American Poetry: The Twentieth Century Vol. 2 (LOA #116): E.E. Cummings to May Swenson

by Robert Hass (Compiler), John Hollander (Compiler), Carolyn Kizer (Compiler), Nathaniel Mackey (Compiler), Marjorie Perloff (Compiler)

Overview

“The editing is more than brilliant: It is nearly unimaginable how the Library of America team managed to do so much so well. . . . Every possible kind of poem is here in its best examples. No one has ever done a better anthology of modern American poetry, or even come close.” — Talk

This second volume of the landmark two-volume Library of America anthology of twentieth-century poetry, organized chronologically by the poets’ birthdates, takes the reader from E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) to May Swenson (1913–1989). In the wake of the modernist renaissance, American poets continued to experiment with new techniques and themes, while the impact of the Depression and World War II and the continuing political struggle of African Americans became part of the fabric of a literature in transition. New schools and definitions of poetry seemed often to divide the literary scene. This was the era of the Harlem Renaissance, the Objectivists, the Fugitives, the proletarian poets. It was also an era of vigorously individuated voices—knotty, defiant, sometimes eccentric.

The range of tone and subject matter is immense: here are Melvin B. Tolson’s swirlingly allusive Harlem portraits, Phyllis McGinley’s elegant verse transcriptions of suburbia, May Swenson’s playful meditations on the laws of physics. The diversity of formal approaches includes the extreme linguistic experiments of Eugene Jolas and Abraham Lincoln Gillespie, Rolfe Humphries’s adaptation of traditional Welsh meter, the haiku of Richard Wright, the ballads of Helen Adam and Elder Olson, the epigrams of J.V. Cunningham. A selection of light verse is joined by lyrics from the era’s greatest songwriters, including Robert Johnson, Woody Guthrie, and Ira Gershwin. Several important long poems are presented complete, including Hart Crane’s The Bridge, Louis Zukofsky’s Poem beginning “The” and Robert Penn Warren’s Audubon: A Vision. Rounding out the volume are such infrequently anthologized figures as Vladimir Nabokov, James Agee, Tennessee Williams, and John Cage.

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:	9781883011789
Publisher:	Library of America
Publication date:	03/20/2000
Series:	Library of America: The American Poetry Anthology , #5
Pages:	1000
Product dimensions:	5.19(w) x 8.15(h) x 1.23(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.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

R. P. Blackmur
1904-1965

Mirage

The wind was in another country, and
the day had gathered to its heart of noon
the sum of silence, heat, and stricken time.
Not a ripple spread. The sea mirrored
perfectly all the nothing in the sky.
We had to walk about to keep our eyes
from seeing nothing, and our hearts from stopping
at nothing. Then most suddenly we saw
horizon on horizon lifting up
out of the sea's edge a shining mountain
sun-yellow and sea-green; against it surf
flung spray and spume into the miles of sky.
Somebody said mirage, and it was gone,
but there I have been living ever since.

BLIND LEMON JEFFERSON
(1897-1929)

Long Distance Moan

I'm flying to South Carolina
                           I gotta go there this time
I'm flying to South Carolina
                           I gotta go there this time
Woman in Dallas Texas
                     is 'bout to make me lose my mind

Long distance, longdistance
                          will you please give me a credit call
Long distance, long distance
                          will you give me a please cr-credit call
Want to talk to my gal in South Carolina
                                 who looks like a Indian squaw

Just want to ask my baby
                         what in the world is she been doing
I want to ask my baby
                      what in the world is she been doing
Give your loving to another joker
                                and it's sure gonna be my ruin

Hey long distance
                 I can't help but moan
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
                I can't help but moan
My baby's voice sound so sweet
                          oh I'm gonna break this telephone

You don't know you love
                        your rider till she is so far from you
You don't know you love your rider
                                    until she's so far from you

You can get long distance moan
                             and you don't care what you do

I say no use standing and buzzing
                               to get my brownie off my mind
No use standing and bawling
                            get my baby off my mind
This long distance moan
                        about to worry me to death this time

Table of Contents

	"All in green went my love riding"	1
	"in Just-/spring when the world is mud-"	2
	"Tumbling-hair/picker of buttercups"	3
	"Humanity i love you"	3
	"O sweet spontaneous"	4
	"stinging/gold swarms"	5
	"between green/mountains"	6
	"Babylon slim/-ness of"	6
	"ta/ppin/g/toe"	7
	"Buffalo Bill's/defunct"	7
	"the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls"	8
	"god pity me whom(god distinctly has)"	8
	"Dick Mid's large bluish face without eyebrows"	9
	"Spring is like a perhaps hand"	9
	Poem, or Beauty Hurts Mr. Vinal	10
	"she being Brand"	12
	"on the Madam's best april the"	13
	Memorabilia	14
	"next to of course god america i"	15
	"lis/-ten//you know what i mean when"	15
	"my sweet old etcetera"	16
	"Among/these/red pieces of"	17
	"in spite of everything"	18
	"since feeling is first"	18
	"i sing of Olaf glad and big"	18
	"twi-/is -Light bird"	20
	"a clown's smirk in the skull of a baboon"	20
	"somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond"	21
	"r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r"	22
	"the boys i mean are not refined"	22
	"as freedom is a breakfastfood"	23
	"anyone lived in a pretty how town"	24
	"my father moved through dooms of love"	25
	"plato told"	27
	"pity this busy monster, manunkind"	28
	"a grin without a"	29
	Proud Riders	30
	Europa	31
	Test Paper	32
	From the Green Book of Yfan	33
	Mater Dolorosa	35
	Words of an Old Woman	36
	Hasbrouck and the Rose	37
	Bill Gets Burned	39
	"On Brooklyn Bridge I saw a man drop dead"	42
	"I met in a merchant's place"	42
	"The shopgirls leave their work"	42
	"How shall we mourn you who are killed and wasted"	42
	"My work done, I lean on the window-sill"	43
	"In the shop, she, her mother, and grandmother"	43
	The Idiot	43
	"She who worked patiently"	43
	Epidemic	43
	"Her work was to count linings--"	43
	"The house-wreckers have left the door and a staircase"	44
	Aphrodite Vrania	44
	April	44
	"Out of the hills the trees bulge"	44
	"How difficult for me is Hebrew"	44
	"I have learnt the Hebrew blessing before eating bread"	44
	"After I had worked all day at what I earn my living"	44
	"The Hebrew of your poets, Zion"	45
	"Though our thoughts often, we ourselves"	45
	"Among the heaps of brick and plaster lies"	45
	Epitaphs	45
	Millinery District ["The clouds ..."]	46
	"A dead gull in the road"	47
	"I like this secret walking"	47
	Rainy Season	47
	"Of course, we must die"	48
	My grandfather, dead long before I was born"	48
	"A grove of small trees, branches thick with berries"	48
	Millinery District ["Many fair hours ..."]	48
	Similes	49
	Epitaph	49
	Free Verse	49
	from Early History of a Writer	50
	Empty Bed Blues	57
	Everyday Alchemy	59
	Thirst	59
	To One Loved Wholly Within Wisdom	59
	To Mr. Maunder Maunder, Professional Poet	60
	To the Powers of Desolation	61
	To the Natural World: at 37	61
	Try Tropic	62
	All Around the Town	63
	Bounding Line	64
	Hymn to Yellow	64
	The Weed	65
	Fructus	66
	Reapers	68
	Cotton Song	68
	Georgia Dusk	69
	Nullo	70
	Evening Song	70
	Portrait in Georgia	71
	Seventh Street	71
	Storm Ending	72
	Her Lips Are Copper Wire	72
	Gum	73
	The Gods Are Here	74
	This Amber Sunstream	75
	Axle Song	75
	The Near House	76
	Midland	77
	So Simple	77
	Where I Saw the Snake	77
	The First Poem	78
	Lamentations	79
	Winter Nocturne: The Hospital	80
	"To an Amiable Child"	81
	Creatures in the Zoo	82
	A Purplexicon of Dissynthegrations	84
	Ol' Man River	87
	Little Girl Blue	89
	Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered	90
	Dead Man's Corner	92
	Epitaphs	93
	A House of the Eighties	94
	The Omelet of A. MacLeish	95
	Newsreel LIII	99
	Waltz Against the Mountains	101
	Something Starting Over	104
	Noon	106
	I Can't Get Started	107
	They All Laughed	109
	Elegy for Melusine from the Intensive Care Ward	111
	Red-Headed Intern, Taking Notes	113
	Scene: A Bedside in the Witches' Kitchen	113
	Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?	115
	Insects	117
	A History of the Caesars	117
	Medusa	119
	Knowledge	120
	Women	120
	The Alchemist	121
	My Voice Not Being Proud	121
	Men Loved Wholly Beyond Wisdom	122
	Sub Contra	122
	Cassandra	123
	Winter Swan	123
	Dark Summer	123
	Late	124
	Song	124
	Short Summary	125
	Roman Fountain	125
	Evening-Star	126
	Baroque Comment	126
	Kept	127
	Heard by a Girl	127
	Several Voices Out of a Cloud	128
	Musician	128
	Zone	129
	Night	129
	Morning	130
	The Dragonfly	131
	Sermon	132
	Serenade	132
	Kiss	133
	Almost a God	134
	Long Distance Moan	135
	from Elegy in the Manner of a Requiem in Memory of D. H. Lawrence	137
	Waiter	140
	History of Education	140
	Slow Curtain	141
	Why Must You Know?	141
	Would You Think?	142
	Fish Food: An Obituary to Hart Crane	143
	Come Over and Help Us	144
	Anathema. Maranatha!	147
	In the Bathtub, to Mnemosyne	148
	Esprit d'Escalier	149
	Cross Questions	149
	from John Brown's Body	150
	American Names	154
	Cotton Mather	156
	Daniel Boone	156
	Metropolitan Nightmare	157
	Winter Tenement	160
	Ernest	161
	Vision	162
	Photoheliograph	165
	from Chorus for Survival	166
	The Cage of Voices	168
	from Libretto for the Republic of Liberia	170
	from Harlem Gallery	176
	April Mortality	183
	Ghostly Tree	183
	The Rounds and Garlands Done	184
	The Moon and Spectator	185
	Fragmentary Stars	185
	The Horn	186
	The Figurehead	187
	Grapes Making	187
	Chaplinesque	189
	For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen	190
	Voyages	194
	Repose of Rivers	199
	The Wine Menagerie	199
	At Melville's Tomb	201
	The Bridge	202
	O Carib Isle!	242
	The Broken Tower	243
	Take My Hand, Precious Lord	245
	Dumb	246
	Moment	246
	Fern Song	246
	Frog Song	247
	True Western Summer	248
	from The Indians in the Woods	249
	Girl Help	251
	The Reader	252
	Winter Garden	252
	Helen Grown Old	253
	For the Father of Sandro Gulotta	254
	The Ancient Ones: Betatakin	255
	Garden Note I, Los Altos	256
	Garden Note II, March	256
	from The Wild Party	257
	from Lolita	263
	On Translating "Eugene Onegin"	265
	Santo Domingo Corn Dance	266
	Mr. Pope	269
	Ode to the Confederate Dead	269
	The Twelve	272
	Last Days of Alice	273
	The Wolves	274
	Aeneas at Washington	275
	The Ivory Tower	276
	The Mediterranean	277
	Sonnets at Christmas	279
	The Swimmers	280
	February Ground	283
	Walt Whitman	285
	Two Songs of Advent	288
	The Magpie's Shadow	288
	The Solitude of Glass	291
	October	292
	Vacant Lot	292
	The Cold	293
	Nocturne	294
	The Barnyard	294
	Wild Sunflower	295
	The Realization	296
	Apollo and Daphne	296
	The Fable	297
	The Fall of Leaves	297
	The Slow Pacific Swell	298
	To a Young Writer	299
	By the Road to the Sunnyvale Air-Base	300
	Elegy on a Young Airedale Bitch Lost Two Years Since in the Salt-Marsh	300
	On Teaching the Young	301
	Time and the Garden	301
	In Praise of California Wines	302
	To the Moon	303
	Long Gone	304
	Scotty Has His Say	305
	Sister Lou	306
	Southern Road	308
	Memphis Blues	309
	Ma Rainey	311
	Slim in Atlanta	313
	Children's Children	314
	Chillen Get Shoes	315
	Sporting Beasley	316
	Cabaret	318
	Old Lem	321
	A Broken View	323
	Onion Fields	324
	Earthworm	324
	Slow	325
	By Night	325
	The Curse	326
	While I Slept	326
	The Sound I Listened For	326
	As Easily As Trees	327
	Waxwings	327
	Pitcher	328
	Cypresses	328
From the B&N Reads Blog Page 1 of Related Subjects Literature Poetry Anthologies American Literature Anthologies American Poetry Poetry Anthologies Other American Poetry Other Poetry Anthologies American poetry Poetry anthologies Literature Poetry Anthologies American Literature Anthologies American Poetry Poetry Anthologies Other American Poetry Other Poetry Anthologies American poetry Poetry anthologies Editorial Reviews These two volumes make up the first half of the largest anthology of 20th-century American poetry ever attempted. Over 200 poets are represented, all born before 1914, and presented in birth-date order. The scale here is unprecedented, and the spectrum broad, inclusive and generous. The effect is breathtaking. The first volume begins with anonymous ballads, establishing a theme of popular song that is sustained throughout both volumes, including blues, folks songs and Broadway tunes. This suggests the music that was in the air at the time much of this work was being written, as well as asserting the value of these songs as poetry in their own right. "I can tell the wind is rising/ leaves trembling on the trees/ umm hmm hmm hmm/ all I need my little sweet woman/ and to keep my company" (Robert Johnson, vol. 2). The emphasis in vol. 1 is on the richness of modernism, with enormous selections of Robert Frost, Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, H.D., Marianne Moore and T.S. Eliot. Several of these are long enough to comprise an entire volume of selected poems. (Mina Loy gets more than the usual page or two.) The selections are solidly edited, presenting the most representative and well-known poems across each writer's oeuvre. The second volume includes many more poets, and tends toward shorter selections, though Hart Crane is featured prominently. Multiple and simultaneous layers of American poetics are represented side-by-side in both volumes: lyricism, early confessional poetry, Imagism, light verse, Objectivism, the Harlem Renaissance, hoaxes, the Fugitives, among others. One of the greatest pleasures of these books is discovering (or re-discovering) poets like Abraham Lincoln Gillespie, Lola Ridge, John G. Neihardt or dadaist Elsa Von Freytag-Loringhoven, energetic and distinct poets who have long since been dropped from most cullings, or were never included in the first place. This anthology, edited by Robert Hass, John Hollander, Carolyn Kizer, Nathaniel Mackey and Marjorie Perloff, will be an invaluable and lasting resource to anyone interested in American poetry. Its inclusive take on the multiplicity of work leaves all the differences intact, all the layers in context. It brilliantly illuminates the shifting substance of American poetry. (Apr.) FYI: Geoffrey O'Brien is editor-in-chief of the Library of America, and the author of The Times Square Story and other nonfiction, as well as of Floating City: Selected Poems 1978-1995. His The Browser's Ecstasy: A Meditation on Reading is due from Counterpoint in June. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.| Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly Part of the distinguished Library of America series, this impressive anthology was edited by Robert Hass, John Hollander, Carolyn Kizer, Nathaniel Mackey, and Marjorie Perloff, who arranged the poets chronologically by date of birth. Readers will appreciate the diversity of the poetry, including generous selections of the high moderns (Robert Frost, e.e. cummings, Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane, Elizabeth Bishop, and Theodore Roethke). There is also vers de societ (Dorothy Parker, Phyllis McGinley, Ogden Nash, and Virginia Adair). African American writers include Arna Bontemps, Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, Richard Wright, and Claude McKay. Even musicians and composers are well represented (Woody Guthrie, Bessie Smith, Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin, and Oscar Hammerstein). The two volumes contain more than 1500 poems by over 200 different poets, with excellent biographical and textual notes and an index of first lines. Essential for all poetry collections.--Daniel L. Guillory, Millikin Univ., Findlay, IL Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\ Library Journal Customer Reviews