{"product_id":"the-voice-that-is-great-within-us-isbn-9780553262636","title":"The Voice That Is Great Within Us","description":"\u003cb\u003e“What an achievement, these sixty years of poetry! In whatever terms we Americans regard the rest of our recent history, the score of things done well and done ill, this much at least we have done superlatively.”—Hayden Carruth\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis famous anthology includes the works of more than 130 major American poets of the modern period—Robert Frost, Paul Goodman, Carl Sandburg, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Allen Ginsberg, and Gwendolyn Brooks among them—along with short biographies of each.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e“Not only the best on its period, I think, but is even perhaps safe from the competition of rivals.”—Robert Lowell\u003c\/b\u003e\"Not only the best on its period, I think, but it is even perhaps safe from the competition of rivals.\"\u003cbr\u003e--Robert Lowell\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"What an achievement, these sixty years of poetry!  In whatever terms we Americans regard the rest of our recent history, the score of things done well and done ill, this much at least we have done superlatively.\"\u003cbr\u003e--Hayden Carruth\u003cb\u003eHayden Carruth\u003c\/b\u003e (1921–2008) lived for many years in northern Vermont, then moved to upstate New York, where he taught at Syracuse University. He won the National Book Award for \u003ci\u003eScrambled Eggs \u0026amp; Whiskey\u003c\/i\u003e, and his \u003ci\u003eCollected Shorter Poems\u003c\/i\u003e received the National Book Critics Circle Award.\u003cb\u003eROBERT FROST (1875-1963)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBorn in San Francisco, Frost moved to New England ten years later upon the death of his father, and in effect remained there the rest of his life, becoming the New Englander par excellence of his age. Yet his early life was not notably successful. Twice interrupted in attempts to secure a college degree, he farmed for a while in New Hampshire, worked as a mill hand, a schoolteacher, a newspaperman. His first poem was published in 1894; but during the next twenty years his work was consistently rejected by American editors.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFinally, discouraged but still determined, Frost went to England in 1912, and there won the support of influential poets and critics, including Ezra Pound. His first two books, \u003cb\u003eA Boy's Will\u003c\/b\u003e (1913) and \u003cb\u003eNorth of Boston\u003c\/b\u003e (1914), were published in London. In 1915 he returned to America. Thereafter his success was unquestioned: he won many honors, including four Pulitzer Prizes for poetry, and became not only the most popular serious poet in the country but one of the most generally respected among fellow writers. Frost's poetic practice was based on what he called \"sentence sounds,\" the natural tones and rhythms of speech cast loosely against standard poetic forms. Conventional as it may seem today, it was a new departure in its time, making Frost a distinctly modern poet. Similarly his combination of Emersonian spiritual aspiration with back-country Yankee pragmatism placed him squarely among his contemporaries, to whom his metaphysically probing Iyrics and narratives, sometimes cynical or playful but often genuinely anguished, spoke with force. These factors, together with his superb poetic gift, make him dominant in the American tradition, a figure with whom younger poets, even the most rebellious, must come to terms.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eComplete Poems of Robert Frost\u003c\/b\u003e. Holt, Rinehart \u0026amp; Winston, 1949 ff.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMENDING WALL\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSomething there is that doesn't love a wall,\u003cbr\u003eThat sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,\u003cbr\u003eAnd spills the upper boulders in the sun;\u003cbr\u003eAnd makes gaps even two can pass abreast.\u003cbr\u003eThe work of hunters is another thing:\u003cbr\u003eI have come after them and made repair\u003cbr\u003eWhere they have left not one stone on a stone,\u003cbr\u003eBut they would have the rabbit out of hiding,\u003cbr\u003eTo please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,\u003cbr\u003eNo one has seen them made or heard them made,\u003cbr\u003eBut at spring mending-time we find them there.\u003cbr\u003eI let my neighbor know beyond the hill;\u003cbr\u003eAnd on a day we meet to walk the line\u003cbr\u003eAnd set the wall between us once again.\u003cbr\u003eWe keep the wall between us as we go.\u003cbr\u003eTo each the boulders that have fallen to each.\u003cbr\u003eAnd some are loaves and some so nearly balls\u003cbr\u003eWe have to use a spell to make them balance:\u003cbr\u003e'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'\u003cbr\u003eWe wear our fingers rough with handling them.\u003cbr\u003eOh, just another kind of outdoor game,\u003cbr\u003eOne on a side. It comes to little more:\u003cbr\u003eThere where it is we do not need the wall:\u003cbr\u003eHe is all pine and I am apple orchard.\u003cbr\u003eMy apple trees will never get across\u003cbr\u003eAnd eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.\u003cbr\u003eHe only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'\u003cbr\u003eSpring is the mischief in me, and I wonder\u003cbr\u003eIf I could put a notion in his head:\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e'Why\u003c\/i\u003e do they make good neighbors? Isn't it\u003cbr\u003eWhere there are cows? But here there are no cows.\u003cbr\u003eBefore I built a wall I'd ask to know\u003cbr\u003eWhat I was walling in or walling out,\u003cbr\u003eAnd to whom I was like to give offense.\u003cbr\u003eSomething there is that doesn't love a wall\u003cbr\u003eThat wants it down.' I could say 'E1ves' to him,\u003cbr\u003eBut it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather\u003cbr\u003eHe said it for himself. I see him there\u003cbr\u003eBringing a stone grasped firmly by the top\u003cbr\u003eIn each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.\u003cbr\u003eHe moves in darkness as it seems to me,\u003cbr\u003eNot of woods only and the shade of trees.\u003cbr\u003eHe will not go behind his father's saying,\u003cbr\u003eAnd he likes having thought of it so well\u003cbr\u003eHe says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCARL SANDBURG (1878-1967)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe son of Swedish immigrants, Sandburg grew up in Galesburg, Ill., a railroad town, where he attended school until he was thirteen, then dropped out and wandered for years through the West and Midwest, working at varied jobs. He served in the Spanish-American War and for a while attended college. Finally he settled in Milwaukee, where he married, became a Socialist and a newspaperman, and began devoting himself seriously to poetry. In 1913 he moved to Chicago. Harriet Monroe, founder of \u003ci\u003ePoetry,\u003c\/i\u003e gave his work a prominent place in her magazine, where it attracted attention for its robust and Whitmanesque freedom. Two books, \u003cb\u003eChicago Poetry\u003c\/b\u003e (1916) and \u003cb\u003eCornhuskers\u003c\/b\u003e (1918), assured his reputation. During the twenties and thirties Sandburg toured widely, lecturing, reading his poems, singing and collecting folk songs, playing his guitar. His two collections, \u003cb\u003eThe American Songbag\u003c\/b\u003e (1927) and \u003cb\u003eThe New American Songbag\u003c\/b\u003e (1950), are important contributions to folklore. At the same time he became deeply interested in the life and achievement of Abraham Lincoln, and spent many years in producing a multi-volume biography. In addition his works include several first-rate books for children (the Rootabaga series), novels, autobiographies, screen plays, and much journalism. Sandburg's poetry was scorned during his middle and later life by the European-oriented critics of the time, and in part rightly so; he wrote too much and too facilely. But some of his early poems have a fresh vision and incantatory vigor that remain firm. In style, attitude, and temperament, he was closer to the young poets of today than most of them recognize.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eComplete Poems\u003c\/b\u003e. Harcourt, Brace, 1950.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCHICAGO\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHog Butcher for the World,\u003cbr\u003eTool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,\u003cbr\u003ePlayer with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler; Stormy, husky, brawling,\u003cbr\u003eCity of the Big Shoulders:\u003cbr\u003eThey tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps hiring the farm boys.\u003cbr\u003eAnd they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.\u003cbr\u003eAnd they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.\u003cbr\u003eAnd having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:\u003cbr\u003eCome and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.\u003cbr\u003eFlinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;\u003cbr\u003eFierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,\u003cbr\u003eBareheaded,\u003cbr\u003eShoveling,\u003cbr\u003eWrecking,\u003cbr\u003ePlanning,\u003cbr\u003eBuilding, breaking, rebuilding,\u003cbr\u003eUnder the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,\u003cbr\u003eUnder the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,\u003cbr\u003eLaughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,\u003cbr\u003eBragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people,\u003cbr\u003eLaughing!\u003cbr\u003eLaughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWALLACE STEVENS (1879-1955)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eStevens determined, early in life, to create a life-style that would accommodate his first vocation, poetry. The course he chose would have seemed paradoxical to many, but not to him. He studied law, entered the insurance business at Hartford, Conn., and spent a number of years working upward to an executive position and a life of affluence. Consequently his first book, \u003cb\u003eHarmonium\u003c\/b\u003e (1923), did not appear until he was forty-three years old; but then it made an immediate hit. Many of its poems became favorites: \"Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores,\" \"Sunday Morning,\" \"The Emperor of Ice-Cream,\" \"Tea at the Palaz of Hoon,\" \"Sea Surface Full of Clouds,\" etc. They were as exotic as their titles; full of tropical imagery and unusual diction, armored in brilliant stylized rhetoric; but despite their ornamentation they dealt with disturbing themes, particularly man's attempt to find, or create, meaning in a universe from which the spiritual rationale had apparently departed. For Stevens, the way lay through aesthetic experience; yet he was never merely willing to substitute art for reality. The real world, he insisted, was the \"necessary angel\" who announced to imaginative man the plenitude of hie. As his books succeeded one another, perceptive readers saw that although the famous stylization of the early poems had moderated, the new work was more exact, better integrated, and more profoundly felt. Indeed some of Stevens's most moving poems, written in his last years, were not published until after his death, in a volume which also contains bis \"Adagia\", brilliant prose aphorisms and philosophical aperçus. No other poetry of the twentieth century has been more consistently, flawlessly individual; none has been more attractive; none has been harder to imitate. Hence the influence of Stevens on younger poets, though pervasive, has been indirect.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens\u003c\/b\u003e. Knopf, 1954.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eOpus Posthumous\u003c\/b\u003e. Ed. Samuel French Morse. Knopf, 1957.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Necessary Angel\u003c\/b\u003e. (Essays.) Knopf, 1951.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSelected Letters of Wallace Stevens\u003c\/b\u003e. Ed Holly Stevens. Knopf, 1966.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTHE HOUSE WAS QUIET AND THE WORLD WAS CALM\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe house was quiet and the world was calm.\u003cbr\u003eThe reader became the book; and summer night\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWas like the conscious being of the book.\u003cbr\u003eThe house was quiet and the world was calm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe words were spoken as if there was no book,\u003cbr\u003eExcept that the reader leaned above the page,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWanted to lean, wanted much most to be\u003cbr\u003eThe scholar to whom his book is true, to whom\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe summer night is like a perfection of thought.\u003cbr\u003eThe house was quiet because it had to be.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:\u003cbr\u003eThe access of perfection to the page.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,\u003cbr\u003eIn which there is no other meaning, itself\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIs calm, itself is summer and night, itself\u003cbr\u003eIs the reader leasing late and reading there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Mending Wall\" by Robert Frost. From \u003cb\u003eComplete Poems of Robert Frost\u003c\/b\u003e. Copyright © 1916, 1923 by Holt, Rinehart \u0026amp; Winston, Inc. Copyright © 1936, 1942 by Robert Frost. Copyright © 1964 by Leslie Frost Ballantine. Reprinted by permission of Holt, Rinehart \u0026amp; Winston, Inc.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Chicago\" by Carl Sandburg. From \u003cb\u003eChicago Poems\u003c\/b\u003e. Copyright © by Holt, Rinehart \u0026amp; Winston, Inc. Copyright © by Carl Sandburg. Reprinted by permission of Holt, Rinehart \u0026amp; Winston, Inc.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm\" by Wallace Stevens. From \u003cb\u003eThe Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens\u003c\/b\u003e. Copyright © 1942, 1947 by Wallace Stevens. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.","brand":"Bantam","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304804372709,"sku":"NP9780553262636","price":10.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780553262636.jpg?v=1767742099","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-voice-that-is-great-within-us-isbn-9780553262636","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}