1 mar 2005

My list of of 10 poems can beat up your list of 10 poems

1. "Standing and Watching" (Jimmy Schuyler)
2. "On Rachmaninoff's Birthday" ("Blue Windows, blue rooftops") If you don't know who wrote that I pity you.
3. "The Silken Tent" If you don't know who wrote that I pity you.
4. "Gravel" (Barbara Guest)
5. "The Devil's Trill Sonata" (David Shapiro)
6. "The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter" If you don't know who wrote that I pity you.
7. "The Wild Swans at Coole" If you don't know who wrote that I pity you.
8. "Some Trees" (Ashbery)
9. "The Prophet" (Notley)
10. "The Art of Poetry" (Kenneth Koch)

That's just 20th century and poems written in English, mostly American, to simplify things. No epic poems, though a few longer pieces like the Shapiro and the Koch. It's a good place to start at least. I would really need to make a list of 100 poems and 100 books of poems.

Some longer works: Tender Buttons (I pity you, etc...) Silliman, Paradise. Mayer, A Midwinter's Day, Coolidge, Crystal Text., Williams, Spring and All Go to school with a poet. Never read the "Selected Poems" of anyone. You need the context of the weaker poems alongside the stronger ones. Never let an anthologist or selector do your work for you. Instead of sitting down a student with a Norton Anthology, wouldn't it be better to sit him or her down with the Collected Poems of Stevens, Cummings, Williams, H.D., Moore, Creeley, and let her or him make the anthology?

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