TITULO: CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN POETRY

SELECTED AND INTRODUCED BY: DONALD HALL

EDITORIAL: PENGUIN BOOKS

LUGAR: GRAN BRETAÑA

AÑO: 1972

CONTENIDO:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 20

INTRODUCTION 25

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 35

INDEX OF POETS 269

INDEX OF TITLES 271

INDEX OF FIRST LINES 275

WILLIAM STAFFORD (b.1914) comes from Kansas and was educated at the universities of Kansas, Wisconsin and Iowa. He has taught in California and Indiana and is now at Lewis and Clark College in Oregon. West of Your City appeared in 1960, and Travelling Through the Dark (winner of the National Book Award) in 1962. In 1966 he published The Rescued Year and in 1970 Allegiances.

Travelling through the Dark 39

Returned to Say 39

At Cove on the Crooked River 40

Strokes 41

Near 41

With My Crowbar Key 42

DUDLEY RANDALL (b. 1914) is a librarian in Detroit, and publisher of the Broadside Press, which prints broadsides and books by black American poets. Randall published some of his poems, together with poems by Margaret Danner, in Poem Counterpoem (1966), and a second collection, Cities Burning, in 1968.

Roses and Revolutions 43

Black Poet, White Critic 44

George 44

Old Witherington 45

DAVID IGNATOW (b. 1914) has lived most of his life in Manhattan. In 1961 he published Say Pardon, and in 1964 Figures of the Human, which collected poems from volumes that had gone out of print. Rescue the Dead, from which all of these poems are taken, was published in 1968. In 1970he published Poems 1934-1969.

The Bagel 46

Rescue the Dead 46

Ritual Three 47

East Bronx 48

All Quiet 49

ROBERT LOWELL (b. 1917) is a member of the Bostonian family which included a President of Harvard and the poets Amy and James Russell. He attended Harvard and Kenyon, and studied with John Crowe Ransom. After returning to live in Boston for several years, Lowell moved to New York City, from which he periodically commutes to teach at Harvard. Lord Weary’s Castle (1946), Lowell’s first full-scale book, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1947. The Mills of Kanvanagh’s followed in 1951, and Life Studies (which won the National Book Award) in 1959. A book of translations, Imitations appeared in 1961, and a translation of Racine’s Phedrè in 1961. He published a new collection of poems, For the Union Dead in 1964, and a collection of his plays, The Old Gloryin 1965. His most recent collections of poems are Near the Ocean (1967), Notebooks (1969) and a revised Notebook 1970.

Christmas Eve under Hooker’s Statue 50

The Holy Innocents 51

New Year’s Day 51

Katherine’s Dream 52

After the Surprising Conversions 53

Memories of West Street and Lepke 55

For Sale 56

Man and Wife 57

Skunk Hour 58

ROBERT DUNCAN (b. 1919) comes from Oakland, California, and has continued to live near by. He has edited the Experimental Review and Phoenix, and taught at Black Mountain College and the University of Buffalo. Among his books are The Opening of the Field (1960), Roots and Branches (1964) and Bending the Bow (1968).

A Poem Beginning with a Line by Pindar 60

REED WHITTEMORE (b. 1919) was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and attended Yale University. He taught at Carleton College, was consultant in poetry at he Library of Congress in 1964-65, and is now on the staff of the National Institute of Public Affairs in Washington, D.C. He has published six volumes of poetry, of which the most recent is Poems New and Selected (1967).

Still Life 69

A Day with the foreign Legion 70

On the Suicide of a Friend 73

The Party 73

The Walk Home 74

HOWARD NEMEROV (b.1920), joined the Royal Canadian Air Force after graduating from Harvard, and flew in England during the Second World War. He has published considerable literary criticism, three novels, a book of short stories and an autobiographical Journal of the Fictive Life, as well as several books of poems. New and Selected Poems appeared in 1960 and was followed by The Next Room of the Dream (1962) and The Blue Swallows (1967).

Storm Windows 75

The Statues in the Public Gardens 75

A Singular Metamorphosis 77

The View from an Attic Window 78

The Fall Again 80

RICHARD WILBUR (b. 1921) was educated at Amherst College and Harvard, where he took an M.A. in 1947, and was a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows 1947-50. He has taught at Harvard, Wellesley and Wesleyan University, and he has been a Guggenheim Fellow and received a Prix de Rome. His books of poems include The Beautiful Changes (1947), Ceremony (1945), Things of this World (1956), Poems 1943-1956 (1957) and Advice to a Prophet (1961). In 1957 he received the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for Things of this World. He is also an accomplished translator, especially known for his translation of plays by Molière, The Misanthrope (1955) and Tartuffe (1963). In 1969 he published a new collection of poems, Walking to Sleep.

Tywater 81

“A World Without Objects is a Sensible Emptiness” 82

Museum Piece 83

After the Last Bulletins 83

She 85

The Undead 86

In the Smoking Car 87

Shame 88

ANTHONY HECHT (b. 1922) is a native of New York City, and attended Kenyon College, where he studied with John Crowe Ransom. He has taught at Smith College, Bard, and the University of Rochester. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and Hudson Review Fellow. A Summoning of Stones appeared in 1954, and The Hard Hours (which included a selection from the earlier book) was published in 1967 and received the Pulitzer Prize.

Alceste in the Wilderness 90

Samuel Sewall 91

The Vow 92

The End of the Weekend 93

“More Light! More Light!” 94

JAMES DICKEY (b. 1923) was born in Georgia and has lived most of his life in the South. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, consultant in poetry for the Library of Congress, and teaches at the University of South Carolina. In 1967 he gathered his verse together in Poems 1957-67. In 1968 he collected his criticism under the title From Babel to Byzantium. His must recent collection of poems is Eyebeaters, Blood, Victory, Buck-head and Mercy (1970).

The Performance 97

Hunting Civil War Relics at Nimblewill Creek 98

DENISE LEVERTOV (b. 1923) comes from Ilford in Essex, England, and served as a nurse during the Second World War, when her poems were first published by Wrey Gardiner in London. She married the American writer, Mitchell Goodman, and has lived in the United States since1948. Her American books include Here and Now (1957), Overland to the Islands (1958), With Eyes at the Back of Our Heads (1960), The Jacob’s Ladder (1961), O, Taste and See! (1964), The Sorrow Dance (1967) and Relearning the Alphabet (1970).

Overland to the Islands 100

Sunday Afternoon 100

The Springtime 101

The Grace-note 102

The world Outside 102

Six Variations 103

A Map of the Western Part of the County of Essex in England 106

JOHN LOGAN (b. 1923) is editor of Choice, and teaches at the University of Buffalo. His books of poems are Cycle for Mother Cabrini (1955), Ghosts of the Heart (1960),

Spring of the Thief (1963) and Zigzag Walk: Poems 1963-1968 (1969).

The Picnic 108

A Trip to Four or Five Towns 110

LOUIS SIMPSON (b. 1923), born in Jamaica in the West Indies, came to the United States in 1940, and attended Columbia University. He spent three years in the United States Army, mostly in the glider infantry, and received his citizenship at Berchtesgaden. He has been a publisher, and has taught at the University of California, Berkeley and at Stony Brook in Long Island. He has published a novel, a critical book and six books of poems. At the End of the Open Road won the Pulitzer Prize in 1964, Selected Poems appeared in 1966 and The Adventures of the Letter I in 1971.

Early in the Morning 115

The ash and the Oak 116

To the Western World 117

The Riders Held Back 117

Walt Whitman at Bear Mountain 119

There Is 120

My Father in the Night Commanding No 122

EDGAR BOWERS (b. 1924) was born in Georgia, and attended the University of North Carolina and Stanford, where he studied with Yvor Winters. He has been a Sewanee Review Fellow and a Guggenheim Fellow. He now teaches at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His books of poems are The Form of Loss (1956) and The Astronomers (1965).

The Mountain Cemetery 124

The Prince 125

The Centaur Overhead 127

Adam’s Song to Heaven 128

Le Reve 129

JOHN HAINES (b. 1924) was born in Virginia, and in the late forties studied painting and sculpture in Washington and New York. He went to Alaska in 1947, and lived in a cabin which he built himself some seventy miles from Fairbanks. He published Winter News in 1966 and The Stone Harp in 1971.

And When the Green Man Comes 130

The Tundra 131

Foreboding 131

If the Owl Calls Again 132

To Turn Back 133

DONALD JUSTICE (b. 1925) was born in Miami, Florida, where he attended the University of Miami. He has studied at Stanford University and at the University of North Carolina. He teaches at the State University of Iowa. The Summer Anniversaries was the Lamont Poetry Selection in 1959, and was followed by Night Light in 1967.

Beyond the Hunting Woods 134

On the Death of Friends in Childhood 135

Here in Katmandu 135

Another Song 136

Counting the Mad 137

On a painting by Patient B of the Independence State Hospital for the Insane 137

ROBERT BLY (b. in 1926) was born on the Western plains of Minnesota and attended St Olaf’s College and Harvard University. He is editor of the literary magazine The Seventies, and spent a year in Norway on a Fulbright, translating Scandinavian poetry and prose. Later he returned to Norway and to England on a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Ford Foundation Grant. His poems have been collected in Silence in the Snowy Fields (1962) and in The Light Around the Body, which won the National Pook Award in 1968.

Where We Must Look for Help 139

Sunday in Glastonbury 139

Awakening 140

Poem Against the British 141

Driving toward the Lac Qui Parle River 141

Hunting Pheasants in a Cornfield 142

A Busy Man Speaks 143

Poem in Three Parts 144

The Possibility of New Poetry 144

After the Industrial Revolution, All Things Happen at Once 145

Sleet Storm on the Merritt Parkway 145

Andrew Jackson’s Speech 146

JOHN WOODS (b. 1926) was born in Martinsville, Indiana, and teaches at Western Michigan University. He is the author of books of poetry, including The Cutting Edge (1966) and Turning to Look Back: Poems 1955-1970 (1971).

Lie Closed, My Lately Loved 178

What Do You Do When It’s Spring? 178

Looking Both Ways Before Crossing 180

FRANK O’HARA (1926-66) grew up in New England and attended Harvard and the University of Michigan, where he won a Hopwood Award. Most of his adult life he spent in New York, one of the group of poets associated with contemporary painters. He worked for Art News and The Museum of Modern Art, where he was an assistant curator of exhibitions at the time of his accidental death. The Museum published a posthumous collection of his poems illustrated by painters who were his friends, In Memory of MyFeelings. In 1971, Knopf published The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara.

Why I am not a Painter 183

A Step Away from Them 184

Steps 185

JOHN ASHBERY (b. 1927), a native of Sodus, New York,was educated at Deerfield and Harvard. He has worked for Art News and been art critic for the Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune. He has published four principal collections of poems, Some Trees (Yale Series of Younger Poets, 1956), The Tennis Court Oath (1962), Rivers and Mountains (1966) and The Double Dream of Spring (1970).

Some Trees 187

The Picture of Little J.A. in a Prospect of Flowers 188

A vase of Flowers 189

Thoughts of a Young Girl 190

Our Youth 190

The Young Prince and the Young Princess 192

GALWAY KINNELL (b. 1927) was born in Rhode Island and attended Princeton University. He has lived in France where he taught at Grenoble, and in Iran. He has translated Yves Bonnefoy and Villon, among other French poets. He lives in an old farmhouse in Vermont, fromwhich he occasionally departs to teach for a semester or two. He has published What a Kingdom It Was (1960), Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock (1964), Body Rags (1968) and The Book of Nightmares (1971).

From the Avenue bearing the initial of Christ into the New World 193

Flower-herding Pictures on Mount Monadnock 195

W.S. MERWIN (b.1927) was born in New York City, raised in Pennsylvania, and educated at Princeton University. He has spent most of the last two decades in Spain, England and France, where he has a small cottage. He has published numerous translations from Spanish and French. His seven books of poems include The Drink in the Furnace (1960), The Moving Target (1963), The Lice (1967) and The Carrier of Ladders (1970).

Leviathan 198

Low Fields and Lights 199

The Bones 200

Small Woman on Swallow Street 201

Grandfather in the Old Men’s Home 202

Views from the High Camp 203

Departure’s Girl-friend 204

JAMES WRIGHT (b. 1927) is a native of Ohio, and studied under John Crowe Ransom and Theodore Roethke. He has been a Kenyon Review Fellow, and has lived in Austria on a Fulbright Award. He taught at the University of Minnesota and now teaches at Hunter College in New York. His books of poems are The Green Wall (Yale Series of Younger Poets, 1957), Saint Judas (1959), The Branch Will Not Break (1963), Shall We Gather at the River (1968). His Collected Poems appeared in 1971.

A Gesture by a Lady with an Assumed Name 206

At Thomas Hardy’s Birthplace, 1953 207

Saint Judas 208

Confession to J. Edgar Hoover 209

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota 210

Depressed by a Book of Bad Poetry, I Walk toward an Unused Pasture and Invite

The Insects to Join Me 210

The Blessing 211

Miners 212

ANNE SEXTON (b.1928) began writing poems in 1957, and published her fourth volume, Love Poems in 1969. TO Bedlam and Part Way Back appeared in 1960, followed by All My Pretty Ones (1962), and Live or Die, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1967. She is a housewife and lives in the suburbs of Boston.

Lament 213

Wanting to Die 214

That Day 215

DONALD HALL (b1928) is editor of his anthology. He was born in Connecticut, and since 1957 has lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He spent two years at Oxford on a Henry Fellowship, and has returned to spend two more years in England subsequently. His books of poems include Exiles and Marriages (1955), The Dark Houses (1958), A Roof of Tiger Lilies (1963), The Alligator Bride (1969) and The Yellow Room love poems (1971).

The Long River 217

The Blue Wing 217

The Alligator Bride 218

Gold 220

Reclining Figure 220

X.J. KENNEDY (b. 1920) is a native of New Jersey and took his B.A. at Seton Hall University, going to the University of Michigan for graduate study. His first book of poems, Nude Descending a Staircase, was the Lamont Poetry Selection for 1961. he teaches at Tufts University. In 1969he published a second book of poems, Growing Into Love.

First Confession 221

Nude Descending a Staircase 222

Little Elegy 222

B Negative 223

In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus One Day 225

ADRIENNE RICH (b. 1929), a native of Baltimore, published her first book of poems when she was a senior at Radcliffe College. She lives in Manhattan. She has been a Guggenheim Fellow and has held an Amy Lowell Travelling Scholarship. Her most recent books are Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law (1963), Necessities of Life (1966), Leaflets (1969) and The Will to Change (1971).

The Insusceptibles 227

Readings of History 227

EDWARD DORN (b. 1929) was born in Illinois, and attended Black Mountain College. He lived for some time in the northwest of the United States, especially in Pocatello, Idaho. Recently, he spent several years as a visiting professor at the University of Essex, in England. Some of his books are The Newly Fallen (1961), Geography (1965), The North Atlantic Turbine (1967) and Gunslinger (Book I, 1968; Book II, 1969).

Home on the Range, February 1962 233

On the Debt My Mother Owed to Sears Roebuck 234

A Song 235

Mourning Letter, March 29 1963 236

GARY SNYDER (b. 1930) has lived most of the past decade in Japan, but has now settled in northern California in a house – Kitkitdizze – which he built himself. His principal books are Riprap (1959), Myths and Texts (1960), The Back Country (1968) and Regarding Wave (1970).

All through the Rains 237

Piute Creek 237

Above Pate Valley 238

Milton by Firelight 239

Hay for the Horses 240

SYLVIA PLATH (1932-63) WAS BORN IN BOSTON AND WENT TOsMITH College. On a Fulbright to Cambridge she met Ted Hughes, the English poet, whom she married in 1956. She published her first book of poems, The Colossus, in 1960. Shortly after the birth of her second child in 1962, she wrote the poems of her posthumous volume, Ariel (1965).

Lady Lazarus 242

Death & Co. 244

Words 246

ETHERIDGE KNIGHT (b. 1933) was born in Corinth, Mississippi. He has written of himself, “i died in Korea from a shrapnel wound and narcotics resurrected me. I died in 1960 from a prison sentence and poetry brought me back to life.” His book of poems is called Poems from Prison, and appeared in 1968. He was released from the Indiana State Prison in December 1968.

Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane 247

He Sees Through the Stone 248

The Idea of Ancestry 249

As You Leave Me 251

MICHAEL BENEDIKT (b. 1937) lives in New York. The Body was published in 1968, Sky in 1970and Mole Notes in 1971. He has also published considerable translation.

The European Shoe 252

The Eye 253

Divine Love 254

Some Feelings 254

Thoughts 255

TOM CLARK (b. 1941) grew up in Chicago and was graduated from the University of Michigan in 1963, where he won a Major Hopwood Award for poetry. He themn attended Cambridge University and the University of Essex, returning to the United States in 1967. He now lives in California. His first major collection of poems, Stones, appeared in 1969 and Air in 1970.

Poem 256

Going to School in France or America 256

Doors 257

Eyeglasses 259

Poem 260

RON PADGETT (b. 1942) was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and edited a magazine while he was still in high school which included work by Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley and LeRoi Jones. With several other artists from Tulsa, he moved to New York, and currently lives in the East Village. His book of collaborations with Ted Barrigan, Bean Spasms, appeared in 1967. In 1969he published a collection of his own poems, called Great Balls of Fire.

After the Broken Arm 261

The Sandwich Man 261

INDEX OF POETS

Ammons, A.R., 168

Ashbery, John, 187

Benedikt, Michael, 252

Bly, Robert, 139

Bowers, Edgar, 124

Clark, Tom, 256

Creeley, Robert, 147

Dickey, James, 96

Dorn, Edward, 233

Duncan, Robert, 60

Ginsberg, Allen, 172

Haines, John,130

Hall, Donald, 217

Hecht, Anthony, 90

Igatow, David, 46

Justice, Donald, 134

Kennedy, X.J., 221

Kinnell, Galway, 193

Knight, Etheridge, 247

Levertov, Denise, 100

Logan, John, 108

Lowell, Robert, 50

Merrill, James, 155

Merwin, W.S., 198

Nemerov, Howard, 75

O’Hara, Frank, 183

Padgett, Ron, 261

Plath, Sylvia,242

Randall, Dudley, 43

Rich, Adrienne, 227

Sexton, Anne, 213

Simpson, Louis, 115

Snodgrass, W.D., 160

Snyder, Gary, 237

Stafford, William, 39

Whittemore, Reed, 69

Wilbur, Richard, 81

Woods, John, 178

Wright, James, 206

INDEX OF TITLES

Above Pate Valley, 238

Adam’s Song to Heaven, 128

After Greece, 158

After Lorca, 147

After the Broken Arm, 261

After the Industrial Revolution, All Things Happen at Once,145

After the Last Bulletins, 83

After the Surprising Conversions, 53

Alceste in the Willderness, 90

Alligator Bride, The, 218

All through the Rains, 237

All Quiet, 49

Andrew Jackson’s Speech, 146

And When the Green Man Comes, 130

Angel, 155

Another Song, 135

Ash and the Oak, The, 116

As You Leave Me, 251

At Cove on the Crooked River, 40

At Thomas Hardy’s Birthplace, 1953, 207

Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ into the New world, The, 193

Awakening, 140

Bagel, The, 46

B Negative, 223

Beyond the Hunting Woods, 134

Black Poet, White Critic, 44

Blessing, The, 217

Bones, The, 200

Busy Man Speaks, A, 143

Centaur Overhead, The, 127

Childlessness, 156

Christmas Eve under Hooker’s Statue, 50

Confession to J, Edgar Hoover, 209

Counting the Mad, 137

Cracks, The, 149

Day with the Foreign Legion, A, 70

Death &Co., 244

Departure’s Girl-friend, 204

Depressed by a Book of Bad Poetry, I walk toward an Unused Pasture and Invite the Insects to Join Me, 210

Divine Love, 254

Doors, 257

Dream Record: June 8 1955, 173

Driving toward the Lac Qui Parle River, 141

Early in the Morning, 115

East Bronx, 48

End of the Weekend, The, 93

End, The, 176

European Shoe, The, 252

Examination, The, 164

Eye, The, 253

Eyeglasses, 259

Fall Again, The, 80

First Confession, 221

First Party at Ken Keseys with Hell’s Angels, 177

Flower-herding Pictures on Mount Monadnock, 195

Foreboding, 131

For Love, 150

For Sale, 56

George, 44

Gesture by a Lady with an Assumed Name, A, 206

Going to School in France or America, 256

Gold, 220

Grace-note, The, 102

Grandfather in the Old Men’s Home, 202

Hard Rock Returns to Prison from Hospital for the Criminal Insane, 247

Hay for the Horses, 240

Heart’s Needle, 160

Here in Katmandu, 135

He Sees Through Stone, 248

Hill, The, 148

Holy Innocents, The, 51

Home on the Range, February 1962, 233

Hunting Civil War Relics at Nimblewell Creek, 97

Hunting Pheasants in a Cornfield, 142

Hymn, 168

Idea of Ancestry, The, 249

If the Owl Calls Again, 132

I Know a Man, 147

In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus One Day, 225

In the Smoking Car, 87

Insusceptibles, The, 227

Katherine’s Dream, 52

Kore, 152

Lady Lazarus, 242

Lament, 213

Le Reve, 129

Leviathan, 198

Lie Closed, My Lately Loved, 178

Little Elegy, 222

Long River, The, 217

Looking Both Ways before Crossing, 180

Loss, 171

Low Fields and Light, 199

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota, 210

Man and Wife, 57

Map of the Western Part of the County of Essex in England, A, 106

Memories of West Street and Lepke, 55

Message, 175

Milton by Firelight, 239

Miners, 212

Monet: “ Les Nymphéas”, 166

“More Light! More Light!” 94

Mountain Cemetery, the, 124

Mourning Letter, March 29 1963, 236

Museum Piece, 83

My Father in the Night Commanding No, 122

Near, 41

New Year’s Day, 51

Nude Descending a Staircase, 222

Old Witherington, 45

On a Painting by Patient B of the Independence State Hospital for the Insane, 137

On the Death of Friends in Childhood, 135

On the Debt My Mother Owed to Sears Roebuck, 234

On the Suicide of a Friend, 73

Our Youth, 190

Overland to the Islands, 100

Party, The, 54

Performance, The, 96

Picnic, The, 108

Picture of Little J.A. in a Prospect of Flowers, The, 188

Piute Creek, 237

Poem, 256

Poem, 259

Poem Against the British, 141

Poem Beginning with a Line by Pinder, A, 60

Poem in Three Parts, 144

Possibility of New Poetry, The, 144

Power Station, The, 155

Prince, The, 125

Prospecting, 170

Rain ,The, 153

Readings of History, 227

Reclining Figure, 220

Rescue the Dead, 46

Returned to Say, 39

Riders Held Back, The, 117

Ritual Three, 47

Roses and Revolutions, 43

Saint Judas, 208

Samuel Sewall, 91

Sandwich Man, The, 261

Shame, 88

She, 85

Signboard, The, 148

Singular Metamorphosis, A, 77

Six Variations, 103

Skunk Hour, 58

Sleet Storm on the Merritt Parkway, 145

Small Woman on Swallow Street, 201

Some Feelings, 254

Some Trees, 187

Song, A, 235

Springtime, The, 101

Statues in the Public Gardens, The, 75

Step Away from Them, A, 184

Steps, 185

Still life, 69

Storm Windows, 75

Strokes, 41

Sunday Afternoon, 100

Sunday in Glastonbury, 139

Supermarket in California, A, 172

Terrain, 169

That Day, 215

There Is, 120

Thoughts, 255

Thoughts of a Young Girl, 190

To Lindsay, 174

To the Western World, 117

To Turn Back, 133

Travelling through the Dark, 39

Trip to Four or Five Towns, A, 110

Tundra, The, 131

Tywater, 81

Undead, The, 86

Vase of Flowers, A, 189

View from an Attic Window, The, 78

Views from the High Camp, 203

Vow, The, 92

Walk home, The, 74

Walt Whitman at Bear Mountain, 119

Wanting to Die, 214

What Do You Do When It’s Spring, 178

Where We Must Look for Help, 139

Why I am not a Painter, 183

With My Crowbar Key, 42

Words, 246

World Outside, The, 102

“World Without Objects is a Sensible Emptiness, A”, 82

Young Prince and the Young Princess, The, 192

INDEX OF FIRST LINES

A critic advises 44

A drunken night in my house with a 173

A dying firelight slides along the quirt 93

A lip which had once been stolid, now moving 254

A love that is not pardoned 257

A siren sang, and Europe turned away 117

Above my desk, whirring and self-important 155

After the First Communion 100

After the last bulletins the windows darken 83

Again and then again the year is born 51

All night the sound had 153

Alone at the end of green allées, alone 75

Among the high-branching, leafless boughs 78

As he moves the mine-detector 97

As I sd to my 147

As I was walking 152

As one grows older and Caesar, Hitler 74

At Cove at our camp in the open canyon 40

At dusk 132

Axes 246

Blood thudded in my ears. I scuffed 221

Child of my winter, born 160

Coming to the cottonwoods, an 170

Composed in the Tower before his execution 94

Cool black night thru redwoods 177

Darkness falls like a wet sponge 188

Death of Sir Nihil, book the nth 81

Don’t step 149

Drugs are a tuition 256

Early in the morning 115

Even as children they were late sleepers 86

Evening is clogged with gnats as the light fails 90

Excuse me, isn’t that you I see concealed underneath there 255

Finally, to forgo love is to kiss a leaf 46

Flutes, and the harp on the plain 233

Four feet up, under the bruise-blue 201

From point A a wind is blowing to point B 261

Gentle at last, and as clean as ever 202

Hard Rock was “known not to take no shit” 247

He had driven half the night 240

Here lies resting, out of breath 222

He sees through stone 248

Hiding in the church of an abandoned stone 209

How come nobody is being bombed today 49

How funny you are today New York 185

I am driving; it is dusk; Minnesota 141

I am I, old Father Fisheye, that begat the ocean, the worm 176

I am not a painter, I am a poet 183

I can support it no longer 195

I come to tell you that my son is dead 125

I do tricks in order to know 42

I dreamed last night I dreamed, and in that sleep 129

I have done it again 242

I heard Andrew Jackson say, as he closed his Virgil 146

I know if I find you I will have to leave the earth 168

I look out at the white sleet covering the still streets 145

I must explain why it is that at night, in my own house 69

I speak of that great house 134

I stopped to pick up the bagel 46

I think it is in Virginia, that place 199

In a prominent bar in Secaucus one day 225

In Sabbath quiet, a street 102

In the afternoon, while the wind 203

In the street two children sharpen 48

In the third month, a sudden flow of blood 92

It is a cramped little state with no foreign policy 88

It is out in the flimsy suburbs 139

It is sometime since I have been 148

“it is such a beautiful day I had to write you a letter” 190

It is the Old Man through the sleeping town 80

It is the picnic with Ruth in the spring 108

It must have been a Friday, I could hear 52

It’s my lunch hour, so I go 184

It’s quiet for me, now that I have buried the child 47

It takes a long time to hear what the sands 200

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota 211

Last night we sat with the stereopticon 227

Let’s go – much as that dog goes 100

Letters she left to clutter up the desk 206

Lie closed, my lately loved, in the far bed 178

Light into the olive entered 158

Like musical instruments 260

Listen, the hay-bells tinkle as the cart 51

Loneliness leapt in the mirrors, but all week 204

Look! From my window there’s a view 120

Merry the green, the green hill shall be merry 136

Musing on roses and revolutions 43

My father in the night commanding No 122

Nautilus Island’s hermit 58

Neither on horseback nor seated 119

No hesitation 236

Not to the mother of solitude will I give myself 143

Now we enter a strange world, where the Hessian Christmas 145

O depth sufficient to desire 128

Of this house I know the backwindow 259

“O hell, what do mine eyes with grief behold?” 239

Of bricks… Who built it? Like some crazy balloon 190

Oh, on an early morning I think I shall live forever! 144

Old Witherington had drunk too much again 45

On a day when smoke lies down in alleys 180

On one of those days with the Legion 70

On the kitchen wail a flash 102

Once I lived with my brothers, images 127

One granite ridge 237

One morning, as we travelled in the fields 117

Only teaching on Tuesdays, book-worming 55

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly 210

Pale gold of the walls, gold 220

People are putting up storm windows now 75

Poor sheepish plaything 56

Relieved, I let the book fall behind a stone 210

Samuel Sewall, in a world of wigs 91

September twenty-second, Sir; today 53

She was all around me 217

Shiny record albums, scattered over 251

Since we had changed 175

Since you ask, most days I cannot remember 214

Singing of Niagara, and the Huron squaws 144

Someone is dead 213

Some there are who are present at such occasions 73

Something forgotten twenty years: though my fathers 106

Something immense and lonely 131

Summer was dry, dry the garden 234

Talking along in this not quite prose way 41

Tamed by Miltown, we lie on Mother’s bed 57

Taped to the wall of my cell are pictures: 47 black 249

That mare stood in the field 237

The church is a business, and the rich 147

The clock of my days winds down 218

The dove returns; it found no resting place 139

The European Shoe is constructed of grass and reed, bound 252

The eyelids glowing, some chill morning 166

The eyelids meet. He’ll catch a little nap 87

The feelings go up into the air 254

The fishmarket closed, the fishes gone into flesh 193

The funny thing is that he’s reading a paper 261

The gold-coloured skin of my Lebanese friends 110

The good grey guardians of art 83

The grass cuts our feet as we wend our way 192

The grass people bow 133

The last time I saw Donald Armstrong 96

The left side of her world is gone 41

The light foot hears you and the brightness begins 60

The man is clothed 130

The musk-ox smells 217

The narcissist’s eye is blue, fringed with white and covered with tempting

Salad leaves 253

The nurse carried him up the stair 207

The police are dragging for the bodies 212

The quieter the people are 148

The red eyes of rabbits 101

The soul is a region without definite boundaries 169

The tall camels of the spirit 82

The tiny new emotions 256

The tundra is a living 131

The vase is white and would be a cylinder 189

The weather of this winter night, my mistress 156

The wind through the box-elder trees 141

Then the knee of the wave 220

Then the long sunlight lying on the sea 227

There is a blue sky 235

These are amazing: each 187

These seven houses have learned to face one another 137

They served tea in the sandpile, together with 73

Think back now to that cleft 155

This is the black sea-brute bulling through wave-wrack 198

This is the desk I sit at 215

This one was put in a jacket 137

Toe upon toe, a snowing flesh 222

Tonight a blackout. Twenty years ago 50

Travelling through the dark I found a deer 39

Two, of course there are two 244

Under the thick beams of that swirly smoking light 141

Vachel, the stars are out 174