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American Poetry: The Twentieth Century Vol. 1 (LOA #115): Henry Adams to Dorothy Parker
1000
American Poetry: The Twentieth Century Vol. 1 (LOA #115): Henry Adams to Dorothy Parker
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Overview
In the years between the beginning of the twentieth century and the end of World War II, American poetry was transformed, producing a body of work whose influence was felt throughout the world. Now for the first time the landmark two-volume Library of America anthology of twentieth-century poetry through the post-War years restores that era in all its astonishing beauty and explosive energy.
This first volume of the set, organized chronologically by the poets’ birthdates, takes the reader from Henry Adams (1838–1918) to Dorothy Parker (1893–1967), and in the process reveals the unfolding of a true poetic renaissance. Included are generous selections from some of the century’s greatest poets: Edwin Arlington Robinson, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, H.D., Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot. Here they are seen as part of an age that proposed new and often contentious definitions of what American poetry could be and fresh perceptions of a society undergoing rapid and often tumultuous change.
The multifarious aesthetic influences brought to bear—Chinese and Japanese poetry, the African-American sermon, the artistic revolutions of Cubism and Dada, the cadences of jazz, the brash urgencies of vernacular speech—resulted in a poetic culture of dynamic energy and startling contrasts.
The poets of this era transformed not only style but traditional subject matter: there are poems here on a silent movie actress, a lynching, the tenements of New York, the trench warfare of World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the landscape of Mars. Here too are folk ballads on events like the assassination of McKinley and the sinking of the Titanic; popular and humorous verse by Don Marquis and Franklin P. Adams; the famous “Spectra” hoax; song lyrics by Ma Rainey, Joe Hill, and Irving Berlin; and poems by writers as unexpected as Djuna Barnes, Sherwood Anderson, John Reed, and H. P. Lovecraft. Included are some of the century’s most important poems, presented in full: Pound’s Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, Eliot’s The Waste Land, Steven’s Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction.
LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
This first volume of the set, organized chronologically by the poets’ birthdates, takes the reader from Henry Adams (1838–1918) to Dorothy Parker (1893–1967), and in the process reveals the unfolding of a true poetic renaissance. Included are generous selections from some of the century’s greatest poets: Edwin Arlington Robinson, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, H.D., Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot. Here they are seen as part of an age that proposed new and often contentious definitions of what American poetry could be and fresh perceptions of a society undergoing rapid and often tumultuous change.
The multifarious aesthetic influences brought to bear—Chinese and Japanese poetry, the African-American sermon, the artistic revolutions of Cubism and Dada, the cadences of jazz, the brash urgencies of vernacular speech—resulted in a poetic culture of dynamic energy and startling contrasts.
The poets of this era transformed not only style but traditional subject matter: there are poems here on a silent movie actress, a lynching, the tenements of New York, the trench warfare of World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the landscape of Mars. Here too are folk ballads on events like the assassination of McKinley and the sinking of the Titanic; popular and humorous verse by Don Marquis and Franklin P. Adams; the famous “Spectra” hoax; song lyrics by Ma Rainey, Joe Hill, and Irving Berlin; and poems by writers as unexpected as Djuna Barnes, Sherwood Anderson, John Reed, and H. P. Lovecraft. Included are some of the century’s most important poems, presented in full: Pound’s Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, Eliot’s The Waste Land, Steven’s Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction.
LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781883011772 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Library of America |
| Publication date: | 03/20/2000 |
| Series: | Library of America: The American Poetry Anthology , #4 |
| Pages: | 1000 |
| Sales rank: | 309,496 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.30(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.20(d) |
About the Author
Robert Hass is one of America's most acclaimed poets, winner of both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. He was poet laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997.
John Hollander (1929–2013) published nearly two dozen books of poetry, including Selected Poetry (1993), Figurehead (1999), and A Draft of Light (2008), as well as five books of criticism. He received the Bollingen Prize and a MacArthur Fellowship, and was Sterling Professor of English at Yale University.
Carolyn Kizer (1925-2014) was the author of more than a dozen works of poetry, prose, and translation. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1985.
Nathaniel Mackey is a poet, novelist, anthologist, literary critic, and editor. He is the Reynolds Price Professor of Creative Writing at Duke University and a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets.
Marjorie Perloff teaches courses and writes on twentieth and twenty-first century poetry and poetics. She is Professor Emerita of English at Stanford University and Florence R. Scott Professor of English Emerita at the University of Southern California.
John Hollander (1929–2013) published nearly two dozen books of poetry, including Selected Poetry (1993), Figurehead (1999), and A Draft of Light (2008), as well as five books of criticism. He received the Bollingen Prize and a MacArthur Fellowship, and was Sterling Professor of English at Yale University.
Carolyn Kizer (1925-2014) was the author of more than a dozen works of poetry, prose, and translation. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1985.
Nathaniel Mackey is a poet, novelist, anthologist, literary critic, and editor. He is the Reynolds Price Professor of Creative Writing at Duke University and a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets.
Marjorie Perloff teaches courses and writes on twentieth and twenty-first century poetry and poetics. She is Professor Emerita of English at Stanford University and Florence R. Scott Professor of English Emerita at the University of Southern California.
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
Walter Conrad Arensberg
1878-1954
Arithmetical Progression of the Verb "To Be"
On a sheet of paper
dropped with the intention of demolishing
space
by the simple subtraction of a necessary plane
draw a line that leaves the present
in addition
carrying forward to the uncounted columns
of the spatial ruin
now considered as complete
the remainder of the past.
The act of disappearing
which in the three-dimensional
is the fate of the convergent
vista
is thus
under the form of the immediate
arrested in a perfect parallel
of being
in part.
Edward Arlington Robinson
(1869-1935)
The Poor Relation
No longer torn by what she knows
And sees within the eyes of others,
Her doubts are when the daylight goes,
Her fears are for the few she bothers.
She tells them it is wholly wrong
Of her to stay alive so long;
And when she smiles her forehead shows
A crinkle that had been her mother's.
Beneath her beauty, blanched with pain,
And wistful yet for being cheated,
A child would seem to ask again
A question many times repeated;
But no rebellion has betrayed
Her wonder at what she has paid
For memories that have no stain,
For triumph born to be defeated.
To those who come for what she was—
The few left who know where to find her—
She clings, for they are all she has;
And she may smile when they remind her,
As heretofore, of what they know
Of roses that are still to blow
By ways where not so much as grass
Remains of what she sees behind, her.
They stay a while, and having done
What penance or the past requires,
They go, and leave her there alone
To count her chimneys and her spires.
Her lip shakes when they go away,
And yet she would not have them stay;
She knows as well as anyone
That Pity, having played, soon tires.
But one friend always reappears,
A good ghost, not to be forsaken;
Whereat she laughs and has no fears
Of what a ghost may reawaken,
But welcomes, while she wears and mends
The poor relation's odds and ends,
Her truant from a tomb of years—
Her power of youth so early taken.
Poor laugh, more slender than her song
It seems; and there are none to hear it
With even the stopped ears of the strong
For breaking heart or broken spirit.
The friends who clamored for her place,
And would have scratched her for her face,
Have lost her laughter for so long
That none would care enough to fear it.
None live who need fear anything
From her, whose losses are their pleasure;
The plover with a wounded wing
Stays not the flight that others measure
So there she waits, and while she lives,
And death forgets, and faith forgives,
Her memories go foraging
For bits of childhood song they treasure.
And like a giant harp that hums
On always, and is always blending
The coming of what never comes
With what has past and had an ending,
The City trembles, throbs, and pounds
Outside, and through a thousand sounds
The small intolerable drums
Of Time are like slow drops descending.
Bereft enough to shame a sage
And given little to long sighing,
With no illusion to assuage
The lonely changelessness of dying,—
Unsought, unthought-of, and unheard,
She sings and watches like a bird,
Safe in a comfortable cage
From which there will be no more flying.
SARAH N. CLEGHORN
(1876-1959)
The Golf Links Lie So Near the Mill
The golf links lies so near the mill
That, almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And see the men at play.
WITTER BYNNER
(1881-1968)
A Sigh
Still must I tamely
Talk sense with these others?
How long
Before I shall be with you again,
Magnificently saying nothing.
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
(1883-1963)
Thursday
I have had my dream—like others—
and it has come to nothing, so that
I remain now carelessly
with feet planted on the ground
and look up at the sky—
feeling my clothes about me,
the weight of my body in my shoes,
the rim of my hat, air passing in and out
at my nose—and decide to dream no more.
Table of Contents
| Anonymous Ballads | |
| Henry Adams (1838-1918) | |
| Charles Erskine Scott Wood (1852-1944) | |
| Lizette Woodworth Reese (1856-1935) | |
| Harriet Monroe (1860-1936) | |
| Edith Wharton (1862-1937) | |
| Frances Desmore (1867-1957) | |
| Mary Austin (1868-1934) | |
| W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) | |
| Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950) | |
| Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935) | |
| George Sterling (1869-1926) | |
| Arthur Gutterman (1871-1943) | |
| James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) | |
| Edwin Ford Piper (1871-1939) | |
| Leonora Speyer (1872-1956) | |
| W. C. Handy (1873-1958) | |
| Lola Ridge (1873-1941) | |
| Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874-1927) | |
| Robert Frost (1874-1963) | |
| Amy Lowell (1874-1925) | |
| Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) | |
| Anna Hempstead Branch (1875-1937) | |
| Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941) | |
| Sarah N. Cleghorn (1876-1959) | |
| William Ellery Leonard (1876-1944) | |
| Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) | |
| Walter Conrad Arensberg (1878-1954) | |
| Adelaide Crapsey (1878-1914) | |
| Don Marquis (1878-1937) | |
| Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) | |
| Joe Hill (1879-1915) | |
| Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931) | |
| Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) | |
| Angelina Weld Grimké (1880-1958) | |
| Franklin P. Adams (1881-1960) | |
| Witter Bynner (1881-1968) | |
| Abbie Huston Evans (1881-1983) | |
| John G. Neihardt (1881-1973) | |
| Elizabeth Madox Roberts (1881-1941) | |
| Mina Loy (1882-1966) | |
| Anne Spencer (1882-1976) | |
| Badger Clark Jr. (1883-1957) | |
| Max Eastman (1883-1969) | |
| Arthur Davison Ficke (1883-1945) | |
| Alfred Kreymborg (1883-1966) | |
| William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) | |
| Donald Evans 1884-1921) | |
| Arturo Giovannitti(1884-1959) | |
| Wilbert Snow (1884-1977) | |
| Sara Teasdale (1884-1933) | |
| Ezra Pound (1885-1972) | |
| Elinor Wylie (1885-1928) | |
| John Gould Fletcher (1886-1950) | |
| Hazel Hall, (1886-1924) | |
| Roy Helton (b. 1886) | |
| Georgia Douglas Johnson (1886-1966) | |
| Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918) | |
| Ma Rainey (1886-1939) | |
| John Hall Wheelock (1886-1978) | |
| Skipwith Cannell (1887-1957) | |
| Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962) | |
| Orrick Johns (1887-1946) | |
| Marianne Moore (1887-1972) | |
| Charlie Patton (1887-1934) | |
| John Reed (1887-1920) | |
| Irving Berlin (1888-1989) | |
| T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) | |
| Fenton Johnson (1888-1958) | |
| Haniel Long (1888-1956) | |
| John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974) | |
| Alan Seeger (1888-1916) | |
| Conrad Aiken (1889-1973) | |
| H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) | |
| Claude Mckay (1890-1948) | |
| Cole Porter (1891-1964) | |
| Djuna Barnes (1892-1982) | |
| John Peale Bishop (1892-1944) | |
| Maxwell Bodenheim (1892-1954) | |
| Archibald Macleish (1892-1982) | |
| Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) | |
| Donald Davidson (1893-1968) | |
| Samuel Greenberg (1893-1917) | |
| Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) | |
| Biographical Notes, | 887 |
| Note on the Texts, | 930 |
| Acknowledgments, | 941 |
| Notes, | 946 |
| Index of Titles and First Lines, | 967 |
| Index of Poets, | 985 |
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