From Sister Age M. F. K. Fisher From "Crabbed Age and Youth" Robert Louis Stevenson "A Pastoral Nun" Wallace Stevens "The Canzioniere" Petrarch "Among School Children" W. B. Yeats "The Whole Question" Robert Penn Warren "God's Grandeur" Gerard Manley Hopkins "The Flower" George Herbert "Up-Hill" Christina Rossetti "On His Blindness" John Milton "In winter in the woods alone" Robert Frost From At Seventy: A Journal May Sarton "The Silence Now" May Sarton "Old Lovers at the Ballet" May Sarton "The First Snow of the Year"Mark Van Doren "Night Thoughts in Age" John Hall Wheelock "Fern Hill" Dylan Thomas "Grasses" Amy Clampitt "Fizzle 3: Afar a bird" Samuel Beckett From "A Catch of Shy Fish" Gwendolyn Brooks "A Prayer for Old Age" W. B. Yeats "From My Diary" Stephen Spender "Wide Awake, Full of Love" William Carlos Williams "After the Persian" Louise Bogan "The Plain Sense of Things" Wallace Stevens "Nadirs" Josephine Miles "Brim" Josephine Miles "Stroke" Josephine Miles "Crossing the Bar" Alfred Lord Tennyson "Halcyon Days" Walt Whitman "Old Women" Czeslaw Milosz "Breakfast Time" Betty Rosen "Thinking of the Lost World" Randall Jarrell From Ecclesiastes Psalm 90 "Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness" John Donne "What Are Years?" Marianne Moore Notes and Sources Some Books That Provide Lists of Books About Aging Index
Synopsis
Wayne Booth has selected, and has been inspired by, the works by some of our greatest writers on the art of growing older. In this widely praisedand#160;anthology he shows that the very making of art is in itself a victory over time.and#160;Culled chiefly from great literary works, this unusual compendium of prose and poetry . . . highlights the physical and emotional aspects of aging. . . . The thoughtful commentary with which Booth connects the selections reminds readers that physical decay and fear of death are conditions common to us all. . . . Provocative."and#8212;
Publishers Weeklyand#160;"His blending of literature, humor, and crotchetiness will capture the interest of readers of all ages."and#8212;
Booklist"Funny . . . profound. . . . It is hard to resist the closing chapters, which celebrate the freedom from constraint and ambition, the permission to be crotchety, the joy of memory and perspective that come with age."and#8212;William March, Tampa Tribuneand#160;"Booth puts a new spin on the worries many of us have about what's catching up with us. . . . Booth's book . . . [is] for both the younger readers and those of us who are nervously counting birthdays."and#8212;Sacramento Bee
Synopsis
Old Age is a territory that most of us can expect to enter and brave, however tentatively. In this anthology, Wayne Booth has selected, and has been inspired by, the works of some of our greatest writers--Shakespeare, Emily Bronte, Walt Whitman, and many more--on the art of growing older. Profound, witty, shrewd, compassionate, but never sentimental, he deals candidly with losses, fears, and lamentations, but then dwells on not just the consolations but the reasons for celebration.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [305]-317) and index.
About the Author
Wayne C. Booth (1921and#8211;2005) was the George Pullman Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. His many books include The Rhetoric of Fiction, A Rhetoric of Irony, The Power and Limits of Pluralism, The Vocation of a Teacher, and Forthe Love of It, all published by the University of Chicago Press.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Feeling Older
From Essays
Montaigne
"Death be not proud"
John Donne
"Timor mortis conturbat me"
Anonymous
From A Margin of Hope
Irving Howe
From "The Tower"
W. B. Yeats
From "Sailing to Byzantium"
W. B. Yeats
"Lines Written on the Eve of a Birthday"
Kelly Cherry
From Gulliver's Travels
Jonathan Swift
From Macbeth
William Shakespeare
From As You Like It
William Shakespeare
From "Sonnet on Turning Twenty-three"
John Milton
From "On Being Twenty-six"
Philip Larkin
From "On This Day I Complete My Thirty-sixth Year"
George Gordon, Lord Byron
From On Old Age
Cicero
From "Rabbi Ben Ezra"
Robert Browning
Letter to Malcolm Cowley
Kenneth Burke
From The View from 80
Malcolm Cowley
"This is what human beauty comes to"
Francois Villon
From Satire X
Juvenal
From Epistolae morales
Seneca
From The Canterbury Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer
"The problem, unstated till now, is how"
Adrienne Rich
"It's true, these last few years I've lived"
Adrienne Rich
"One Art"
Elizabeth Bishop
From Self-Consciousness: A Memoir
John Updike
From "The Vanity of Human Wishes"
Samuel Johnson
"Dear Charles, My Muse, asleep or dead"
Philip Larkin
From "St. Mark's Rest"
John Ruskin
"Yes; I write verses now and then"
Walter Savage Landor
From "Used: The Mind-Body Problem"
Kelly Cherry
"As I Sit Writing Here"
Walt Whitman
"Queries to My Seventieth Year"
Walt Whitman
Letter to Malcolm Cowley
Kenneth Burke
"It Is Time"
Laurence Lerner
"Extempore Effusion Upon the Death of James Hogg"
William Wordsworth
From Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
George Gordon, Lord Byron
"The Old Familiar Faces"
Charles Lamb
Letter to Malcolm Cowley
Kenneth Burke
From "A Toccata of Galuppi's"
Robert Browning
From "Faithful Wilson"
Thomas Hardy
"The Face in the Mirror"
Robert Graves
"I Look into My Glass"
Thomas Hardy
"Growing Old"
Matthew Arnold
19:32-39: 2 Samuel
From "Girl from Samos"
Menander
"O sovereign my Lord! Oldness has come"
Ptah Hotep
"For when thou art angry all our days are gone": From The Book of Common Prayer
From The Diary of Alice James
Alice James
"He who has lived sixty years": Egyptian Papyrus
Letter to W. Morton Fullerton
Henry James
"My Picture Left in Scotland"
Ben Jonson
From Paradise Lost
John Milton
"Song"
Christina Rossetti
"Old Age"
Buland Al-Haydari
"What, then, is life if love the golden is gone?"
Mimnermus
Chorus, from Herakles
Euripides
From Oedipus at Colonus
Sophocles
"Jogger"
Daniel Hoffman