At the end of the Second Season of Mad Men, Don Draper says, “Now I am quietly waiting for/the catastrophe of my personality/to seem beautiful again, /and interesting and modern.” (p. 308) Those are lines from Frank O’Hara’s “Mayakovsky” and they strike the right tone for that episode.
In The Heart of American Poetry, Edward Hirsch selected 40 poems he considers central to our cultural experience, from Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672) to Joy Hard (1951- ). I was happy to see that Western NY poet Lucille Clifton made the cut.
After every poem, Hirsch writes about the poet and analyzes the poem. I thought Hirsch’s dissection of John Ashbery’s “Soonest Mended” was brilliant. Also excellent are Hirsch’s writings on James Wright and Philip Levine.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Introduction: The Education of a Poet By Edward Hirsch — xii
Anne Bradstreet, “The Author to Her Book” — 3
Phillis Wheatley, “To S. M. a Young African Painter, on seeing his Works” — 14
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Jewish Cemetery at Newport” — 26
Walt Whitman, “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” — 35
Herman Melville, “Shiloh” — 52
Emily Dickinson, #479 [“Because I could not stop for Death”] — 61
Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus” — 70
Edwin Arlington Robinson, “Eros Turannos” — 80
Amy Lowell, “Madonna of the Evening Flowers” — 88
Robert Frost, “The Most of It” — 97
Wallace Stevens, “Sunday Morning” — 106
William Carlos Williams, from Spring and All, I [“By the road to the contagious hospital”] — 117
Ezra Pound, “The River-Merchant’s Wife: a Letter” — 128
Marianne Moore, “The Steeple-Jack” — 142
T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” — 154
Hart Crane, “To Brooklyn Bridge” — 168
Langston Hughes, “Harlem” — 178
Sterling A. Brown, “Southern Road” — 190
Theodore Roethke, “Cuttings” and “Cuttings (later)” — 204
Elizabeth Bishop, “In the Waiting Room” — 215
Robert Johnson, “Cross Road Blues” [Take 2] — 227
Robert Hayden, “Middle Passage” — 235
Muriel Rukeyser, “St. Roach” — 249
Julia de Burgos, “Farewell in Welfare Island” — 260
Gwendolyn Brooks, “A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon” –269
Anthony Hecht, “‘More Light! More Light!’” — 284
Denise Levertov, “O Taste and See” — 296
Frank O’Hara, “The Day Lady Died” — 305
Allen Ginsberg, “America” — 314
John Ashbery, “Soonest Mended” — 325
James Wright, “Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio” — 339
Philip Levine, “To Cipriano, in the Wind” — 348
Adrienne Rich, “XIII (Dedications)” [from “An Atlas of the Difficult World”] — 358
Sylvia Plath, “Daddy” — 368
Lucille Clifton, [“won’t you celebrate with me”] — 379
C. K. Williams, “My Mother’s Lips” — 389
Michael S. Harper, “Dear John, Dear Coltrane” — 401
Louise Glück, “Retreating Wind” — 410
Garrett Hongo, “Ancestral Graves, Kahuku” — 421
Joy Harjo, “Rabbit Is Up to Tricks” — 437
Acknowledgements & Permissions — 447
