Great American Prose Poems

From Poe to the Present

David Lehman

• Publisher: Scribner
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9780743243506
• eBook ISBN: 9781439105115
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

A prose poem is a poem written in prose rather than verse. But what does that really mean? Is it an indefinable hybrid? An anomaly in the history of poetry? Are the very words "prose poem" an oxymoron? This groundbreaking anthology edited by celebrated poet David Lehman, editor of The Best American Poetry series, traces the form in all its dazzling variety from Poe and Emerson to Auden and Ashbery and on, right up to the present.In his brilliant and lucid introduction, Lehman explains that a prose poem can make use of all the strategies and tactics of poetry, but works in sentences rather than lines. He also summarizes the prose poem's French heritage, its history in the United States, and the salient differences between verse and prose. Arranged chronologically to allow readers to trace the gradual development of this hybrid genre, the poems anthologized here include important works from such masters of American literature as Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, e. e. cummings, Hart Crane, Ernest Hemingway, James Schuyler, Allen Ginsberg, Frank O'Hara, and Elizabeth Bishop. Contemporary mainstays and emerging poets -- Robert Bly, John Ashbery, Charles Simic, Billy Collins, Russell Edson, James Tate, Anne Carson, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Lydia Davis, among them -- are represented with their best work in the field.The prose poem is beginning to enjoy a tremendous upswing in popularity. Readers of this marvelous collection, a must-have for anyone interested in the current state of the art, will learn why.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Epigraph
• Introduction
• Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803–1882
• Edgar Allan Poe, 1809–1849
• Emma Lazarus, 1849–1887
• Amy Lowell, 1874–1925
• Gertrude Stein, 1874–1946
• William Carlos Williams, 1883–1963
• H. D. (Hilda Doolittle), 1886–1961
• T. S. Eliot, 1888–1965
• e. e. cummings, 1894–1962
• Jean Toomer, 1894–1967
• Thornton Wilder, 1897–1975
• Hart Crane, 1899–1932
• Ernest Hemingway, 1899–1961
• Ruth Krauss, 1901–1993
• Edwin Denby, 1903–1983
• W. H. Auden, 1907–1973
• Elizabeth Bishop, 1911–1979
• Czeslaw Milosz, 1911–
• Kenneth Patchen, 1911–1972
• Delmore Schwartz, 1913–1966
• David Ignatow, 1914–1997
• Barbara Guest, 1920–
• James Schuyler, 1923–1991
• Kenneth Koch, 1925–2002
• Robert Bly, 1926–
• Allen Ginsberg, 1926–1997
• James Merrill, 1926–1995
• Frank O’hara, 1926–1966
• John Ashbery, 1927–
• W. S. Merwin, 1927–
• James Wright, 1927–1980
• John Hollander, 1929–
• Harry Mathews, 1930–
• Mark Strand, 1934–
• Michael Benedikt, 1935–
• Russell Edson, 1935–
• Rosmarie Waldrop, 1935–
• Charles Simic, 1938–
• Margaret Atwood, 1939–
• Frank Bidart, 1939–
• Fanny Howe, 1940–
• Tom Clark, 1941–
• Billy Collins, 1941–
• Robert Hass, 1941–
• Lyn Hejinian, 1941–
• Joe Brainard, 1942–1994
• Louis Jenkins, 1942–
• Ron Padgett, 1942–
• Michael Palmer, 1943–
• James Tate, 1943–
• Paul Violi, 1944–
• John Godfrey, 1945–
• Bernadette Mayer, 1945–
• Alice Notley, 1945–
• Ira Sadoff, 1945–
• Anne Waldman, 1945–
• Terence Winch, 1945–
• B.J. Atwood-Fukuda, 1946–
• Andrei Codrescu, 1946–
• Rae Armantrout, 1947–
• Michael Burkard, 1947–
• Lydia Davis, 1947–
• Aaron Fogel, 1947–
• Yusef Komunyakaa, 1947–
• Maureen Seaton, 1947–
• Leslie Scalapino, 1948–
• Tom Whalen, 1948–
• Agha Shahid Ali, 1949–2001
• Lynn Emanuel, 1949–
• Kit Robinson, 1949–
• Charles Bernstein, 1950–
• Anne Carson, 1950–
• Carolyn Forché, 1950–
• James Richardson, 1950–
• John Yau, 1950–
• Peter Johnson, 1951–
• Maxine Chernoff, 1952–
• Rita Dove, 1952–
• Carla Harryman, 1952–
• Mark Jarman, 1952–
• Mary Ruefle, 1952–
• Killarney Clary, 1953–
• Fran Carlen, 1954–
• Thylias Moss, 1954–
• Tyrone Williams, 1954–
• Harryette Mullen, ?–
• Susan Wheeler, 1955–
• April Bernard, 1956–
• Amy Gerstler, 1956–
• Dionisio D. Martínez, 1956–
• Catherine Bowman, 1957–
• Wang Ping, 1957—
• Nin Andrews, 1958–
• Michael Friedman, 1960–
• Stephanie Brown, 1961–
• Denise Duhamel, 1961–
• Christopher Edgar, 1961–
• Campbell Mcgrath, 1962–
• Linh Dinh, 1963–
• Claudia Rankine, 1963–
• Gabriel Gudding, 1966–
• Joe Wenderoth, 1966–
• Lisa Jarnot, 1967–
• Karen Volkman, 1967–
• Mark Bibbins, 1968–
• Richard Blanco, 1968–
• Jennifer L. Knox, 1968–
• Richard Deming, 1970–
• Anselm Berrigan, 1972–
• Katherine Lederer, 1972–
• Andrew Zawacki, 1972–
• Jamey Dunham, 1973–
• Matthea Harvey, 1973–
• Sarah Manguso, 1974–
• Jenny Boully, 1976—
• Acknowledgments
• Notes on Contributors
• Index of Poems
• Index of Poets
• Copyright