Poet's choice [1st ed] 9780151013562, 9780156032674, 015101356X

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POET'S CHOICE E D W A R D B HIRSCH authorof ~ov$toReadaPoern

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PRAISE FOR

Poet's Choice "Hirsch remains much the same enthusiast, much the same writer of apt summation, the memorable insight, but now less explicitly the teacher and more, with the reader, a partner in delight."

-America:

The National Catholic Weekly

"If many of [Hirsch's] choices here are about loss, there's an almost playful quality to the scope of the selections. He focuses on everything from poems by international writers unfamiliar to most mainstream readers, to poems about sports, Nebraska, insomnia, and New York City. . .The unifying thread is his pleasure in telling us about them. If one of the great joys of reading poetry is sharing your favorites, talking about them and trading them like baseball cards, Hirsch can count himself as a lucky man." -The Arizona Republic

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"[Hirsch] presents his personal overview of poets and their works from the ancients to today." -Pittsburgh Post Gazette "Combine passionate intellect and boyish enthusiasm and you have -Monterq County Herald Edward Hirsch." "Here is one poet's deep and terribly personal engagement with the poetry of others, rendered with the electricity of one who truly believes that 'poetry speaks with the greatest intensity against the effacement of individuals, the obliteration of communities, the destruction s f nature. Poetry is a necessary part of our planet.' He is every bit as dedicated to poets in translation, from Borges to Basho and Li Po, as he is to poets in his own language. And his short pieces around these poems . are exemplary in their clarity, passion and precision. And a very personal choice this is, from Aztec poets to his lesser-known -The Buffalo News American contemporaries."

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"In the elegant and precious Poet? Choice, Edward Hirsch, a prominent poet, critic and educator, uses the work of. . . different poets to illustrate to the average reader how to appreciate diverse pieces of poetry." -Deseret Morning News "With Poet? Choice, [Hirsch] offers a delightful tutorial in both classic -Bookpage and contemporary verse." "Hirsch includes the work of more than 130poets from across the globe and across centuries, with poems from the ancients alongside those of the most contemporary of poets creating a pleasurable introduction to poetry. Using an essay form with stanzas embedded, he makes coherent arguments and offers excellent illustrations of how each work and the human experience are intertwined. A mini-course in world poetry, this accessible, learned, and relevant book is highly recommended." -Libra y Journal "Eclectic and idiosyncratic, Hirsch's choices are unified by astute excerpting and keen commentary." -Publishers Weekly "Hirsch, a natural-born teacher as well as a poet, shares his extraordinary erudition and love for poetry with lucidity and intensity, empathically summarizing the lives of poets past and present, and offering poems to readers as though they are food or benedictions, gossip or prescriptions. . . . Hirsch's aesthetic is unerring, and his interpretations are profound as he considers our 'collective destiny' and takes measure of poetry's encompassing vision." -Booklist

Poet's Choice

Poet's Choice POETRY

For the Sleepwalkers (1981) Wild Gratitude (1986) The Night Parade (1989) Earthly Measures (1994) On Love (1998) Lay Back the Darkness (2003)

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EDWARD HIRSCH

PROSE

How to Read a Poem and Fall i n Love with Poetry (1999) Resp~nsiveReading (1999) The Demon and the Angel: Searching$r the Source of Artistic Inspiration (2002) EDITOR

Transfirming Exion: Writers on Art (1994) William Maxwell: Memories andAppreciations (2004) with Charles Baxter and Michael Collier Theodore Roethke: Selected Poems ( 2 ~ 5 )

A HARVEST BOOK

HARCOURT, INC.

Orlando Austin Neu York San Diego Toronto di don

Copyright O 2006 by Edward Hirsch

ALI rights reserved. No part of this may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, eleccronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be submitted online at www.harcourt.com1contact or mailed to the following address: Permissions Department, Harcourt, Inc., 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows: Hirsch, Edward. ed. Poet's choicelEdward Him&.-1st p. cm. I. Poetry-History and criticism. I. Title. PNIIII.HJ~ 2006 808.81-dczz zoo5026890 ISBN 978-0-15-101356-2 ISBN 978-0-15-603267-4 (pbk) Text set in Adobe Garamond Designed by Cathy Riggs Printed in the United States of America First Harvest edition 2007 C E G I K J H P D .

Permissions acknowledgments appear on pages 40?@9, which constitute a continuation of the copyright page.

For Andrk Bernard

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

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PART I Nightingales (Jorge Luis Borges) 2. Gerard Manley Hopkins ("God's Grandeur," "Pied Beauty") 3. Caedmon ("Caedmon's Hymn," Denise Levertov's "Caedmon") 4. Olympian Odes (Pindar, Bacchylides) 5. The Greek Anthology (Pure Pagan) 6. Sappho (fragment 31) 7. The Poet as Maker (F. T. Prince) 8. The Ars Poetica (Blaga Dimitrova) 9. The Bardic Order (Eavan Boland) 10. Aztec Poets (Nezahualc6yot1, Ayocuan Cuetzpaltzin) 11. Riddles (Daniel Hoffman, Ella Bat-T~ion,Eytan Eytan) 12. Charms (Thomas Campion, Kathy Fagan) 13. John Clare ("Lines: 'I A m ' ) 14. Christmas Poems (Thomas Hardy, Robert Fitzgerald) 15. Charlotte Mew ("Rooms," "The Call") 16. W. B. Yeats ("Cuchulain Comforted) 17. Rabindranath Tagore (Final Poems) 18. Giuseppe Belli ("Night of Terror," "The Bosses of Rome") 19. Giuseppe Ungaretti ("In Memory of") 20. Eugenio Montale ("Sit the noon out. . . ," "The Eel") 21. Rainer Maria Rilke ("The Panther," "The Gazelle") 22. Self-Portraits (Rainer Maria Rilke, Frank Bidart) 23. Ernst Stadler ("The Saying) 24. Nelly Sachs ("Butterfly") I.

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