But compare, to these flat invitations, the opening of Crane’s “Proem,” with its immediate energies of syntax, vocabulary, active verbs, and sound effects:

By which I take her to mean: unique, stand-alone, separate poems, Jarrell-lightningstrike miracle event poems, non-repeatable in their singularity— I’ve done just enough editing myself to know that standing up and saying you’re editing an anthology is a bit like standing up and saying you’re a target—and the larger the scope of the anthology, the larger the target. It’s worse, too, when you’re editing a book that includes living poets: at this point you might as well consider yourself a walking bull's eye, and be prepared to suffer the slings and arrows of outraged poets everywhere. In any anthology, there will be grounds for disagreement: the poor editor has a limited amount of space, and in the end will find that he or she has to select one poet out of dozens with valid claims for inclusion.The automatic—and not apt—association of an urban scene with noise has generated Dove’s ‘cacophony,'” proclaims Vendler upon reaching Hart Crane, and then she proceeds to leave accuracy in the dust. Poor Crane: since Vendler has decreed that he is on my list of grievances, she rushes triumphantly to his defense, countering my description of “the cacophony of urban life on Hart Crane’s bridge” with examples of silence in “Proem,” which serves as the overture to the main work. Agreed, the hushed splendor of this preface is undeniable…but what of the poem itself? A cursory sweep over just the section excerpted in my anthology yields a host of extraordinary sounds: what with trains whistling their “wail into distances,” chanting road gangs, papooses crying—even men crunching down on tobacco quid—my gasp of surprise at Vendler’s blunder can barely be heard.

With regard to speculation: I understand that you feel speculation about HarperCollins is valid. I hope you understand that speculation, presented as such, is generally valid, even when it is not about people with whom we're frustrated, even when it is about people we love.The suicide issue raised by Dove and Vendler is no issue. It flows in the veins of all poets and is not exclusive to the confessionals. Her sketch of Fifties America is no less drawn to cliché, as is her idealistic vision of democratic forefathers, (slaveholders, many of them): Perhaps Dove’s canvas—exhibiting mostly short poems of rather restricted vocabulary—is what needs to be displayed now to a general audience. But the American scene of the past hundred years is far richer than this sample suggests. Seeing the single poem included by James Merrill, I want to turn to the reader and say, “But there’s a much better Merrill than the one who wrote ‘The Victor Dog’!” Seeing that the scanty Ammons selection ends with the 1968 “Corsons Inlet,” I want to cry out that he wrote almost thirty more years of poems, and could we please perpetuate “Easter Morning”? And it is sometimes difficult to adjust Dove’s effortful remarks in the introduction to her choices: where in Bishop’s “The Fish” or “Sestina” or “One Art” can we behold the poet “chisel the universe into pixilated uncertainties”? Women were cheap. A lot of early American women poets who published did so for very little money; they were happy to appear in print. So, there were economic reasons why American women were published.

But of course you're wrong about me assuming to speak for her intentions. If you read the post with anything like care, you'll see that I present other people's speculation about her intentions, question some of it, and the present some speculations of my own, never saying they are more than speculations. This is not assuming to speak for those intentions.Extending chronologically from the classic couplets of Philip Freneau to the pioneering free verse of Walt Whitman, this first volume charts the formation of a distinctly American poetry. Here, in generous selections, are the major figures: Poe, Emerson, Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier—as well as such unexpected contributors as the landscape painter Thomas Cole, the actress Fanny Kemble, and the presidents John Quincy Adams and Abraham Lincoln. Parodies, dialect poems, song lyrics, and children’s verse evoke the liveliness of an era when poetry was accessible to all. Here are poems that played a crucial role in American public life, whether to arouse the national conscience (Edwin Markham’s “The Man with the Hoe”) or to memorialize the golden age of the national pastime (Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat”). homage to my hips ; [at last we killed the roaches] ; death of fred clifton ; to my last period / Lucille Clifton I understand that those very close to the project feel they've done all they could -- and I appreciate your input, Fred and Fred.

Dear John, dear Coltrane ; Last affair : Bessie's blues song ; Grandfather ; Nightmare begins responsibility / M

Retailers:

The poets who have the most to teach arenot always the poets who exemplify a literary-historical watershed.