Status
Available
Genres
Collection
Publication
Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2006.
Description
This collection redefines the great canon of American poetry from its origins in the 17th century right up to the present. It features the work of more than 200 poets, almost three times as many as the 1976 edition. The book includes not only writers born since the previous edition, but also many fine poets overlooked in earlier editions or little known in the past but highly deserving of attention. Many more women and African-American poets are represented, and unexpected figures such as the musicians Bob Dylan, Patti Smith and Robert Johnson have a place.--From publisher description.
User reviews
LibraryThing member satyridae
This new edition is considerably larger than the previous ones, and I've been working on it for a month or so. I discovered some new poets, some old friends, and faithfully slogged through some poems I remembered hating. I was right about them, but one never knows. Poetry, I've found, is very
The poems new to me with which I fell in love:
Amaze by Adelaide Crapsey
The House Was Quiet And The World Was Calm by Wallace Stevens
Before Disaster by Yvor Winters
Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden
The Lost Children by Randall Jarrell
Why Regret by Galway Kinnell
The Return by Philip Levine
At 65 by Richard Howard
Forty Something by Robert Hass
Celestial Music and
Vespers by Louise Gluck
Otherwise by Jane Kenyon
Form by Heather McHugh
And last, this gem from the blurb about William Matthews
"He once observed that most published poems fall into one of four thematic categories: '1. I went out in the woods today and it made me feel, you know, sort of religious. 2. We're not getting any younger. 3. It sure is cold and lonely (a) without you, honey, or (b) with you, honey. 4) Sadness seems but the other side of the coin of happiness, and vice versa, and in any case the coin is too soon spent and on we know not what.'"
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fluid, and poems resonate differently for me through the years. There's no way I feel adequate to review a book on this scale, a book of this scope, except to say that if you like poetry it's certainly worth perusing. If you hate poetry, read the quote by William Matthews below, and be free.The poems new to me with which I fell in love:
Amaze by Adelaide Crapsey
The House Was Quiet And The World Was Calm by Wallace Stevens
Before Disaster by Yvor Winters
Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden
The Lost Children by Randall Jarrell
Why Regret by Galway Kinnell
The Return by Philip Levine
At 65 by Richard Howard
Forty Something by Robert Hass
Celestial Music and
Vespers by Louise Gluck
Otherwise by Jane Kenyon
Form by Heather McHugh
And last, this gem from the blurb about William Matthews
"He once observed that most published poems fall into one of four thematic categories: '1. I went out in the woods today and it made me feel, you know, sort of religious. 2. We're not getting any younger. 3. It sure is cold and lonely (a) without you, honey, or (b) with you, honey. 4) Sadness seems but the other side of the coin of happiness, and vice versa, and in any case the coin is too soon spent and on we know not what.'"
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