Poem in Your Pocket: 200 Poems to Read and Carry

by Academy Of American Poets (Compiler), Kay Ryan (Introduction), Elaine Bleakney (Editor)

First there was National Poetry Month, then there was National Poem in Your Pocket Day, now you can carry a poem in your pocket anytime!
 
Published in conjunction with the Academy of American Poets, Poem in Your Pocket enables you to select a poem you love, tear it out neatly from the book, and then carry it with you all day to read, be inspired by, and share with coworkers, family, and friends. This innovative format features 200 poems from Shakespeare to Sexton, cleverly organized by theme. If you’re feeling wistful, flip to the “Sonic Youth” section. If you want to romance your lover and surprise him or her with a seductive sonnet, turn to the “Love and Rockets” section. Now you can easily spread the love of poetry or treasure it in private with Poem in Your Pocket !
Whether you’re a fan of Sylvia Plath or Emily Dickinson, Frank O’Hara or Walt Whitman, Poem in Your Pocket has a poem for everyone.

Genres: Poetry

436 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2009

Reviews

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This appears to be a project of The Academy of American Poets (the cover says "in conjunction with") to celebrate National Poetry Month in 2009. The idea was to provide a format in which it's easy to tear a poem from a book and carry it with you throughout the day. So the poems are bound scratch paper fashion with a thin layer of gum at the top.

I wonder if anyone ever used this collection of poems in the intended way. I knew it wouldn't work well for me. However, I thought I could tear them out and surreptitiously insert them into books at the library or leave them "accidentally" in doctors offices, etc. (would it be legal to leave them under windshield wipers?). With that in mind, I read through them and culled those that I wouldn't care to pass on. There weren't many.

It was an enjoyable read. There were old familiar favorites and poems by much more current poets and those who were utterly unfamiliar to me. There were unfamiliar poems by poets I know well. So a nice mixed bag. The collection was arranged and selected thematically, which I really don't think added much to it, though it may have aided the selection process to give it some structure and limitations.

I'll share a few of the new-to-me poems that I discovered in my reading.

From "Six Apologies, Lord" by Olena Kalytiak Davis:

I Have Loved My Horrible Self, Lord.
I Rose, Lord, And I Rose, Lord, And I
Dropt. Your Requirements, Lord. 'Spite Your Requirements, Lord,
I Have Loved the Low Voltage Of The Moon, Lord,
Until There Was No Moon Intensity Left, Lord, No Moon Intensity Left

From "Anthem for Doomed Youth" by Wilfred Owen (we in America seem to only have the one about the gassing in our anthologies):

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells

This poem in full because it's great fun. "What Bee Did" by Julie Larios:

Bee not only buzzed.
When swatted at, Bee deviled,
Bee smirched. And when fuddled,
like many of us, Bee labored, Bee reaved.
He behaved as well as any Bee can have.

Bee never lied. Bee never lated.
And despite the fact Bee took, Bee also stowed.
In love, Bee seiged. Bee seeched.
Bee moaned, Bee sighed himself,
Bee gat with his Beloved.

And because Bee tokened summer
(the one season we all, like Bee, must lieve)
Bee also dazzled.

And a poem translated from Arabic by Peter Cole, "Warning" by Taha Muhammad Ali:

Lovers of hunting,
and beginners seeking your prey:
Don't aim your rifles
at my happiness,
which isn't worth
the price of the bullet
(you'd waste on it).
What seems to you
so nimble and fine,
like a fawn,
and flees
every which way,
like a partridge,
isn't happiness.
Trust me:
My happiness bears
no relation to happiness.

[Aneesa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this book because a reviewer wrote that the introduction by Kay Ryan was worth the price alone. The introduction is really good, but it is only one page. I don't plan to read the entire collection. The format of the book is neat, though: a hard cover around a top-bound pad of poems, like a daily calendar.

[Andrea Huelsenbeck · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t know what I was thinking when I bought this book ten years ago.

Yes, I do. I wanted a book of poems. I ordered it through a book club (Book of the Month? Quality Paperback Book Club? Mystery Guild? I belonged to a bunch of them back in the day.) and in the picture in the brochure, it looked like an ordinary hardcover book.

But when I opened it, I was totally disoriented. It was glue-bound like a notepad. It had no page numbers, no table of contents.

The premise of the book is, you can tear out a poem and keep it handy in your pocket, ready to be referred to or to be offered to a friend or to a stranger.

Of course, I would never deface a book by pulling out pages. If I like a poem, I want it right there in my book where I can find it again, not in my pocket where it will get wrinkled or go through the wash, transforming itself into garbage.

Also, it’s really cumbersome opening a book and then reading pages that are bound at the top. You can’t flip through the pages without holding the book sideways.

I started the book several times without getting very far. But I recently committed to reading the entire book from front to back.

Many of the poets were familiar to me. None of the poems were. I don’t know if I am just ignorant, or if it was Bleakney’s intention to promote less-known masterpieces.

There are some poems in here that I didn’t care for at all (that risk goes with anthology territory). But there are also some that were so delightful I felt compelled to turn over the corner for ease of rereading.

For example, here is a Shakespeare sonnet I’m sure I’d never read before:

Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws,
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,
And burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood;
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet’st,
And do whate’er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,
To the wide world and all her fading sweets,
But I forbid thee one most heinous crime:
O, carve not with thy hours my love’s fair brow,
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;
Him in thy course untainted do allow
For beauty’s pattern to succeeding men.
Yet do they worst, old Time: despite thy wrong,
My love shall in my verse ever live young.

And this beautiful poem by Robert Frost:

Desert Places

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it, it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars, on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

I will reread this book periodically, because I am determined to become familiar with as much poetry as possible. But I recommend it only for people who would willing go to the trouble of reading relatively obscure poetry in an awkward format. Or for people who like to tear pages out of books.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of 200 poems has a clever concept: the book is designed like a page-a-day calendar so the poems can be torn out and carried, posted or shared. Poems by contemporary and classic poets, predominantly American, are presented in interesting categories: Love & Rockets; Dwellings; Friends & Ghosts; Myself I Speak & Spell; Spring & After; City, My City; Eating & Drinking; and Sonic Youth. It’s a fun concept, but the collection as a whole left me wishing there were more poems I wanted to share like these two:

Green Buddhas/ On the fruit stand./ We eat the smile/ And spit out the teeth." Watermelons, Charles Simic"

"A little Madness in the Spring/ Is wholesome even for the King,/ But God be with the Clown -/
Who ponders this tremendous scene -/ This whole Experiment of Green - / As if it were his own!”
Emily Dickinson

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fine collection, though not really a 'book.' The idea is more like a 'page-a-day' calendar, a poem to rip out and hand off. The quality of the poems is universally good, generally accessible, some older, some more contemporary. There are eight sections with 15 -20 or so poems each.

The binding is - by design - impermanent. Now close to two decades after buying this and using it as a source for verse, it may have reached its final days. It is more a pile of jumbled papers, with my favorites sliding about.

[Danielle Palmer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked nearly half the poems in here (or at least some portion of them). That’s not bad. The essays on the inner cover of this one snd its companion are remarkable.

[Melanie Faith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just purchased a second-hand copy of this book online, and it arrived in today's mail. Love it! There's a great variety of poets included-- from Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath to quite recent poets. There is a phenomenal poem about all of the cups of soup a poet has enjoyed throughout her life and poems about everything from friendship to divorce and nature. The cool thing about the book is that you can either read it as a normal text or tear off the page of the poem you enjoy to take with you throughout your day. There's an intro by U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan. :) I'll be returning to this collection for inspiration and rumination-- although I've already read a fourth of it already. :)

[Marissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid collection of wonderful poems. Good variety in subject and style. It loses one star because I felt like an more broad mix of poets could have been included.

[Annamarie]

Meant for "Poem in your pocket day". Filled with fun, witty, educational, emotional poetry.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not a format that appeals to me. It's only easy to handle if you tear out the pages as you read the poems, not really something I want to do. The poetry did not inspire me.

[Tori]

I am currently pasting up poems in random places, because this book inspires me like that.

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't read it all yet but i love tearing out a page and haaving a piece of poetry with me during the day

[Deja Bertucci · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love this book for the introduction by Kay Ryan, if nothing else. Quite a few lovely picks here, too.

[Deirdre K]

Want to read Kay's intro, and perhaps best for a classroom if students were allowed to rip and keep a poem they liked.