Synopses & Reviews
This is, perhaps, the widest ranging, most comprehensive poetry collection available, and it is useful for poetry courses at all levels. It contains an excellent introduction to reading poetry and understanding the elements, as well as sections on poems and paintings, poems and music, and poems from other languages. Sections on featured poets are integrated with the chronological anthology which gives students a perspective on the variety and range of a large group of poets. This multi-national, multi-cultural, multi-genre and multi-lingual collection gives students a view and instructors an opportunity to teach the universality of poetry. Includes a superb historical range of poetry, from its recorded beginnings to most contemporary.
About the Author
Robert DiYanni is Professor of English at Pace University, Pleasantville, New York, where he teaches courses in literature, writing, and humanities. He has also taught at Queens College of the City University of New York, at New York University in the Graduate Rhetoric Program, and most recently in the Expository Writing Program at Harvard University. He received his B.A. from Rutgers University (1968) and his Ph.D. from the City University of New York (1976). Robert DiYanni has written articles and reviews on various aspects of literature, composition, and pedagogy. His books include Literature: Reading, Fiction, Poetry, Drama and the Essay; The McGraw-Hill Book of Poetry; Womens Voices; Like Seasond Timber: New Essays on George Herbert; and Modern American Poets: Their Voicesand Visions (a text to accompany the Annenberg-funded telecourse, Voices and Visions). With Kraft Rompf, he edited The McGraw-Hill Book of Poetry, (1993) and The McGraw-Hill Book of Fiction (1995). With Pat Hoy, he edited Encounters: Readings for Inquiry and Argument (1997).
Table of Contents
PART ONE: INTRODUCTION. THE PLEASURES OF POETRY Robert Frost, Dust of Snow THE ACT OF READING Raymond Carter, Photograph of My Father in His Twenty-Second Year Emily Dickinson, Much Madness is divinest Sense Adrienne Rich, Aunt Jennifer¿s Tigers THE ELEMENTS OF POETRY SPEAKER AND SITUATION Langston Hughes, Mother to Son Walt Whitman, When I heard the Learn¿d Astronomer DICTION Robert Francis, Pitcher Robert Fitzgerald, Cobb Would Have Caught It Gwendolyn Brooks, We Real Cool William Wordsworth, I wandered lonely as a cloud IMAGERY Robert Browning, Meeting at Night Lutz Rathenow, For Uwe Gressmann (translated by Boria Sax) Elizabeth Bishop, First Death in Nova Scotia FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE Gertrude Stein, A Petticoat N. Scott Momday, A Simile Sylvia Path, Metaphors William Shakespeare, That time of year thou may¿st in me behold William Carlos Williams, Winter Trees SYMBOL Robert Frost, Nothing Gold Can Stay ALLUSION William Blake, Mock on, Mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau TONE C.P. Cavafy, As Much As You Can (translated by Rae Dalven) Alexander Pushkin, Old Man (translated by Babette Deutsch Theodore Roethke, My Pap¿s Waltz Stephen Crane, War Is Kind A.E. Housman, Is my team plowing? Thomas Hardy, The Ruined Maid SYNTAX Alexander Pope from An Essay on Man e.e. cummings, Me up at does SOUNDS Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening Helen Chasin, The Word Plum Gerald Manley Hopkins, In the Valley of the Elwy RHYTHM AND METER Robert Frost, The Span of Life Louis Simpson, The Heroes STRUCTURE: CLOSED FORM AND OPEN FORM Langston Hughes, My People and I, too, sing America Edna St. Vincent Millay, Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink and What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why THEME Emily Dickinson, Crumbling is not an instant¿s Act Elizabeth Bishop, One Art VISUAL POETRY Francis Quarles, Emblem III George Herbert, The Altar e.e. cummings 1(a Reinhold Dohl, Pattern Poem with an Elusive Intruder Guillaume Apollinaire, La Tour Eiffel/The Eifell Tower (translated by Adelia Willimas) Mirror/Mirror (translated by Adelia Williams) John Hollander, Swan and Shadow May Swenson, How Everything Happens POETRY AND ART William Blake, The Sick Rose Henri Matisse, The Dance Natalie Safir, Matisse¿s Dance Anne Sexton, The Starry Night Robert Fagles, The Starry Night Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night X.J. Kennedy, Nude Descending a Staircase Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase Jan Vermeer, Young Woman with a Water Jug Stephen Mitchell, Vermeer William Carlos Williams, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus Pieter Breughel the Elder, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus W.H. Auden, Musee des Beaux Arts Anne Sexton, To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph Ovid, the Story of Daedalus and Icarus (translated by Rolfe Humphries) Vinnie-Marie D¿Ambrosio, The Painter Yearning for her Lake Suzanne Gilliard, Still Life with Tiger Lillies Rainer Maria Rilke, Archais Torso of Apollo (translated by Stephen Mitchell) Jorie Graham, San Sepolcro Piero della Francesca, Madonna del Parto Ruth F. Eisenberg, Coventry Cathedral Anonymous, Stained Glass Windows, Coventry Cathedral Cathy Song, Girl Powdering Her Neck Kitagawa Utamaro, Girl Powdering Her Neck POETRY AND MUSIC Anonymous, Summer is icumen in and Barbara Allan Thomas Campion, There is a garden in her face Ben Johnson, To Celia Isaac Watts, Our God, Our Help Robert Burns, Auld Lang Syne John Newton, Amazing Grace Giuseppe Verdi/Victor Hugo, La Donna E Mobile (Woman is Fickle) and Libretto by Francesco Piave Edward Arlington Robinson, Richard Cory Langston Hughes, Same in Blues Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog, Jr., God Bless the Chils Bessie Smith, Lost Your Head Blues Woody Guthrie, This Land Is Your Land Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, To every thing there is a season Pete Seeger, Turn! Turn! Turn! Dan Maclean, Vincent PART TWO: POEMS IN ENGLISH: Caedmon, Caedmon¿s Hymn Anonymous, The Seafarer (translated by Ezra Pound) Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343-1400), Canterbury Tales: from The General Prologue and The Pardoner¿s Prologue and Tale Anonymous Lyrics, Adam lay ibounden, I sing of a mayden Anonymous, Westron wynde/Western wind Ballads, Edward and The Three Ravens John Skelton (1460-1529), To Mistress Margaret Hussey Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542), They Flee from me, Whoso list to hunt Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547), The soote season Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603), When I was fair and young Edmund Spenser (1552-1618), The Nymph¿s Reply to the Shepherd Sir Philip Sidney (1553-1586), from Astrophel and Stella: Loving in Truth, Thou blind man¿s mark Chidiock Tichborne (c. 1558-1586) Tichborne¿s Elegy Robert Southwell (c.156101595) The Burning Babe Michael Drayton (1563-1631) Since there¿s no help, come let us kiss and part Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), The Passionate Shepherd to His Love William Shakespeare (1564-1616) Sonnets: Shall I compare thee to a summer¿s day?, When in disgrace with Fortune and men¿s eye, Not marble, nor the gilded monuments, Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, No longer mourn for me when I am dead, They that have pow¿r to hurt and will do none, Th¿ expense of spirit in a waste of shame, My Mistress¿ eyes are nothing like the sun, Poor soul, the center of my sinful earth Songs: When daisies pied (Love¿s Labour¿s Lost), Under the greenwood (As You Like It), Blow, blow, thou winter wind (As You Like It), It was a lover and his lass (As You Like It), Oh mistress mine! (Twelfth Night), When that I was and a little tiny boy (Twelfth Night), Fear no more the heat o¿ the sun (Cymbeline) Full fathom five (The Tempest) Soliloquies: All the world¿s a stage (As You Like It), Now is the winter of our discontent (Richard III), O mighty Caesar! (Julius Casesar), Friends, Romans, countrymen (Julius Caeser), Once more unto the breach (Henry V), If we are marked to die (Henry V), Is this a dagger which I see before me (Macbeth), It is the cause, it is the cause (Othello), O that this too too sullied flesh would melt (Hamlet), To be, or not to be (Hamlet), O reason not the need! (King Lear), Our revels now are ended (The Tempest) Thomas Campion, I care not for these ladies, My Sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love Thomas Nashe (1567-1601) A Litany in Time of Plague John Donne (1572-1631) Song (Go, and catch a falling star), The Indifferent, The Sun Rising, The Anniversary, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy¿s Day¿Being the Shortest Day, The Canonization, Lover¿s Infiniteness, The Flea, The Ecstasy, Elegy XIX: To His Mistress Going to Bed, Batter my heart, three-personed God, Death, be not proud, Hymn to God the Father, Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness Ben Johnson (1572-1637) Still to be neat, still to be dressed, Come, me Celia, On My First Daughter, On My First Son, To Penshurst Robert Herrick (1591-1674) Delight in Disorder, Upon Julia¿s Clothes, To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time Henry King (1592-1669) The Exequy George Herbert (1593-1633) The Pulley, The Collar, Denial, Virtue James Shirley (1596-1666) Th glories of our blood and state Thomas Carew (c. 1596-1640) Song (Ask me no more where Jove bestows) Edmund Waller (1606-1687) Song (Go, lovely rose!) John Milton (1608-1674) Lycidas, L¿Allegro, Il Penseroso, When I consider how my light is spent, On the Late Massacre in Piedmont, Methought I saw my late espoused saint, from Paradise Lost, Books I, III, IV Sir John Suckling (1609-1642) Out upon It! Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672) Before the Birth of One of Her Children Abraham Cowley (1618-1657) To Althea, from Prison Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) A Dialogue Between the Soul and Body, The Definition of Love, To His Coy Mistress, The Garden Henry Vaughan (1621-1695) They are all gone into the world of light! John Dryden (1631-1700) A Song for St. Cecilia¿s Day Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (1661-1720) A Nocturnal Reverie Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) A Description of the Morning, The Lady¿s Dressing Room Alexander Pope (1688-1744) Ode on Solitude, from An Essay on Criticism, The Rape of the Lock, Epistle to Miss Blount, from An Essay on Man Thomas Gray (1716-1771) Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774) When lovely woman stoops to folly William Blake (1757-1827) The Echoing Green, The Chimney Sweeper (Innocence), The Chimney Sweeper (Experience), The Tyger, The Clod and the Pebble, The Garden of Love, A Poison Tree, London, from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: Proverbs of Hell, from Milton: And did those feet, Auguries of Innocence Robert Burns (1759-1796) A Red, Red Rose William Wordworth (1770-1850) Lines, To My Sister, She dwelt among the untrodden ways, A slumber did my spirit seal, My heart leaps up, The Solitary Reaper. The world is too much with us, It is a beauteous evening, She was a Phantom of delight, Ode: Intimations of Immorality, from The Prelude, Books I,V,XII Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) Kubla Khan, Dejection: An Ode George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) She walks in beauty, The Destruction of Sennacherib Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) Ozymandias, To a Skylark, Ode to the West Wind John Keats (1795-1821) On First Looking into Chapman¿s Horner, On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again, Why did I Laugh tonight?, Bright Star, When I have fears that I may cease to be, La Belle Dame sans Merci, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode to a Grecian Urn, Ode on Melancholy, To Autumn Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) Brahma Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) How do I love thee? Let me count the ways Edward FitzGerald from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) The Chambered Nautilus Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849) To Helen, The Raven, Annabel Lee Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) Mariana, The Lotus-Eaters, Break, break, break, Ulysses, Tithonus, Tears, idle tears, Now sleeps the crimson petal, Come down, O maid, from In Memoriam A.H.H., The Eagle: A Fragment, Crossing the Bar Robert Browning (1812-1889) My Last Duchess, Porphryia¿s Lover, Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister, The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed¿s Church, Andrea del Sarto Edward Lear (1812-1888) The Owl and the Pussy-cat Emily Bronte (1818-1848) Remembrance Walt Whitman (1819-1892) One¿s Self I Sing, There was a child went forth every day, from Song of Myself, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, Calvary Crossing a Ford, Bivouac on a Mountain Side, Vigil strange I kept on the field one night, A sight in camp in thje daybreak gray and dim, The Wound-Dresser, The Dalliance of the Eagles, A noiseless patient spider, When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom¿d, Good-bye Fancy! Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) Dover Beach George Meredith (1828-1909) Lucifer in Starlight Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) Barren Spring Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894) Remember Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) 326. I cannot dance upon my Toes, 303. The Soul selects her own Society, 199. I¿m ¿wife¿ ¿ I¿ve finished that, 241. I like a look of Agony, 249. Wild Nights¿Wild Nights!, 258. There¿s a certain Slant of light, 280. I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, 341. After great pain, a formal feeling comes, 419. We grow accustomed to the Dark, 449. I died for Beauty¿but was scarce, 465. I heard a Fly Buzz¿when I died, 536. The Heart asks Pleasure¿first, 599. There is a pain¿so utter, 650. Pain¿has an element of Blank, 712. Because I could not stop for Death, 744. Remorse¿is Memory¿awake, 754. My Life had stood¿a Loaded Gun, 986. A narrow Fellow in the Grass, 1078. The Bustle in a House, 1100. The last Night that She lived, 1129. Tell all the Truth but tell it slant, 1624. Apparently with no surprise, 1732. My life closed twice before its close Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) Jabberwocky Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) Neutral Tones, Channel Firing, The Man He Killed, The Oxen, During Wind and Rain Gerald Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) God¿s Grandeur, The Windhover, Pied Beauty, Spring, The Wreck of the Deutschland, Spring and Fall: To a Young Child, Binsey Poplars, Inversnaid, As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame, I wake and feel the fell of dark, not fay, Carrion Comfort, No worst, there is none, Thou art indeed just, Lord A.E.Housman (1859-1963) To an Athlete Dying Young, With rue my heart is laden William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) The Lake Isle of Innisfree, When you are old, The Song of Wandering Aengus, Adam¿s Curse, No Second Troy, A Coat, The Scholars, The Wild Swans at Coole, An Irish Airman Foresees His Death, Easter, The Second Coming, A Prayer for My Daughter, Sailing to Byzantium, Leda and the Swan, Among School Children, Byzantium, Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop, Lapis Lazuli, The Circus Animals¿ Desertion, Long-legged Fly, Politics Ernest Dowson (1867-1900) Non sum qualis bonae sub regno Cynarae Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935) Miniver Cheevy Paul Lawrence Dunbar (1872-1906) We wear the mask Walter de la Mare (1873-1956) The Listeners Amy Lowell (1874-1925) Patterns Robert Frost (1874-1963) Mowing, The Tuft of Flowers, Mending Wall, After Apple-Picking, The Road Not Taken, Birches, Hyla Brook, The Oven Bird, ¿Out, Out¿¿, Putting in the Seed, Fire and Ice, For Once, Then, Something, To Earthward, The Need of Being Versed in Country Things, Two Look at Two, Once by the Pacific, On Looking up by Chance at the Constellations, Acquainted with the night, Tree at my window, Departmental, Desert Places, Design, Neither Out For Nor In Deep, Provide, Provide, The Silken Tent, The Most of It John Masefield (1878-1967) Cargoes Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) Chicago Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) The Poems of Our Climate, Peter Quince at the Clavier, Sunday Morning, The Snow Man, Anecdote of the Jar, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, Bantams in Pine-Woods, The Idea of Order at Key West, from The Man with the Blue Guitar, of Modern Poetry, The house was quiet and the world was calm William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) The Red Wheelbarrow, January Morning, The Last Words of My English Grandmother, Queen Anne¿s Lace, To Elsie, Spring and All, At the Ball Game, This Is Just to Say, To a Poor Old Woman, Nantucket, The Young Housewife, The Dance, A Sort of a Song, The Sparrow, from Paterson, Book II: Sunday in the Park D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) Love on the Farm, Piano, Snake, The Elephant Is Slow to Mate, Humming-bird, When I read Shakespeare Ezra Pound (1885-1972) In a Station of the Metro, The White Stag, Sestina: Altaforte, Portrait d¿une Femme, The Return, Epitaphs, The River-Merchant¿s Wife: A Letter, The Garden, A Pact, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (Life and Contacts), Canto I: And then went down to the ship, Canto XIII: Kung walked, from Canto XLV: With usura, from Canto LXXXI: Yet/Ere the season died a-cold H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) (1886-1961) Heat, Helen Marianne Moore (1887-1972) The Fish, Poetry, Critics and Connisseurs, The Steeple-Jack, To a Snail, The Past Is the Present, The Monkeys, The Mind Is an Enchanting Thing, Nevertheless, Propriety T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Preludes, Gerontion, The Waste Land, from Four Quarters: Little Gidding John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974) Bells for John Whiteside¿s Daughter, Piazza Piece Claude McKay (1890-1948) The Tropics in New York Archibald MacLeish (1892-1982) Ars Poetica Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) Recuerdo Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) Dulce et Decorum Est e.e. cummings (1894-1962) Buffalo Bill¿s, may i feel said he, anyone lived in a pretty how town, my father moved through dooms of love, i thank You God for most this amazing Charles Reznikoff (b. 1894) Kaddish Jean Toomer (1894-1967) Reapers Robert Graves (1895-1985) Down, wanton, down!, Symptoms of Love Louise Bogan (1897-1970) Women Hart Crane (1899-1932) from The Bridge Robert Francis (1901-1987) Cadence Langston Hughes (1902-1967) The Negro Speaks of River, The Weary Blues, Mulatto, Trumpet Player, Ballad of the Landlord, Madam and the Rent Man, Dream Deferred, Theme for English B Stevie Smith (1902-1971) Not Waving but Drowning Countee Cullen (1903-1946) Incident Richard Eberhart (b. 1905) Love and Knowledge W.H. Auden (1907-1973) The Unknown Citizen, In Memory of W. B Yeats, The Shield of Achilles A.D. Hope (b. 1907) Imperial Adams Theodore Roethke (1908-1963) The Waking, Elegy for Jane Charles Olson (1910-1970) Maximus, to Gloucester, Sunday, July 19 Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) Sandpiper, The Fish, The Monument, The Unbeliever, Seascape, The Armadillo, Questions of Travel, Sestina, In the Waiting Room Robert Hayden (1913-1980) Those Winter Sundays Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980) Myth Randall Jarrell (1914-1965) The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner Henry Reed (b. 1914) Chard Whitlow, Naming of Parts William Stafford (b. 1914) Traveling through the dark Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) The force that through the green fuse drives the flower, I see the boys of summer, And death shall have no dominion, The hunchback in th epark, A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London, Poem in October, Fern Hill, In my craft or sullen art, Do not go gentle into that good night Judith Wright (b. 1915) Eve to Her Daughters Robert Lowell (1917-1977) Skunk Hour, For the Union Dead Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917) The Mother Robert Duncan (1919-1988) The Dance Lawrence Ferlinghetti (b.1919) Constantly risking absurdity May Swenson (b. 1919) Women, The Centaur Charles Bukowski (b. 1920) My Father Amy Clampitt (b. 1920) Beach Glass Howard Nemerov (1920-1991) The War in the Air Richard Wilbur (b. 1921) Mind Marie Ponsot (b. 1922) Summer Sestina Philip Larkin )1922-1985) Church Going,A Study of Reading Habits James Dickey (b. 1923) The Dover Bitch: A Criticism of Life, ¿More Light! More Light!¿ Denise Levertov (b. 1923) O Taste and See Lois Simpson (b. 1923) America Poetry, My father in the night commanding No Donald Justice (b. 1925) In Bertram¿s Garden, Men at Forty Kenneth Koch (b. 1925) Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams, You were wearing A.R. Ammons (b. 1926) Reflective, Bonus Robert Bly (b. 1926) Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter Robert Creeley (b. 1926) After Lorca, I Know a Man Allen Ginsberg (b. 1926) A Supermarket in California