Contemporary Poetry

A Retrospective from the Quarterly Review of Literature

Theodore Russell Weiss, René Weiss, Theodore Russell Weiss, René Weiss, Theodore Weiss, René Weiss

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780691617411, 9780691644554
• eBook ISBN: 9781400871728
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism in Poetry
• Index: Literature

Here in one volume is some of the most exciting poetry written during the last thirty years, culled from the pages of one of America's foremost literary magazines. The Quarterly Review of Literature has been among the first to present many significant poets of our time. In addition to publishing the work of new poets, it has made available little-known work of writers of established reputation. It has brought to the reading public both experimental and traditional verse, and foreign poetry in distinguished translations as well as poetry originally written in English. Its pages have been open, in the words of its editors, "to any work that reflects a dedication to ultimately painstaking art." This volume contains the work of 146 foreign and American poets. It is thus not only a remarkable anthology, but a valuable retrospective of the literary scene.

Originally published in 1976.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• In Retrospect
• Alberti, Rafael, Chaplin's Sad Speech; Goodbye to the Lost Lights; Madrigal to a Streetcar Token; Song (Translated from the Spanish by Lloyd Mallan)
• Amichai, Yehuda, As for the World; In the Middle of this Century; Like Our Bodies' Imprint (Translated from the Hebrew by Assia Gutman)
• Ammons, A. R., The Constant; Glass; Measure;
• Andrade, Jorge Carrera, Nothing Is Ours; Mined Zone (Translated from the Spanish by Muna Lee)
• Ashbery, John, Glazunoviana; The Young Son; Pantoum; Hotel Dauphin
• Belitt, Ben, 1966: The Stone Mason's Funeral
• Benedikt, Michael, Developments; Some Feelings (After Larry Rivers); Upon His Thirtieth Birthday Celebration
• Benn, Gottfried, September; A Hymn (Translated from the German by Edgar Lohner and Cid Corman)
• Bishop, Elizabeth, For M. M.
• Bly, Robert, Poems on the Voyage
• Bobrowski, Johannes, Dead Language; Pruzzian Elegy; Else Lasker-Schüler (Translated from the German by Ruth and Matthew Mead)
• Bogan, Louise, The Pleasures of Formal Poetry
• Brinnin, John Malcolm, Among Old Letters
• Buechner, Frederick, Family Scenes
• Bullis, Jerald, The Night Calling; Elegy, Her Joy
• Burr, Gray, Huckleberry Finn; Stone Cold Dead in the Market
• Campbell, Roy, Luis De Camōes; San Juan De la Cruz
• Carrier, Warren, Summer's End; The Mild Man
• Carruth, Hayden, The Far-Removed Mountain Men; First Night; Hymn to Artemis
• Cavafy, C. P., Waiting for the Barbarians; Thermopylae; Ithaka; One of Their Gods; Nero's Respite; For Ammonis, Who Died at 29, in 610 (Translated from the Greek by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)
• Celan, Paul, Leap-Centuries; Alchemical; Plashes the Fountain (Translated from the German by Michael Hamburger)
• Char, René, The Damaged Crop; If a Forest; The Prodigal's Torch; Fine Edifice and Forebodings; Sturdy Meteors; The Oriole; A March; Threshold; Song of the Corduroy; The Revelation; Fascinating Four (Translated from the French by Charles Guenther)
• Cummings, E. E., Poem
• Darr, Ann, St. Ann's Gut; 33 1/3
• Davie, Donald, A First Epistle to Eva Hesse
• Dejong, David Cornel, Victory
• Deutch, Richard, The Drunkard's Prayer; In Passing
• Dickey, James, Poem
• Duncan, Robert, From the Mabinogion; A New Poem; Two Messages
• Eaton, Charles Edward, The Midget
• Eberhart, Richard, Ode to the Chinese Paper Snake; On Seeing an Egyptian Mummy in Berlin, 1932
• Engels, John, Confessions of a Peeping Tom
• Enslin, Theodore, Temptation; Stalking
• Enzensberger, Hans Magnus, In Memory of William Carlos Williams (Translated from the German by Christopher Levenson)
• Essenin, Three Prayers for the First Forty Days of the Dead (Translated from the Russian by W. S. Merwin and Olga Carlisle)
• Fagles, Robert, Achilles and Penthesileia; Achilles and Cycnus
• Feirstein, Frederick, The Anti-Life: A Fantasy
• Finkel, Donald, Old Lady with a Rosary on the Bus to Puebla; Song for Syrinx and Pennywhistle; Archaic Figurine from Nayarit
• Fox, Siv Cedering a Raccoon
• Galler, David, Arete's Speech to Odysseus
• Gardien, Kent Wrappings
• Garrigue, Jean, Old Haven
• Gaskell, Ronald, Man with Birds
• Goethe, "Faust" from Scene I (Translated from the German by Randall Jarrell)
• Golffing, Francis, A Vanished House
• Goll, Yvan, The Crucified Swimmer (Translated from the French by Galway Kinnell)
• Goodman, Paul, Theory of the Pathetic (After Euripides)
• Graham, W. S. Listen. Put on Morning; The Crowd of Birds and Children; My Final Bread
• Greene, Jonathan, Definition
• Gregor, Arthur, Unencumbered; Estufa Fria
• Gregory, Horace, ... & Testament; The Muse Behind the Laurel
• Guthrie, Ramon, Suite by the River
• Hamburger, Michael, Friends
• Harper, Michael S. We Assume
• Heath-Stubbs, John, Poem After Solstice
• Hecht, Anthony, "And Can Ye Sing Baluloo When the Bairn Greets"; Adam; Lizards and Snakes; Pig
• Hecht, Roger, An Encounter; After Kristallnacht
• Hochman, Sandra—Lauderdale; Crucifix
• Hoffman, Jill, Love Letter; Waking; A Fiery Furnace
• Holmes, John, One Day's Rain
• Hoskins, Katherine, Chatterly Comments; "Spleen"
• Howard, Richard, Pastoral Remains (Hitherto Unpublished) From the Rectory
• Hughes, Ted, Crow Lore
• Hugo, Richard F., Keen to Leaky Flowers, S. Miniato: One by Aretino; Pishkun; Bluejays Adjusted
• Ignatow, David, Two Voices; The Nailhead; I Was Angry; Walking
• Jacob, Max, Nocturne; Hat; Approach to a View in Perspective; Departure; Prognostics (Translated from the French by Michael Benedikt)
• Jarrell, Randall, Eighth Air Force; A Ghost Story
• Kaufman, Shirley, Subversion
• Kinnell, Galway Two Poems
• Kinsella, Thomas, Traveller; Ballydavid Pier; Remembering Old Wars
• Kizer, Carolyn, The Voyager
• Koch, Kenneth, Question in Red Ink
• Koethe, John, Montana; Level; Maps; Leather Slippers
• Kunze, Reiner, At E.'s Home in Vresice; Three Etudes of a Sculptor (Translated from the German by John M. Gogol)
• Kuzma, Greg, Hunting near a Strip Mine
• Laughlin, James, The Swarming Bees
• Leary, Paris, Microcosm
• Levertov, Denise, The Air of November; Luxury; The Jacob's Ladder
• Lieberman, Laurence, Increasing Night; Rock and Cloud; Love, the Barber
• Lipsitz, Lou, Reading a Poem by Walt Whitman I Discover We Are Surrounded by Companions; Young Woman on Her Own; After Visiting a Home for Disturbed Children; To a Fighter Killed in the Ring
• Logan, John, Lines for Michael in the Picture
• Lowell, Robert, Charles the Fifth and the Peasant (After Paul Valéry)
• Maclnnes, Mairi, Reading Cavafy in Translation; Hardly Anything Bears Watching
• Macleod, Norman, Remembrance of the Szeks1 Paris, 1932
• Mandelstam, Osip, Poems (Translated from the Russian by W. S. Merwin and Clarence Brown)
• Matthews, William, Why We Are Truly a Nation; Fear of Reconstruction; Driving all Night
• Merrill, James, The Hero; Foliage of Vision
• Merton, Thomas J., Ariadne; The Greek Women; Some Bloody Mutiny; The Regret
• Merwin, W. S., Blind William's Song; Song with the Eyes Closed
• Middleton, Christopher, Poem Written After Contemplating the Adverb "Primarily"; Old Man, Looking South; Cartoon of a Common Theme
• Miles, Josephine, Skin; Botany
• Montale, Eugenio, Xenia (Translated from the Italian by Helen Barolini)
• Moore, Marianne, By Disposition of Angels; Voracities and Verities Sometimes Are Interacting; La Fontaine Precepts
• Moore, Rosalie Moving, by Roads Moved...; O but the Nickel Daisies; Parade with Piccolos; Appointment, December 25
• Morris, Herbert, The Neighbor's Son
• Moss, Howard, An Answer Questioned; Gulls
• Nathan, Leonard E., The Matchmaker in Flight
• Nemerov, Howard, Brainstorm; Lightning Storm on Fuji (Hokusai); Orphic Scenario
• O'Keefe, Richard R., Scratching Bites
• Orlovitz, Gil, Art of the Sonnet: LXIX; Art of the Sonnet: XXCV
• Pastan, Linda, At the Jewish Museum; Arcadia; Between Generations
• Patchen, Kenneth, A Lost Poem; Two for History
• Peck, John, Dark on Dark; For the Engraver; The Turn; A Quarrel; In the Twinkling of an Eye; The Factor Remembers His Lady; Colophon for Ch'ing-Ming Shang-Ho T'u (The Spring Festival on the River) By Chang Tse-Tuan, 12th Century
• Perse, Saint-John, Poem for Valéry Larbaud (Translated from the French by Richard Howard)
• Piccolo, Lucio, Night; The Moon Brings the Month; The Warning (Translated from the Italian by Brian Swann and Ruth Feldman)
• Plath, Sylvia, From Three Women, a Radio Play
• Plumly, Stanley, Some Canvases That Will Retain Their Calm Even in the Catastrophe; Arriving at the Point of Departure
• Ponge, Francis, Rain (Translated from the French by Lane Dunlop)
• Pound, Ezra, Canto LXXXIV
• Rakosi, Carl, The Old Man's Hornpipe; Discoveries, Trade Names, Genitals, and Ancient Instruments
• Rexroth, Kenneth, Two Poems
• Rich, Adrienne, Gabriel; The Observer; Continuum; In the Evening
• Ridler, Anne, Backgrounds to Italian Paintings: 15th Century
• Rosenthal, M. L., Three Conversations; Liston Cows Patterson and Knocks Him Silly
• Rudnik, Raphael, The Painting of 'Flora'; A Letter for Emily
• Rudolph, Lee, Hard Times; The Hands
• Schramm, Richard, Old Dreams
• Schubert, David, Victor Record Catalog; It Is Sticky in the Subway; Getting a Mosquito; A Corsage; Reflections on Violence; No Finis
• Seferis, George, Memory I; The Last Day; Morning (Translated from the Greek by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)
• Sexton, Anne, Song for a Red Nightgown; The Kiss; In Celebration of My Uterus
• Shapiro, Harvey, For Job at Forty; The Collectors; National Cold Storage Company; Past Time
• Simon, John, A Tombstone Carved from Speech; Recapitulation
• Simpson, Louis, Moving the Walls
• Sitwell, Edith, Dirge for the New Sunrise
• Snodgrass, W. D., A Flat One; Inquest
• Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, A Campfire and Ants; A Poet's Remains (Translated from the Russian by John M. Gogol)
• Stafford, William, My Parents Were Simple Folk; Shaniko; Spanish Guitar; By the Black Ships; Massacre at Glencoe
• Stevens, Wallace, Repetitions of a Young Captain
• Strand, Mark, In Memoriam
• Sullivan, Nancy, In and out Museums
• Swann, Brian, Stirring; Rape
• Swenson, Karen, Impressions
• Tate, James, Letting Him Go; The Answeriny Service; Plea Based on a Sentence from a Letter Received by the Indiana State Welfare Department
• Thompson, Phyllis, The Last Thing
• Tomlinson, Charles, Mad Song; Obsession
• Urdang, Constance, Lines for My Grandmother's Grave
• Valéry, Paul, Palm (Translated from the French by Denis Devlin)
• Van Duyn, Mona, Leda Reconsidered
• Vliet, R. G., Now Name the Season Blackberry
• Watkins, Vernon, The Cave-Drawing
• Weiss, Theodore, A Midsummer Nightmare
• Whitman, Walt, To the Poor; My Own Poems; To What You Said; I Stand and Look; Reminiscences, '64; Champagne in Ice; Sunrise; America to the Old World Bards
• Wilbur, Richard, The Good Servant; Then When the Ample Season; Flumen Tenebrarum
• Williams, William Carlos, The Words Lying Idle, Summary of a Year's Verse
• Wright, James, The Fourth Echo
• Zukofsky, Louis, All of December Toward New Year's; Reading and Talking