Although readers of prose fiction sometimes find descriptive passages superfluous or boring, description itself is often the most important aspect of a poem. This book examines how a variety of contemporary poets use description in their work. Description has been the great burden of poetry. How do poets see the world? How do they look at it? What do they look for? Is description an end in itself, or a means of expressing desire? Ezra Pound demanded that a poem should represent the external world as objectively and directly as possible, and William Butler Yeats, in his introduction to The Oxford Book of Modern Verse (1936), said that he and his generation were rebelling against, inter alia, "irrelevant descriptions of nature" in the work of their predecessors. The poets in this book, however, who are distinct in many ways from one another, all observe the external world of nature or the reflected world of art, and make relevant poems out of their observations. This study deals with the crisp, elegant work of Charles Tomlinson, the swirling baroque poetry of Amy Clampitt, the metaphysical meditations of Charles Wright from a position in his backyard, the weather reports and landscapes of John Ashbery, and the "new way of looking" that Jorie Graham proposes to explore in her increasingly fragmented poems. All of these poets, plus others (Gary Snyder, Theodore Weiss, Irving Feldman, Richard Howard) who are dealt with more briefly, attend to what Wallace Stevens, in a memorable phrase, calls "the way things look each day." The ordinariness of daily reality is the beginning of the poets' own idiosyncratic, indeed unique, visions and styles.

Although readers of prose fiction sometimes find descriptive passages superfluous or boring, description itself is often the most important aspect of a poem. This book examines how a variety of contemporary poets use description in their work. Description has been the great burden of poetry. How do poets see the world? How do they look at it? What do they look for? Is description an end in itself, or a means of expressing desire? Ezra Pound demanded that a poem should represent the external world as objectively and directly as possible, and William Butler Yeats, in his introduction to The Oxford Book of Modern Verse (1936), said that he and his generation were rebelling against, inter alia, "irrelevant descriptions of nature" in the work of their predecessors. The poets in this book, however, who are distinct in many ways from one another, all observe the external world of nature or the reflected world of art, and make relevant poems out of their observations. This study deals with the crisp, elegant work of Charles Tomlinson, the swirling baroque poetry of Amy Clampitt, the metaphysical meditations of Charles Wright from a position in his backyard, the weather reports and landscapes of John Ashbery, and the "new way of looking" that Jorie Graham proposes to explore in her increasingly fragmented poems. All of these poets, plus others (Gary Snyder, Theodore Weiss, Irving Feldman, Richard Howard) who are dealt with more briefly, attend to what Wallace Stevens, in a memorable phrase, calls "the way things look each day." The ordinariness of daily reality is the beginning of the poets' own idiosyncratic, indeed unique, visions and styles.

This groundbreaking volume may well be the poetry anthology for the global village. As selected by J.D. McClatchy, this collection includes masterpieces from four continents and more than two dozen languages in translations by such distinguished poets as Elizabeth Bishop, W.S. Merwin, Ted Hughes, and Seamus Heaney. Among the countries and writers represented are: Bangladesh--Taslima Nasrin Chile--Pablo Neruda China--Bei Dao, Shu Ting El Salvador--Claribel Alegria France--Yves Bonnefoy Greece--Odysseus Elytis, Yannis Ritsos India--A.K. Ramanujan Israel--Yehuda Amichai Japan--Shuntaro Tanikawa Mexico--Octavio Paz Nicaragua--Ernesto Cardenal Nigeria--Wole Soyinka Norway--Tomas Transtromer Palestine--Mahmoud Darwish Poland--Zbigniew Herbert, Czeslaw Milosz Russia--Joseph Brodsky, Yevgeny Yevtushenko Senegal--Leopold Sedar Senghor South Africa--Breyten Breytenbach St. Lucia, West Indies--Derek Walcott

Essays on the craft and relevance of poetry by distinguished practitioners and teachers of the art

Winner 2017 Benjamin Franklin GOLD AWARD for POETRY. Winner 2017 MONTAIGNE MEDAL for most thought-provoking books. Major tour de force traces arc of one of millions of American immigrant families, survivors of WWII. Raw, eloquent, nuanced, intimate--illuminates the many faces of war, toll taken on innocent civilians, how trauma echoes down through

An Eye For An Eye Makes The Whole World Blind features poems by over 100 poets from all over The United States of America. This important book creates an alternative poetic response to the din of collective madness that has characterized our national dialogue since 9/11/2001. Many of the poets have projected themselves into the minds and the bodies of the victims if 9/11, and the firemen and policemen who were searching the wreckage of the buildings and even the hijackers. The poets express deep emotions and profound thoughts with the sever attention to detail that makes poems revelatory. Upon reading these poems written by so many diverse poets one sees a deepening of perception, of renewed seriousness about the human predicament and about the necessity to evolve into our full humanity. We hope the poems will help readers feel more deeply, think about our future, and ultimately act to achieve a more peaceful and just world. Poets include: Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Diane di Prima, Robert Creeley, Opal Palmer Adisa, Robert Pinsky, Michael McClure, devorah major, Nellie Wong, Jack Hirschman, David Meltzer, Neeli Cherkovski, Lyn Lifshin, Antler, John Sinclair, Allen Cohen, Clive Matson, Al Young, Steve Kowit, Gerald Nicosia, Q.R. Hand, Ira Cohen, Julia Vinograd, Jack Foley, Janine Pommy Vega, A.D. Winans, Shepherd Bliss, S.A. Griffin, Coleman Barks, Claire Burch, Gail Ford, Charles Pappas, and many more.