The Penguin Book of American Verse
Page 1
Selected and Introduced by Geoffrey Moore
THE PENGUIN BOOK OF AMERICAN VERSE
Revised Edition
Contents
Introduction
Preface to the Revised Edition
Note on the Text
ANNE BRADSTREET 1612–72
The Author to her Book
The Flesh and the Spirit
From Contemplations
To My Dear and Loving Husband
Some verses upon the burning of our House
MICHAEL WIGGLESWORTH 1631–1705
From The Day of Doom
EDWARD TAYLOR 1645–1729
From Preparatory Meditations, First Series Meditation 38
[When] Let by Rain
Upon a Spider Catching a Fly
Huswifery
PHILIP FRENEAU 1752–1832
The Indian Student
JOEL BARLOW 1754–1812
From The Hasty-Pudding
FRANCIS SCOTT KEY 1779–1843
The Star-Spangled Banner
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 1794–1878
The Prairies
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1803–82
The Rhodora
Each and All
The Problem
The Snow-Storm
Blight
Hamatreya
Days
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 1807–82
In the Churchyard at Cambridge
The Day is Done
The Jewish Cemetery at Newport
Chaucer
The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls
From The Song of Hiawatha Hiawatha’s Departure
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 1807–92
Skipper Ireson’s Ride
Barbara Frietchie
EDGAR ALLAN POE 1809–49
A Dream witn a Dream
To Helen
The City inhe Sea
To One in Padise
The Conquer Worm
Ulalume – A Ballad
Annabel Lee
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 1809–94
From Wind-Clouds and Star-Drifts Manhood
HENRY DAVID THOREAU 1817–62
Great God, I ask Thee for No Meaner Pelf
I am a Parcel of Vain Strivings Tied
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 1819–91
From A Fable for Critics
Emerson
Poe and Longfellow
HERMAN MELVILLE 1819–91
Misgivings
Shiloh
Monody
WALT WHITMAN 1819–92
Song of Myself
From Calamus Scented Herbage of My Breast
From Memories of President Lincoln When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d
Good-bye My Fancy!
EMILY DICKINSON 1830–86
67 ‘Success is counted sweetest’
214 ‘I taste a liquor never brewed’
216 ‘Safe in their Alabaster Chambers’
241 ‘I like a look of Agony’
258 ‘There’s a certain Slant of light’
303 ‘The Soul selects her own Society’
328 ‘A Bird came down the Walk’
341 ‘After great pain, a formal feeling comes’
401 ‘What Soft – Cherubic Creatures’
449 ‘I died for Beauty – but was scarce’
465 ‘I heard a Fly buzz – when I died’
510 ‘It was not Death, for I stood up’
547 ‘I’ve seen a Dying Eye’
585 ‘I like to see it lap the Miles’
640 ‘I cannot live with You’
712 ‘Because I could not stop for Death’
829 ‘Ample make this Bed’
986 ‘A narrow Fellow in the Grass’
1624 ‘Apparently with no surprise’
1732 ‘My life closed twice before its close’
GEORGE A. STRONG 1832–1912
From The Song of Milkanwatha ‘When he killed the Mudjokivis’
FRANCIS BRET HARTE 1836–1902
Plain Language from Truthful James
ANONYMOUS
The Old Chisholm Trail
John Henry
Frankie and Johnny
EDGAR LEE MASTERS 1869–1950
The Hill
Elsa Wertman
Editor Whedon
‘Butch’ Weldy
EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON 1869–1935
Reuben Bright
Miniver Cheevy
Richard Cory
Eros Turannos
Mr Flood’s Party
STEPHEN CRANE 1871–1900
From The Black Riders
III ‘In the desert’
From War is Kind
XII ‘A newspaper is a collection of half-injustices’
AMY LOWELL 1874–1925
Meeting-House Hill
ANONYMOUS
‘I sometimes think I’d rather crow’
ROBERT FROST 1874–1963
Mending Wall
The Death of the Hired Man
After Apple-Picking
‘Out, Out – ’
For Once, Then, Something
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Bereft
Acquainted with the Night
Neither Out Far Nor In Deep
Provide, Provide
Design
Desert Places
The Most of It
DON MARQUIS 1878–1937
pete the parrot and shakespeare
CARL SANDBURG 1878–1967
Limited
From The People, Yes The Copperfaces, the Red Men
VACHEL LINDSAY 1879–1931
Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan
WALLACE STEVENS 1879–1955
A High-Toned Old Christian Woman
Sunday Morning
Le Monocle de Mon Oncle
Disillusionment of Ten o’Clock
Sad Strains of a Gay Waltz
The Idea of Order at Key West
Credences of Summer
The World as Meditation
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 1883–1963
From Al Que Quiere! Spring Strains
Overture to a Dance of Locomotives
Spring and All
The Red Wheelbarrow
Poem
This Is Just to Say
To a Poor Old Woman
The Term
Philomena Andronico
From Paterson
The Falls
Episode 17 (‘Beat hell out of it’)
The Dance
The Ivy Crown
EZRA POUND 1885–1972
The Seafarer
The Garden
A Pact
The Temperaments
In a Station of the Metro
Alba
The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter
To-Em-Mei’s ‘The Unmoving Cloud’
Provincia Deserta
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
Canto I
Canto LI
H. D.1886–1961
Oread
Heat
At Baia
Helen
ROBINSON JEFFERS 1887–1962
Shine, Perishing Republic
Hurt Hawks
The Eye
MARIANNE MOORE 1887–1972
The Fish
Poetry
Critics and Connoisseurs
Spenser’s Ireland
Tom Fool at Jamaica
When I Buy Pictures
T. S. ELIOT 1888–1965
The Love Song of J. Alfred I ufrock
Preludes
Whispers of Immortality
JOHN CROWE RANSOM 1888–1974
<
br /> Here Lies a Lady
Captain Carpenter
Antique Harvesters
EDNA ST VINCENT MILLAY 1892–1950
‘What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why’
‘Hearing your words, and not a word among them’
ARCHIBALD MACLEISH 1892–1982
Ars Poetica
The End of the World
E. E. CUMMINGS 1894–1962
‘injust –’
‘Buffalo Bill’s’
Poem, or Beauty Hurts Mr Vinal
‘she being Brand’
‘my sweet old etcetera’
‘this little bride & groom are’
‘anyone lived in a pretty how town’
‘my father moved through dooms of love’
‘ygUDuh’
‘plato told’
‘i thank You God for most this amazing’
‘the little horse is newlY’
CHARLES REZNIKOFF 1894–1976
From Testimony
HART CRANE 1899–1932
Voyages
From The Bridge Proem: To Brooklyn Bridge
The River
ERNEST HEMINGWAY 1899–1961
Oklahoma
The Ernest Liberal’s Lament
The Age Demanded
ALLEN TATE 1899–1979
Ode to the Confederate Dead
KENNETH FEARING 1902–61
Dirge
LANGSTON HUGHES 1902–67
The Weary Blues
Brass Spittoons
Theme for English B
OGDEN NASH 1902–71
You Bet Travel is Broadening
Very Like a Whale
COUNTEE CULLEN 1903–46
Heritage
LOUIS ZUKOFSKY 1904–78
All of December Toward New Year’s
Catullus viii
RICHARD EBERHART 1904–2005
The Groundhog
The Fury of Aerial Bombardment
KENNETH REXROTH 1905–82
The Bad Old Days
ROBERT PENN WARREN 1905–89
Revelation
From Promises VIII Founding Fathers, Nineteenth-Century Style, Southeast U.S.A.
THEODORE ROETHKE 1908–63
Dolor
The Waking
Meditation at Oyster River
CHARLES OLSON 1910–70
I, Maximus of Gloucester, to You
ELIZABETH BISHOP 1911–79
The Prodigal
First Death in Nova Scotia
In the Waiting Room
DELMORE SCHWARTZ 1913–66
The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me
KARL SHAPIRO 1913–2000
Buick
Auto Wreck
RANDALL JARRELL 1914–65
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
Thinking of the Lost World
JOHN BERRYMAN 1914–72
From The Dream Songs
4 ‘Filling her compact & delicious body’
14 ‘Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so’
15 ‘Let us suppose, valleys & such ago’
29 ‘There sat down, once, a thing on Henry’s heart’
63 ‘Bats have no bankers and they do not drink’
67 ‘I don’t operate often. When I do’
380 From the French Hospital in New York, 901
Olympus
Henry’s Fate
ROBERT LOWELL 1917–77
The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket
Sailing Home from Rapallo
Waking in the Blue
Memories of West Street and Lepke
Skunk Hour
For the Union Dead
T. S. Eliot
Ezra Pound
GWENDOLYN BROOKS 1917–2000
The Lovers of the Poor
ROBERT DUNCAN 1919–88
Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow
Poetry, a Natural Thing
LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI 1919–
From A Coney bland of the Mind
REED WHITTEMORE 1919–
Clamming
Our Ruins
CHARLES BUKOWSKI 1920–94
don’t come round but if you do …
no lady godiva
something for the touts …
the catch
HOWARD NEMEROV 1920–91
Make Love Not War
RICHARD WILBUR 1921–
Still, Citizen Sparrow
Love Calls Us to the Things of This World
Pangloss’s Song: A Comic-Opera Lyric
On the Marginal Way
ALAN DUGAN 1923–2003
Love Song: I and Thou
Fabrication of Ancestors
ANTHONY HECHT 1923–2004
Japan
DENISE LEVERTOV 1923–1997
O Taste and See
What Wild Dawns There Were
The Malice of Innocence
KENNETH KOCH 1925–2002
Mending Sump
You Were Wearing
FRANK O’HARA 1926–66
To the Film Industry in Crisis
The Day Lady Died
Why I am not a Painter
Ave Maria
A. R. AMMONS 1926–2001
Coon Song
Corsons Inlet
ROBERT BLY 1926–
The Executive’s Death
Waking from Sleep
ROBERT CREELEY 1926–2005
I Know a Man
The Operation
The Whip
The Rain
Something
‘I Keep to Myself Such Measures …’
The Rhythm
Morning (8:10 a.m.)
Blue Skies Motel
ALLEN GINSBERG 1926–97
From Howl
A Supermarket in California
America
Death to Van Gogh’s Ear!
Death News
A Vow
Mugging
JAMES MERRILL 1926–1995
The Broken Home
W. D. SNODGRASS 1926–2009
From Heart’s Needle
JOHN ASHBERY 1927–
‘How Much Longer Will I Be Able to Inhabit the Divine Sepulcher …’
Bird’s-Eye View of the Tool and Die Co.
Here Everything is Still Floating
Joe Leviathan
W. S. MERWIN 1927–
The Child
JAMES WRIGHT 1927–80
A Blessing
ANNE SEXTON 1928–74
Unknown Girl in the Maternity Ward
All My Pretty Ones
EDWARD DORN 1929–1999
From Slinger, Book 1
ADRIENNE RICH 1929–
Diving into the Wreck
Rape
Toward the Solstice
GREGORY CORSO 1930–2001
Marriage
GARY SNYDER 1930–
A Walk
Things to Do Around a Lookout
Vapor Trails
I Went into the Maverick Bar
SYLVIA PLATH 1932–63
The Colossus
Lady Lazarus
Daddy
The Applicant
The Arrival of the Bee Box
Blackberrying
ETHERIDGE KNIGHT 1933–1991
Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane
IMAMU AMIRI BARAKA (LEROI JONES) 1934–
Horatio Alger Uses Scag
At the National Black Assembly
RICHARD EMIL BRAUN 1934–
Goose
ROBERT MEZEY 1935–
My Mother
SONIA SANCHEZ 1935–
TCB
Right on: white america
DIANE WAKOSKI 1937–
The Father of My Country
CHARLES SIMIC 1938–
Poem without a Title
Brooms
HAKI R. MADHUBUTI (DON L. LEE) 1942–
But He Was C
ool or: He Even Stopped for Green Lights
ALTA 1942–
I Never Saw a Man in a Negligee
I Don’t Have No Bunny Tail on My Behind
NIKKI GIOVANNI 1943–
Nikki-Rosa
Woman Poem
JAMES TATE 1943–
The Blue Booby
AI (FLORENCE OGAWA) 1947–2010
Woman
The Sweet
Select Bibliography of Poetry and Criticism
General Works of Criticism
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
PENGUIN BOOKS
THE PENGUIN BOOK OF AMERICAN VERSE
Geoffrey Moore was born in London in 1920. After war service in the RAF he read English at Cambridge. His career as an academic included appointments at the Universities of Wisconsin, Tulane, Kansas, Harvard, New Mexico and Southern California. For four years he ran a weekly arts discussion programme from Station WHA, Madison and, subsequently, WNOE, New Orleans. Back in England, he edited BBC TV’s Weekend Magazine and worked as a producer for Television Talks. In 1955 he was appointed to the first full-time lectureship in American literature at a British University (Manchester). In 1962 he founded the Department of American Studies at the University of Hull, where for twenty years he was Head of Department and Professor of American Literature. From 1976 to 1994 he was a regular reviewer for the Weekend Financial Times. From 1986 he edited and introduced eleven volumes of selected verse by English and American poets. His other publications include Poetry from Cambridge, Poetry Today, American Literature and the American Imagination, American Literature and numerous articles and reviews. He edited Roderick Hudson, Daisy Miller and The Portrait of a Lady for Penguin Classics and was General Editor for the works of Henry James in that series. He died in 1999.
Introduction
For The Penguin Book of Modern American Verse, published in 1954, I selected fifty-eight poets to represent the period between Emily Dickinson and W. S. Merwin. In this anthology the number is over a hundred, and the period spanned has been enlarged to include the major poets of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as well as the twentieth.
The aim of the earlier book was to introduce to the general public in the United Kingdom the wide variety of American poetic talent in the first half of the twentieth century. This time, however, I felt that a different kind of collection was called for – one which would not only cover the whole of American verse from its beginnings but also pay special attention to the extraordinarily vital period which has elapsed since the early fifties.
No anthology can be ideal. It is not possible to include everyone; it is certainly not possible to include all the poems one might wish. The economics of the market: restrictions on length, amount available for permissions fees, cooperation or non-cooperation of the poet or his publisher – all these things, at least partly, dictate the shape of an anthology. Within these limits, however, it is a reflection of the editor’s critical judgement, and the selection both of poets and of poems must stand or fall on its own merit. Nevertheless, the reader may be interested in the principles behind this selection.