Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.
Start by marking “Now and Then: The Poet's Choice Columns, 1997-2000” as Want to Read:
Now and Then: The Poet's Choice Columns, 1997-2000
by
During his tenure as US Poet Laureate, Robert Hass revived the popular nineteenth-century tradition of including poetry in our daily newspapers. “Poet's Choice” ultimately became a nationally syndicated column appearing in dozens of papers across the country. Every week, Hass would marry poets and poetry to headlines and holidays.
Proceeding in sequence from early 1997 to t ...more
Proceeding in sequence from early 1997 to t ...more
Get A Copy
Hardcover, 304 pages
Published
April 6th 2007
by Counterpoint
(first published 2007)
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Reader Q&A
To ask other readers questions about
Now and Then,
please sign up.
Be the first to ask a question about Now and Then
This book is not yet featured on Listopia.
Add this book to your favorite list »
Community Reviews
Showing 1-30
Start your review of Now and Then: The Poet's Choice Columns, 1997-2000
A nice collection of disparate and brief essays about poets and poetry. I find the sentimentalizing of the "pre 9-11" world a bit overdone as it relates to what is just a study of poetry in short essays. Perhaps that is just what the publisher wanted to write, but there is only a need to say it is timeless. Hass captures the timeless quality, whether of living poets or ones who wrote centuries ago.
...more
This was SO GOOD. It's a book full of poems with little essays attached to them - essays that lead you in understanding the poem, give you background on the poet, or teach you how to read poetry. Originally published as a weekly newspaper column designed to introduce readers to poems and poets, this collection stretched me and exposed me to so many wonderful poets I have never even heard of before, including poets from other countries. I've written down at least a dozen poetry books I want to re
...more
This is a compendium of weekly columns, each including a poem or two, that Robert Hass wrote for the Washington Post's Book World from late 1997 through early 2000. Each column is titled with a poet, sometimes accompanied with a header, often a holiday, or the nationality of the poet. Many of the columns concerned poetic works published during those years, but there are also columns focusing on works published in prior years and further in the past.
This collection is made interesting through th ...more
This collection is made interesting through th ...more
Mar 04, 2016
Jonna Higgins-Freese
added it
What an unexpected treasure, stumbled across on the library shelf. Hass has an engaging and accessible way of introducing and interacting with the poems and situating them in context so they can be appreciated. His tone is neither too academic nor condescending to the lay reader, but pitch perfect: here's some stuff that I really enjoy. Here's why you might like it too, or the things you might need to know to appreciate it. See what you think.
...more
THis is a nice compilation of columns about poetry by a practicing poet. Hass's essays follows the seasons, presenting poems about winter in wintertime, for example, and range over poems and poets old and new. This is a great book for someone who remembers being entranced by poetry as a student long ago and who now would like to read some poetry without plunging in to a pure anthology. Stimulating and entertaining!
...more
The book is a collection of Hass’s newspaper columns from his time as Poet Laureate. Many of the essays in here are quite helpful especially when reading a list of American poets from the last fifty years. Hass writes vignettes on many different writers such as Wallace Stevens, Rita Dove, John Ashbery, Robert Frost, as well as many others. In most of the essays he is discussing a particular poem that illustrates that poet’s aesthetics.
Jun 17, 2008
Rachel
added it
Lucid introductions to contemporary American poets rendered with grace and broad-mindedness. It was an excellent way to broaden my reading tastes. Too bad Hass is no longer writing this column. Why aren't there more such columns on poetry in American newspapers?
...more
So far, really fantastic for his insight on the anthology of poets he chooses. Beautiful!
Nice collection from his columns while he was Poet Laureate. It helped to introduce me to a couple of new poets, too, old and new. I've enjoyed reading it slowly and was sad when I was finished.
...more
...more
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
Readers also enjoyed
Robert Hass was born in San Francisco and lives in Berkeley, California, where he teaches at the University of California. He served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997. A MacArthur Fellow and a two-time winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, he has published poems, literary essays, and translations. He is married to the poet Brenda Hillman.
Related Articles
His idiom is spare, he means to say what he knows, as simply as possible, and the simpler the poems the more mysterious they are. For clear water,...
18 likes · 13 comments
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
