Touchstones: American Poets on a Favorite Poem (Bread Loaf Anthology)

637 Pages·1996·1.72 MB·English

by  Robert Pack

Touchstones : American Poets On a
title:
Favorite Poem
author: Pack, Robert; Parini, Jay.
publisher: University Press of New England
isbn10 | asin: 0874517230
print isbn13: 9780874517231
ebook isbn13: 9780585269962
language: English
English poetry--History and criticism,
American poetry--History and criticism,
subject
Books and reading, American poetry,
English poetry.
publication date: 1996
lcc: PR503.T68 1996eb
ddc: 821.009
English poetry--History and criticism,
American poetry--History and criticism,
subject:
Books and reading, American poetry,
English poetry.
Page i
Touchstones
Page ii
A BREAD LOAF ANTHOLOGY
The Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, edited
by Robert Pack, Sydney Lea, and Jay Parini, 1985.
The Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary American Short Stories,
edited by Robert Pack and Jay Parini, 1987.
The Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary American Essays, edited
by Robert Pack and Jay Parini, 1989.
Writers on Writing, edited by Robert Pack and Jay Parini, 1991.
Poems for a Small Planet: Contemporary American Nature Poetry,
edited by Robert Pack and Jay Parini, 1993.
American Identities: Contemporary Multicultural Voices, edited by
Robert Pack and Jay Parini, 1994.
Touchstones: American Poets on a Favorite Poem, edited by Robert
Pack and Jay parini, 1995.
Page iii
Touchstones
American Poets on a Favorite Poem
Edited by
Robert Pack
Jay Parini
Page iv
MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE PRESS
Published by University Press of New England
Hanover, NH 03755
© 1996 by the President and Fellows of Middlebury College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
5 4 3 2 1
data appear at the end of the book
CIP
Page v
Indeed there can be no more useful help for discovering what poetry belongs
to the class of the truly excellent, and can therefore do us most good, than to
have always in one's mind lines and expressions of the great masters, and to
apply them as a touchstone to other poetry.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Page vii
Contents
Introduction
Robert Pack and Jay Parini
Touchstones
On "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop 1
Julia Alvarez
On "Space being . . . Curved" by e. e. cummings 4
David Baker
On "Wulf and Eadwacer" by Anonymous, Anglo-Saxon 1
John Balaban
On The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser 15
Ann Barker
On "Naming of Parts" by Henry Reed 20
Marvin Bell
On "Silence" by Marianne Moore 26
Rosellen Brown
On The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer 31
Teresa D. Cader
On "Astrophil and Stella" by Sir Philip Sidney 37
Michael Collier
On "Painting" by Langston Hughes 40
William C. Cook
On "Caelica" by Fulke Greville 44
Steven Cramer
On "Mithridates" by Ralph Waldo Emerson 48
Thomas M. Disch
Page viii
On "Mr. Flood's Party" by Edwin Arlington Robinson 52
Stephen Dunn
On "Frau Baumann, Frau Schmidt, and Frau Schwartz" by 57
Theodore Roethke
John Engels
On "The Wife of Usher's Well" by Anonymous 61
Donald Finkel
On "Because I Could not Stop for Death" by Emily 67
Dickinson
Carol Frost
On "Gaze Not on Swans" Attributed to William Strode 75
Anthony Hecht
On "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden 80
David Huddle
On "Auguries of Innocence" by William Blake 84
Richard Jackson
On "Tam O'Shanter" by Robert Burns 92
Mark Jarman
On The Sonnets of William Shakespeare 102
Erica Jong
On "Coming" by Philip Larkin 105
Donald Justice
On "To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell 110
X. J. Kennedy
On "A Shropshire Lad" by A. E. Housman 116
Maxine Kumin