Christmas Poems

by Hollander, John; McClatchy, J. D.

• ISBN13: 9780375407895
• ISBN10: 0375407898
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-10-26
• Publisher: Everyman's Library

Summary

Christmas is both a holiday and a holy day, and from the start it has been associated with poetry, from the song of the seraphim above the manger to the cherished carols around the punch bowl. This garland of Christmas poems contains not only the ones you would insist on finding here ("A Visit from St. Nicholas," "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming," and "The Twelve Days of Christmas" among them) but such equally enchanting though lesser-known Yuletide treasures as Emily Dickinson's "The Savior must have been a docile Gentleman," Anthony Hecht's "Christmas Is Coming," Rudyard Kipling's "Christmas in India," Langston Hughes's "Shepherd's Song at Christmas," Robert Graves's "The Christmas Robin," and happy surprises like Phyllis McGinley's "Office Party," Dorothy Parker's "The Maid-Servant at the Inn," and Philip Larkin's "New Year Poem."

Author Biography

John Hollander is the author of seventeen previous books of poetry. His first, A Crackling of Thorns, was chosen by W. H. Auden as the 1958 volume in the Yale Series of Younger Poets. He has written eight books of criticism, including the award-winning Rhyme's Reason: A Guide to English Verse and The Work of Poetry, and edited or coedited twenty-two collections, among them The Oxford Anthology of English Literature, American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century, and (with Anthony Hecht, with whom he shared the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1983) Jiggery-Pokery: A Compendium of Double Dactyls. Mr. Hollander attended Columbia and Indiana Universities and was a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows of Harvard University. He has taught at Connecticut College and Yale, and was a professor of English at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY. He is currently Sterling Professor emeritus of English at Yale. In 1990 he received a MacArthur Fellowship.

J. D. McClatchy is the author of four earlier books of poems, Scenes from Another Life (1981), Stars Principal (1986), The Rest of the Way (1990), and Ten Commandments (1998). His literary essays are collected in White Paper (1989) and Twenty Questions (1998). He is the editor of The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry (1990) and The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry (1996), as well as a co-editor of James Merrill's Collected Poems (2001) and Collected Novels and Plays (2002). The author of several opera libretti, McClatchy is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He teaches at Yale University and is editor of The Yale Review.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. 11
The Annunciation	p. 17
Advent	p. 18
Advent Calendar	p. 19
Christmas Eve	p. 25
Christmas Eve	p. 28
from In Memoriam	p. 29
Noel: Christmas Eve, 1913	p. 31
The Oxen	p. 33
Jest 'Fore Christmas	p. 34
A Visit from St. Nicholas	p. 37
Upon Christ His Birth	p. 45
On the Morning of Christs Nativity	p. 46
Nativity	p. 57
The Nativity	p. 58
New Prince, New Pomp	p. 60
The Nativity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ	p. 62
For the Nativity	p. 64
Christmas	p. 65
The Maid-servant at the Inn	p. 67
Joseph	p. 68
The Mother of God	p. 69
Shepherd's Song at Christmas	p. 70
The Three Kings	p. 72
Journey of the Magi	p. 76
The Adoration of the Kings	p. 78
The Three Holy Kings	p. 80
Carol of the Three Kings	p. 83
The Masque of Christmas	p. 87
The True Christmas	p. 92
Old Christmastide	p. 94
Christmas at Sea	p. 98
The Christmas Tree	p. 102
Our Christmas Tree	p. 104
December	p. 105
Christmas	p. 113
The Burning Babe	p. 115
'The Savior must have been a docile Gentleman'	p. 117
A Christmas Hymn	p. 119
Christmas	p. 120
Sonnets at Christmas	p. 121
An Old Song Ended	p. 123
A Christmas Poem	p. 125
Illumination	p. 127
The Mahogany Tree	p. 131
Christmas	p. 133
The Dark Christmas on Wildwood Road	p. 136
Lady Selecting Her Christmas Cards	p. 139
City Christmas	p. 140
Office Party	p. 141
Christmas is Coming	p. 145
The House of Christmas	p. 147
Christmas Bells	p. 149
A Nativity	p. 151
Christmas Trees	p. 153
A Christmas Card, After the Assassinations	p. 154
Christmas in Biafra (1969)	p. 155
A Christmas Ghost-story	p. 158
Christmas in India	p. 159
A Christmas Sonnet	p. 162
A Carol	p. 163
The Christmas Robin	p. 164
Carol	p. 167
An Ode of the Birth of Our Saviour	p. 168
On Christmas Day to My Heart	p. 170
A Christmas Carol	p. 172
from In Memoriam	p. 175
French Noel	p. 177
Christus Natus Est	p. 180
A Carol	p. 182
A Lullaby	p. 183
While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night	p. 184
Good King Wenceslas	p. 186
O Little Town of Bethlehem	p. 188
We Three Kings	p. 190
It Came Upon the Midnight Clear	p. 192
Silent Night	p. 194
Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming	p. 195
The Cherry-tree Carol	p. 196
I Saw Three Ships	p. 199
I Sing of a Maiden	p. 201
A Child This Day is Born	p. 202
To-morrow Shall be My Dancing Day	p. 204
Nowell Sing We	p. 205
The First Nowell	p. 206
The Holly and the Ivy	p. 208
Green Grow'th the Holly	p. 210
The Twelve Days of Christmas	p. 211
God Rest You Merry Gentlemen	p. 212
Wassail, Wassail	p. 215
Here We Come A-wassailing	p. 217
from For the Time Being	p. 221
Untrimming the Tree	p. 224
Burning the Christmas Greens	p. 226
New Year's Eve	p. 230
New Year	p. 232
New Year's Day	p. 235
New Year Poem	p. 236
Twelfth Night	p. 239
Twelfth Night	p. 241
Epiphany	p. 243
Acknowledgments	p. 245
Index of Authors	p. 249
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