An Introduction to Poetry

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Written by two reknowned poets, this book is an attempt to provide the reader with a compact introduction to the study and appreciation of poetry. Kennedy/Gioia'sAn Introduction to Poetry,13 th edition continues to inspire readers with a rich collection of poems and engaging insights on reading, analyzing, and writing about poetry. Exclusive conversation between Dana Gioia and U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan, offer readers an insiderrs"s look into the importance of literature and reading in the life of this poet. More than 50 new selections-from a wonderful range of poets including Kevin Young, Bettie Sellers, Mary Oliver, David Lehman, Constantine Cavafy, Rainer Maria Rilke, Anne Stevenson, James Weldon Johnson, Alice Fulton, Jimmy Baca, Rita Dove, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Lorine Niedecker, among others. For everyone that delights in the study of poetry.

X. J. Kennedy , after graduation from Seton Hall and Columbia, became a journalist second class in the Navy (“Actually, I was pretty eighth class”). His poems, some published in the New Yorker, were first collected in Nude Descending a Staircase (1961). Since then he has written six more collections, several widely adopted literature and writing textbooks, and seventeen books for children, including two novels. He has taught at Michigan, North Carolina (Greensboro), California (Irvine), Wellesley, Tufts, and Leeds. Cited in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations and reprinted in some 200 anthologies, his verse has brought him a Guggenheim fellowship, a Lamont Award, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, an award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, an Aiken-Taylor prize, the Robert Frost Medal of the Poetry Society of America, and the Award for Poetry for Children from the National Council of Teachers of English. He now lives in Lexington, Massachusetts, where he and his wife Dorothy have collaborated on four books and five children.

 

Dana Gioia is a poet, critic, and teacher. Born in Los Angeles of Italian and Mexican ancestry, he attended Stanford and Harvard before taking a detour into business. (“Not many poets have a Stanford M.B.A., thank goodness!”) After years of writing and reading late in the evenings after work, he quit a vice presidency to write and teach. He has published three collections of poetry, Daily Horoscope (1986), The Gods of Winter (1991), and Interrogations at Noon (2001), which won the American Book Award; an opera libretto, Nosferatu (2001); and three critical volumes, including Can Poetry Matter? (1992), an influential study of poetry’s place in contemporary America. Gioia has taught at Johns Hopkins, Sarah Lawrence, Wesleyan (Connecticut), Mercer, and Colorado College.

 

He is also the co-founder of the summer poetry conference at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. From 2003-2009 he served as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. At the NEA he created the largest literary programs in federal history, including Shakespeare in American Communities and Poetry Out Loud, the national high school poetry recitation contest. He also led the campaign to restore active and engaged literary reading by creating The Big Read, which has helped reverse a quarter century of decline in U.S. reading. He currently divides his time between Washington, D.C. and Santa Rosa, California, living with his wife Mary, their two sons, and two uncontrollable cats.

 

 

**Indicates new selection

 

Poetry

 

Interview with Kay Ryan

 

1. Reading a Poem  

Poetry or Verse

Reading a Poem

Paraphrase

 William Butler Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innisfree  

Lyric Poetry  

  Robert Hayden, Those Winter Sundays  

Adrienne Rich, Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers  

Narrative Poetry  

 Anonymous, Sir Patrick Spence  

 Robert Frost, “Out, Out–”  

 Dramatic Poetry  

 Robert Browning, My Last Duchess  

Didactic Poetry

 Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing  

 Adrienne Rich, Recalling “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers”  

Thinking About Paraphrase  

 William Stafford, Ask Me  

 William Stafford, A Paraphrase of “Ask Me”  

Checklist: Writing a Paraphrase

Writing Assignment on Paraphrasing  

More Topics for Writing

Terms for Review

 

2. Listening to a Voice

 Tone  

 Theodore Roethke, My Papa’s Waltz  

 Countee Cullen, For a Lady I Know  

 Anne Bradstreet, The Author to Her Book  

 Walt Whitman, To a Locomotive in Winter  

 Emily Dickinson, I like to see it lap the Miles  

 ** Kevin Young, Doo Wop

 Weldon Kees, For My Daughter  

The Person in the Poem  

 Natasha Trethewey, White Lies  

 Edwin Arlington Robinson, Luke Havergal  

 Ted Hughes, Hawk Roosting  

 Suji Kwock Kim, Monologue for an Onion  

 William Wordsworth, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud  

 Dorothy Wordsworth, Journal Entry  

 James Stephens, A Glass of Beer  

 Anne Sexton, Her Kind  

 William Carlos Williams, The Red Wheelbarrow  

Irony  

 Robert Creeley, Oh No  

 W. H. Auden, The Unknown Citizen  

 Sharon Olds, Rites of Passage

 ** Rod Taylor, Dakota: October, 1822: Hunkpapa Warrior

 Sarah N. Cleghorn, The Golf Links  

 Edna St. Vincent Millay, Second Fig  

 ** Dorothy Parker, Comment

 ** Bob Hicok, Making It In Poetry

 Thomas Hardy, The Workbox  

For Review and Further Study  

 William Blake, The Chimney Sweeper  

 ** Erich Fried, The Measures Taken 

 William Stafford, At the Un-National Monument Along the Canadian Border  

 Richard Lovelace, To Lucasta  

 Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum Est  

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing  

 Wilfred Owen, War Poetry  

Thinking About Tone

Checklist: Writing about Tone  

Writing Assignment on Tone  

 Student Paper, Word Choice, Tone, and Point of View in Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz”  

More Topics for Writing

Terms for Review

  

3. Words  

Literal Meaning: What a Poem Says First  

 William Carlos Williams, This Is Just to Say  

Diction  

 Marianne Moore, Silence  

 Robert Graves, Down, Wanton, Down!  

 John Donne, Batter my heart, three-personed God, for You 

The Value of a Dictionary  

 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Aftermath  

 ** Kay Ryan, Chemise

 J. V. Cunningham, Friend, on this scaffold Thomas More lies dead  

 Carl Sandburg, Grass

 ** Dan Anderson, Dog Haiku

Word Choice and Word Order

 Robert Herrick, Upon Julia’s Clothes  

 ** Robert Burns, Auld Lang Syne

 Kay Ryan, Blandeur  

 Thomas Hardy, The Ruined Maid  

 Richard Eberhart, The Fury of Aerial Bombardment  

 Wendy Cope, Lonely Hearts  

For Review and Further Study  

 E. E. Cummings, anyone lived in a pretty how town  

 Billy Collins, The Names  

 ** Charles Bukowski, Dostoevsky

 Anonymous, Carnation Milk  

 Gina Valdés, English con Salsa  

 Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky  

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing  

 Lewis Carroll, Humpty Dumpty Explicates “Jabberwocky”  

Thinking About Diction  

Checklist: Writing About diction

Writing Assignment on Word Choice  

More Topics for Writing

Terms for Review

  

4. Saying and Suggesting  

Denotation and Connotation

 John Masefield, Cargoes  

 William Blake, London  

 Wallace Stevens, Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock  

 Gwendolyn Brooks, Southeast Corner  

 Timothy Steele, Epitaph  

 E. E. Cummings, next to of course god america i  

 Robert Frost, Fire and Ice  

 ** Diane Thiel, The Minefield  

 ** Ron Rash, The Day the Gates Closed  

 Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Tears, Idle Tears  

 Richard Wilbur, Love Calls Us to the Things of This World  

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing  

 Richard Wilbur, Concerning “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World”  

Thinking About Denotation and Connotation  

Checklist: writing about What a Poem SAYS AND Suggests  

Writing Assignment on Denotation and Connotation  

More Topics for Writing

Terms for Review

   

5. Imagery  

 Ezra Pound, In a Station of the Metro  

 Taniguchi Buson, The Piercing Chill I Feel

Imagery

 T. S. Eliot, The Winter Evening Settles Down 

 Theodore Roethke, Root Cellar  

 Elizabeth Bishop, The Fish  

 ** Rainer Maria Rilke, The Panther

 Charles Simic, Fork  

 Emily Dickinson, A Route of Evanescence  

 Jean Toomer, Reapers  

 Gerard Manley Hopkins, Pied Beauty  

About Haiku  

 Arakida Moritake, The falling flower  

 Matsuo Basho, Heat-lightning streak  

 Matsuo Basho, In the old stone pool  

 Taniguchi Buson, On the one-ton temple bell  

 ** Taniguchi Buson, Moonrise on mudflats

 Kobayashi Issa, Only One Guy  

 Kobayashi Issa, Cricket  

Haiku from Japanese Internment Camps  

 ** Suiko Matsushita, Cosmos in Bloom  

 ** Neiji Ozawa, The War–This Year

 Hakuro Wada, Even the Croaking of Frogs 

Contemporary Haiku  

 Etheridge Knightn Making jazz swing in

 Lee Gurga, Visitor’s Room

 Penny Harter, broken bowl

 Jennifer Brutschy, Born Again

 John Ridland, The Lazy Man’s Haiku

 Garry Gay, Hole in the Ozone

For Review and Further Study  

 John Keats, Bright star! Would I Were Steadfast as Thou Art  

 Walt Whitman, The Runner  

 T. E. Hulme, Image  

 William Carlos Williams, El Hombre  

 Robert Bly, Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter  

 ** Paul Goodman, Birthday Cake

 Louise Glück, Mock Orange  

 Billy Collins, Embrace  

   ** Kevin Prufer, Pause, Pause

 Stevie Smith, Not Waving but Drowning  

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing  

 Ezra Pound, The Image  

 Thinking About Imagery  

Checklist: Writing about Imagery  

Writing Assignment on Imagery  

 Student Paper, FADED BEAUTY: Elizabeth Bishop’s Use of Imagery in “The Fish”  

More Topics for Writing

Terms for Review

 

6. Figures of Speech  

Why Speak Figuratively?  

 Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Eagle  

 William Shakespeare, Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?  

 Howard Moss, Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?  

Metaphor and Simile  

 Emily Dickinson, My Life had stood — a Loaded Gun  

 Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Flower in the Crannied Wall  

 William Blake, To see a world in a grain of sand  

 Sylvia Plath, Metaphors  

 N. Scott Momaday, Simile  

 Emily Dickinson, It dropped so low — in my Regard  

 ** Jill Alexander Essbaum, The Heart  

 Craig Raine, A Martian Sends a Postcard Home  

Other Figures of Speech  

 James Stephens, The Wind  

 Margaret Atwood, You fit into me  

 George Herbert, The Pulley  

 Dana Gioia, Money  

 Charles Simic, My Shoes

 ** Carl Sandburg, Fog  

For Review and Further Study  

 Robert Frost, The Silken Tent  

 Jane Kenyon, The Suitor  

 Robert Frost, The Secret Sits  

 A. R. Ammons, Coward  

 Kay Ryan, Turtle  

 ** Anne Stevenson, The Demolition  

 Robinson Jeffers, Hands  

 Robert Burns, Oh, my love is like a red, red rose  

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing  

 Robert Frost, The Importance of Poetic Metaphor  

Thinking About Metaphors  

Checklist: Writing About Metaphors  

Writing Assignment on Figures of Speech  

More Topics for Writing

Terms for Review

  

7. Song  

Singing and Saying  

 Ben Jonson, To Celia  

 ** James Weldon Johnson, Since You Went Away

 William Shakespeare, O mistress mine  

 Edwin Arlington Robinson, Richard Cory  

 Paul Simon, Richard Cory  

Ballads  

 Anonymous, Bonny Barbara Allan  

 Dudley Randall, Ballad of Birmingham  

Blues  

 Bessie Smith with Clarence Williams, Jailhouse Blues  

 W. H. Auden, Funeral Blues  

 ** Kevin Young, Late Blues

Rap  

 Run D.M.C., from Peter Piper  

For Review and Further Study  

 John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Eleanor Rigby  

 Bob Dylan, The Times They Are a-Changin’  

 Aimee Mann, Deathly  

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing  

 Paul McCartney, Creating “Eleanor Rigby”  

Thinking About Poetry and Song

Checklist: Writing About Song Lyrics 

Writing Assignment on Song Lyrics  

More Topics for Writing

Terms for Review

  

8. Sound  

Sound as Meaning  

 Alexander Pope, True Ease in Writing comes from Art, not Chance  

 William Butler Yeats, Who Goes with Fergus?  

 John Updike, Recital  

 William Wordsworth, A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal  

 Emanuel di Pasquale, Rain  

 Aphra Behn, When maidens are young  

Alliteration and Assonance  

 A. E. Housman, Eight O’Clock  

 James Joyce, All day I hear  

 Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Splendor Falls on Castle Walls  

Rime  

 William Cole, On my boat on Lake Cayuga  

 Hilaire Belloc, The Hippopotamus  

 Ogden Nash, The Panther  

 William Butler Yeats, Leda and the Swan  

 Gerard Manley Hopkins, God’s Grandeur  

 ** William Jay Smith, A Note on the Vanity Dresser 

 Robert Frost, Desert Places  

Reading and Hearing Poems Aloud  

 Michael Stillman, In Memoriam John Coltrane  

 William Shakespeare, Full fathom five thy father lies  

 T. S. Eliot, Virginia  

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing  

 T. S. Eliot, The Music of Poetry  

Thinking About a Poem's Sound 

Checklist: Writing About a Poem’s Sound  

Writing Assignment on Sound  

More Topics for Writing

Terms for Review

  

9. Rhythm  

Stresses and Pauses  

 Gwendolyn Brooks, We Real Cool  

 Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Break, Break, Break  

 Ben Jonson, Slow, Slow, Fresh Fount, Keep Time With My Salt Tears  

 Dorothy Parker, Résumé  

Meter  

 Edna St. Vincent Millay, Counting-out Rhyme  

 Jacqueline Osherow, Song for the Music in the Warsaw Ghetto  

 A. E. Housman, When I was one-and-twenty  

 William Carlos Williams, Smell!  

 Walt Whitman, Beat! Beat! Drums!  

 David Mason, Song of the Powers  

 Langston Hughes, Dream Boogie  

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing  

 Gwendolyn Brooks, Hearing “We Real Cool”  

Thinking About Rhythm  

Checklist: Scanning a Poem

Writing Assignment on Rhythm  

More Topics for Writing

Terms for Review

  

10. Closed Form  

Formal Patterns  

 John Keats, This living hand, now warm and capable  

 Robert Graves, Counting the Beats  

 John Donne, Song (“Go and Catch a Falling Star”)  

 Phillis Levin, Brief Bio  

The Sonnet  

 William Shakespeare, Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds

 Michael Drayton, Since There's No Help, Come Let Us Kiss and Part

 Edna St. Vincent Millay, What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why  

 Robert Frost, Acquainted with the Night  

 ** William Meredith, The Illiterate

 Kim Addonizio, First Poem for You  

 ** Mark Jarman, Unholy  Sonnet: After the Praying

 A. E. Stallings, Sine Qua Non  

 R. S. Gwynn, Shakespearean Sonnet  

The Epigram  

 Alexander Pope, Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog

 Sir John Harrington, Of Treason

 Robert Herrick, Moderation

 William Blake, Her Whole Life Is An Epigram

 E. E. Cummings, a politician

 Langston Hughes, Prayer

 J. V. Cunningham, This Humanist

 John Frederick Nims, Contemplation

 Brad Leithauser, A Venus Flytrap

 Dick Davis, Fatherhood

 Anonymous, Epitaph of a Dentist

 Hilaire Belloc, Fatigue

 Wendy Cope, Variation on Belloc’s “Fatigue”

 Other Forms  

 Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night  

 Robert Bridges, Triolet  

 Elizabeth Bishop, Sestina  

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing  

 A. E. Stallings, On Form and Artifice  

Thinking About a Sonnet  

Checklist: Writing About a Sonnet

Writing Assignment on a Sonnet  

More Topics for Writing

Terms for Review

  

11. Open Form  

 Denise Levertov, Ancient Stairway  

 E. E. Cummings, Buffalo Bill ’s  

 W. S. Merwin, For the Anniversary of My Death  

 William Carlos Williams, The Dance  

 Stephen Crane, The Heart  

 Walt Whitman, Cavalry Crossing a Ford  

 Ezra Pound, Salutation  

 Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird  

Prose Poetry  

 Carolyn Forché, The Colonel  

 Charles Simic, The Magic Study of Happiness  

Visual Poetry  

 George Herbert, Easter Wings  

 John Hollander, Swan and Shadow  

 ** Richard Kostelanetz, Simultaneous Translations

 Dorthi Charles, Concrete Cat  

Seeing the Logic of Open Form Verse  

 E. E. Cummings, in Just-  

 ** A. E. Stallings, First Love: A Quiz

 ** David Lehman, Radio

 Carole Satyamurti, I Shall Paint My Nails Red  

 ** Alice Fulton, What I Like  

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing  

 Walt Whitman, The Poetry of the Future  

Thinking About Free Verse  

Checklist: Writing about free verse  

Writing Assignment on Open Form  

More Topics for Writing

Terms for Review

  

12. Symbol  

 T. S. Eliot, The Boston Evening Transcript  

 Emily Dickinson, The Lightning is a yellow Fork  

 Thomas Hardy, Neutral Tones  

 Matthew 13:24-30, The Parable of the Good Seed  

 George Herbert, The World  

 Edwin Markham, Outwitted   

 Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken  

 Christina Rossetti, Uphill  

For Review and Further Study

 William Carlos Williams, The Term  

 Ted Kooser, Carrie  

 ** Mary Oliver, Wild Geese

Lorine Niedecker, Popcorn-can cover  

 ** Wallace Stevens, The Snow Man

 Wallace Stevens, Anecdote of the Jar  

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing  

William Butler Yeats, Poetic Symbols  

Thinking About Symbols  

Checklist: Writing About Symbols  

Writing Assignment on Symbolism  

More Topics for Writing

Terms for Review

  

13. Myth and Narrative  

 Robert Frost, Nothing Gold Can.

 William Wordsworth, The world is too much with us  

 H. D., Helen  

 ** Constantine Cavafy, IThaca  

Archetype  

 Louise Bogan, Medusa  

 John Keats, La Belle Dame sans Merci  

Personal Myth  

 William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming  

 Gregory Orr, Two Lines from the Brothers Grimm  

Myth and Popular Culture  

 Charles Martin, Taken Up  

 Andrea Hollander Budy, Snow White  

 Anne Sexton, Cinderella  

Writing Effectively  

Writers on Writing  

 Anne Sexton, Transforming Fairy Tales  

Thinking About Myth

Checklist: Writing About Myth  

Writing Assignment on Myth  

 Student Paper, The Bonds Between Love and Hatred in H. D.’s “Helen”  

More Topics for Writing

Terms for Review

  

14. Poetry and Personal Identity  

 Sylvia Plath, Lady Lazarus  

 Rhina Espaillat, Bilingual/Bilingüe  

 Culture, Race, and Ethnicity  

 Claude McKay, America  

 Samuel Menashe, The Shrine Whose Shape I Am  

 Francisco X. Alarcón, The X in My Name  

 Judith Ortiz Cofer, Quiñceañera  

 ** Sherman Alexie, The Powwow at the End of the World

 Yusef Komunyakaa, Facing It  

Gender  

 Anne Stevenson, Sous-Entendu  

 ** Bettie Sellers, In the Counselor's Waiting room

 Donald Justice, Men at Forty  

 Adrienne Rich, Women  

For Review and Further Study  

 Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Learning to Love America  

 Philip Larkin, Aubade  

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing  

 Rhina Espaillat, Being a Bilingual Writer  

Thinking About Poetry of Personal Identity  

Checklist:  Writing About Voice and Personal Identity

Writing Assignment on Personal Identity  

More Topics for Writing

  

15. Translation  

Is Poetic Translation Possible?  

World Poetry  

 Li Po, Moon-Beneath Alone Drink (literal translation)  

 Translated by Arthur Waley, Drinking Alone by Moonlight  

Comparing Translations  

 Horace, “Carpe Diem” Ode (Latin text)  

 Horace, Seize the Day (literal translation)  

 Translated by Edwin Arlington Robinson, Horace to Leuconoe  

 Translated by James Michie, Don’t Ask  

 Translated by A. E. Stallings, A New Year’s Toast  

 Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyati

 ** Translated by Edward FitzGerald, XII: A Book of Verses Underneath the Bough  

 ** Translated by Edward FitzGerald, VII: Come, Fill the Cup

 ** Translated by Edward FitzGerald, XIII: Some for the Glories of this World

 ** Translated by Edward FitzGerald, XXIV: Ah, Make the Most of What We Yet May Spend

 ** Translated by Edward FitzGerald, LXXI: The Moving Finger writes

 ** Translated by Edward FitzGerald, XCIX: Ah Love! Could You and I with Him Conspire

Parody  

 Anonymous, We four lads from Liverpool are  

 Hugh Kingsmill, What, still alive at twenty-two?  

 ** Stanley J. Sharpless, How Do I Hate You?  Let Me Count the Ways

 Gene Fehler, If Richard Lovelace Became a Free Agent  

 Aaron Abeyta, thirteen ways of looking at a tortilla  

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing  

Arthur Waley, The Method of Translation  

Thinking About a Parody  

Checklist: Writing About a Parody 

Writing Assignment on Parody  

More Topics for Writing  

 

16. Poetry in Spanish: Literature of Latin America  

 Sor Juana, Presente en que el Cariño Hace Regalo la Llaneza  

 Translated by Diane Thiel, A Simple Gift Made Rich by Affection  

 Pablo Neruda, Muchos Somos  

 Translated by Alastair Reid, We Are Many  

 Jorge Luis Borges, Amorosa Anticipación  

 Translated by Robert Fitzgerald, Anticipation of Love  

 Octavio Paz, Con los ojos cerrados  

 Translated by Eliot Weinberger, With Eyes Closed

Surrealism in Latin American Poetry  

 Frida Kahlo, The Two Fridas  

 César Vallejo, La cólera que quiebra al hombre en niños  

 Translated by Thomas Merton, Anger  

Contemporary Mexican Poetry  

 José Emilio Pacheco, Alta Traición  

 Translated by Alastair Reid, High Treason  

 Tedi López Mills, Convalecencia  

 Translated by Cheryl Clark, Convalescence  

 ** Francisco Segovia, Cada árbol en Su Sombra

 Translated by Don Share with César Perez, Every Tree in Its Shadow

Writers on Translating  

 Alastair Reid, Translating Neruda  

Writing Assignment on Spanish Poetry  

More Topics for Writing  

 

17. Recognizing Excellence  

 Anonymous, O Moon, when I gaze on thy beautiful face  

 Emily Dickinson, A Dying Tiger — moaned for Drink  

 Rod McKuen, Thoughts on Capital Punishment  

 William Stafford, Traveling Through the Dark  

 ** Dylan Thomas, In My Craft or Sullen Art  

Recognizing Excellence  

 William Butler Yeats, Sailing to Byzantium  

 Arthur Guiterman, On the Vanity of Earthly Greatness  

 Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias  

 Robert Hayden, The Whipping  

 Elizabeth Bishop, One Art  

 W. H. Auden, September 1, 1939  

 Walt Whitman, O Captain! My Captain!  

 Paul Laurence Dunbar, We Wear the Mask  

 Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus  

 Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee  

Writing Effectively

Writers on Writing  

 Edgar Allan Poe, A Long Poem Does Not Exist  

Thinking About an Evaluation  

Checklist: Writing an Evaluation 

Writing Assignment on Evaluating a Poem  

More Topics for Writing  

 

18. What Is Poetry?  

 Archibald MacLeish, Ars Poetica 

 Dante, Samuel Johnson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Thomas Carlyle, Thomas Hardy, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Mina Loy, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, J. V. Cunningham, **José Garcia Villa, **Christopher Fry, Elizabeth Bishop, **Joy Harjo, Jorge Luis Borges, Octavio Paz, William Stafford, **Charles Simi , Some Definitions of Poetry  —

 Ha Jin, Missed Time  

 

19. Two Critical Casebooks
Emily Dickinson and Langston Hughes  

 

Emily Dickinson  

 Success is counted sweetest  

 Wild Nights — Wild Nights!  

 ** There’s a certain Slant of light

 I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain  

 I’m Nobody! Who are you?  

 The Soul selects her own Society  

 Some keep the Sabbath going to Church  

 After great pain, a formal feeling comes  

 ** Much Madness is divinest Sense

 This is my letter to the World  

 I heard a Fly buzz — when I died  

 I started Early — Took my Dog  

 Because I could not stop for Death  

 The Bustle in a House  

 Tell all the Truth but tell it slant  

Emily Dickinson on Emily Dickinson

 Recognizing Poetry  

 Self-Description  

Critics on Emily Dickinson  

 Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Meeting Emily Dickinson  

 Thomas H. Johnson, The Discovery of Emily Dickinson’s Manuscripts  

 Richard Wilbur, The Three Privations of Emily Dickinson  

 Cynthia Griffin Wolff, Dickinson and Death (A Reading of “Because I could not stop for Death”)  

 Judith Farr, A Reading of “My Life had stood — a Loaded Gun”  

 

Langston Hughes  

 The Negro Speaks of Rivers  

 ** My People

  Mother to Son  

 Dream Variations  

 I, Too  

 The Weary Blues  

 Song for a Dark Girl  

 Prayer  

 Ballad of the Landlord  

 End  

 Theme for English B  

 Subway Rush Hour  

 Harlem [Dream Deferred]  

 ** Homecoming

 As Befits a Man  

Langston Hughes on Langston Hughes

 The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain  

 The Harlem Renaissance  

Critics on Langston Hughes

 Arnold Rampersad, Hughes as an Experimentalist  

 Rita Dove and Marilyn Nelson, Langston Hughes and Harlem  

 Darryl Pinckney, Black Identity in Langston Hughes  

 Peter Townsend, Langston Hughes and Jazz  

 Onwuchekwa Jemie, A Reading of “Dream Deferred”  

Topics for Writing About Emily Dickinson  

Topics for Writing About Langston Hughes  

 

20. Critical Casebook: T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”  

T. S. Eliot  

 The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock  

Publishing “Prufrock”

The Reviewers on Prufrock  

 Unsigned, Review from Times Literary Supplement  

 Unsigned, Review from Literary World  

 Unsigned, Review from New Statesman  

 Conrad Aiken, From “Divers Realists,” The Dial  

 Babette Deutsch, from “Another Impressionist,” The New Republic  

 Marianne Moore, From “A Note on T. S. Eliot’s Book,”  Poetry  

 May Sinclair, From “Prufrock and Other Observations: A Criticism,” The Little Review  

T. S. Eliot on Writing

 Poetry and Emotion  

 The Objective Correlative  

 The Difficulty of Poetry  

Critics on “Prufrock”

 Denis Donoghue, One of the Irrefutable Poets  

 Christopher Ricks, What’s in a Name?  

 Philip R. Headings, The Pronouns in the Poem: “One,” “You,” and “I”  

 Maud Ellmann, Will There Be Time?  

 Burton Raffel, “Indeterminacy” in Eliot’s Poetry  

 John Berryman, Prufrock’s Dilemma  

 M. L. Rosenthal, Adolescents Singing  

Topics for Writing  

 

21. Poems for Further Reading  

 Anonymous, Lord Randall  

 Anonymous, The Three Ravens  

 Anonymous, Last Words of the Prophet  

 Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach  

 John Ashbery, At North Farm  

 Margaret Atwood, Siren Song  

 W. H. Auden, As I Walked Out One Evening  

 W. H. Auden, Musée des Beaux Arts  

 ** Jimmy Baca, Spliced Wire

 Elizabeth Bishop, Filling Station  

 William Blake, The Tyger  

 William Blake, The Sick Rose  

 Gwendolyn Brooks, The Mother  

 ** Gwendolyn Brooks, The Rites for Cousin Vit

 Elizabeth Barrett Browning, How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways  

 Robert Browning, Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister  

 Geoffrey Chaucer, Merciless Beauty  

 John  Ciardi, Most Like an Arch This Marriage

 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan  

 Billy Collins, Care and Feeding  

 Hart Crane, My Grandmother’s Love Letters  

 E. E. Cummings, somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond  

 Marisa de los Santos, Perfect Dress  

 John Donne, Death be not proud  

 John Donne, The Flea  

 John Donne, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning  

 ** Rita Dove, Daystar

 John Dryden, To the Memory of Mr. Oldham  

 T. S. Eliot, Journey of the Magi  

 Robert Frost, Birches  

 Robert Frost, Mending Wall  

 Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening  

 Allen Ginsberg, A Supermarket in California  

 Donald Hall, Names of Horses  

 Thomas Hardy, The Convergence of the Twain  

 Thomas Hardy, The Darkling Thrush  

 Thomas Hardy, Hap  

 Seamus Heaney, Digging  

 ** Anthony Hecht, The Vow

 George Herbert, Love  

 Robert Herrick, To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time  

 ** Tony Hoagland, Beauty

 Gerard Manley Hopkins, Spring and Fall  

 Gerard Manley Hopkins, No worst, there is none  

 Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Windhover  

 A. E. Housman, Loveliest of trees, the cherry now  

 A. E. Housman, To an Athlete Dying Young  

 Randall Jarrell, The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner  

 Robinson Jeffers, To the Stone-cutters  

 Ben Jonson, On My First Son  

 Donald Justice, On the Death of Friends in Childhood  

 John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn  

 John Keats, When I have fears that I may cease to be  

 John Keats, To Autumn  

 Ted Kooser, Abandoned Farmhouse  

 Philip Larkin, Home is so Sad  

 Philip Larkin, Poetry of Departures  

 D. H. Lawrence, Piano  

 Denise Levertov, The Ache of Marriage  

 Shirley Geok-lin Lim, To Li Po

 Robert Lowell, Skunk Hour  

 Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress  

 Edna St. Vincent Millay, Recuerdo  

 John Milton, When I consider how my light is spent  

 Marianne Moore, Poetry  

 Marilyn Nelson, A Strange Beautiful Woman  

 Howard Nemerov, The War in the Air  

 ** Lorine Niedecker, Sorrow Moves in Wide Waves

 Sharon Olds, The One Girl at the Boys’ Party  

 Wilfred Owen, Anthem for Doomed Youth  

 Linda Pastan, Ethics  

 Sylvia Plath, Daddy  

 Edgar Allan Poe, A Dream within a Dream  

 Alexander Pope, A little Learning is a dang’rous Thing  

 Ezra Pound, The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter  

 Dudley Randall, A Different Image  

 John Crowe Ransom, Piazza Piece  

 Henry Reed, Naming of Parts  

 Adrienne Rich, Living in Sin  

 Edwin Arlington Robinson, Miniver Cheevy  

 Theodore Roethke, Elegy for Jane  

 William Shakespeare, When, in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes  

 William Shakespeare, Not marble nor the gilded monuments  

 William Shakespeare, That time of year thou mayst in me behold  

 William Shakespeare, My mistress’ eyes are nothing likethe sun  

 ** Charles Simic, The Butcher Shop

 Christopher Smart, For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry  

 Cathy Song, Stamp Collecting  

 William Stafford, The Farm on the Great Plains  

 Wallace Stevens, The Emperor of Ice-Cream  

 Jonathan Swift, A Description of the Morning  

 Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses  

 Dylan Thomas, Fern Hill  

 John Updike, Ex-Basketball Player  

 Derek Walcott, The Virgins  

 Edmund Waller, Go, Lovely Rose  

 Walt Whitman, from Song of the Open Road  

 Walt Whitman, I Hear America Singing  

 Richard Wilbur, The Writer  

 William Carlos Williams, Spring and All  

 William Carlos Williams, To Waken an Old Lady  

 William Wordsworth, Composed upon Westminster Bridge  

 James Wright, A Blessing  

 James Wright, Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio  

 Mary Sidney Wroth, In this strange labyrinth  

 Sir Thomas Wyatt, They flee from me that sometime did me sekë  

 William Butler Yeats, Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop  

 William Butler Yeats, The Magi  

 William Butler Yeats, When You Are Old  

  

22. Writing about Literature

 Read Actively

  Robert Frost, NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY

 Plan Your Essay

 Discover Your Ideas

  Sample Student Prewriting Exercises

 Developing a Literary Argument

 Writing a Rough Draft

  Sample Student Paper (Rough Draft)

 Revise Your Draft

 Some Final Advice on Rewriting

 Document Sources to Avoid Plagiarism

 The Form of Your Finished Paper

 Spell-Check and Grammar Check Programs

  

23. Writing about a Poem

 Read Actively

 Think About the Poem

 Discover Your Ideas

 Write a Rough Draft

 Common Approaches to Writing about Poetry

 How to Quote a Poem

 Topics for Writing

  Robert Frost, IN WHITE

  

24. Writing a Research Paper

 Browse the Research

 Choose a Topic

 Begin Your Research

 Evaluate Sources

 Organize Your Research

 Refine Your Thesis

 Organize Your Paper

 Write and Revise

 Maintain Academic Integrity

 Acknowledge All Sources

 Documenting Sources Using MLA Style

 Reference Guide for Citation

  

25.  Critical Approaches to Literature

 Formalist Criticism

 Biographical Criticism

 Historical Criticism

 Psychological Criticism

 Mythological Criticism

 Sociological Criticism

 Gender Criticism

 Reader-Response Criticism

 Deconstructionist Criticism

 Cultural Studies

 

Terms for Review

 

Acknowledgements

Photo Acknowledgements

Index of Major Themes

Index of First Lines of Poetry

Index of Authors and Titles

Index of Literary Terms