Americans' Favorite Poems

by Dietz, Maggie

• ISBN13: 9780393048209
• ISBN10: 0393048209
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-11-17
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Summary

The selections in this anthology were chosen form the personal letters of thousands of Americans who responded to Robert Pinsky's invitation to write to him about their favorite poems. Some poems are memories treasured in the mind since childhood; some crystallize the passion of love or recall the trail of loss and sorrow. The poems and poets in this anthology'”from Sappho to Lorca, from Shakespeare and Chaucer to Gwendolyn Brooks, Louise Bluck, and Allen Ginsberg'”are poems to be read aloud and memorized, poems to be celebrated as part of our nation's cultural inheritance. Accompanying the poems are comments by people who speak not as professional critics but as passionate readers of various ages, professions and regions. This anthology, in a manner unlike any other, discloses the rich and vigorous presence of poetry in American life at the millennium and provides a portrait of the United States through the lens of poetry.

Table of Contents

Introduction	3	(2)
Anna Akhmatova (1889--1966)	5	(1)
The Sentence
A. R. Ammons (B. 1926)	6	(2)
Mansion
Archilochos (Seventh Century B.C.E.)	8	(1)
Will, lost in a sea of trouble
Matthew Arnold (1822--1888)	9	(2)
Dover Beach
John Ashbery (B. 1927)	11	(1)
The Improvement
Margaret Atwood (B. 1939)	12	(2)
Variation on the Word Sleep
W. H. Auden (1907--1973)	14	(4)
In Memory of W. B. Yeats
Refugee Blues
Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) (B. 1934)	18	(1)
Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note
Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)	19	(4)
One Art
At the Fishhouses
Black Elk (1863--1950)	23	(1)
Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle
William Blake (1757--1827)	24	(3)
Eternity
The Ecchoing Green
The Little Black Boy
Eavan Boland (B. 1944)	27	(1)
The Emigrant Irish
Anne Bradstreet (1612--1672)	28	(2)
Before the Birth of one of her Children
To my Dear and loving Husband
Rupert Brooke (1886--1915)	30	(1)
The Soldier
Gwendolyn Brooks (B. 1917)	31	(2)
We Real Cool
The Bean Eaters
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806--1861)	33	(1)
Sonnet 43 (How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.)
Robert Browning (1812--1889)	34	(2)
My Last Duchess
Julia De Burgos (1914--1953)	36	(2)
Ay, Ay, Ay of the Kinky-Haired Negress
Robert Burns (1759--1796)	38	(2)
Address to a Haggis
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788--1824)	40	(4)
She Walks in Beauty
from Manfred
Lewis Carroll (1832--1898)	44	(2)
Jabberwocky
Willa Cather (1876--1947)	46	(2)
Grandmither, Think Not I Forget
Catullus (84--54 B.C.E.)	48	(1)
31
C. P. Cavafy (1863--1933)	49	(1)
The City
Paul Celan (1920--1970)	50	(1)
from Zeitgehoft
Geoffrey Chaucer (CA. 1342--1400)	51	(1)
from The General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales
Sandra Cisneros (B. 1954)	52	(1)
You Called Me Corazon
Lucille Clifton (B. 1936)	53	(1)
The Lost Baby Poem
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772--1834)	54	(4)
from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Hart Crane (1899--1933)	58	(3)
Poem: To Brooklyn Bridge
Voyages (III)
Robert Creeley (B. 1926)	61	(2)
The Rain
I Know a Man
Countee Cullen (1903--1946)	63	(1)
Yet Do I Marvel
E. E. Cummings (1894--1962)	64	(2)
i sing of Olaf glad and big
Robert Desnos (1900--1945)	66	(1)
Last Poem
James Dickey (1923--1997)	67	(3)
The Bee
Emily Dickinson (1830--1886)	70	(4)
I'm Nobody! Who are You? (288)
I never saw a Moor---(1052)
A little Madness in the Spring (1333)
``Hope'' is the thing with Feathers---(254)
A Bird came down the Walk---(328)
John Donne (1572--1631)	74	(3)
The Flea
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
Mark Doty (B. 1953)	77	(1)
The Embrace
Rita Dove (B. 1952)	78	(2)
Daystar
Michael Drayton (1563--1631)	80	(1)
Since ther's no helpe, Come let us kisse and part (10)
Alan Dugan (B. 1923)	81	(1)
Love Song: I And Thou
Paul Lawrence Dunbar (1872--1906)	82	(1)
We Wear the Mask
Hussein Elhami (Twentieth Century)	83	(1)
A Lyric in Exile
T. S. Eliot (1888--1965)	84	(7)
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Dry Salvages (II)
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803--1882)	91	(1)
The Rhodora
Robert Frost (1874--1963)	92	(7)
The Road Not Taken
Acquainted with the Night
Immigrants
Birches
A Hillside Thaw
``Out, Out---''
Allen Ginsberg (1926--1997)	99	(2)
The Terms in Which I Think of Reality
Louise Gluck (B. 1943)	101	(1)
The Queen of Carthage
Thom Gunn (B. 1929)	102	(1)
Baby Song
Donald Hall (B. 1928)	103	(2)
Names of Horses
Thomas Hardy (1840--1928)	105	(2)
The Darkling Thrush
Robert Hass (B. 1941)	107	(2)
Meditation at Lagunitas
Robert Hayden (1913--1980)	109	(3)
Those Winter Sundays
Monet's ``Waterlilies''
Semus Heaney (B. 1939)	112	(2)
Mid-Term Break
William Ernest Henley (1849--1903)	114	(2)
Invictus
George Herbert (1593--1633)	116	(2)
Church-musick
Vertue
Zbigniew Herbert (B. 1924)	118	(1)
The pebble
Nazim Hikmet (1902--1963)	119	(4)
Things I Didn't Know I Loved
Hugo Von Hofmannsthal (1874--1929)	123	(1)
Do you see the town?
Homer (Mid Ninth Century B.C.E)	124	(2)
from the Iliad (Book Six, lines 439--79)
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844--1889)	126	(3)
God's Grandeur
Pied Beauty
The Windhover
A. E. Housman (1859--1936)	129	(2)
Diffugere Nives
Langston Hughes (1902--1967)	131	(3)
Minstrel Man
Merry-Go-Round
Mother to Son
Richard Hugo (1923--1982)	134	(2)
Driving Montana
Randall Jarrell (1914--1965)	136	(4)
Next Day
Losses
Robinson Jeffers (1887--1962)	140	(2)
The Purse-Seine
James Weldon Johnson (1871--1938)	142	(4)
The Creation
Ben Jonson (1573--1637)	146	(2)
Song To Celia
On My First Son
James Joyce (1882--1941)	148	(1)
Ecce Puer
John Keats (1795--1821)	149	(4)
Ode to a Nightingale
Sonnet VII (O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell)
This Living Hand
Jane Kenyon (1947--1995)	153	(1)
Otherwise
Galway Kinnell (B. 1927)	154	(2)
St. Francis and the Sow
Yusef Komunyakaa (B. 1947)	156	(1)
Facing It
Stanley Kunitz (B. 1905)	157	(2)
Hornworm: Autumn Lamentation
Lao Tzu (Ca. Fourth to third Centuries B.C.E)	159	(1)
from Tao te Ching
D. H. Lawrence (1885--1930)	160	(3)
Snake
Emma Lazarus (1849--1887)	163	(1)
The New Colossus
Denise Levertov (1923--1997)	164	(2)
Come into Animal Presence
Philip Levine (B. 1928)	166	(2)
You Can Have It
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807--1882)	168	(3)
A Psalm of Life
Federico Garcia Lorca (1898--1936)	171	(2)
The Moon Sails Out
Song of the Barren Orange Tree
Amy Lowell (1874--1925)	173	(4)
Patterns
James Russell Lowell (1819--1891)	177	(2)
The First Snow-Fall
Robert Lowell (1917--1977)	179	(2)
Waking in the Blue
Haki R. Madhubuti (B. 1942)	181	(2)
Big Momma
Andrew Marvell (1621--1678)	183	(2)
To His Coy Mistress
Herman Melville (1819--1891)	185	(1)
Art
W. S. Merwin (B. 1927)	186	(1)
Strawberries
Edna ST. Vincent Millay (1892--1950)	187	(2)
Sonnet XXIV (When you, that at this moment are to me)
Dirge Without Music
A. A. Milne (1882--1956)	189	(1)
Happiness
Czeslaw Milosz (B. 1911)	190	(1)
On Pilgrimage
John Milton (1608--1674)	191	(5)
Lycidas
William Vaughn Moody (1869--1910)	196	(1)
Harmonics
Marianne Moore (1887--1972)	197	(2)
Poetry
I May, I Might, I Must
Thomas Moore (1779--1852)	199	(1)
The Time I've Lost in Wooing
Pablo Neruda (1904--1973)	200	(3)
Ode to My Socks
Jacob Nibenegenasabe (1900--1977)	203	(1)
Quiet Until the Thaw
Frank O'Hara (1926--1966)	204	(3)
A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island
Mary Oliver (B. 1953)	207	(1)
The Summer Day
Wilfred Owen (1893--1918)	208	(2)
Dulce et Decorum Est
Pham Tien Duat (B. 1941)	210	(1)
To Return to the Urges Unconscious of Their Beginnings
Carl Phillips (B. 1959)	211	(2)
Luncheon on the Grass
Sylvia Plath (1932--1963)	213	(6)
The Night Dances
Lady Lazarus
Polly's Tree
Hyam Plutzik (1911--1962)	219	(1)
Cancer and Nova
Alexander Pope (1688--1744)	220	(2)
from Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot
Ezra Pound (1885--1972)	222	(2)
The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter
Alexander Pushkin (1799--1837)	224	(1)
I loved you
Francisco De Quevedo (1580--1645)	225	(1)
Love Constant Beyond Death
Sir Walter Raleigh (1552--1618)	226	(1)
The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd
Henry Reed (1914--1986)	227	(2)
Naming of Parts
Adrienne Rich (B. 1929)	229	(2)
To the Days
Prospective Immigrants Please Note
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875--1926)	231	(1)
Entrance
Arthur Rimbaud (1854--1891)	232	(31)
Romance
Wislawa Szymborska (B. 1923)	263	(2)
Notes from a Nonexistent Himalayan Expedition
Rabindranath Tagore (1861--1941)	265	(2)
Gift
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809--1892)	267	(3)
Ulysses
Ernest Lawrence Thayer (1863--1940)	270	(3)
Casey at the Bat
Dylan Thomas (1914--1953)	273	(4)
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
In My Craft or Sullen Art
Fern Hill
Chidiock Tichborne (CA. 1558--1586)	277	(1)
Tichborne's Elegy
Derek Walcott (B. 1930)	278	(2)
A Far Cry from Africa
Robert Penn Warren (1905--1989)	280	(1)
Arizona Midnight
Walt Whitman (1819--1892)	281	(6)
An Old Man's Thought of School
from Song of the Open Road (1, 4, & 8)
To a Certain Cantatrice from Song of Myself (46 & 52)
Richard Wilbur (B. 1921)	287	(2)
Love Calls Us to the Things of This World
C. K. Williams (B. 1936)	289	(2)
My Fly
William Carlos Williams (1883--1963)	291	(4)
To Elsie
Danse Russe
William Wordsworth (1770--1850)	295	(6)
from The Prelude (Book IV, lines 354--70)
Lines (Tintern Abbey)
Sir Henry Wotton (1568--1639)	301	(1)
On a Bank As I Sat Fishing
James Wright (1927--1980)	302	(1)
A Blessing
Thomas Wyatt (1503--1542)	303	(1)
Forget Not Yet
William Butler Yeats (1865--1939)	304	(3)
Politics
When You Are Old
Sailing to Byzatium
Sone no Yoshitada (Late Tenth Century)	307	(1)
The lower leaves of the trees
Adam Zagajewski (B. 1945)	308	(3)
To Go to Lvov
Zawgee (1907--1990)	311	(2)
The Way of the Water-Hyacinth
Permissions	313	(8)
Index	321