false 59688 2 3 female 1944/09/22 203838 0393321789 9780393321784 19 <![CDATA[The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172652355m/203838.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172652355s/203838.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/203838.The_Making_of_a_Poem_A_Norton_Anthology_of_Poetic_Forms 3.90 229 The Making of a Poem is among the best how-to-read-poetry titles. Edited by two of our greatest living poets, one Irish and female, the other American and male, it is both an exploration of poetic forms and an anthology. Eavan Boland and Mark Strand each offer an introduction and then give us a series of chapters devoted to particular verse forms--the sonnet, the ballad, the sestina, the villanelle, blank verse, the stanza--as well as a long section devoted to what they somewhat vaguely call shaping forms. This refers to poetic structures established not by a specific rhyme and/or metrical pattern but by content: the elegy, for example, or the pastoral or ode. The book then concludes with a section on open forms. Each chapter is conveniently subdivided, each topic simply defined: a single page gives "The Ballad at a Glance" (or, for that matter, the pantoum) as a quick overview of the form's structure. A page or two on the history of the form follows, along with a brief comment on "the contemporary context." Then a chronological anthology of poems demonstrates the particular form. In the sonnet's case, for instance, we are treated to 23 brilliantly chosen examples--everything from Shakespeare's "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" to Seamus Heaney's "The Haw Lantern" to Mary Jo Salter's playful "Half a Double Sonnet." The section then concludes with another brief analysis of one example. In this spot, the villanelle features Elizabeth Bishop's classic heartbreaker, "One Art," and blank verse gives us far too brief a take on Robert Frost's tantalizing "Directive." Itself worth the price of admission, the poem begins:
Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simply by the loss
of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
There is a house that is no more than a house
Upon a farm that is no more than a farm
And in a town that is no more than a town.
One can readily see both the advantages and the limitations of such a format: definitions are kept lean, at times approaching the sound bite, and the short sentences and brief paragraphs often seem designed for a readership more accustomed to journalism than to the complexities of Dante (see, for example, the one-page history of the sestina). All of this looks like an attempt to reach an audience of both college students and general readers. While more information might help (brief comments on why certain poems in the anthology are defined as odes, pastorals, or elegies, for example), the bottom line is that The Making of a Poem does an excellent job of taking the inexperienced reader inside the mystery of poetic form. In these terms the volume succeeds, giving us a way into the history of poetry, along with an excellent anthology as a starting point for a deeper exploration of the glories of the genre. --Doug Thorpe]]> 59688 4.06 787 86 31907 4.02 1219 107 2000 256032 0393308227 9780393308228 13 <![CDATA[Outside History: Selected Poems, 1980-1990]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173198891m/256032.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173198891s/256032.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/256032.Outside_History_Selected_Poems_1980_1990 4.23 92 59688 4.06 787 86 1990 256033 0393312984 9780393312980 3 <![CDATA[In a Time of Violence (Norton Paperback)]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1223676547m/256033.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1223676547s/256033.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/256033.In_a_Time_of_Violence 4.05 85 59688 4.06 787 86 1994 103315 0393314375 9780393314373 11 <![CDATA[Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman and the Poet in Our Time]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171491789m/103315.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171491789s/103315.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/103315.Object_Lessons_The_Life_of_the_Woman_and_the_Poet_in_Our_Time 4.17 82 ]]> 59688 4.06 787 86 1995 240026 0393324249 9780393324242 8 <![CDATA[Against Love Poetry: Poems]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173031891m/240026.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173031891s/240026.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/240026.Against_Love_Poetry_Poems 4.15 71 59688 4.06 787 86 2001 256031 0393316017 9780393316018 3 <![CDATA[An Origin Like Water: Collected Poems 1957-1987]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173198890m/256031.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173198890s/256031.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/256031.An_Origin_Like_Water_Collected_Poems_1957_1987 4.43 51 59688 4.06 787 86 1996 256034 0393319512 9780393319514 5 <![CDATA[The Lost Land: Poems]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173198893m/256034.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173198893s/256034.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/256034.The_Lost_Land_Poems 3.97 35 and staccato "A Dream of Colony," a vision of wish-fulfillment in which words can reverse the past:
Each phrase of ours,
holding still for a moment in the stormy air,
raised an unburned house
at the end of an avenue of elder and willow.

Unturned that corner
the assassin eased around and aimed from.
Undid. Unsaid:
Once. Fire. Quick. Over there.
In her essay "Outside History," Boland declares: "A society, a nation, a literary heritage is always in danger of making up its communicable heritage from its visible elements. Women, as it happens, are not especially visible in Ireland." The Lost Land is out to bring women inside history. "Formal Feeling," finds the poet proclaiming that the distaff half will no longer be willfully blinded and kept down by myth; in a triumphant conclusion, she calls upon Eros to "see the difference / This time--and this you did not ordain-- / I am changing the story." Still, for each heightened moment in the volume there are several more grief-stricken ones, and it is this tension that gives Boland's work its strength and shadows. --Kerry Fried

]]> 59688 4.06 787 86 1998 256029 0393062414 9780393062410 2 <![CDATA[Domestic Violence: Poems]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173198888m/256029.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173198888s/256029.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/256029.Domestic_Violence_Poems 4.10 31 "A poet at the peak of her power…one of Ireland's greatest, and among the best writing in English anywhere."—Booklist

These are poems about the charged spaces in which people live, about the interiors where seductions, quarrels, memories, and griefs occur. A marriage is a window for outward violence; a painted cup becomes a theater for a long love; in an ordinary room a mythic violation takes place.]]> 59688 4.06 787 86 2007 1196625 1885983158 9781885983152 6 <![CDATA[Committed to Memory: 100 Best Poems to Memorize]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1181797421m/1196625.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1181797421s/1196625.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1196625.Committed_to_Memory_100_Best_Poems_to_Memorize 4.00 20 Poet John Hollander has divided the poems into tales, sonnets, songs, meditations and counsels. Published in partnership with The Academy of American Poets.

]]> 59688 4.06 787 86 1996 1513935 0393065790 9780393065794 1 <![CDATA[New Collected Poems]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1184529665m/1513935.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1184529665s/1513935.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1513935.New_Collected_Poems 4.07 15 An expansive, celebratory collection from "one of the finest and boldest poets of the last half century" (Poetry Review).

An Origin Like Water: Poems 1967-1987 confirmed Eavan Boland's place at the forefront of modern Irish poetry. New Collected Poems now brings the record of her achievement up to date, adding material from her subsequent volumes and filling out key poems from the early years. Following the chronology of publication, the reader experiences the exhilarating sense of development, now incremental, now momentous. Boland's work traces a measured process of emancipation from conventions and stereotypes, writing now in a space she has cleared not by violent rejection, but by dialogue, critical engagement, and patient experimentation with form, theme, and language.]]> 59688 4.06 787 86 2005