Poet's Choice

by Hirsch, Edward

• ISBN13: 9780151013562
• ISBN10: 015101356X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-04-03
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Summary

Edward Hirsch began writing a column in the Washington Post Book World called "Poet's Choice" in 2002. This book brings together those enormously popular columns, some of which have been revised and expanded, to present a minicourse in world poetry; Poet's Choice includes the work of more than 130 poets-from Asia and the Middle East to Europe and America, from ancient times to the present-and demonstrates how poetry responds to the challenges of our modern world. Rich, relevant, and inviting, the book reveals how poetry both puts us in touch with ourselves and connects us to each other. I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,Insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep, Going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,Taking in and thinking, eating every day.I don't want so much misery. I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb, Alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses, Half frozen, dying of grief.-from "WALKING AROUND" by PABLO NERUDA, translated by ROBERT BLY

Author Biography

Edward Hirsch is the author of six books of poems and three books of prose, among them the national bestseller How to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love with Poetry. He has received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Prix de Rome, and a MacArthur Fellowship, and is president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He lives in New York.

Table of Contents

Introduction	xiii
PART I
Nightingales (Jorge Luis Borges)	7	(3)
Gerard Manley Hopkins (``God's Grandeur,'' ``Pied Beauty'')	10	(3)
Caedmon (``Caedmon's Hymn,'' Denise Levertov's ``Caedmon'')	13	(3)
Olympian Odes (Pindar, Bacchylides)	16	(3)
The Greek Anthology (Pure Pagan)	19	(3)
Sappho (fragment 31)	22	(3)
The Poet as Maker (F. T. Prince)	25	(3)
The Ars Poetica (Blaga Dimitrova)	28	(3)
The Bardic Order (Eavan Boland)	31	(3)
Aztec Poets (Nezahualcoyotl, Ayocuan Cuetzpaltzin)	34	(2)
Riddles (Daniel Hoffman, Ella Bat-Tzion, Eytan Eytan)	36	(3)
Charms (Thomas Campion, Kathy Fagan)	39	(3)
John Clare (``Lines: `I Am''')	42	(5)
Christmas Poems (Thomas Hardy, Robert Fitzgerald)	47	(3)
Charlotte Mew (``Rooms,'' ``The Call'')	50	(3)
W. B. Yeats (``Cuchulain Comforted'')	53	(3)
Rabindranath Tagore (Final Poems)	56	(3)
Giuseppe Belli (``Night of Terror,'' ``The Bosses of Rome'')	59	(3)
Giuseppe Ungaretti (``In Memory of'')	62	(3)
Eugenio Montale (``Sit the noon out . . . ,'' ``The Eel'')	65	(3)
Rainer Maria Rilke (``The Panther,'' ``The Gazelle'')	68	(3)
Self-Portraits (Rainer Maria Rilke, Frank Bidart)	71	(3)
Ernst Stadler (``The Saying'')	74	(3)
Nelly Sachs (``Butterfly'')	77	(3)
Women and War (After Every War)	80	(4)
Max Jacob (``The Beggar Women of Naples,'' ``The Yellow Star Again'')	84	(3)
Insomnia (Osip Mandelstam, Marina Tsvetaeva)	87	(3)
Marina Tsvetaeva (``Opened my veins . . .'')	90	(2)
Velimir Khlebnikov (``Incantation by Laughter,'' ``Russia, I give you . . .'')	92	(3)
Joseph Brodsky (``May 24, 1980'')	95	(3)
Czeslaw Milosz (``Gift'')	98	(4)
Adam Zagajewski (``A Flame,'' ``Fire,'' ``A Quick Poem'')	102	(5)
Edvard Kocbek (Nothing Is Lost)	107	(3)
Tomaz Salamun (Feast)	110	(3)
Radmila Lazic (A Wake for the Living)	113	(3)
Primo Levi (``Shema'')	116	(3)
Avraham Ben Yitzhak (``Blessed Are They Who Sow and Do Not Reap . . .'')	119	(3)
Kadya Molodowsky (``Merciful God'')	122	(3)
Yehuda Amichai (``Letter of Recommendation,'' ``My Father's Memorial Day'')	125	(3)
Aharon Shabtai (J'Accuse)	128	(3)
Taha Muhammad Ali (``Abd El-Hadi Fights a Superpower'')	131	(3)
Venus Khoury-Ghata (``Here there was once a country'')	134	(3)
Protest Poetry (Thomas Lux, Saadi Youssef)	137	(3)
Ishikawa Takuboku (Sad Toys)	140	(3)
Lam Thi My Da, Xuan Quynh (``Garden Fragrance,'' ``Night Harvest''; ``Summer'')	143	(3)
Miguel Hernandez (``My heart can't go on any longer'')	146	(3)
Cesar Vallejo (``The Black Heralds,'' ``Mass'')	149	(5)
Suffering (Rudolph Muller, Cesar Vallejo)	154	(3)
Self-Naming (Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Cesar Vallejo)	157	(3)
Pablo Neruda (``Body of a Woman'')	160	(8)
Nicanor Parra (``Roller Coaster,'' ``I Take Back Everything I've Said'')	168	(3)
Alfonsina Storni (``To Eros,'' ``To My Lady of Poetry'')	171	(3)
Jorge Luis Borges (``The Enigmas'')	174	(4)
Octavio Paz (``Between Going and Staying'')	178	(5)
Julia de Burgos (``Seawall'')	183	(3)
Contemporary Mexican Poets (Reversible Monuments)	186	(3)
Sleep and Poetry (Mary Ruefle, Maria Negroni)	189	(3)
Scottish Poetry: Norman MacCaig (``Praise of a Collie'')	192	(3)
P. K. Page (``The Disguises'')	195	(2)
Kathleen Raine (``Spell of Creation'')	197	(3)
Wendy Cope (``Waste Land Limericks'')	200	(3)
Thom Gunn (``Still Life'')	203	(3)
Robert Frost and Edward Thomas (``To E. T.''; ``The Owl'')	206	(3)
Agha Shahid Ali (``Arabic'')	209	(3)
Reetika Vazirani (``It's Me, I'm Not Home,'' ``Lullaby'')	212	(7)
PART 2
Reading (C. K. Williams, Wallace Stevens)	219	(3)
Birth Poems (John Berryman, Lee Upton)	222	(3)
The Poet as Mother (Kate Daniels, Kathleen Ossip)	225	(3)
Allen Grossman (``The Runner'')	228	(3)
Stanley Kunitz (``The Portrait'')	231	(3)
Childhood (Robert Hayden)	234	(3)
Naomi Nye (The Flag of Childhood)	237	(3)
Grandparents (Lorine Niedecker, Li-Young Lee)	240	(3)
John Greenleaf Whittier (``Ichabod!'')	243	(3)
Baseball (Richard Hugo)	246	(3)
The American Prose Poem (Russell Edson)	249	(2)
William Carlos Williams (``The Banner Bearer'')	251	(2)
Amy Lowell (``The Taxi'')	253	(2)
George Oppen (``Psalm'')	255	(3)
Yom Kippur (Jacqueline Osherow)	258	(2)
Psalms (Brooks Haxton)	260	(3)
Poetry Responds to Suffering (Wallace Stevens, Mark Strand)	263	(3)
Kenneth Rexroth (``Delia Rexroth'')	266	(3)
Muriel Rukeyser (``Letter to the Front,'' ``The Sixth Night: Waking'')	269	(3)
Dailiness (Randall Jarrell, Marie Howe)	272	(3)
John Berryman (``Henry's Understanding'')	275	(3)
Robert Penn Warren (``After the Dinner Party'')	278	(3)
Howard Nemerov (``Einstein & Freud & Jack'')	281	(3)
Kenneth Koch (New Addresses)	284	(3)
Swimming (Maxine Kumin, William Stafford)	287	(3)
Robert Bly (The Night Abraham Called to the Stars)	290	(2)
Gary Snyder (``Riprap'')	292	(3)
Donald Justice (``The Pupil'')	295	(3)
Daniel Hughes (``Too Noble'')	298	(3)
Dorothea Tanning (A Table of Content)	301	(3)
Jane Mayhall (Sleeping Late on Judgment Day)	304	(3)
William Matthews (``Grief'')	307	(3)
Vietnam War Poems (David Ignatow, Yusef Komunyakaa)	310	(3)
New York City (Paul Goodman, Deborah Garrison)	313	(3)
Tom Sleigh (``New York American Spell, 2001'')	316	(3)
Thomas James (Letters to a Stranger)	319	(4)
Stan Rice (``Monkey Hill'')	323	(3)
Roland Flint (``Seasonal, 1991,'' ``2-26-91'')	326	(3)
M. Wyrebek (``Night Owl'')	329	(3)
Roberta Spear, Ernesto Trejo (``Meditation''; ``Some Sparrows'')	332	(3)
Peter Everwine (``How It Is,'' ``Distance'')	335	(2)
Michael Fried (The Next Bend in the Road)	337	(3)
Michael Ryan (``God Hunger,'' ``Reminder'')	340	(3)
Louise Gluck (``The Seven Ages'')	343	(3)
Bill Knott (``Goodbye,'' ``The Unsubscriber,'' ``Death,'' ``Crux'')	346	(3)
Stuart Dybek (Streets in Their Own Ink)	349	(3)
Mark Jarman (To the Green Man)	352	(3)
Nicholas Christopher (``Haiku,'' ``Tropico'')	355	(3)
Philip Schultz (Living in the Past)	358	(3)
Deborah Digges (Trapeze)	361	(3)
Susan Stewart (Columbarium)	364	(3)
Stuart Dischell (``A Tenant at Will'')	367	(3)
Olena Kalytiak Davis (``six apologies, Lord'')	370	(3)
Sarah Arvio (Visits from the Seventh)	373	(3)
Dan Chiasson (The Afterlife of Objects)	376	(3)
Catherine Barnett (Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced)	379	(3)
A. Van Jordan (M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A)	382	(3)
Nebraska Poetry (Loren Eiseley, Ted Kooser)	385	(2)
Basketball Poems (B. H. Fairchild)	387	(3)
Tony Hoagland (``Migration'')	390	(3)
Martin Espada (``The Prisoners of Saint Lawrence'')	393	(3)
Young Asian American Women Poets (Quan Barry, Suji Kwock Kim)	396	(3)
Birdsong (Ruth Stone)	399	(3)
Robert Pinsky (``If You Could Write One Great Poem, What Would It Be About?'')	402	(2)
Farewell (Basho, Li Po, Walt Whitman)	404	(3)
Notes and Acknowledgments	407	(2)
Publication Acknowledgments	409	(12)
Index	421

Excerpts

Nightingalessprings messenger, the lovelyvoiced nightingaleSapphoI wish Id been on the street in Madrid on that night in 1934 when Pablo Neruda, who was then Chiles consul to Spain, told Miguel Hernndez that he had never heard a nightingale. It is too cold for nightingales to survive in Chile. Hernndez grew up in a goatherding family in the province of Alicante, and he immediately scampered up a high tree and imitated a nightingales liquid song. Then he climbed up another tree and created the sound of a second nightingale answering. He could have been joyously illustrating Boris Pasternaks notion of poetry as two nightingales dueling. I once told this story to the writer William Maxwell, and he said that learning how to sing like nightingales in treetops ought to be a requirement for poets. It should be taught, like prosody, in writing programs. The Romantic poets might have agreed: Wordsworth called the nightingale a creature of fiery heart; Keats inscribed its music forever in his famous ode (Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird!); John Clare observed one assiduously as a boy (she is a plain bird something like the hedge sparrow in shape and the female Firetail or Redstart in color but more slender then the former and of a redder brown or scorched color then the latter); and Shelley declared:A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why.The singing of a nightingale becomes a metaphor for writing poetry here, and listening to that birdthat natural musicbecomes a metaphor for reading it. One could write a good book about nightingales in poetry. It would begin with one of the oldest legends in the world, the poignant tale of Philomela, that poor ravished girl who had her tongue cut out and was changed into the nightingale, which laments in darkness but nonetheless expresses its story. The tale reverberates through all of Greco-Roman literature. Ovid gave it a poignant rendering in Metamorphoses, and it echoed down the centuries from Shakespeare (Titus Andronicus) to Matthew Arnold (Philomela) and T. S. Eliot (The Waste Land). One of my favorite poems about springs messenger is by Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentine fabulist, who may never have heard a nightingale, and yet, through poetry, had a lifelong relationship with the unseen bird.To the NightingaleOut of what secret English summer eveningor night on the incalculable Rhine,lost among all the nights of my long night,could it have come to my unknowing ear,your song, encrusted with mythology,nightingale of Virgil and the Persians?Perhaps I never heard you, but my lifeis bound up with your life, inseparably."MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: 24.0pt"The symbol for you was a wandering spiritin a book of enigmas. The poet, El Marino,nicknamed you the siren of th

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