book excerptise:   a book unexamined is not worth having

J. Paul Hunter and Alison Booth

The Norton Introduction to Poetry, Eighth Edition

and Kelly J. Mays

Hunter, J. Paul; Alison Booth; Kelly J. Mays;

The Norton Introduction to Poetry, Eighth Edition

W. W. Norton & Company 2002-05 (Paperback, 672 pages $59.65)

ISBN 9780393978209 / 0393978206

topics: |  poetry | anthology


The poems are wonderful; they seem to have been chosen so as to appeal to
the broadest possible audience.  The very first few, e.g. Tally Stick and
Love Poem, are fresh and eager and draw you in.  The themes unfold slowly.
Whether as a text or simply reading for pleasure, a wonderful book!

The Tally Stick: Jarold Ramsey (1977) p.3


Here from the start, from our first of days, look:
I have carved our lives in secret on this stick
of mountain mahogany the length of your arms
outstretched, the wood clear red, so hard and rare.
It is time to touch and handle what we know we share.

Near the butt, this intricate notch where the grains
converge and join: it is our wedding.
I can read it through with a thumb and tell you now
who danced, who made up the songs, who meant us joy.
These little arrowheads along the grain,
they are the births of our children. See,
they make a kind of design with these heavy crosses,
the deaths of our parents, the loss of friends.

Over it all as it goes, of course, I
have chiseled Events, History--random
hashmarks cut against the swirling grain.
See, here is the Year the World Went Wrong,
we thought, and here the days the Great Men fell.
The lengthening runes of our lives run through it all.
See, our tally stick is whittled nearly end to end;
delicate as scrimshaw, it would not bear you up.
Regrets have polished it, hand over hand.
Yet let us take it up, and as our fingers
like children leading on a trail cry back
our unforgotten wonders, sign after sign,
we will talk softly as of ordinary matters,
and in one another's blameless eyes go blind.

Love Poem: Linda Pastan (1988) p.4


	I want to write you
	a love poem as headlong
	as our creek
	after thaw
	when we stand
	on its dangerous
	banks and watch it carry
	with it every twig
	every dry leaf and branch
	in its path
	every scruple
	when we see it
	so swollen
	with runoff
	that even as we watch
	we must grab
	each other
	and step back
	we must grab each
	other or
	get our shoes
	soaked we must
	grab each other

The Vacuum : Howard Nemerov (1955) p.10


The house is so quiet now
The vacuum cleaner sulks in the corner closet,
Its bag limp as a stopped lung, its mouth
Grinning into the floor, maybe at my
Slovenly life, my dog-dead youth.

I've lived this way long enough,
But when my old woman died her soul
Went into that vacuum cleaner, and I can't bear
To see the bag swell like a belly, eating the dust
And the woollen mice, and begin to howl

Because there is old filth everywhere
She used to crawl, in the corner and under the stair.
I know now how life is cheap as dirt,
And still the hungry, angry heart
Hangs on and howls, biting at air.

   	from The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov. © U. Chicago Press
	http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2004/06/25


Shakespeare: Ever-Fixed Mark (Sonnet 116) p.17


Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Casabianca: Elizabeth Bishop

Love's the boy stood on the burning deck
trying to recite `The boy stood on
the burning deck.' Love's the son
stood stammering elocution
while the poor ship in flames went down.

Love's the obstinate boy, the ship,
even the swimming sailors, who
would like a schoolroom platform, too,
or an excuse to stay
on deck. And love's the burning boy.

---blurb

483 poems total, 101 new to this edition.  Accompanied by audio CD
containing 33 poems read aloud, in the voices of
W. H. Auden, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Frost, Li-Young Lee,
Robert Lowell, Adrienne Rich, Anne Sexton, Wallace Stevens, Dylan Thomas,
Derek Walcott, and Richard Wilbur, Yeats, and others.


amitabha mukerjee (mukerjee [at-symbol] gmail.com) 2010 Jul 15