“Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg”
You might come here Sunday on a whim.
Say your life broke down. The last good kiss
you had was years ago. You walk those streets
laid out by the insane, past hotels
that didn’t last, bars that did, the tortured try
of local drivers to accelerate their lives.
Only churches are kept up. The jail
turned 70 this year. The only prisoner
is always in, not knowing what he’s done.
This is the first stanza of Richard Hugo’s 1973 poem that inspired James Crumley to write his classic noirish detective novel, The Last Good Kiss. Edward Hirsch provides the text of the poems he’s chosen and then provides an essay for each selection providing information on the poet and how the poem came to be written. I was familiar with 31 of these poems. After reading all 100 poems, I want to read more by many of these poets. How many of these 100 poems are you familiar with? Any favorites? GRADE: A
Table of Contents
Introduction xv
“Surprised by joy-impatient as the Wind” (1815, 1820) William Wordsworth 1
“This living hand” (1819) John Keats 5
“I am” (c. 1847) John Clare 8
In Memoriam, VII (c. 1848) Alfred Lord Tennyson 12
“Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend” (1889) Gerard Manley Hopkins 16
“The God Abandons Antony” (1910) Constantine Cavafy 21
“The Voice” (1912) Thomas Hardy 25
“The Owl” (1915) Edward Thomas 29
“The Pretty Redhead” (1918) Guillaume Apollinaire 33
“What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why” (1920) Edna St. Vincent Millay 39
“Song for a Dark Girl” (1927) Langston Hughes 44
“Rooms” (c. 1929) Charlotte Mew 49
“Black Stone Lying on a White Stone” (1930) César Vallejo 53
“I’m Going to Sleep” (1938) Alfonsina Storni 58
“To Julia de Burgos” (1938) Julia de Burgos 62
“In Memory of M. B.” (1940) Anna Akhmatova 67
“The Fifth Eclogue” (1943) Miklós Radnóti 71
“Café” (1944) Czeslaw Milosz 76
“Merciful God” (1945) Kadya Molodowsky 81
“Shemà” (1946) Primo Levi 86
“On Living” (1948) Nâzim Hikmet 91
“Aspects of Robinson” (1948) Weldon Kees 97
“The rites for Cousin Vit” (1949) Gwendolyn Brooks 102
“Not Waving but Drowning” (1953, 1957) Stevie Smith 105
“In the Midst of Life” (1955) Tadeusz Rózewicz 109
“On the road at night there stands the man” (1959) Dahlia Ravikovitch 115
“Poem of the Gifts” (1960) Jorge Luis Borges 119
“In the Park” (1961) Gwen Harwood 124
“The Whipping” (1962) Robert Hayden 128
“Night Sweat” (1963) Robert Lowell 133
“Wanting to Die” (1964) Anne Sexton 137
“My Nightingale” (1965) Rose Ausländer 142
“Next Day” (1965) Randall Jarrell 146
“Montana Fifty Years Ago” (1967) J. V. Cunningham 151
“For the Anniversary of My Death” (1967) W. S. Merwin 155
“Poem” (1968) Muriel Rukeyser 158
“The Idea of Ancestry” (1968) Etheridge Knight 163
“Henry’s Understanding” (1969) John Berryman 169
“A Deathplace” (1969) L. E. Sissman 173
“They Feed They Lion” (1969) Philip Levine 178
“The Small Square” (1972) Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen 185
“Under One Small Star” (1972) Wislawa Szymborska 189
“Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg” (1973) Richard Hugo 193
“On This Side of the River” (1975) Stephen Berg 199
“Aubade” (1977) Philip Larkin 204
“Parents” (1978) William Meredith 210
“Essay” (1978) Hayden Carruth 214
“Arches” (1978) James Schuyler 218
“Kindness” (1978, 1994) Naomi Shihab Nye 222
“The Woman on the Bridge over the Chicago River” (1979) Allen Grossman 228
“The Book of Yolek”(1981) Anthony Hecht 234
“Mr Cogito and the Imagination” (1983) Zbigniew Herbert 240
“From My Window” (1983) C. K. Williams 247
“Night Song” (1983) Louise Glück 253
“The Race” (1983) Sharon Olds 259
“In Memory of the Unknown Poet, Robert Boardman Vaughn” (1984) Donald Justice 264
“The Dancing” (1984) Gerald Stern 269
“For Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, Whose Spirit Is Present Here and in the Dappled Stars (for we remember the story and must tell it again so we may all live)” (1985) Joy Harjo 272
“Mendocino Rose” (1987) Garrett Hongo 279
“(Dedications)” (1990-91) Adrienne Rich 284
“The Gas-poker” (1991) Thom Gunn 289
“What He Thought” (1991) Heather McHugh 295
“It Allows a Portrait in Line-Scan at Fifteen” (1993) Les Murray 301
“The People of the Other Village” (1993) Thomas Lux 306
“For the Taking” (1993) Linda Gregerson 310
“Terminus” (1993) Nicholas Christopher 316
“What the Living Do” (1994) Marie Howe 322
“The War Works Hard” (1994) Dunya Mikhail 327
“Halley’s Comet” (1995) Stanley Kunitz 332
“Song” (1995) Brigit Pegeen Kelly 336
“Simile” (1996) Rosanna Warren 341
“In Memory of Joe Brainard” (1997) Frank Bidart 345
“jasper texas 1998” (1998) Lucille Clifton 350
“The Rapture” (2000) Cynthia Huntington 354
“Elementary Principles at Seventy-Two” (2001) Richard Howard 359
“Quarantine” (2001) Eavan Boland 363
“Woman Martyr” (2002) Agi Mishol 369
“We Are Not Responsible” (2002) Harryette Mullen 373
“Shelley” (2004) Galway Kinnell 377
“Aphasia” (2004) Vijay Seshadri 381
“On Wanting to Tell [ ] About a Girl Eating Fish Eyes” (2004) Mary Szybist 385
“Lead” (2005) Mary Oliver 389
“Persimmon” (2005) Anya Krugovoy Silver 393
“Ethel’s Sestina” (2006) Patricia Smith 398
“Woman, Mined” (2006) Carolyn Creedon 403
“Graveyard Blues” (2006) Natasha Trethewey 407
“Requiem” (2006) Camille Dungy 412
“Aubade in Autumn” (2007) Peter Everwine 417
“Barton Springs” (2007) Tony Hoagland 421
“Failure” (2007) Philip Schultz 425
“An Individual History” (2007) Michael Collier 429
“The Second Slaughter” (2008) Lucia Perillo 434
“Old School” (2010) Michael Waters 439
“Infinite Riches in the Smallest Room” (2015) Lucie Brock-Broido 442
“The African Burial Ground” (2014) Yusef Komunyakaa 448
“The Addict’s Mother: Birth Story” (2014-15) Kate Daniels 454
“Spirit Boxing” (2015) Afaa Michael Weaver 458
“Obit [The Blue Dress]” (2016) Victoria Chang 463
“Pantoum for the Broken” (2017) Toi Derricotte 466
“Krishna, 3:29 a.m.” (2018) Toi Derricotte 471
Acknowledgments 479
Credits 483
To my knowledge I have read none of these unless I read them in college and have forgotten. My only course in poetry was the Romantics. Most of the poets here I have never even heard of. Mostly the newer ones. I am not a poetry reader. I respect the craft but reading poetry doesn’t interest me.
Steve, poetry waxes and wanes over the centuries. Right now, poetry seems to be on the up-tick.
I’m no familiar with many here—mostly the earlier (pre-1900) ones, then the Edna St. Vincent Millay and a couple of the more modern ones (Anne Sexton, W.S. Merwyn). I’m surprised Lord Byron’s “We’ll Go No More A Roving” is not included—its melancholy note always gets to me. Not to mention W.H. Auden’s “Stop All the Clocks” and A.E. Housman’s “To An Athlete Dying Young.” Those poems always break my heart!
Deb, I was puzzled why “Stop All the Clocks” and “To An Athlete Dying Young” weren’t included, too. Perhaps, those two poems are “too famous.”
None of the titles are familiar but I recognize about 30 of the names as being familiar in some context, not necessarily as poets. I had college courses in both Romantic and Victorian poetry and was shocked that I preferred the Victorians.
Michael, I prefer Victorian poetry over Romantic poetry, too.
I recognize about 30-40% of poets but I could not recite a poem by any of them. Maybe reciting poems is a dated notion anyway.
Patti, with the popularity of podcasts, reciting poems is making a resurgence.
Memorizing their work maybe less so.
Any Poetry collection that doesn’t include Robert W Service is meaningless anyway.
Dan, and Rod McKuen!
And you lot forget Hamlin Garland? Required Citation for Real Men, With Real Man Poesy!
I couldn’t identify any of the poems, though I have probably read a few. I did study people like Wordsworth and Hopkins (yuck). I do like the Hugo poem, and the Crumley book it inspired. Like Steve, I do not read poetry.
Jeff, 21st Century poetry seems to be a performance art.
I do read poetry, a few a week, and recognize about a third of the poets here, though I couldn’t say how many of the specific poems. I wouldn’t intentionally pick up a collection of sad poems, I prefer to be uplifted by it, not bummed out.
Rick, I felt a cathartic effect when I read these poems. Like you, I read a few poems each week.
I like poetry, but realize but haven’t read enough of it.
For the past five years or so, when I wanted to break my heart I would turn to the news.
Jerry, or listen to Joni Mitchell’s BLUE.
Quarteto Zupay did some nice settings of Borges’s milongas and related work to music. But, then, Oscar Brown’s setting of Gwendolyn Brooks’s “Elegy” triumphs over some of the the cuteness of his performance on his CBS album BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL.
Batting zero! The ones I read usually have the word Nantucket in them!
Bob, Nantucket and “Thar she blows!”
And heroes fortuitously named “Horatio”!
(I have to thank “Frazier” for that joke!)
CK Williams was teaching at George Mason U when I was a student in the English Dept. there, and was not alone in being part of Poetry of Witness advocates. (One survivor notes in his Princeton obit online that he was babysat by the not quite as young Jerry Lewis, and that, I’m sure, can lead to a lifetime of wanting to say Something about the atrocities in life.) The middle shank of the poets collected are those most familiar to me, for the most part.