Includes bibliographical references (pages 291-292) and index.
Art and Beauty -- Civilization -- Family Relations -- Freedom and Slavery -- The Individual and Society -- Innocence and Experience -- Life and Death -- Loss -- Love and Sex -- Memory -- Nature -- Obligations and Choices -- Poetry -- The Self -- Skepticism and Belief -- Suffering and Joy -- Thought and Perception -- Time and Change -- Tradition and Heritage -- Truth and Appearances -- War.
0
Contains essays on 21 alphabetically arranged themes that recur throughout American poetry . Includes interpretations of 250 poems, representing the work of 86 poets from a wide spectrum of historical, contemporary, ethnic, and canonical writers.
LOSS The Raven (Edgar Allan Poe), Annabel Lee (Edgar Allan Poe), Telling the Bees (John Greenleaf Whittier), When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomʼd (Walt Whitman), I never lost as much but twice (Emily Dickinson), The Bustle in a House (Emily Dickinson), The last Night that She lived (Emily Dickinson), My life closed twice before its close (Emily Dickinson), The Frost of Death was on the Pane- (Emily Dickinson), The Cross of Snow (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow), Monody (Herman Melville), For a Dead Lady (Edwin Arlington Robinson), Home Burial (Robert Frost), The Widowʼs Lament in Springtime (William Carlos Williams), Bells for John Whitesideʼs Daughter (John Crowe Ransom), Elegy for Jane (Theodore Roethke), The Day Lady Died (Frank OʼHara), One Art (Elizabeth Bishop). LOVE AND SEX From Pent-Up Aching Rivers (Walt Whitman), In Paths Untrodden (Walt Whitman), Wild Nights-Wild Nights! (Emily Dickinson), My Life had stood-a Loaded Gun- (Emily Dickinson), Eros Turannos (Edwin Arlington Robinson), A Virginal (Ezra Pound), Oh, Sleep forever in the Latmian cave (Edna St. Vincent Millay), The Silken Tent (Robert Frost), Living in Sin (Adrienne Rich), I Knew a Woman (Theodore Roethke), The Aged Lover Discourses in the Flat Style (J.V. Cunningham), An Aubade (Timothy Steele), A Story about the Body (Robert Hass).
MEMORY Concord Hymn (Ralph Waldo Emerson), An upper chamber in a darkened house (Frederick Goddard Tuckerman), Snow-Bound (John Greenleaf Whittier), Mnemosyne (Trumbull Stickney), Incident (Countee Cullen), Dusting (Rita Dove), Picking Blackberries, Austerlitz, New York, 1957 (Mary Oliver), Summer Storm (Dana Gioia). NATURE Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood (William Cullen Bryant), To Cole, the Painter, Departing for Europe (To an American Painter Departing for Europe) (William Cullen Bryant), A Bird came down the Walk (Emily Dickinson), I dreaded that first Robin, so (Emily Dickinson), The Maldive Shark (Herman Melville), The Wood-Pile (Robert Frost), The Most of It (Robert Frost), Anecdote of the Jar (Wallace Stevens), November Surf (Robinson Jeffers), Carmel Point (Robinson Jeffers), Advice to a Prophet (Richard Wilbur), The Armadillo (Elizabeth Bishop), For a Coming Extinction (W.S. Merwin), The Peace of wild Things (Wendell Berry), Metaphor of Grass in California (Charles Martin). OBLIGATIONS AND CHOICES Abraham Davenport (John Greenleaf Whittier), The Road Not Taken (Robert Frost), Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (Robert Frost), Come In (Robert Frost), Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight (Yvor Winters), A Note Left in Jimmy Leonardʼs shack (James Wright), Traveling through the dark (William Stafford).
POETRY To a New England Poet (Philip Freneau), Merlin (Ralph Waldo Emerson), Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking (Walt Whitman), This was a Poet-It is That (Emily Dickinson), Oh for a poet-for a beacon bright (Edwin Arlington Robinson), Petit, the Poet (Edgar Lee Masters), A Pact (Ezra Pound), Poetry (Marianne More), Ars Poetica (Archibald MacLeish), The Wind Increases (William Carlos Williams), A Sort of Song (William Carlos Williams), For My Contemporaries (J.V. Cunningham), American Poetry (Louis Simpson), Because You Asked about the Line between Poetry and Prose (Howard Nemerov), The Next Poem (Dana Gioia). THE SELF Song of Myself (Walt Whitman), I dwell in Possibility (Emily Dickinson), Desert Places (Robert Frost), The Heavy Bear Who Goes with Me (Delmore Schwartz), Theme for English B (Langston Hughes), April Inventory (W.D. Snodgrass), Skunk Hour (Robert Lowell), In the Waiting Room (Elizabeth Bishop). SKEPTICISM AND BELIEF On the Religion of Nature (Philip Freneau), On the Uniformity and Perfection of Nature (Philip Freneau), On the Universality and Other Attributes of the God of Nature (Philip Freneau), To a Waterfowl (William Cullen Bryant), The Problem (Ralph Waldo Emerson), The Chambered Nautilus (Oliver Wendell Holmes), Faith is a fine invention (Emily Dickinson), Some keep the Sabbath going to Church (Emily Dickinson), I know that He exists (Emily Dickinson), Sunday Morning (Wallace Stevens), Journey of the Magi (T.S. Eliot), Design 9Robert Frost), Love Calls Us to the Things of This World (Richard Wilbur), In a Dark Time (Theodore Roethke), Boom! (Howard Nemerov) The Hereafter (Andrew Hudgins).
SUFFERING AND JOY A Visit from St. Nicholas (Clement Moore), The Heart asks Pleasure-first- (Emily Dickinson) Wound-Dresser (Walt Whitman), The Weary Blues (Langston Hughes), Trumpet Player (Langston Hughes), 90 North (Randall Jarrell), Child on Top of a Greenhouse (Theodore Roethke), A Blessing (James Wright), Hamlen Brook (Richard Wilbur). THOUGHT AND PERCEPTION When I Heard the Learnʼd Astronomer (Walt Whitman), I felt a Funeral, in my Brain (Emily Dickinson), The Brain is wider than the Sky (Emily Dickinson), After Apple Picking (Robert Frost), The Snow Man (Wallace Stevens), The Idea of Order at Key West (Wallace Stevens), A Postcard from the Volcano (Wallace Stevens), The Fish (Marianne Moore), The Fish (Elizabeth Bishop), I Know a Man (Robert Creeley), Lying in a Hammock at William Duffyʼs Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota (James Wright), Gravelly Run (A.R. Ammons), The Blue Swallows (Howard Nemerov), Meditation at Lagunitas (Robert Hass).
THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY Iʼm Nobody! Who are you? (Emily Dickinson), Much Madness is Divinest Sense- (Emily Dickinson), Miniver Cheevy (Edwin Arlington Robinson), Bewick Finzer (Edwin Arlington Robinson), The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (T.S. Eliot), The Harlem Dancer (Claude McKay), Helen (Hilda Doolittle), Chaplinesque (Hart Crane), Southern Cop (Sterling Brown), The Drunk in the Furnace (W.S. Merwin). INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE As Adam Early in the Morning (Walt Whitman), The March into Virginia (Herman Melville), Birches (Robert Frost), To Earthward (Robert Frost), in Just- (E.E. Cummings), The Lost Son (Theodore Roethke), To the Snake (Denise Levertov), A Barred Owl (Richard Wilbur). LIFE AND DEATH The Wild Honey Suckle (Philip Freneau), Thanatopsis (William Cullen Bryant), A Psalm of Life (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow), Mezzo Cammin (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow), Hamatreya (Ralph Waldo Emerson), I heard a Fly buzz-when I died- (Emily Dickinson), Because I could not stop for Death- (Emily Dickinson), Lucinda Matlock (Edgar Lee Masters), Richard Cory (Edwin Arlington Robinson), The Mill (Edwin Arlington Robinson), ʼOut, Out-ʼ (Robert Frost), The Emperor of Ice-Cream (Wallace Stevens), Piazza Piece (John Crowe Ransom), Hurt Hawks (Robinson Jeffers), Vulture (Robinson Jeffers), the Phoenix (J.V. Cunningham), The Sparrow (William Carlos Williams), We Real Cool (Gwendolyn Brooks), Falling (James Dickey), The Black Snake (Mary Oliver).
THEMES and POEMS: ART AND BEAUTY To Helen (Edgar Allan Poe), Each and All (Ralph Waldo Emerson), The Rhodora (Ralph Waldo Emerson), Art (Herman Melville), Euclid Alone Has Looked on Beauty Bare (Edna St. Vincent Millay), Beauty (Elinor Wylie), Blue Girls (John Crowe Ransom), To the Stone Cutters (Robinson Jeffers), No Swan So Fine (Marianne Moore), Juggler (Richard Wilbur), Piazza di Spagna, Early Morning (Richard Wilbur), Aunt Jenniferʼs Tigers (Adrienne Rich), Beauty and Sadness (Cathy Song). CIVILIZATION To the States (Walt Whitman), Chicago (Carl Sandburg), New England (Edwin Arlington Robinson), the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls (E.E. Cummings), ʼnext to of course god america i (E.E. Cummings), Disillusionment of Ten Oʼ Clock (Wallace Stevens), Shine, Perishing Republic (Robinson Jeffers), Harlem (Langston Hughes), A Supermarket in California (Allen Ginsberg), A Primer of the Daily Round (Howard Nemerov), For the Union Dead (Robert Lowell), Among Philistines (R.S. Gwynn). FAMILY RELATIONS My Papaʼs Waltz (Theodore Roethke), Daddy (Sylvia Plath) Those Winter Sundays (Robert Hayden), The Broken Home (James Merrill), The Writer (Richard Wilbur), The Gift (Li-Young Lee), Womanʼs Work (Julia Alvarez), Eden (Emily Grosholz). FREEDOM AND SLAVERY On the Emigration to America and Peopling the Western Country (Philip Freneau), To Sir Toby (Philip Freneau), Ichabod (John Greenleaf Whittier), Laus Deo (John Greenleaf Whittier), The New Colossus (Emma Lazarus), Sympathy (Paul Laurence Dunbar), Middle Passage (Robert Hayden), Caged Bird (Maya Angelou).
TIME AND CHANGE The Prairies (William Cullen Bryant), The Last Leaf (Oliver Wendell Holmes), My Lost Youth (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow), Days (Ralph Waldo Emerson), And Change, with hurried hand, has swept these scenes (Frederick Goddard Tuckerman), Crossing Brooklyn Ferry (Walt Whitman), Mr. Floodʼs Party (Edwin Arlington Robinson), The Oven Bird (Robert Frost), Nothing Gold Can Stay (Robert Frost), Spring Pools (Robert Frost), In a Station of the Metro (Ezra Pound), Spring and All (By the Road to the Contagious hospital) (William Carlos Williams, You, Andrew Marvell (Archibald MacLeish), At the Fishhouses (Elizabeth Bishop), Corsons Inlet (A.R. Ammons), Old Bachelor Brother (Brad Leithauser), Aurora (Timothy Steele). TRADITION AND HERITAGE The Indian Burying Ground (Philip Freneau), Chaucer (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow), Milton (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow), Mending Wall (Robert Frost), The Negro Speaks of Rivers (Langston Hughes), Outcast (Claude McKay), Heritage (Countee Cullen), Passing through Little Rock (Simon J. Ortiz). TRUTH AND APPEARANCES Uriel (Ralph Waldo Emerson), Brahma (Ralph Waldo Emerson), I like a look of Agony (Emily Dickinson), Tell all the Truth but tell it slant (Emily Dickinson), I saw a man pursuing the horizon (Stephen Crane), Sonnet XXV (As in the midst of battle) (George Santayana), We Wear the Mask (Paul Laurence Dunbar), Sonnet on Rare Animals (William Meredith), Pitcher (Robert Francis).
WAR Advice to a Raven in Russia (Joel Barlow), A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown (Walt Whitman), Reconciliation (Walt Whitman), A utilitarian View of the Monitorʼs Fight (Herman Melville), Shiloh: A Requiem (Herman Melville), Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind (Stephen Crane), Grass (Carl Sandburg), the Death of the Ball Turret Gunner (Randall Jarrell), The Fury of Aerial Bombardment (Richard Eberhart), Ode for the American Dead in Asia (Thomas McGrath), On a Line from Valery (Carolyn Kizer).