A Masque of Poets (1878) is a poetry collection edited by George Parsons Lathrop. Part of Boston-based publisher Roberts Brothers’ “No Name” series, A Masque of Poets presents the works of little-known writers—including Emily Dickinson—alongside such recognized masters as Christina Rossetti and James Russell Lowell, leaving each poem anonymous to allow the reader to experience the work without thought of reputation. “Sing! Sing of what? The world is full of song; / And all the singing seems but echoed notes / Of the great masters...” Beginning with this playful introductory poem, A Masque of Poets attempts to demystify poetry by removing poets from the equation altogether. Understanding the pressures inherent to making art, especially the kind of art with such a long and storied history as poetry, this collection foregoes reputation and tradition by allowing the poems to speak for themselves, to appear anonymously so that the reader might make a clear judgment regarding each poem’s meaning and quality. Far from mere publishing gimmick, A Masque of Poets is a highly original, challenging, and rewarding collection of poems that happens to include works from some of the nineteenth century’s finest poets. By forcing the reader to trust their interpretive abilities, A Masque of Poets reinvigorates a craft whose worth was never the names of its practitioners, but the words they could produce. “Success,” the final poem before the concluding “novelette in verse” Guy Vernon, just so happens to be one of the only poems published by Emily Dickinson in her lifetime. For its importance to Dickinson scholars, as well as for its genuine originality, A Masque of Poets remains an essential contribution to the history of American literature. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of A Masque of Poets is a classic work of American literature reimagined for modern readers.

A collection centered in myth, A Mask for Janus is the 49th volume of the Yale Series of Younger Poets While Merwin's poetry as a whole is grounded in the poetic forms of many eras and societies, this first collection is inspired by classical models. Writing in American Poetry Review, Vernon Young traces the poems to "Biblical tales, Classical myth, love songs from the Age of Chivalry, Renaissance retellings; they comprise carols, roundels, odes, ballads, sestinas, and they contrive golden equivalents of emblematic models: the masque, the Zodiac, the Dance of Death."

Poetic drama.

A father and husband's meditation on love, adolescence, and the mysterious mechanisms of poetic creation, from the acclaimed poet. The poet's art is revealed in stages in this "making-of" book, where we watch as poems take shape--first as dreams or memories, then as drafts, and finally as completed works set loose on the world. In the long poem "Must We Mean What We Say," a woman reader narrates in prose the circumstances behind poems and snippets of poems she receives in letters from a stranger. Who made up whom? Chiasson, an acclaimed poetry critic, has invented a remarkable structure where the reader and a poet speak to one another, across the void of silence and mystery. He is also the father of teenaged sons, and this volume continues the autobiographical arc of his prior, celebrated volumes. One long section is about the age of thirteen and the dawning of desire, while the title poem looks at the crucial age of fifteen and the existential threat of climate change and gun violence, which alters the calculus of adolescence. Though the outlook is bleak, these poems register the glories of our moment: that there are places where boys can kiss each other and not be afraid; that small communities are rousing and taking care of each other; that teenagers have mobilized for a better world. All of these works emerge from the secretive imagination of a father as he measures his own adolescence against that of his sons and explores the complex bedrock of marriage. Chiasson sees a perilous world both navigated and enriched by the passionate young and by the parents--and poets--who care for them.