THE HEATH INTRODUCTION TO

POETRY

FIFTH EDITION

Joseph DeRoche

Northeastern University

D. C. HEATH AND COMPANYLexington, Massachusetts Toronto

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION: ON POETRY 1

1 A BRIEF HISTORY 23

ANONYMOUS (eighth century) 25"The Seafarer" (modern version by Ezra Pound, 1912) 25

ANONYMOUS 27

From "Beowulf"* (translation by C. W. Kennedy) 27

ANONYMOUS—Middle English Lyrics (thirteenth and fourteenthcenturies) 28

"Sumer Is Icumen In" 28"Alysoun" 29"All Night by the Rose" 30"Western Wind" 30"The Lady Fortune" 30

GEOFFREY CHAUCER (C. 1343-1400) 31"The Legend of Good Women"* 31

ANONYMOUS—the Popular Ballads (fourteenth and fifteenthcenturies) 32

"Get Up and Bar the Door" 32"Lord Randal" 33"The Three Ravens" 34"The Cherry-Tree Carol" 35"The Unquiet Grave" 36"Bonny Barbara Allan" 37

SIR THOMAS WYATT (1503-1542) 38"They Flee from Me" 38

SIR WALTER RALEIGH (i552?-i6i8) 39"The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" 39

*excerpt

xiii

xiv Contents

EDMUND SPENSER (i552?-i599) 40From "Amoretti"* 40Sonnet 15 ("Ye tradefull Merchants, that with weary toyle") 40Sonnet 67 ("Lyke as a huntsman, after weary chace") 40Sonnet 75 ("One day I wrote her name upon the strand") 41Sonnet 82 ("Joy of my life, full oft of loving you") 41

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY (1554-1586) 42"Thou Blind Man's Mark" 42"Leave Me, O Love" 42

CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE (i558?-i586) 43"Tichborne's Elegy" 43

ROBERT SOUTHWELL (i56i?-i595) 43"The Burning Babe" 43

MICHAEL DRAYTON (1563-1631) 44From "Idea"*Sonnet 6 ("How many paltry, foolish, painted things") 44Sonnet 7 ("Since there's no help, come, let us kiss and part") 44

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE (1564-1593) 45"The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" 45

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564-1616) 46Sonnet 2 ("When forty winters shall besiege thy brow") 46Sonnet 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day") 46Sonnet 20 ("A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted") 46Sonnet 29 ("When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes") 47Sonnet 30 ("When to the sessions of sweet silent thought") 47Sonnet 55 ("Not marble nor the gilded monuments") 48Sonnet 64 ("When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced") 48Sonnet 73 ("That time of year thou mayst in me behold") 48Sonnet 97 ("How like a winter hath my absence been") 49Sonnet 104 ("To me, fair friend, you never can be old") 49Sonnet 116 ("Let me not to the marriage of true minds") 49Sonnet 129 ("Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame") 50Sonnet 130 ("My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;") 50Sonnet 144 ("Two loves I have, of comfort and despair") 51Sonnet 146 ("Poor soul, the center of my sinful earth,") 51Sonnet 151 ("Love is too young to know what conscience is") 51

ANONYMOUS—ELIZABETHAN LYRICS (SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH

CENTURIES) 52

"Back and Side Go Bare" 52"April Is in My Mistress'Face" 53"My Love in Her Attire" 53

Contents xv

"There Is a Lady Sweet and Kind" 53"The Silver Swan" 54

THOMAS NASHE (1567-1601) 54"Adieu, Farewell Earth's Bliss" 54

THOMAS CAMPION (1567-1620) 55"My Sweetest Lesbia" 55"There Is a Garden in Her Face" 56

2 A BRIEF HISTORY 57

JOHN DONNE (1572-1631) 59

"Song ("Go and catch a falling star")" 59"The Sun Rising" 59"Song ("Sweetest love, I do not go")" 60"A Valediction: Of Weeping" 61"The Apparition" 62"A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" 62"The Funeral" 63From "Holy Sonnets"* 64

Sonnet 7 ("At the round earth's imagined corners, blow") 64Sonnet 10 ("Death, be not proud, though some have calledthee") 64Sonnet 13 ("What if this present were the world's lastnight?") 65Sonnet 14 ("Batter my heart, three-personed God; foryou") 65

"Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness" 66

ROBERT HERRICK (1591-1674) 67"Delight in Disorder" 67 \"Upon Julia's Clothes" 67"To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" 67

GEORGE HERBERT (1593-1633) 68"The Pulley" 68"The Collar" 69"Easter Wings" 70"Virtue" 70"Love (III)" 71

JOHN MILTON (1608-1674) 71"How Soon Hath Time" 71"On His Blindness" 72"At a Solemn Music" 72"On the Late Massacre in Piedmont" 73From "Paradise Lost", Book XII* 73

xvi Contents

ANNE BRADSTREET (i6i2?-i672) 76

"To My Dear and Loving Husband" 76"A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon PublickfEmployment" 76

ANDREW MARVELL (1621-1678) 77"To His Coy Mistress" 77"The Garden" 78

JONATHAN SWIFT (1677-1745) 80"A Description of the Morning" 80"A Description of a City Shower" 80

ALEXANDER POPE (1688-1744) 82"Ode on Solitude" 82From "An Essay on Man"* 83

3 A BRIEF HISTORY 85

THOMAS GRAY (1716-1771) 87"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" 88

CHRISTOPHER SMART (1722-1771)From

WILLIAM

From

From

From

"Rejoice in the Lamb"*

[ BLAKE (1757-1827)"Songs of Innocence"*"Introduction" 93"The Lamb" 93"The Chimney Sweep""The Little Black Boy""Songs of Experience"*"The Sick Rose" 95"The Tyger" 95"London" 95"To the Muses" 97"Milton"* ("And did those

9090

9393

949495

feet in ancient time") 97

ROBERT BURNS (1759-1796) 98"To a Mouse" 98"John Anderson, My Jo" 99"A Red, Red Rose" 100

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850) 100"Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey" 100"She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways" 104"A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal" 105"It Is a Beauteous Evening" 105"London,1802" 105

Contents xvii

"Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3,1802" 106"Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of EarlyChildhood" 106"She Was a Phantom of Delight" 112"The World Is Too Much with Us" 112"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" 113"The Solitary Reaper" 113"Mutability" 114"Scorn Not the Sonnet" 115

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772-1834) 115"KublaKhan" 115"This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison" 117"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" 119"Dejection: An Ode" 136

GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON (1788-1824) 139"SoWe'llGoNoMoreA-Roving" 139"She Walks in Beauty" 140"The Destruction of Sennacherib" 140

LYDIA SIGOURNEY (1791-1865) 141"The Mother of Washington" 141"Death of an Infant" 142"Female Education" 143

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1792-1822) 143"Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" 143"Ozymandias" 146"Ode to the West Wind" 146"To —" ("Music, when soft voices die") 148

JOHN KEATS (1795-1821) 149

"On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" 149"When I Have Fears" 149"Ode to a Nightingale" 150"Ode on a Grecian Urn" 152"La Belle Dame sans Merci" 154"Ode on Melancholy" 155"To Autumn" 156

4 A BRIEF HISTORY 159

RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882) 161"Concord Hymn" 161"Days" 161

xviii Contents

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING (1806-1861) 162"On a Portrait of Wordsworth by B. R. Haydon" 162"Grief" 162From "Sonnets from the Portuguese"* 162

Sonnet 14 ("If thou must love me, let it be for nought") 162Sonnet 43 ("How do I love thee? Let me count the ways") 163

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW (1807-1882) 163"The Jewish Cemetery at Newport" 163"Chaucer" 165"The Cross of Snow" 165

EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1849) 166

"To Helen" 166"The Raven" 166"Annabel Lee" 169

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON (1809-1892) 170"Song" ("A spirit haunts the year's last hours") 170"Ulysses" 171From "The Lotos-Eaters"* 173"Break, Break, Break" 174"The Splendor Falls on Castle Walls" 174From "In Memoriam A. H. H."* 175

I ("I held it truth, with him who sings") 1757 ("Dark house, by which once more I stand") 175I1 ("Calm is the morn without a sound") 17550,("Be near me when my light is low") 176130 ("Thy voice is on the rolling air") 176

"The Eagle" 177"Crossing the Bar" 177 \

ROBERT BROWNING (1812-1889) 178"My Last Duchess" 178"Home-Thoughts, from Abroad" 179"Meeting at Night" 180"Parting at Morning" 180

WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892)" 181"Song of Myself" 181"Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" ~ 225"When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" 229"Cavalry Crossing a Ford" 230"When Lilacs last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" 230"A Noiseless Patient Spider" 236"The Dalliance of the Eagles" 237

ALICE CAREY (1820-1871)"The Bridal Veil""The West Country"

Contents xix

237237

238

MATTHEW ARNOLD (1822-1888) 239"Shakespeare" 239"Dover Beach" 239

EMILY DICKINSON (1830-1886) 240"Success is counted sweetest" (#67) 240"I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed" (#214) 241"I like a look of Agony" (#241) 241"Wild Nights—Wild Nights!" (#249) 241"I can wade Grief" (#252) 242"There's a certain Slant of light" (#258) 242"I felt a Funeral, in my Brain" (#280) 243"I'm Nobody! Who are you?" (#288) 243"The Soul selects her own Society" (#303) 244"A Bird came down the Walk" (#328) 244"After great pain, a formal feeling comes" (#341) 245"Much Madness is divinest Sense" (#435) 245"This is My letter to the World" (#441) 245"I heard a Fly buzz—when I died" (#465) 246"Pain—has an Element of Blank" (#650) 246"Because I could not stop for Death" (#712) 246"My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun" (#754) 247"The poets light but Lamps" (#883) 248"A narrow Fellow in the Grass" (#986) 248"I never saw a Moor" (#1052) 249"The Bustle in a House" (#1078) 249"Tell all the Truth but tell it slaiif (#1129) 249"A route of Evanescence" (#1463) 250"My life closed twice before its close" (#1732) 250"To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee" (#1755) 250

HELEN HUNT JACKSON (1830-1885) 251"Her Eyes" 251"Found Frozen" 251"Danger" 251

LEWIS CARROLL (1832-1898) 252"Jabberwocky" 252

THOMAS HARDY (1840-1928) 253"The Ruined Maid" 253"Neutral Tones" 254

XX Contents

"The Man He Killed" 254"The Convergence of the Twain" 255"Channel Firing" 256

INA COOLBRITH (1841-1928) 257"Withheld" 257"I Cannot Count My Life a Loss" 258

GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS (1844-1889) 259"Heaven-Haven" 259"Pied Beauty" 259"Spring and Fall" 259"(Carrion Comfort)" 260"No Worst, There Is None" 260

A. E. HOUSMAN (1859-1936) 261From "A Shropshire Lad"* 261

"Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now" 261"When I Was One-and-Twenty" 261"To an Athlete Dying Young" 262"From Far, from Eve and Morning" 262"With Rue My Heart Is Laden" 263"Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff..." 263

5 A BRIEF HISTORY 267

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS (1865-1939) 269"The Lake Isle of Innisfree" 269"When You Are Old" 269"The Folly of Being Comforted" 269"Easter 1916" 270"The Wild Swans at Coole" 272"An Irish Airman Foresees His Death" 273"The Second Coming" 273"Leda and the Swan" 274"Sailing to Byzantium" 274"Among School Children" 275"After Long Silence" 277"Lapis Lazuli" 277"Politics" 279

ERNEST DOWSON (1867-1900) 279"Non sum qualis eram bonea sub regno Cynarae" 279

EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON (1869-1935) 280"Miniver Cheevy" 280"For a Dead Lady" 281"Eros Turannos" 282

Contents xxi

"Mr. Flood's Party" 283"Karma" 285"New England" 285

WALTER DE LA MARE (1873-1956) 286"The Listeners" 286

ROBERT FROST (1874-1963) 287"Mending Wall" 287"The Death of the Hired Man" 288"The Road Not Taken" 292"The Oven Bird" 293"Birches" 293"Out, Out—" 295"Fire and Ice" 296"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" 296"Once by the Pacific" 296"Departmental" 297"Design" 298"The Draft Horse" 298"In Winter in the Woods Alone" 299

GERTRUDE STEIN (1874-1945) 299"A Petticoat" 299"A Waist" 299"A Time to Eat" 300From "Before the Flowers of Friendship Faded FriendshipFaded'"* 30029 ("I love my love with a v") 300

CARL SANDBURG (1878-1967) \ 300"Early Copper" 300"Fog" 301"Cool Tombs" 301

WALLACE STEVENS (1879-1955) 301"Sunday Morning" 301"Anecdote of the Jar" 304"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" 305"The Snow Man" 307"TheEmperor of Ice-Cream" 307"The Idea of Order at Key West" 308"Peter Quince at the Clavier" 309

WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS (1883-1963) 311"The Young Housewife" 311"The Red Wheelbarrow" 312"The Yachts" 312

xxii Contents

"The Dance" 313"The Great Figure" 313"This Is Just to Say" 314

D. H. LAWRENCE (1885-1930) 314"Piano" 314"Snake" 314

EZRA POUND (1885-1972) 317

"The Garden" 317"Salutation" 317"In a Station of the Metro" 317"Dance Figure" 318"L'Art 1910" 318"The Tea Shop" 318"Ancient Music" 319"The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter" 319"These Fought in Any Case" 320From "The Cantos"* 321

"Canto 81" 321From "Hugh Selwyn Mauberly"* 323

H. D. (HILDA DOOLITTLE) (1886-1961) 324"Heat" 324"Sea Rose" 325"Oread" 325

ROBINSON JEFFERS (1887-1962) 325"Divinely Superfluous Beauty" 325"Love the Wild Swan" 326"Cassandra" 326

MARIANNE MOORE (1887-1972) 327"Poetry" 327"A Grave" 328"The Mind Is an Enchanting Thing" 328

EDWIN MUIR (1887-1959) 329

"Childhood" 329"The Animals" 330"The Brothers" 331 ."The Horses" 332

T. S. ELIOT (1888-1965) 333"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" 333"The Waste Land" 337"Preludes" 352

Contents xxiii

"Sweeney Among the Nightingales" 353"Rhapsody on a Windy Night" 354"La Figlia Che Piange" 356"Marina" 357"Journey of the Magi" 358

6 A BRIEF HISTORY 361

JOHN CROWE RANSOM (1888-1974) 363"Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter" 363"Old Mansion" 363"Piazza Piece" 365"Spectral Lovers" 365

ARCHIBALD MACLEISH (1892-1982) 366"Ars Poetica" 366"You, Andrew Marvell" 367

EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY (1892-1950) 368"First Fig" 368Sonnet 2 ("Time does not bring relief; you all have lied") 368Sonnet 5 ("If I should learn, in some quite casual way") 369Sonnet 11 ("I shall forget you presently, my dear") 369Sonnet 15 ("Only until this cigarette is ended") 369Sonnet 18 ("When I too long have looked upon your face,") 370Sonnet 21 ("On, my beloved, have you thought of this:") 370Sonnet 27 ("I know I am but summer to your heart,") 371Sonnet 42 ("What lips my lips have kissed, and where and why") 371Sonnet 45 ("Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.") 371Sonnet 68 ("For this your mother sweated in the cold") 372 'Sonnet 95 ("Women have loved'before as I love now:") 372 ,Sonnet 99 ("Love is not all; it is riot meat nor drink") 373Sonnet 115 ("Even in the moment of our earliest kiss,") 373Sonnet 116 ("Well, I have lost you; and I lost you fairly;") 373Sonnet 120 ("If in the years to come you should recall") 374

WILFRED OWEN (1893-1918) 374"Strange Meeting" 374"Duke et Decorum Est" 375"Anthem for Doomed Youth" 376

DOROTHY PARKER (1893-1967) 377"Resume" 377

E. E. CUMMINGS (1894-1963) 377"the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls" 377"may i feel said he" 377

xxiv Contents

"All in green went my love riding" 378"in Just-" 379"Buffalo Bill's" 380"my sweet old etcetera" 380"i sing of Olaf glad and big" 381

LOUISE BOGAN (1897-1970) 382" The Crossed Apple" 382"The Dragonfly" 383"Medusa" 384

HART CRANE (1899-1932) 384

"Proem: To Brooklyn Bridge" 384"Chaplinesque" 386

JANET LEWIS (1899- ) 386

"Girl Help" 386

ALLEN TATE (1899-1979) 387

"Ode to the Confederate Dead" 387

YVOR WINTERS (1900-1968) 389"At the San Francisco Airport" 389

LANGSTON HUGHES (1902-1967) 390"The Negro Speaks of Rivers" 390"I, Too" 391"Old Walt" 391"Harlem" 391

STEVIE SMITH (1902-1972) 392"Not Waving but Drowning" 392

COUNTEE CULLEN (1903-I946) 392 '"For a Lady I Know" 392"Heritage" 393

EARL BIRNEY (1904- ) 396

"Anglosaxon Street" 396"Twenty-Third Flight" 397"The Bear on the Delhi Road" 398"From the Hazel Bough" 399

RICHARD EBERHART (1904- ) 399"The Fury of Aerial Bombardment" 399"On a Squirrel Crossing the Road in Autumn, in New England" 400

KENNETH REXROTH (1905-1982) 400"Vitamins and Roughage" 400

Contents xxv

"Proust's Madeleine" 401

W. H. AUDEN (1907-1973) 402"The Unknown Citizen" 402"Mus6e des Beaux Arts" 402"In Memory ofW. B.Yeats" 403"Epitaph on a Tyrant" 405"As I Walked Out One Evening" 405

THEODORE ROETHKE (1908-1963) 407"Root Cellar" 407"The Waking" 407"Dolor" 408"I Knew a Woman" 408"In a Dark Time" 409"My Papa's Waltz" 410"The Meadow Mouse" 410

A. M. KLEIN (1909-1972) 411"The Rocking Chair" 411"Lone Bather" 412

STEPHEN SPENDER (1909-1995) 413"I Think Continually of Those Who Were Truly Great" 413"The Express" 414

CHARLES OLSON (1910-1970) 414"I, Maximus of Gloucester, to You" 414

ELIZABETH BISHOP (1911-1979) 418"The Fish" 418"Sandpiper" 420"In the Waiting Room" 4io"The Moose" 423"One Art" 427"Sonnet" 427

KENNETH PATCHEN (1911-1972) 428"The Character of Love Seen as a Search for the Lost" 428"Do the Dead Know What Time It Is?" 429

IRVING LAYTON (1912- ) 430

"Party at Hydra" 430"Berry Picking" 431

ROBERT HAYDEN (1913-1980) 431"Those Winter Sundays" 431"Frederick Douglass" 432

xxvi Contents

JOHN BERRYMAN (1914-1972) 432"A Professor's Song" 432"Dream Song #14" 433

DAVID IGNATOW (1914- ) 433"Sunday at the State Hospital" 433"Moonlight Poem" 434"No Theory" 434"The Bagel" 434

RANDALL JARRELL (1914-1965) 435"The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" 435"Nestus Gurley" 435

DUDLEY RANDALL (1914- ) 437"Ballad of Birmingham" 437

WILLIAM STAFFORD (1914- ) 438"At the Un-National Monument Along the Canadian Border" 438"Traveling Through the Dark" 438

DYLAN THOMAS (1914-1953) 439"A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London" 439"In My Craft or Sullen Art" 439"Fern Hill" 440"Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" 441

P. K. PAGE (1916- ) 442"The Stenographers" 442"Schizophrenic" 443

GWENDOLYN BROOKS (1917- ) 444

"The Bean Eaters" 444 \"We Real Cool" 444

ROBERT LOWELL (1917-1977) 445"Mr. Edwards and the Spider" 445"Skunk Hour" 446"Water" 447"For the Union Dead" 448

MARGARET AVISON (1918- ) 450"A Nameless One" 450

ALFRED PURDY (1918- ) 451"The Cariboo Horses" 451"Wilderness Gothic" 452

Contents xxvii

LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI (1919- ) 453"In Goya's greatest scenes we seem to see" 453"The pennycandystore beyond the El" 454

HOWARD NEMEROV (1920-1991) 455"The Goose Fish" 455"I Only Am Escaped Alone to Tell Thee" 456

RICHARD WILBUR (1921- ) 457"In a Churchyard" 457"Exeunt" 458"Place Pigalle" 459"Love Calls Us to the Things of This World" 459"Years's-End" 460

PHILIP LARKIN (1922-1985) 461"Church Going" 461"The Whitsun Weddings" 463

JAMES DICKEY (1923- ) 465"The Heaven of Animals" 465"Buckdancer's Choice" 466

DENISE LEVERTOV (1923- ) 467"SixVariations(part iii)" 467"Come into Animal Presence" 467"What Were They Like?" 468"Losing Track" 469

EDWARD FIELD (1924- ) 469"The Bride of Frankenstein" 469

DONALD JUSTICE (1925- ) ^ 4 7 1"Here in Katmandu" 471"Luxury" 472 ""Anonymous Drawing" 472

ROBERT BLY (1926- ) 473

"Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter" 473

ROBERT CREELEY (1926- ) 473"Oh No" 473"Naughty Boy" 474

ALLEN GINSBERG (1926- ) 474From "Howl"* 474"A Supermarket in California" 480

xxviii Contents

JAMES MERRILL (1926-1995) 480"Charles on Fire" 480"Maisie" 481

FRANK O'HARA (1926-1966) 482"The Day Lady Died" 482"Autobiographica Literaria" 483"A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island" 483

JOHN ASHBERY (1927- ) 485"City Afternoon" 485"Paradoxes and Oxymorons" 486

GALWAY KINNELL (1927- ) 486"Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock" 486"To Christ Our Lord" 489

W. S. MERWIN (1927- ) 490"The River of Bees" 490"The Moths" 490

JAMES WRIGHT (1927-1980) 491"Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio" 491"Two Postures Beside a Fire" 492

PHILIP LEVINE (1928- ) 492

"To a Child Trapped in a Barber Shop" 492"You Can Have It" 493

DONALD PETERSEN (1928- ) 494"The Ballad of Dead Yankees" 494

ANNE SEXTON (1928-1974) 496"Her Kind" 496"Cinderella" 496"In Celebration of My Uterus" 499

THOM GUNN (1929- ) 501

"Street Song" 501"The Discovery of the Pacific" 501"Black Jackets" 502

X. J. KENNEDY (1929L- ) 503"In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus, N. J." 503"Nude Descending a Staircase" 504

MAURICE KENNY (1929- ) 505"Listening for the Elders" 505"Legacy" 506

Contents xxix

ADRIENNE RICH (1929- ) 507"A Clock in the Square" 507"Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" 507"The Insusceptibles" 508"Diving into the Wreck" 508

TED HUGHES (1930- ) 510"Hawk Roosting" 510"Pike" 511"The Thought-Fox" 512

GARY SNYDER (1930- ) 513

"Before the Stuff Comes Down" 513

DEREK WALCOTT (1930- ) 513"Sea Canes" 513"A Far Cry from Africa" 514

DON SUMMERHAYES (1931- ) 515"from the corner of one eye" 515"her swans in high park" 515"lucy lost her breasts and died" 516

ROBERT CLAYTON CASTO (1932- ) 516"The Salt Pork" 516"Sketch" 517

SYLVIA PLATH (1932-1963) 518"Ariel" 518"Morning Song" 519"Medallion" 520"Metaphors" 520"Daddy" 521 ?"Lady Lazarus" 523"Fever 103°" 525

ETHERIDGE KNIGHT (1933-1991) 527"For Black Poets Who Think of Suicide" 527

AMIRI BARAKA (LEROI JONES) (1934- ) 527

"W.W." 527

LEONARD COHEN (1934- ) 528"Elegy" 528"The Bus" 528

AUDRE LORDE (1934-1992) 529

"Coal" 529"Love Poem" 529

xxx Contents

"Power" 530"A Question of Climate" 531

MARK STRAND (1934- ) 532

"The Dead" 532"The Tunnel" 532"Keeping Things Whole" 533"Eating Poetry" 534

JEAN VALENTINE (1934- ) 534"The River at Wolf" 534"X" 535

MARY OLIVER (1935- ) 535

"Landscape" 535"Bats" 536

LUCILLE CLIFTON (1936- ) 536"in the inner city" 536

MARGE PIERCY (1936- ) 537

"A Battle of Wills Disguised" 537"When a Friend Dies" 538

DIANE WAKOSKI (1937- ) 538"The Canoer" 538"The Singer" 539

JOSEPH DEROCHE (1938- ) 540"Aunt Laura Moves Toward the Open Grave of Her Father" 540"Blond" 540

MICHAEL S. HARPER (1938- ) 541"Dear John, Dear Coltrane" 541

CHARLES SIMIC (1938- ) 543"The Partial Explanation" 543"Watermelons" 543"Fork" 543

MARGARET ATWOOD (1939- ) 544"It Is Dangerous to Read Newspapers" 544

SEAMUS HEANEY (1939- ) 545

"Bogland" 545"Waterfall" 546"Docker" 546

LOLA LEMIRE TOSTEVIN (1939- ) 547"for Peter" 547

Contents xxxi

From "Song of Songs"* 547"8" 547

MARTHA COLLINS (1940- ) 547

"A History of Small Life on a Windy Planet" 547"Owl" 548

SHARON OLDS (1942- ) 549

"The Death of Marilyn Monroe" 549"Sex Without Love" 550

NIKKI GIOVANNI (1943- ) 551

"Nikki-Rosa" 551

LOUISE GLUCK (1943- ) 552

"Mock Orange" 552"The Mountain" 552

MICHAEL ONDAATJE (1943- ) 553

"(Inner Tube)" 553

JAMES TATE (1943- ) 554

"The Lost Pilot" 554"The Blue Booby" 555"Consumed" 557

AMBER COVERDALE SUMRALL (1945- ) 557

"Keams Canyon, Black Mesa" 557"Ceremonials" 558"Infinity" 559

YUSEF KOMUNYUKAA (1947- ) 559"More Girl Than Boy" 559"Facing It" 560 •;

KENNETH SHERMAN (1950- ) 561

"My Father Kept His Cats Well Fed" 561

RITA DOVE (1952- ) 562

"Geometry" 562"Dusting" 562

INDEX OF TERMS 565

INDEX OF AUTHORS AND TITLES 567

INDEX OF FIRST LINES 575