{"product_id":"fifty-years-of-american-poetry-isbn-9780440218777","title":"Fifty Years of American Poetry","description":"Seer, critic, lover, madwoman--the poet's sensibility gives us a chance to experience them all.  This rich, wide-ranging collection of work by scores of America's contemporary poets brings you both wisdom and entertainment in short verse.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn it are represented, with one poem each, the chancellors, fellows, and award winners of the Academy of American Poets since 1934.  The result is a unique sampler of the various literary styles and themes that have left their marks on the past five decades.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFifty Years of American Poetry\u003c\/b\u003e gives readers the opportunity to hear familiar voices and new ones--and encounter the great American poems that have captured both our minds and our hearts.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Academy of American Poets has as its stated purpose ''To encourage, stimulate, and foster the production of American poetry...\" This was never limited to poets of any particular school, method, or category of poetry so this anthology is as representative a cross-section of American poetry in the last 50 years as any of its kind. The Academy is not a stodgy eastem provincial institution. It encourages young poets, recognizes the importance of change and growth in the poetry of America, and believes that poetry is not for poets only. This anthology was compiled on this basis. \u003ci\u003eFifty Years Of American Poetry\u003c\/i\u003e is not only educational, but also inspirational, hopefully imbuing everyone who reads it with a sense of the dynamic and development of American poetry in the last half century. The Academy of American Poets is the only institution which could compile such a unique anthology because it is the oniy group which has consistently played a large part in the American poetry scene through its patronage to poets and its mission to make poetry an accessible and vital part of the American literary landscape. --\u0026gt;The \u003cb\u003eAcademy of American Poets \u003c\/b\u003ewas founded in 1934 and is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary American poetry. For more than three generations, the Academy has connected millions of people to great poetry through programs such as National Poetry Month, Poets.org, \u003ci\u003eAmerican Poets\u003c\/i\u003e, Poem-a-Day, and an annual series of poetry readings and events.X.J. KENNEDY (1929-)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eIn a Prominent Bar in Secaucus One Day\u003c\/i\u003e (1961)\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eTo the tune of \"The Old Orange Flute\" or the tune of \"Sweet Betsy from Pike\"\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn a prominent bar in Secaucus one day\u003cbr\u003eRose a lady in skunk with a topheavy sway,\u003cbr\u003eRaised a knobby red finger--all turned from their beer--\u003cbr\u003eWhile with eyes bright as snowcrust she sang high and clear:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Now who of you'd think from an eyeload of me\u003cbr\u003eThat I once was a lady as proud as could be?\u003cbr\u003eOh I'd never sit down by a tumbledown drunk\u003cbr\u003eIf it wasn't, my dears, for the high cost of junk.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'All the gents used to swear that the white of my calf\u003cbr\u003eBeat the down of the swan by a length and a half.\u003cbr\u003eIn the kerchief of linen I caught to my nose\u003cbr\u003eAh, there never fell snot, but a little gold rose.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'I had seven gold teeth and a toothpick of gold,\u003cbr\u003eMy Virginia cheroot was a leaf of it rolled\u003cbr\u003eAnd I'd light it each time with a thousand in cash--\u003cbr\u003eWhy the bums used to fight if I flicked them an ash.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Once the toast of the Biltmore, the belle of the Taft,\u003cbr\u003eI would drink bottle beer at the Drake, never draft,\u003cbr\u003eAnd dine at the Astor on Salisbury steak\u003cbr\u003eWith a clean tablecloth for each bite I did take.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'In a car like the Roxy I'd roll to the track,\u003cbr\u003eA steel-guitar trio, a bar in the back,\u003cbr\u003eAnd the wheels made no noise, they turned over so fast,\u003cbr\u003eStill it took you ten minutes to see me go past.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'When the horses bowed down to me that I might choose,\u003cbr\u003eI bet on them all, for I hated to lose.\u003cbr\u003eNow I'm saddled each night for my butter and eggs\u003cbr\u003eAnd the broken threads race down the backs of my legs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Let you hold in mind, girls, that your beauty must pass\u003cbr\u003eLike a lovely white clover that rusts with its grass.\u003cbr\u003eKeep your bottoms off barstools and marry you young\u003cbr\u003eOr be left--an old barrel with many a bung.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'For when time takes you out for a spin in his car\u003cbr\u003eYou'll be hard-pressed to stop him from going too far\u003cbr\u003eAnd be left by the roadsite, for all your good deeds,\u003cbr\u003eTwo toadstools for tits and a face full of weeds.'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAll the house raised a cheer, but the man at the bar\u003cbr\u003eMade a phonecall and up pulled a red patrol car\u003cbr\u003eAnd she blew us a kiss as they copped her away\u003cbr\u003eFrom that prominent bar in Secaucus, NJ.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eROBERT NATHAN (1894-)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eNow Blue October\u003c\/i\u003e (1950)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNow blue October, smoky in the sun,\u003cbr\u003eMust end the long, sweet summer of the heart.\u003cbr\u003eThe last brief visit of the birds is done;\u003cbr\u003eThey sing the autumn songs before they part.\u003cbr\u003eListen, how lovely--there's the thrush we heard\u003cbr\u003eWhen June was small with roses, and the bending\u003cbr\u003eBlossom of branches covered nest and bird,\u003cbr\u003eSinging the summer in, summer unending--\u003cbr\u003eGive me your hand once more before the night;\u003cbr\u003eSee how the meadows darken with the frost,\u003cbr\u003eHow fades the green that was the summer's light.\u003cbr\u003eBeauty is only altered, never lost\u003cbr\u003eAnd love, before the cold November rain,\u003cbr\u003eWill make its summer in the heart again.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJOHN UPDIKE (1932-)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eTelephone Poles\u003c\/i\u003e (1963)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey have been with us a long time.\u003cbr\u003eThey will outlast the elms.\u003cbr\u003eOur eyes, like the eyes of a savage sieving the trees\u003cbr\u003eIn his search for game,\u003cbr\u003eRun through them. They blend along small-town streets\u003cbr\u003eLike a race of giants that have faded into mere mythology.\u003cbr\u003eOur eyes, washed clean of belief,\u003cbr\u003eLift incredulous to their fearsome crowns of bolts, trusses, struts, nuts, insulators, and such\u003cbr\u003eBarnacles as compose\u003cbr\u003eThese weathered encrustations of electrical debris--\u003cbr\u003eEach a Gorgon's head, which, seized right,\u003cbr\u003eCould stun us to stone.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYet they are ours. We made them.\u003cbr\u003eSee here, where the cleats of linemen\u003cbr\u003eHave roughened a second bark\u003cbr\u003eOnto the bald trunk. And these spikes\u003cbr\u003eHave been driven sideways at intervals handy for human legs.\u003cbr\u003eThe Nature of our construction is in every way\u003cbr\u003eA better fit than the Nature it displaces.\u003cbr\u003eWhat other tree can you climb where the birds' twitter,\u003cbr\u003eUnscrambled, is English? True, their thin shade is negligible,\u003cbr\u003eBut then again there is not that tragic autumnal\u003cbr\u003eCasting-off of leaves to outface annually.\u003cbr\u003eThese giants are more constant than evergreens\u003cbr\u003eBy being never green.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSYLVIA PLATH (1932-1963)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eLast Words\u003c\/i\u003e (1961)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI do not want a plain box, I want a sarcophagus\u003cbr\u003eWith tigery stripes, and a face on it\u003cbr\u003eRound as the moon, to stare up.\u003cbr\u003eI want to be looking at them when they come\u003cbr\u003ePicking among the dumb minerals, the roots.\u003cbr\u003eI see them already--the pale, star-distance faces.\u003cbr\u003eNow they are nothing, they are not even babies.\u003cbr\u003eI imagine them without fathers or mothers, like the first gods.\u003cbr\u003eThey will wonder if I was important.\u003cbr\u003eI should sugar and preserve my days like fruit!\u003cbr\u003eMy mirror is clouding over--\u003cbr\u003eA few more breaths, and it will reflect nothing at all.\u003cbr\u003eThe flowers and the faces whiten to a sheet.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI do not trust the spirit. It escapes like steam\u003cbr\u003eIn dreams, through mouth-hole or eye-hole. I can't stop it.\u003cbr\u003eOne day it won't come back. Things aren't like that.\u003cbr\u003eThey stay, their little particular lusters\u003cbr\u003eWarmed by much handling. They almost purr.\u003cbr\u003eWhen the soles of my feet grow cold,\u003cbr\u003eThe blue eye of my turquoise will comfort me.\u003cbr\u003eLet me have my copper cooking pots, let my rouge pots\u003cbr\u003eBloom about me like night flowers, with a good smell.\u003cbr\u003eThey will roll me up in bandages, they will store my heart\u003cbr\u003eUnder my feet in a neat parcel.\u003cbr\u003eI shall hardly know myself. It will be dark,\u003cbr\u003eAnd the shine of these small things sweeter than the face of Ishtar.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJOHN ASHBERY (1927-)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eFor John Clare\u003c\/i\u003e (1970)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKind of empty in the way it sees everything, the earth gets to its feet and salutes the sky. More of a success at it this time than most others it is. The feeling that the sky might be in the back of someone's mind. Then there is no telling how many there are. They grace everything--bush and tree--to take the roisterer's mind off his caroling--so it's like a smooth switch back. To what was aired in their previous conniption fit. There is so much to be seen everywhere that it's like not getting used to it, only there is so much it never feels new, never any different. You are standing looking at that building and you cannot take it all in, certain details are already hazy and the mind boggles. What will it all be like in five years' time when you try to remember? Will there have been boards in between the grass part and the edge of the street? As long as that couple is stopping to look in that window over there we cannot go. We feel like they have to tell us we can, but they never look our way and they are already gone, gone far into the future--the night of time. If we could look at a photograph of it and say there they are, they never really stopped but there they are. There is so much to be said, and on the surface of it very little gets said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere ought to be room for more things, for a spreading out, like. Being immersed in the details of rock and field and slope--letting them come to you for once, and then meeting them halfway would be so much easier--if they took an ingenuous pride in being in one's blood. Alas, we perceive them if at all as those things that were meant to be put aside--costumes of the supporting actors or voice trilling at the end of a narrow enclosed street. You can do nothing with them. Not even offer to pay.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt is possible that finally, like coming to the end of a long, barely perceptible rise, there is mutual cohesion and interaction. The whole scene is fixed in your mind, the music all present, as though you could see each note as well as hear it. I say this because there is an uneasiness in things just now. Waiting for something to be over before you are forced to notice it. The pollarded trees scarcely bucking the wind--and yet it's keen, it makes you fall over. Clabbered sky. Seasons that pass with a rush. After all it's their time too--nothing says they aren't to make something of it. As for Jenny Wren, she cares, hopping about on her little twig like she was tryin' to tell us somethin', but that's just it, she couldn't even if she wanted to--dumb bird. But the others--and they in some way must know too--it would never occur to them to want to, even if they could take the first step of the terrible journey toward feeling somebody should act, that ends in utter confusion and hopelessness east of the sun and west of the moon. So their comment is \"No comment.\" Meanwhile the whole history of probabilities is coming to life, starting in the upper left-hand corner, like a sail.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGEORGE STARBUCK (1931-)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Spell Against Spelling\u003c\/i\u003e (1982)\u003cbr\u003e(a poem to be inscribed in dark places and never to be spoken aloud)\u003cbr\u003eMy favorite student lately is the one who wrote about feeling clumbsy.\u003cbr\u003eI mean if he wanted to say how it feels to be all thumbs he\u003cbr\u003eCertainly picked the write language to right in in the first place\u003cbr\u003eI mean better to clutter a word up like the old Hearst place\u003cbr\u003eThan to just walk off the job and not give a dam.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnother student gave me a diagragm.\u003cbr\u003e\"The Diagragm of the Plot in Henry the VIIIth.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThose, though, were instances of the sublime.\u003cbr\u003eThe wonder is in the wonders they can come up with every time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhy do they all say heighth, but never weighth?\u003cbr\u003eIf chrystal can look like English to them, how come chryptic can't?\u003cbr\u003eI guess cwm, chthonic, qanat, or quattrocento\u003cbr\u003eAlways gets looked up. But never momento.\u003cbr\u003eMomento they know. Like wierd. Like differant.\u003cbr\u003eIt is a part of their deep deep-structure vocabulary:\u003cbr\u003eTheir stone axe, their dark bent-offering to the gods:\u003cbr\u003eTheir protoCro-Magnon pre-pre-sapient survival-against-cultural-odds.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou won't get \u003ci\u003eme\u003c\/i\u003e deputized in some Spelling Constabulary.\u003cbr\u003eI'd sooner abandon the bag-toke-whiff system and go decimal.\u003cbr\u003eI'm on their side. I better be, after my brush with \"infinitessimal.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere it was, right where I put it, in my brand-new book.\u003cbr\u003eAnd my friend Peter Davison read it, and he gave me this look,\u003cbr\u003eAnd he held the look for a little while and said, \"George...\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI needed my students at that moment. I, their Scourge.\u003cbr\u003eI needed them. Needed their sympathy. Needed their care.\u003cbr\u003e\"Their their,\" I needed to hear them say, \"their their.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou see, there are \u003ci\u003eSpellers\u003c\/i\u003e in this world, I mean mean ones too.\u003cbr\u003eThey shadow us around like a posse of Joe Btfsplks\u003cbr\u003eWaiting for us to sit down at our study-desks and go shrdlu\u003cbr\u003eSo they can pop in at the windows saying \"tsk tsk.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI know they're there. I know where the beggars are,\u003cbr\u003eWith their flash cards looking like prescriptions for the catarrh\u003cbr\u003eAnd their mnemnmonics, blast 'em. They go too farrh.\u003cbr\u003eI do not stoop to impugn, indict, or condemn;\u003cbr\u003eBut I know how to get back at the likes of thegm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor a long time, I keep mumb.\u003cbr\u003eI let 'em wait, while a preternatural calmn\u003cbr\u003eRises to me from the depths of my upwardly opened palmb.\u003cbr\u003eThen I raise my eyes like some wizened-and-wisened gnolmbn,\u003cbr\u003eStranger to scissors, stranger to razor and coslmbn,\u003cbr\u003eAnd I fix those birds with my gaze till my gaze strikes hoslgmbn,\u003cbr\u003eAnd I say one word, and the word that I say is \"Oslgmbnh.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Om?\" they inquire. \"No, not exactly. \u003ci\u003eOslgmbnh.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWatch me carefully while I pronounce it because you've got only two more guesses\u003cbr\u003eAnd you only get one more hint there's an odd number of esses,\u003cbr\u003eAnd you only get ten more seconds no nine more seconds no eight\u003cbr\u003eAnd a right answer doesn't count if it comes in late\u003cbr\u003eAnd a wrong answer bumps you out of the losers' bracket\u003cbr\u003eAnd disqualifies you for the National Spellathon Contestant jacket\u003cbr\u003eAnd that's all the time extension you're going to gebt\u003cbr\u003eSo go pick up your consolation prizes from the usherebt\u003cbr\u003eAnd don't be surprised if it's the bowdlerized regularized paperback abridgment of Pepys\u003cbr\u003eBecause around here, gentlemen, we play for kepys.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen I drive off in my chauffeured Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham\u003cbr\u003eLike something out of the last days of Fellini's Rougham\u003cbr\u003eAnd leave them smiting their brows and exclaiming to each other \"Ougham!\u003cbr\u003eO-U-G-H-A-M Ougham!\" and tearing their hair.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIntricate are the compoundments of despair.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWell, brevity must be the soul of something-or-other.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNot, certainly, of spelling, in the good old mother\u003cbr\u003eTongue of Shakespeare, Raleigh, Marvell, and Vaughan.\u003cbr\u003eBut something. One finds out as one goes aughan.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus One Day\" from \u003cb\u003eNude Descending a Staircase\u003c\/b\u003e by X.J. Kennedy (Doubleday), reprinted by permission of the author and Curtis Brown Ltd.  Copyright © 1961 by X.J. Kennedy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Now Blue October\" by Robert Nathan, from \u003cb\u003eThe Green Leaf\u003c\/b\u003e (Alfred A. Knopf), reprinted by permission of the author.  Copyright © 1950 by Robert Nathan.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Telephone Poles\" from \u003cb\u003eTelephone Poles and Other Poems\u003c\/b\u003e by John Updike.  Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf.  Copyright © 1963 by John Updike.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Last Words\" from \u003cb\u003eThe Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath\u003c\/b\u003e, edited by Ted Hughes.  Copyright © 1961 by Ted Hughes.  Reprinted by Harper \u0026amp; Row, Publishers, Inc.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"For John Clare\" from \u003cb\u003eThe Double Dream of Spring\u003c\/b\u003e by John Ashbery, reprinted by permission of Ecco Press.  Copyright © 1970 by John Ashbery.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Spell Against Spelling\" from \u003cb\u003eThe Argot Merchany Disaster\u003c\/b\u003e by George Starbuck, copyright © 1970 by George Starbuck.  First appeared in \u003ci\u003eThe Atlantic Monthly.\u003c\/i\u003e By permission of Little, Brown and Company in association with the Atlantic Monthly Press.","brand":"Laurel","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304285950181,"sku":"NP9780440218777","price":7.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780440218777.jpg?v=1767726850","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/fifty-years-of-american-poetry-isbn-9780440218777","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}