DENIS JOHNSON (1949–2017) was born in Munich, West Germany; raised in Tokyo, Manila, and Washington, DC; and educated at the University of Iowa. He has published five poetry collections and is the author of numerous novels and short story collections. Jesus’ Son and Tree of Smoke won National Book Awards. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Whiting Award, the Award of Merit Medal in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Arts and Letters Award in Literature, and the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction.
BEN JONSON (1572–1637) was born in London, England, and was educated at the Westminster School. He wrote numerous poems, plays, and masques.
JOHN KEATS (1795–1821) was born in Moorgate, London, and educated at Enfield, a private school. He published three books of poetry: Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems (1820); Endymion: A Poetic Romance (1818); and Poems (1817).
LI-YOUNG LEE (1957–) was born in Djakarta, Indonesia, to Chinese political exiles. He arrived with his family in the United States in 1964. Lee was a student at the University of Pittsburgh. His many honors include the Lannon Literary Award, and the American Book Award.
ROBERT LOWELL (1917–1977) was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and was educated at Harvard University and Kenyon College. He was appointed the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, where he served from 1947 until 1948. In addition to winning the National Book Award, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1947 and 1974, the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1977, and a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award in 1947.
CLAUDE McKAY (1889–1948) was born in Jamaica. He studied at the Tuskegee Institute and at Kansas State College. He published eleven books, which include poetry collections and prose. He was awarded the Musgrave Medal, the Harmon Foundation Award, the James Weldon Johnson Literary Guild Award, and the Order of Jamaica.
W. S. MERWIN (1927–) was born in New York City and raised in Union City, New Jersey, and Scranton, Pennsylvania. He attended Princeton University. His many honors include two Pulitzer Prizes, the National Book Award, and the Tanning Prize. In 2010 he was named the US Poet Laureate.
EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY (1892–1950) was born in Rockland, Maine, and was educated at Vassar College. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver. In 1943 she was awarded the Robert Frost Medal for her lifetime contribution to American poetry.
CZESŁAW MIŁOSZ (1911–2004) was born in Lithuania to Polish parents. He graduated from Sigismund Augustus Gymnasium in Vilnius and studied law at Stefan Batory University. He was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1978 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980. In 1999 he was named a Puterbaugh Fellow.
SHARON OLDS (1942–) was born in San Francisco, California and was raised in Berkeley. She attended Stanford University and earned her PhD at Columbia University. Her many honors include the Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the New York State Poet Laureate, and an Academy of American Poets Fellowship. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 2013 for Stag’s Leap.
SYLVIA PLATH (1932–1963) was born in Boston, Massachusetts. She attended Smith College and earned a Fulbright grant to study at the University of Cambridge in England. Her poetry volumes include The Colossus, Crossing the Water, Winter Trees, Ariel, and The Collected Poems, which won the Pulitzer Prize.
STANLEY PLUMLY (1939–) was born in Barnesville, Ohio, was educated at Wilmington College, and earned his PhD at Ohio University. His collection Old Heart (2009) won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Paterson Poetry Prize. His honors and awards include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ingram-Merrill Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Since 2009 he has been Maryland’s Poet Laureate.
ADRIENNE RICH (1929–2012) was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and was educated at Radcliffe College. She won the National Book Award for Diving into the Wreck (1973) and the National Book Critics Circle Award for The School Among the Ruins (2004). Among her other honors are a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Bollingen Prize, a MacArthur Fellowship, and the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Literature. She refused the National Medal of Art in 1997 for political reasons.
RAINER MARIA RILKE (1875–1926) was born in Prague and educated at Charles University (Prague) and the University of Munich. His published volumes of poetry include Sonnets to Orpheus and Divine Elegies, letters, and a novel.
EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON (1869–1935) was born in Head Tide and raised in Gardiner, Maine, which he renamed “Tilbury Town” in his work. He studied for two years as a special student at Harvard University. He published over thirty collections of poems. Collected Poems (1921) was awarded the first Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; he won a second Pulitzer with The Man Who Died Twice (1924) and a third with Tristram (1927).
THEODORE ROETHKE (1908–1963) was born in Saginaw, Michigan, and was educated at the University of Michigan. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for The Waking (1954). He also received two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Bollingen Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, and two National Book Awards.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564–1616) was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. He received no university education. He wrote over thirty plays and 154 sonnets, as well as a variety of other poems.
GERALD STERN (1925–) was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and was educated at the University of Pittsburgh. His volume of poems Lucky Life (1977) was the Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets and his book This Time: New and Selected Poems (1998) won the National Book Award. He also received the Wallace Stevens Award and the Library of Congress Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Award. He was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2006.
WALLACE STEVENS (1879–1955) was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, and educated at Harvard University and New York Law School. In 1946 he was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters and in 1950 he received the Bollingen Prize in Poetry. He received the National Book Award twice, once for The Auroras of Autumn (1950) and once for The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (1955), which also won the Pulitzer Prize.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON (1850–1894) was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. He attended the University of Edinburgh where he studied law. He published collections of poetry, short stories and thirteen novels.
ANN TAYLOR (1782–1866) was an English poet and literary critic. She is best remembered as the sister of Jane Taylor and collaborator in “The Star.” Ann Taylor’s poem “The Maniac’s Song” was said to be an unacknowledged source for Keat’s “La Belle Dame sans Merci.”
JANE TAYLOR (1783–1824) was born in London, England. She frequently collaborated with her sister, Ann. She published over eighty poems, one novel, and was a regular contributor to Youth’s Magazine.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770–1850) was born in Cockermouth, England, and educated at St. John’s College, Cambridge. He wrote more than five hundred sonnets. From 1843 to 1850 he was Poet Laureate of England.
JAMES WRIGHT (1927–1980) was born in Martins Ferry, Ohio. He attended Kenyon College and later continued at the University of Washington. His first volume The Green Wall won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. He was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 1971. His Collected Poems (1971) won the Pulitzer Prize.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI (1945–) was born in Lvov, Poland. He was awarded the Bronze Cross of Merit and twice received the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta. In 1992 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. He won the 2004 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and is the second Polish writer to receive the prize, after Czesław Miłosz. In 2015 he received the Heinrich Mann Prize, and in 2016 the Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award.
PERMISSIONS
Repr
inted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux: Excerpt from The Travels of the Last Benjamin of Tudela from The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai by Yehuda Amichai, edited by Robert Alter. Copyright © 2015 by Hana Amichai. Introduction and selection copyright © 2015 by Robert Alter.
“Musée des Beaux Arts” and “Funeral Blues” by W. H. Auden. Copyright © 1940 and renewed 1968 by W. H. Auden; from W. H. Auden Collected Poems by W. H. Auden. Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd.
Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux: Excerpt from “Freshman Blues” from Collected Poems 1937–1971 by John Berryman. Copyright © 1989 by Kate Donahue Berryman.
Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux: “One Art” from The Complete Poems 1927–1979 from Poems by Elizabeth Bishop. Copyright © 2011 by The Alice H. Methfessel Trust. Publisher’s Note and compilation copyright © 2011 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
“Taking the Hands” from Stealing Sugar from the Castle: Selected and New Poems, 1950–2013 by Robert Bly. Copyright © 2013 by Robert Bly. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux: “Song for the Last Act” from The Blue Estuaries by Louise Bogan. Copyright © 1968 by Louise Bogan. Copyright renewed 1996 by Ruth Limmer.
“The Pomegranate” from In a Time of Violence by Eavan Boland. Copyright © 1994 by Eavan Boland. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
“1 January 1965” by Joseph Brodsky. Copyright © 2001 by The Joseph Brodsky Estate, used by permission of The Wylie Agency, LLC. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux: “1 January 1965” translated by Joseph Brodsky from Nativity Poems by Joseph Brodsky. Translation copyright © 1996 by the Estate of Joseph Brodsky.
“We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks. Reprinted by Consent of Brooks Permissions.
“fury” from The Book of Light by Lucille Clifton. Copyright © 1993 by Lucille Clifton. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.
“somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond” by E. E. Cummings. Copyright ©1931, 1959, 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust. Copyright ©1979 by George James Firmage, from Complete Poems 1904–1962 by E. E. Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.
“The Road Not Taken” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” from The Poetry of Robert Frost by Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright © 1923, 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, copyright © 1951 by Robert Frost. Reprinted by arrangement with Henry Holt and Company. All rights reserved.
Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux: “Confession” from A Village Life from POEMS 1962–2012 by Louise Glück. Copyright © 2012 by Louise Glück.
“Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden. Copyright © 1966 by Robert Hayden, from Collected Poems of Robert Hayden, edited by Frederick Glaysher. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.
“I, Too” from The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold Rampersad with David Roessel, Associate Editor. Copyright © 1994 by the Estate of Langston Hughes. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Additional rights by permission of Harold Ober Associates Incorporated. “You and Your Whole Race” previously unpublished, from the Yale Beinecke Library James Weldon Johnson Collection. By permission of Harold Ober Associates Incorporated. Copyright © 2017 by The Estate of Langston Hughes.
“Heat” from The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly: Poems Collected and New by Denis Johnson. Copyright © 1969, 1976, 1982, 1987, 1995 by Denis Johnson. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
“Have You Prayed” from Behind My Eyes by Li-Young Lee. Copyright © 2008 by Li-Young Lee. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux: “Waking in the Blue” from Collected Poems by Robert Lowell. Copyright © 2003 by Harriet Lowell and Sheridan Lowell.
“The Tropics in New York” by Claude McKay. Copyright © 1920 by Claude McKay, used with the permission of the Literary Estate for the Works of Claude McKay.
“Youth” by W. S. Merwin from The Shadow of Sirius. Copyright © 2008 by W. S. Merwin. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org. “Teachers,” collected in The Second Four Books of Poems, and “Youth,” collected in The Shadow of Sirius, by W. S. Merwin. Copyright © by W. S. Merwin, used by permission of The Wylie Agency, LLC.
“What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why” by Edna St. Vincent Millay from Collected Poems. Copyright © 1923, 1951 by Edna St. Vincent Millay and Norma Millay Ellis. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Holly Peppe, Literary Executor, The Millay Society, www.millay.org.
“Ars Poetica?” and “Dedication” from The Collected Poems 1931–1967 by Czesław Miłosz. Copyright © 1988 by Czesław Miłosz Royalties, Inc. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
“The Sisters of Sexual Treasure” from Satan Says, by Sharon Olds. Copyright © 1980. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.
“My Mother’s Feet” from Now That My Father Lies Down Beside Me: New and Selected Poems, 1970–2000 by Stanley Plumly. Copyright © 2000 by Stanley Plumly. Courtesy of Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
“Poppies in October” [12.1.], “Tulips” [63], “Nick and the Candlestick” [42] from The Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath, edited by Ted Hughes. Copyright © 1960, 1965, 1971, 1981 by the Estate of Sylvia Plath. Editorial material copyright © 1981 by Ted Hughes. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
“Diving into the Wreck” by Adrienne Rich. Copyright © 2016 by the Adrienne Rich Literary Trust. Copyright © 1973 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., from Collected Poems 1950–2012 by Adrienne Rich. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
“Childhood” by Rainer Maria Rilke from New Poems, translated by Joseph Cadora. Copyright © 2014 by Joseph Cadora. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.
“My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke. Copyright © 1942 by Hearst Magazines, Inc.; from Collected Poems by Theodore Roethke. Used by permission of Doubleday, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
“The Red Coal” by Gerald Stern. Copyright © 1981 by Gerald Stern, from This Time: New and Selected Poems by Gerald Stern. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
“The Snow Man” from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens by Wallace Stevens. Copyright © 1954 by Wallace Stevens and copyright © renewed 1982 by Holly Stevens. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
“A Blessing” from Above the River: Complete Poems and Selected Prose by James Wright. Copyright © 1990 by Anne Wright. Published by Wesleyan University Press. Used by permission.
Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux: “Try to Praise the Mutilated World” from Without End: New and Selected Poems by Adam Zagajewski translated by several translators. Copyright © 2002 by Adam Zagajewski. Translation copyright © 2002 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not be possible without the encouragement and sensitivity of Peter Borland, my brilliant editor. It began with a conversation about the poems that were crucial to my coming of age and miraculously blossomed into this surprising memoir. Huge gratitude to my friends at Atria: Daniella Wexler, Lisa Sciambra, Hillar
y Tisman, and Judith Curr. Special gratitude to Nancy Palmquist for her friendship, generosity, and discerning eye. I have benefitted tremendously from the insight, brilliance, and implicit trust of my agent Sarah Chalfant, thank you, and special thanks to the remarkable Jacqueline Ko and Jin Auh at the Wylie Agency. My family, Lucas and David, no words can describe my gratitude for your sustaining presence in my life, for understanding my need to put words to paper and for indulging my occasional desire to read poems to you aloud. Finally, I’m grateful to all the poets living and deceased whose work has enriched my life. I hesitate to imagine who I would be without your words.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JILL BIALOSKY is the author of four acclaimed collections of poetry, most recently The Players. Her poems have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Kenyon Review, the Atlantic, and Best American Poetry, among others. She is the author of three novels and a New York Times bestselling memoir, History of a Suicide: My Sister’s Unfinished Life. In 2015, she was honored by the Poetry Society of America for her distinguished contribution to the field. She is an executive editor at W. W. Norton & Company and lives in New York City.
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ALSO BY JILL BIALOSKY
NONFICTION
History of a Suicide
FICTION
The Prize
The Life Room
Poetry Will Save Your Life Page 16