Being Alive
the sequel to Staying Alive
Published on 28. October 2004
Book
Paperback/Softback
512 pages
978-1-85224-675-4 (ISBN)
Description
Being Alive is the sequel to Neil Astley's Staying Alive, which became Britain's most popular poetry book because it gave readers hundreds of thoughtful and passionate poems about living in the modern world. Now he has assembled this equally lively companion anthology for all those readers who've wanted more poems that touch the heart, stir the mind and fire the spirit. Being Alive is about being human: about love and loss, fear and longing, hurt and wonder.
Staying Alive didn't just reach a broader readership, it introduced thousands of new readers to contemporary poetry, giving them an international gathering of poems of great personal force, poems with emotional power, intellectual edge and playful wit. It also brought many readers back to poetry, people who hadn't read poetry for years because it hadn't held their interest. Being Alive gives readers an even wider selection of vivid, brilliantly diverse contemporary poetry from around the world. Being Alive was followed by a companion anthology, Being Human (2011), and by a fourth volume, Staying Human: new poems for Staying Alive (2020). These anthologies have been welcomed not only by poets but by a wide range of well-known people respected for their work in fields other than poetry - all avid readers of poetry. They want to recommend these books above all other anthologies of contemporary poetry.
Staying Alive didn't just reach a broader readership, it introduced thousands of new readers to contemporary poetry, giving them an international gathering of poems of great personal force, poems with emotional power, intellectual edge and playful wit. It also brought many readers back to poetry, people who hadn't read poetry for years because it hadn't held their interest. Being Alive gives readers an even wider selection of vivid, brilliantly diverse contemporary poetry from around the world. Being Alive was followed by a companion anthology, Being Human (2011), and by a fourth volume, Staying Human: new poems for Staying Alive (2020). These anthologies have been welcomed not only by poets but by a wide range of well-known people respected for their work in fields other than poetry - all avid readers of poetry. They want to recommend these books above all other anthologies of contemporary poetry.
Reviews / Votes
I love Staying Alive and keep going back to it. Being Alive is just as vivid, strongly present and equally beautifully organised. But this new book feels even more alive - I think it has a heartbeat, or maybe that's my own thrum humming along with the music of these poets. Sitting alone in a room with these poems is to be assured that you are not alone, you are not crazy (or if you are, you're not the only one who thinks this way!) I run home to this book to argue with it, find solace in it, to locate myself in the world again. -- Meryl Streep These poems remind us of what we have felt yet never fully articulated, what we have dreamt yet never believed entirely possible. Perhaps most importantly, the poems in here tell us there is nothing more powerful than language when its agenda is to reveal rather than to conceal or distort. -- Kamila Shamsie Hopefully, books like this will put poetry back into the mainstream. -- Van MorrisonMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Tyne and Wear
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 215 mm
Width: 139 mm
Thickness: 32 mm
Weight
717 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-85224-675-4 (9781852246754)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
09/2016
Bloodaxe Books Ltd
€10.99
Available for download
Person
Neil Astley is editor of Bloodaxe Books, which he founded in 1978. His books include novels, poetry collections and anthologies, most notably those in Bloodaxe's Staying Alive anthology series: Staying Alive (2002), Being Alive (2004), Being Human (2011), and Staying Human (2020), a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation; and three collaborations with Pamela Robertson-Pearce, Soul Food: nourishing poems for starved minds (2008), and the DVD-books In Person: 30 Poets (2008) and In Person: World Poets (2017). He has published two novels, The End of My Tether (2002), which was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award, and The Sheep Who Changed the World (2005). He received an Eric Gregory Award for his poetry, was given a D.Litt from Newcastle University for his work with Bloodaxe Books, and in 2018 was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He also guest-edited a transatlantic all-poetry issue of the American literary journal Ploughshares, the first such issue in its 43-year history. He lives in the Tarset Valley of Northumberland, England.
Content
Neil Astley 17 Introduction
1 Exploring the World
Elma Mitchell 22 This Poem...
Gerald Locklin 22 The Iceberg Theory
Billy Collins 23 Introduction to Poetry
Eilean Ni Chuilleanain 24 The Horses of Meaning
Paul Muldoon 24 Symposium
Simon Armitage 25 Not the Furniture Game
Vincent Woods 26 A Song of Lies
Philip Gross 27 Mappa Mundi
Donald Hall 28 The Poem
Galway Kinnell 29 Saint Francis and the Sow
Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill 29 Celebration
Elizabeth Bishop 31 At the Fishhouses
Stewart Conn 33 Tremors
Theodore Roethke 34 Night Journey
Randall Jarrell 35 The Orient Express
C.P. Cavafy 36 Ithaka
Sheenagh Pugh 37 What If This Road
Philip Larkin 38 Poetry of Departures
Derek Mahon 39 The Last of the Fire Kings
Matthew Sweeney 40 The Appointment
Derek Mahon 41 The Mayo Tao
Michael Longley 42 Echoes
Hayden Carruth 43 No Matter What, After All and That Beautiful Word So
Mark Doty 44 Migratory
Don McKay 45 Close-up on a Sharp-shinned Hawk
Lorna Crozier 46 Inventing the Hawk
George Mackay Brown 48 The Hawk
Robert Adamson 46 The southern skua
2 Taste and See
Philip Levine 50 The Simple Truth
David Budbill 51 The First Green of Spring
Denise Levertov 51 O Taste and See
Li-Young Lee 52 From Blossoms
Peter Davison 52 Peaches
Galway Kinnell 53 Blackberry Eating
Sylvia Plath 53 Blackberrying
Tony Harrison 54 A Kumquat for John Keats
Vicki Feaver 57 Crab Apple Jelly
Jacob Polley 59 A Jar of Honey
Pablo Neruda 59 Sweetness, Always
Kim Addonizio 61 For Desire
Helen Dunmore 62 Wild strawberries
Pablo Neruda 63 Horses
Ted Hughes 64 The Horses
Henry Shukman 65 Horses at Christmas
Katrina Porteous 66 Calf
Mary Oliver 66 How Everything Adores Being Alive
Alden Nowlan 68 In Praise of the Great Bull Walrus
Henri Cole 69 Cleaning the Elephant
Alden Nowlan 69 The Bull Moose
Elizabeth Bishop 70 The Fish
Wendell Berry 72 The Peace of Wild Things
Czeslaw Milosz 73 Gift
Jane Hirsh?eld 73 Not-Yet
Andrew Greig 74 A Pre-Breakfast Rant
Chase Twichell 75 Hunger for Something
Ruth L. Schwartz 75 Talking to God on the Seventh Day
Jack Gilbert 76 Hunger
Gwendolyn MacEwen 77 Dark Pines Under Water
Erin Moure 78 Toxicity
P.K. Page 79 Planet Earth
Wislawa Szymborska 80 The Ball
Anne Michaels 81 The Passionate World
Sarah Lindsay 82 World Truffle
Archibald MacLeish 83 You, Andrew Marvell
Mary Oliver 85 Look and See
Agha Shahid Ali 85 Stationery
Michael Donaghy 86 The Present
Imtiaz Dharker 86 Blessing
Robert Creeley 87 The Rain
Naomi Shihab Nye 88 So Much Happiness
Jane Kenyon 89 Happiness
Robert Bly 90 The Third Body
Czeslaw Milosz 90 On Pilgrimage
Mary Oliver 91 The Summer Day
Carl Dennis 92 The God Who Loves You
James K. Baxter 93 The Ikons
Czeslaw Milosz 94 Veni Creator
Carl Sandburg 94 Prayers of Steel
Antonio Machado 95 'Last night while I was sleeping'
Elizabeth Smither 96 Mission Impossible
R.S. Thomas 96 from Counterpoint
Dennis O'Driscoll 97 Missing God
Charles Causley 100 The Forest of Tangle
Fiona Farrell 101 Credo
Aidan Rooney-Cespedes 102 Retro Creation
Kaylin Haught 102 God Says Yes to Me
Kerry Hardie 103 Sheep Fair Day
Ruth L. Schwartz 105 Oh God, Fuck Me
3 Family
Jacob Polley 108 Smoke
Marge Piercy 109 The watch
Lucille Clifton 110 the lost baby poem
Jeni Couzyn 110 Heartsong
Helen Dunmore 111 Scan at 8 weeks
Kona Macphee 112 Ultrasound at 13 weeks
Paul Muldoon 112 The Sonogram
Pauline Stainer 113 The Ringing Chamber
Victoria Redel 113 Ninth Month
Derek Mahon 114 An Unborn Child
Louis MacNeice 115 Prayer Before Birth
Pablo Neruda 116 Births
Kona Macphee 118 The night before the last day of January
Kate Clanchy 118 Driving to the Hospital
W.N. Herbert 119 The Harvest in March
Matthew Hollis 120 And let us say
Lauris Edmond 120 Tempo
Fleur Adcock 122 Counting
Kate Clanchy 123 Love
Sylvia Plath 124 Morning Song
Richard Murphy 124 Natural Son
Thom Gunn 125 Baby Song
Helen Farish 126 Newly Born Twins
Sharon Olds 126 My First Weeks
Kathleen Ossip 127 Nursling
Anne Stevenson 128 The Victory
Kate Clanchy 128 Stance
Jane Hirsh?eld 129 Red Onion, Cherries, Boiling Potatoes, Milk -
Anne Winters 130 from Elizabeth Near and Far
Fleur Adcock 130 For Andrew
Gabriela Mistral 131 Let Him Not Grow Up
Rita Dove 132 Daystar
Anna Jackson 133 The peacock of motherhood
Connie Bensley 134 Single Parent
Michael Ondaatje 134 Bearhug
Nick Flynn 135 Cartoon Physics, part 1
Michael Laskey 136 A Tray of Eggs
Thomas Lynch 137 Skating with Heather Grace
Tony Hoagland 138 Benevolence
Carlos Drummond de Andrade 139 Infancy
Anne Stevenson 139 The Mother
Seamus Heaney 140 Sunlight
Philip Levine 141 Starlight
Seamus Heaney 142 from Clearances
Yehuda Amichai 142 My Father
Sinead Morrissey 143 Genetics
Seamus Heaney 143 Digging
Brendan Kennelly 144 I See You Dancing, Father
Theodore Roethke 145 Papa's Waltz
Susan Wicks 146 My Father Is Shrinking
Li-Young Lee 147 Little Father
Hart Crane 147 My Grandmother's Love Letters
Andrew Waterhouse 148 Climbing My Grandfather
Thomas Lynch 149 Custody
Julia Copus 150 Second Home
Marie Howe 151 How Many Times
Kona Macphee 151 No fairy story
Selima Hill 152 House
Ai 152 The Cockfighter's Daughter
Sylvia Plath 156 Daddy
Sharon Olds 158 Waste Sonata
Tracey Herd 159 The Survivors
Pascale Petit 160 The Strait-Jackets
Pascale Petit 161 Self-Portrait as a Warao Violin
Susan Glickman 162 But till that morning, ain't no one gonna harm you
John Steffler 162 Hollis Street Square, Halifax
Gjertrud Schnackenberg 163 Returning North
Maurice Riordan 165 Time Out
Helen Dunmore 166 The blessing
C. Day Lewis 167 Walking Away
Kathleen Jamie 168 Mother-May-I
Simon Armitage 169 Kid
Cynthia Fuller 170 Guests
Simon Armitage 170 from Book of Matches
Rutger Kopland 171 Johnson Brothers Ltd
Paul Farley 172 Laws of Gravity
Gael Turnbull 174 Transmutation
Vona Groarke 174 Family
Sharon Thesen 175 Animals
Miller Williams 175 Animals
Sharon Olds 176 Forty-one, Alone, No Gerbil
Billy Collins 176 Putting Down the Cat
Elizabeth Smither 177 On the euthanasia of a pet dog
Gerry McGrath 177 'Noticing a man unable...'
Howard Nemerov 178 Walking the Dog
4 Love Life
Wislawa Szymborska 180 Love at First Sight
Rosemary Tonks 181 Story of a Hotel Room
Lavinia Greenlaw 182 Tryst
Derek Walcott 182 Love After Love
Julia Copus 183 Love, Like Water
Yehuda Amichai 184 To My Love, Combing Her Hair
Cathy Song 184 The White Porch
Zbigniew Herbert 186 Rosy Ear
Margaret Atwood 187 Variation on the Word Sleep
Greta Stoddart 188 The Blindfold
Zbigniew Herbert 189 Silk of a Soul
Derek Walcott 190 The Fist
Deryn Rees-Jones 191 What It's Like To Be Alive
Hayden Carruth 191 Alive
Robert Hass 192 Misery and Splendor
Sharon Olds 193 This Hour
Galway Kinnell 194 After Making Love We Hear Footsteps
Czeslaw Milosz 194 Love
Jack Gilbert 195 The Great Fires
Jane Hirsh?eld 196 Knowing Nothing
Carol Ann Duffy 196 Warming Her Pearls
Helen Farish 197 Look at These
Liz Lochhead 198 I Wouldn't Thank You for a Valentine
Carol Ann Duffy 199 Valentine
Pablo Neruda 200 Ode to the Onion
Linda France 202 If Love Was Jazz
Billy Collins 203 Litany
Pablo Neruda 204 from 100 Love Sonnets
Patrick Kavanagh 205 On Raglan Road
Brendan Kennelly 205 Raglan Lane
Stanley Kunitz 206 Touch Me
William Matthews 207 Misgivings
Kerry Hardie 208 The Hunter Home from the Hill
Michael Longley 208 The Waterfall
U.A. Fanthorpe 209 Atlas
Philip Larkin 209 An Arundel Tomb
5 Men and Women
Frederick Seidel 212 Men and Women
C.K. Williams 215 The Dress
Denise Levertov 218 The Mutes
Fred Voss 219 The Inspection
Marge Piercy 220 In the men's room(s)
Gwen Harwood 221 A Simple Story
Tony Hoagland 222 The Change
Carol Ann Duffy 224 Mrs Midas
Anne Rouse 226 Spunk Talking
Tom Leonard 226 Four of the Belt
Chris Greenhalgh 227 A Man in the Valley of the Women
Roddy Lumsden 228 Prayer To Be with Mercurial Women
Wendy Cope 229 Bloody Men
Clare Pollard 230 And Another Bloody Thing...
Charles Bukowksi 230 sexpot
Radmila Lazic 232 I'll Be a Wicked Old Woman
Deborah Randall 233 Ballygrand Widow
Kim Addonizio 234 'What Do Women Want?'
Liz Lochhead 234 Rapunzstiltskin
John Agard 236 English Girl Eats Her First Mango
David Constantine 237 Pleasure
Minnie Bruce Pratt 238 Done
Selima Hill 238 Please Can I Have a Man
Billy Collins 239 Man in Space
Alice Oswald 240 Wedding
Michael Laskey 240 The Tightrope Wedding
Philip Larkin 241 The Whitsun Weddings
Michael Longley 243 The Pattern
Dorothy Molloy 244 Les Grands Seigneurs
Selima Hill 244 Being a Wife
Denise Levertov 245 The Ache of Marriage
Sylvia Plath 245 The Applicant
Dorothy Nimmo 247 Good Gifts
Jacques Prevert 248 Breakfast
Dorothy Nimmo 249 Ill-Wishing Him
Liz Lochhead 249 My Way
Cheryl Follon 251 Love Rats
Duncan Forbes 252 Recension Day
Michael Blackburn 253 Before That
Catherine Smith 253 The New Bride
Helen Ivory 254 Sleeping with the Fishes
James Fenton 255 Let's Go Over It All Again
Eleanor Brown 256 Sonnet
6 Being and Loss
Wallace Stevens 258 The Emperor of Ice-Cream
Jackie Kay 258 Somebody Else
James Merrill 259 Mirror
Michael Davitt 260 The Mirror
Chase Twichell 261 Cat and Mirror
Gael Turnbull 262 Transmutation
Henri Cole 262 Original Face
Aleksandar Ristovic 263 The essential
Marin Sorescu 263 Pond
W.B. Yeats 264 The Circus Animals' Desertion
Jack Gilbert 265 Measuring the Tyger
Cesar Vallejo 266 The black heralds
John Berryman 266 from Dream Songs (155)
Paul Durcan 267 The Death by Heroin of Sid Vicious
Jane Kenyon 268 Otherwise
James Fenton 268 The Mistake
C.P. Cavafy 269 Che Fece... Il Gran Ri?uto
Andrew Waterhouse 270 Speaking About My Cracked Sump
Tracey Herd 270 Ophelia's Confession
Selima Hill 271 Hairbrush
Polly Clark 272 Elvis the Performing Octopus
Sarah Wardle 273 Flight
Kerry Hardie 274 Autumn Cancer
Julia Darling 274 Chemotherapy
Gael Turnbull 275 Transmutation
Kerry Hardie 275 She Replies to Carmel's Letter
Kenneth Mackenzie 276 Caesura
David Scott 277 Heart
Esther Jansma 278 Descent
Carole Satyamurti 279 Broken Moon
Wendy Cope 280 Names
Bob Hicok 280 Alzheimer's
Alison Pryde 281 Have We Had Easter Yet?
Tony Hoagland 282 Lucky
Mark Doty 283 Brilliance
Pearse Hutchinson 285 Flames
Nick Drake 286 The Very Rich Hours
Mark Doty 287 The Embrace
Kerry Hardie 288 What's Left
Lucille Clifton 289 poem to my uterus
Lucille Clifton 290 to my last period
Howard Moss 290 The Pruned Tree
James K. Baxter 291 Tomcat
David Constantine 292 The Hoist
R.S. Thomas 292 Lore
Grace Paley 293 Here
Anne Stevenson 294 Who's Joking with the Photographer?
Fleur Adcock 295 Weathering
Lauris Edmond 296 3 a.m.
C.K. Williams 297 The Shade
Frederick Seidel 298 Dune Road, Southampton
Matthew Sweeney 300 The Box
Gerard Woodward 300 The Murderer Is a Cow
Jacob Polley 302 Moving House
Imtiaz Dharker 303 This room
Naomi Shihab Nye 304 Kindness
7 Daily Round
William Bronk 306 The Way
Glyn Maxwell 307 The Nerve
Simon Armitage 308 Killing Time #2
Louis MacNeice 310 Bagpipe Music
Dennis O'Driscoll 311 Life
Roo Borson 312 City Lights
August Kleinzahler 313 Snow in North Jersey
William Matthews 314 Grief
Helen Dunmore 315 To Virgil
Maura Dooley 316 Mind the Gap
Jo Shapcott 316 My Life Asleep
David Constantine 317 New Year Behind the Asylum
Alden Nowlan 318 Great Things Have Happened
Thom Gunn 319 Night Taxi
Ken Smith 321 Message on the machine
Brendan Kennelly 321 Clearing a Space
Ciaran Carson 323 Clearance
Ciaran Carson 323 Turn Again
Edward Hirsch 324 In Spite of Everything, the Stars
Jack Gilbert 325 Searching for Pittsburgh
Lavinia Greenlaw 325 Zombies
Dennis O'Driscoll 326 Home
Philip Levine 327 What Work Is
Al Purdy 328 Alive or Not
Jacques Prevert 329 At the Florist's
Anne Rouse 330 Her Retirement
Philip Larkin 331 Toads
Robert Phillips 332 The Panic Bird
Julie O'Callaghan 333 Managing the Common Herd
Deborah Garrison 334 Fight Song
Peter Didsbury 335 A Malediction
Rita Ann Higgins 336 Some People
Rodney Jones 337 TV
Vicki Feaver 338 The Way We Live
Philip Levine 339 Every Blessed Day
Tom French 341 Pity the Bastards
Ruth Dallas 345 Photographs of Pioneer Women
Donald Hall 346 Names of Horses
George Mackay Brown 347 The Ballad of John Barleycorn, The Ploughman, and the Furrow
Grace Nichols 349 Sugar Cane
Linda Gregg 350 Fish Tea Rice
Derek Mahon 351 Everything Is Going To Be All Right
Stanley Kunitz 352 The Round
8 Lives
Derek Mahon 354 Lives
Brendan Kennelly 356 The Story
Gael Turnbull 357 Transmutation
Suzanne Cleary 357 Acting
Elizabeth Smither 359 The sea question
Esther Morgan 359 The Sea
Michael Harlow 360 No Problem, But Not Easy
Joanne Limburg 361 Seder Night with My Ancestors
Agha Shahid Ali 362 The Dacca Gauzes
Maya Angelou 363 Still I Rise
Gwendolyn Brooks 365 Sadie and Maud
Douglas Dunn 365 Glasgow Schoolboys, Running Backwards
Denis Glover 366 The Magpies
Paul Muldoon 367 The Loaf
Vona Groarke 368 Imperial Measure
Billy Collins 370 Nostalgia
Thomas Lux 371 Plague Victims Catapulted over Walls into Besieged City
Ken Smith 371 Part of the crowd that day
Tom Paulin 372 Desertmartin
Derek Mahon 373 Ecclesiastes
Andrew Waterhouse 374 Now the City Has Fallen
Peter Reading 375 from Going On
Imtiaz Dharker 376 Honour Killing
Carol Rumens 377 Geography Lesson
W.H. Auden 377 Refugee Blues
George Szirtes 378 My father carries me across a ?eld
Choman Hardi 379 Escape Journey, 1988
Kapka Kassabova 380 Someone else's life
Jane Grif?ths 381 Migration
Carl Sandburg 382 Limited
Moniza Alvi 382 Arrival, 1946
C.P. Cavafy 383 The City
Ken Smith 383 Malenki robot
Saadi Youssef 384 The Mouse
Carol Rumens 385 The Emigree
James Fenton 386 The Ideal
Gwyneth Lewis 386 A Poet's Confession
Zbigniew Herbert 387 Tongue
Mihangel Morgan 387 Conversation
W.S. Merwin 388 Losing a Language
Zbigniew Herbert 389 From the Technology of Tears
Agha Shahid Ali 390 from The Country Without a Post Office
Yehuda Amichai 391 'The Rustle of History's Wings,' as They Used to Say Then
Yehuda Amichai 392 Jerusalem
James Fenton 392 Jerusalem
Mahmoud Darwish 395 In This Land
Moniza Alvi 395 The Sari
James Fenton 396 Wind
9 Mad World
Robert Pinsky 398 ABC
Gerald Stern 398 The Dog
Emily Dickinson 399 'I reason, Earth is short...'
William Stafford 400 Earth Dweller
Hans Magnus Enzensberger 400 The End of the Owls
Miroslav Holub 401 The end of the world
Edwin Muir 402 The Horses
Vijay Seshadri 403 The Disappearances
W.H. Auden 405 The Shield of Achilles
Edwin Brock 407 Five Ways to Kill a Man
Tadeusz Rozewicz 408 Pigtail
Primo Levi 409 Shema
Tadeusz Rozewicz 410 The survivor
(attr.) Martin Niemoeller 411 'First they came for the Jews...'
Erich Fried 411 What Happens
Adrian Mitchell 412 To Whom It May Concern
W.H. Auden 414 'When Statesmen gravely say...'
Hans Magnus Enzensberger 414 Explaining the Declaration
Aleksandar Ristovic 415 Untitled
Bertolt Brecht 415 War Has Been Given a Bad Name
Mahmoud Darwish 416 He Embraces His Murderer
Bertolt Brecht 417 from A German War Primer
Heberto Padilla 417 Song of the Juggler
Erich Fried 418 Conversation with a Survivor
Jackie Kay 419 Twelve Bar Bessie
Adrienne Rich 420 from An Atlas of the Dif?cult World
Genevieve Taggard 421 At Last the Women Are Moving
Carole Satyamurti 421 Ourstory
Marge Piercy 422 The low road
Luis Enrique Mejia Godoy 423 Revenge
Czeslaw Milosz 424 Dedication
Douglas Dunn 425 Ratatouille
Paul Durcan 426 In Memory: The Miami Showband - Massacred 31 July 1975
James Merrill 427 Casual Wear
Yehuda Amichai 428 The Diameter of the Bomb
Norman MacCaig 428 The Red and the Black
Sinead Morrissey 429 The Wound Man
John Burnside 430 History
C.K. Williams 432 The Hearth
W.H. Auden 434 Musee des Beaux Arts
Wislawa Szymborska 435 Reality Demands
Adam Zagajewski 436 Try to Praise the Mutilated World
Faiz Ahmed Faiz 437 A Prison Evening
Adrienne Rich 438 To the Days
Sheenagh Pugh 439 Sometimes
Eva Salzman 439 Spells
Helen Dunmore 440 Glad of these times
Jen Had?eld 441 Staple Island Swing
10 Ends and Beginnings
Philip Larkin 444 The Trees
M.R. Peacocke 444 Late Snow
C.P. Cavafy 445 Candles
Saadi Youssef 446 Night in Al-Hamra
Helen Dunmore 446 Candle poem
Mark Strand 447 A Piece of the Storm
Bernard O'Donoghue 448 Going Without Saying
Patrick Kavanagh 448 Wet Evening in April
W.S. Merwin 448 For the Anniversary of My Death
Adrienne Rich 449 Final Notations
Raymond Carver 450 Gravy
Jane Kenyon 450 In the Nursing Home
Jo Shapcott 451 Lovebirds
Sharon Olds 451 Beyond Harm
Roy Fisher 452 The Entertainment of War
Seamus Heaney 453 Mid-Term Break
Robert Kroetsch 454 Sounding the name
Stephen Dobyns 455 When a Friend
Edwin Brock 456 And another thing...
Michael Longley 457 Detour
Paul Durcan 458 Tullynoe: Tete-a-Tete in the Priest's Parlour
Bernard O'Donoghue 458 Concordiam in Populo
Elizabeth Smither 459 A cortege of daughters
Meg Bateman 460 After the Funeral
Virginia Hamilton-Adair 460 A Last Marriage
Anne Stevenson 461 Musician's Widow
Lauris Edmond 462 Anniversary
R.S. Thomas 463 A Marriage
Carol Muske-Dukes 463 Love Song
Ruth Stone 464 Poems
Antonio Machado 465 The Eyes
Ruth Stone 465 Curtains
Elizabeth Jennings 466 Not at Home
Jane Hirsh?eld 467 A Room
Brendan Kennelly 468 We Are Living
Marie Howe 469 What the Living Do
Norman Nicholson 470 Sea to the West
Lauris Edmond 471 Girls
Czeslaw Milosz 472 A Mistake
Tony Hoagland 472 Migration
Michael Hartnett 473 A Prayer for Sleep
Ruth Pitter 474 The Task
James K. Baxter 474 from Autumn Testament
Mary Oliver 476 Some Questions You Might Ask
M.K. Joseph 476 A Riddle: Of the Soul
Michael Hartnett 477 'There will be a talking...'
Gary Snyder 478 For the children
Ruth Stone 478 In the Next Galaxy
Jane Kenyon 479 Let Evening Come
T.S. Eliot 480 from Four Quartets
484 Further reading
487 Acknowledgements
496 Index of writers
502 Index of titles and first lines
1 Exploring the World
Elma Mitchell 22 This Poem...
Gerald Locklin 22 The Iceberg Theory
Billy Collins 23 Introduction to Poetry
Eilean Ni Chuilleanain 24 The Horses of Meaning
Paul Muldoon 24 Symposium
Simon Armitage 25 Not the Furniture Game
Vincent Woods 26 A Song of Lies
Philip Gross 27 Mappa Mundi
Donald Hall 28 The Poem
Galway Kinnell 29 Saint Francis and the Sow
Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill 29 Celebration
Elizabeth Bishop 31 At the Fishhouses
Stewart Conn 33 Tremors
Theodore Roethke 34 Night Journey
Randall Jarrell 35 The Orient Express
C.P. Cavafy 36 Ithaka
Sheenagh Pugh 37 What If This Road
Philip Larkin 38 Poetry of Departures
Derek Mahon 39 The Last of the Fire Kings
Matthew Sweeney 40 The Appointment
Derek Mahon 41 The Mayo Tao
Michael Longley 42 Echoes
Hayden Carruth 43 No Matter What, After All and That Beautiful Word So
Mark Doty 44 Migratory
Don McKay 45 Close-up on a Sharp-shinned Hawk
Lorna Crozier 46 Inventing the Hawk
George Mackay Brown 48 The Hawk
Robert Adamson 46 The southern skua
2 Taste and See
Philip Levine 50 The Simple Truth
David Budbill 51 The First Green of Spring
Denise Levertov 51 O Taste and See
Li-Young Lee 52 From Blossoms
Peter Davison 52 Peaches
Galway Kinnell 53 Blackberry Eating
Sylvia Plath 53 Blackberrying
Tony Harrison 54 A Kumquat for John Keats
Vicki Feaver 57 Crab Apple Jelly
Jacob Polley 59 A Jar of Honey
Pablo Neruda 59 Sweetness, Always
Kim Addonizio 61 For Desire
Helen Dunmore 62 Wild strawberries
Pablo Neruda 63 Horses
Ted Hughes 64 The Horses
Henry Shukman 65 Horses at Christmas
Katrina Porteous 66 Calf
Mary Oliver 66 How Everything Adores Being Alive
Alden Nowlan 68 In Praise of the Great Bull Walrus
Henri Cole 69 Cleaning the Elephant
Alden Nowlan 69 The Bull Moose
Elizabeth Bishop 70 The Fish
Wendell Berry 72 The Peace of Wild Things
Czeslaw Milosz 73 Gift
Jane Hirsh?eld 73 Not-Yet
Andrew Greig 74 A Pre-Breakfast Rant
Chase Twichell 75 Hunger for Something
Ruth L. Schwartz 75 Talking to God on the Seventh Day
Jack Gilbert 76 Hunger
Gwendolyn MacEwen 77 Dark Pines Under Water
Erin Moure 78 Toxicity
P.K. Page 79 Planet Earth
Wislawa Szymborska 80 The Ball
Anne Michaels 81 The Passionate World
Sarah Lindsay 82 World Truffle
Archibald MacLeish 83 You, Andrew Marvell
Mary Oliver 85 Look and See
Agha Shahid Ali 85 Stationery
Michael Donaghy 86 The Present
Imtiaz Dharker 86 Blessing
Robert Creeley 87 The Rain
Naomi Shihab Nye 88 So Much Happiness
Jane Kenyon 89 Happiness
Robert Bly 90 The Third Body
Czeslaw Milosz 90 On Pilgrimage
Mary Oliver 91 The Summer Day
Carl Dennis 92 The God Who Loves You
James K. Baxter 93 The Ikons
Czeslaw Milosz 94 Veni Creator
Carl Sandburg 94 Prayers of Steel
Antonio Machado 95 'Last night while I was sleeping'
Elizabeth Smither 96 Mission Impossible
R.S. Thomas 96 from Counterpoint
Dennis O'Driscoll 97 Missing God
Charles Causley 100 The Forest of Tangle
Fiona Farrell 101 Credo
Aidan Rooney-Cespedes 102 Retro Creation
Kaylin Haught 102 God Says Yes to Me
Kerry Hardie 103 Sheep Fair Day
Ruth L. Schwartz 105 Oh God, Fuck Me
3 Family
Jacob Polley 108 Smoke
Marge Piercy 109 The watch
Lucille Clifton 110 the lost baby poem
Jeni Couzyn 110 Heartsong
Helen Dunmore 111 Scan at 8 weeks
Kona Macphee 112 Ultrasound at 13 weeks
Paul Muldoon 112 The Sonogram
Pauline Stainer 113 The Ringing Chamber
Victoria Redel 113 Ninth Month
Derek Mahon 114 An Unborn Child
Louis MacNeice 115 Prayer Before Birth
Pablo Neruda 116 Births
Kona Macphee 118 The night before the last day of January
Kate Clanchy 118 Driving to the Hospital
W.N. Herbert 119 The Harvest in March
Matthew Hollis 120 And let us say
Lauris Edmond 120 Tempo
Fleur Adcock 122 Counting
Kate Clanchy 123 Love
Sylvia Plath 124 Morning Song
Richard Murphy 124 Natural Son
Thom Gunn 125 Baby Song
Helen Farish 126 Newly Born Twins
Sharon Olds 126 My First Weeks
Kathleen Ossip 127 Nursling
Anne Stevenson 128 The Victory
Kate Clanchy 128 Stance
Jane Hirsh?eld 129 Red Onion, Cherries, Boiling Potatoes, Milk -
Anne Winters 130 from Elizabeth Near and Far
Fleur Adcock 130 For Andrew
Gabriela Mistral 131 Let Him Not Grow Up
Rita Dove 132 Daystar
Anna Jackson 133 The peacock of motherhood
Connie Bensley 134 Single Parent
Michael Ondaatje 134 Bearhug
Nick Flynn 135 Cartoon Physics, part 1
Michael Laskey 136 A Tray of Eggs
Thomas Lynch 137 Skating with Heather Grace
Tony Hoagland 138 Benevolence
Carlos Drummond de Andrade 139 Infancy
Anne Stevenson 139 The Mother
Seamus Heaney 140 Sunlight
Philip Levine 141 Starlight
Seamus Heaney 142 from Clearances
Yehuda Amichai 142 My Father
Sinead Morrissey 143 Genetics
Seamus Heaney 143 Digging
Brendan Kennelly 144 I See You Dancing, Father
Theodore Roethke 145 Papa's Waltz
Susan Wicks 146 My Father Is Shrinking
Li-Young Lee 147 Little Father
Hart Crane 147 My Grandmother's Love Letters
Andrew Waterhouse 148 Climbing My Grandfather
Thomas Lynch 149 Custody
Julia Copus 150 Second Home
Marie Howe 151 How Many Times
Kona Macphee 151 No fairy story
Selima Hill 152 House
Ai 152 The Cockfighter's Daughter
Sylvia Plath 156 Daddy
Sharon Olds 158 Waste Sonata
Tracey Herd 159 The Survivors
Pascale Petit 160 The Strait-Jackets
Pascale Petit 161 Self-Portrait as a Warao Violin
Susan Glickman 162 But till that morning, ain't no one gonna harm you
John Steffler 162 Hollis Street Square, Halifax
Gjertrud Schnackenberg 163 Returning North
Maurice Riordan 165 Time Out
Helen Dunmore 166 The blessing
C. Day Lewis 167 Walking Away
Kathleen Jamie 168 Mother-May-I
Simon Armitage 169 Kid
Cynthia Fuller 170 Guests
Simon Armitage 170 from Book of Matches
Rutger Kopland 171 Johnson Brothers Ltd
Paul Farley 172 Laws of Gravity
Gael Turnbull 174 Transmutation
Vona Groarke 174 Family
Sharon Thesen 175 Animals
Miller Williams 175 Animals
Sharon Olds 176 Forty-one, Alone, No Gerbil
Billy Collins 176 Putting Down the Cat
Elizabeth Smither 177 On the euthanasia of a pet dog
Gerry McGrath 177 'Noticing a man unable...'
Howard Nemerov 178 Walking the Dog
4 Love Life
Wislawa Szymborska 180 Love at First Sight
Rosemary Tonks 181 Story of a Hotel Room
Lavinia Greenlaw 182 Tryst
Derek Walcott 182 Love After Love
Julia Copus 183 Love, Like Water
Yehuda Amichai 184 To My Love, Combing Her Hair
Cathy Song 184 The White Porch
Zbigniew Herbert 186 Rosy Ear
Margaret Atwood 187 Variation on the Word Sleep
Greta Stoddart 188 The Blindfold
Zbigniew Herbert 189 Silk of a Soul
Derek Walcott 190 The Fist
Deryn Rees-Jones 191 What It's Like To Be Alive
Hayden Carruth 191 Alive
Robert Hass 192 Misery and Splendor
Sharon Olds 193 This Hour
Galway Kinnell 194 After Making Love We Hear Footsteps
Czeslaw Milosz 194 Love
Jack Gilbert 195 The Great Fires
Jane Hirsh?eld 196 Knowing Nothing
Carol Ann Duffy 196 Warming Her Pearls
Helen Farish 197 Look at These
Liz Lochhead 198 I Wouldn't Thank You for a Valentine
Carol Ann Duffy 199 Valentine
Pablo Neruda 200 Ode to the Onion
Linda France 202 If Love Was Jazz
Billy Collins 203 Litany
Pablo Neruda 204 from 100 Love Sonnets
Patrick Kavanagh 205 On Raglan Road
Brendan Kennelly 205 Raglan Lane
Stanley Kunitz 206 Touch Me
William Matthews 207 Misgivings
Kerry Hardie 208 The Hunter Home from the Hill
Michael Longley 208 The Waterfall
U.A. Fanthorpe 209 Atlas
Philip Larkin 209 An Arundel Tomb
5 Men and Women
Frederick Seidel 212 Men and Women
C.K. Williams 215 The Dress
Denise Levertov 218 The Mutes
Fred Voss 219 The Inspection
Marge Piercy 220 In the men's room(s)
Gwen Harwood 221 A Simple Story
Tony Hoagland 222 The Change
Carol Ann Duffy 224 Mrs Midas
Anne Rouse 226 Spunk Talking
Tom Leonard 226 Four of the Belt
Chris Greenhalgh 227 A Man in the Valley of the Women
Roddy Lumsden 228 Prayer To Be with Mercurial Women
Wendy Cope 229 Bloody Men
Clare Pollard 230 And Another Bloody Thing...
Charles Bukowksi 230 sexpot
Radmila Lazic 232 I'll Be a Wicked Old Woman
Deborah Randall 233 Ballygrand Widow
Kim Addonizio 234 'What Do Women Want?'
Liz Lochhead 234 Rapunzstiltskin
John Agard 236 English Girl Eats Her First Mango
David Constantine 237 Pleasure
Minnie Bruce Pratt 238 Done
Selima Hill 238 Please Can I Have a Man
Billy Collins 239 Man in Space
Alice Oswald 240 Wedding
Michael Laskey 240 The Tightrope Wedding
Philip Larkin 241 The Whitsun Weddings
Michael Longley 243 The Pattern
Dorothy Molloy 244 Les Grands Seigneurs
Selima Hill 244 Being a Wife
Denise Levertov 245 The Ache of Marriage
Sylvia Plath 245 The Applicant
Dorothy Nimmo 247 Good Gifts
Jacques Prevert 248 Breakfast
Dorothy Nimmo 249 Ill-Wishing Him
Liz Lochhead 249 My Way
Cheryl Follon 251 Love Rats
Duncan Forbes 252 Recension Day
Michael Blackburn 253 Before That
Catherine Smith 253 The New Bride
Helen Ivory 254 Sleeping with the Fishes
James Fenton 255 Let's Go Over It All Again
Eleanor Brown 256 Sonnet
6 Being and Loss
Wallace Stevens 258 The Emperor of Ice-Cream
Jackie Kay 258 Somebody Else
James Merrill 259 Mirror
Michael Davitt 260 The Mirror
Chase Twichell 261 Cat and Mirror
Gael Turnbull 262 Transmutation
Henri Cole 262 Original Face
Aleksandar Ristovic 263 The essential
Marin Sorescu 263 Pond
W.B. Yeats 264 The Circus Animals' Desertion
Jack Gilbert 265 Measuring the Tyger
Cesar Vallejo 266 The black heralds
John Berryman 266 from Dream Songs (155)
Paul Durcan 267 The Death by Heroin of Sid Vicious
Jane Kenyon 268 Otherwise
James Fenton 268 The Mistake
C.P. Cavafy 269 Che Fece... Il Gran Ri?uto
Andrew Waterhouse 270 Speaking About My Cracked Sump
Tracey Herd 270 Ophelia's Confession
Selima Hill 271 Hairbrush
Polly Clark 272 Elvis the Performing Octopus
Sarah Wardle 273 Flight
Kerry Hardie 274 Autumn Cancer
Julia Darling 274 Chemotherapy
Gael Turnbull 275 Transmutation
Kerry Hardie 275 She Replies to Carmel's Letter
Kenneth Mackenzie 276 Caesura
David Scott 277 Heart
Esther Jansma 278 Descent
Carole Satyamurti 279 Broken Moon
Wendy Cope 280 Names
Bob Hicok 280 Alzheimer's
Alison Pryde 281 Have We Had Easter Yet?
Tony Hoagland 282 Lucky
Mark Doty 283 Brilliance
Pearse Hutchinson 285 Flames
Nick Drake 286 The Very Rich Hours
Mark Doty 287 The Embrace
Kerry Hardie 288 What's Left
Lucille Clifton 289 poem to my uterus
Lucille Clifton 290 to my last period
Howard Moss 290 The Pruned Tree
James K. Baxter 291 Tomcat
David Constantine 292 The Hoist
R.S. Thomas 292 Lore
Grace Paley 293 Here
Anne Stevenson 294 Who's Joking with the Photographer?
Fleur Adcock 295 Weathering
Lauris Edmond 296 3 a.m.
C.K. Williams 297 The Shade
Frederick Seidel 298 Dune Road, Southampton
Matthew Sweeney 300 The Box
Gerard Woodward 300 The Murderer Is a Cow
Jacob Polley 302 Moving House
Imtiaz Dharker 303 This room
Naomi Shihab Nye 304 Kindness
7 Daily Round
William Bronk 306 The Way
Glyn Maxwell 307 The Nerve
Simon Armitage 308 Killing Time #2
Louis MacNeice 310 Bagpipe Music
Dennis O'Driscoll 311 Life
Roo Borson 312 City Lights
August Kleinzahler 313 Snow in North Jersey
William Matthews 314 Grief
Helen Dunmore 315 To Virgil
Maura Dooley 316 Mind the Gap
Jo Shapcott 316 My Life Asleep
David Constantine 317 New Year Behind the Asylum
Alden Nowlan 318 Great Things Have Happened
Thom Gunn 319 Night Taxi
Ken Smith 321 Message on the machine
Brendan Kennelly 321 Clearing a Space
Ciaran Carson 323 Clearance
Ciaran Carson 323 Turn Again
Edward Hirsch 324 In Spite of Everything, the Stars
Jack Gilbert 325 Searching for Pittsburgh
Lavinia Greenlaw 325 Zombies
Dennis O'Driscoll 326 Home
Philip Levine 327 What Work Is
Al Purdy 328 Alive or Not
Jacques Prevert 329 At the Florist's
Anne Rouse 330 Her Retirement
Philip Larkin 331 Toads
Robert Phillips 332 The Panic Bird
Julie O'Callaghan 333 Managing the Common Herd
Deborah Garrison 334 Fight Song
Peter Didsbury 335 A Malediction
Rita Ann Higgins 336 Some People
Rodney Jones 337 TV
Vicki Feaver 338 The Way We Live
Philip Levine 339 Every Blessed Day
Tom French 341 Pity the Bastards
Ruth Dallas 345 Photographs of Pioneer Women
Donald Hall 346 Names of Horses
George Mackay Brown 347 The Ballad of John Barleycorn, The Ploughman, and the Furrow
Grace Nichols 349 Sugar Cane
Linda Gregg 350 Fish Tea Rice
Derek Mahon 351 Everything Is Going To Be All Right
Stanley Kunitz 352 The Round
8 Lives
Derek Mahon 354 Lives
Brendan Kennelly 356 The Story
Gael Turnbull 357 Transmutation
Suzanne Cleary 357 Acting
Elizabeth Smither 359 The sea question
Esther Morgan 359 The Sea
Michael Harlow 360 No Problem, But Not Easy
Joanne Limburg 361 Seder Night with My Ancestors
Agha Shahid Ali 362 The Dacca Gauzes
Maya Angelou 363 Still I Rise
Gwendolyn Brooks 365 Sadie and Maud
Douglas Dunn 365 Glasgow Schoolboys, Running Backwards
Denis Glover 366 The Magpies
Paul Muldoon 367 The Loaf
Vona Groarke 368 Imperial Measure
Billy Collins 370 Nostalgia
Thomas Lux 371 Plague Victims Catapulted over Walls into Besieged City
Ken Smith 371 Part of the crowd that day
Tom Paulin 372 Desertmartin
Derek Mahon 373 Ecclesiastes
Andrew Waterhouse 374 Now the City Has Fallen
Peter Reading 375 from Going On
Imtiaz Dharker 376 Honour Killing
Carol Rumens 377 Geography Lesson
W.H. Auden 377 Refugee Blues
George Szirtes 378 My father carries me across a ?eld
Choman Hardi 379 Escape Journey, 1988
Kapka Kassabova 380 Someone else's life
Jane Grif?ths 381 Migration
Carl Sandburg 382 Limited
Moniza Alvi 382 Arrival, 1946
C.P. Cavafy 383 The City
Ken Smith 383 Malenki robot
Saadi Youssef 384 The Mouse
Carol Rumens 385 The Emigree
James Fenton 386 The Ideal
Gwyneth Lewis 386 A Poet's Confession
Zbigniew Herbert 387 Tongue
Mihangel Morgan 387 Conversation
W.S. Merwin 388 Losing a Language
Zbigniew Herbert 389 From the Technology of Tears
Agha Shahid Ali 390 from The Country Without a Post Office
Yehuda Amichai 391 'The Rustle of History's Wings,' as They Used to Say Then
Yehuda Amichai 392 Jerusalem
James Fenton 392 Jerusalem
Mahmoud Darwish 395 In This Land
Moniza Alvi 395 The Sari
James Fenton 396 Wind
9 Mad World
Robert Pinsky 398 ABC
Gerald Stern 398 The Dog
Emily Dickinson 399 'I reason, Earth is short...'
William Stafford 400 Earth Dweller
Hans Magnus Enzensberger 400 The End of the Owls
Miroslav Holub 401 The end of the world
Edwin Muir 402 The Horses
Vijay Seshadri 403 The Disappearances
W.H. Auden 405 The Shield of Achilles
Edwin Brock 407 Five Ways to Kill a Man
Tadeusz Rozewicz 408 Pigtail
Primo Levi 409 Shema
Tadeusz Rozewicz 410 The survivor
(attr.) Martin Niemoeller 411 'First they came for the Jews...'
Erich Fried 411 What Happens
Adrian Mitchell 412 To Whom It May Concern
W.H. Auden 414 'When Statesmen gravely say...'
Hans Magnus Enzensberger 414 Explaining the Declaration
Aleksandar Ristovic 415 Untitled
Bertolt Brecht 415 War Has Been Given a Bad Name
Mahmoud Darwish 416 He Embraces His Murderer
Bertolt Brecht 417 from A German War Primer
Heberto Padilla 417 Song of the Juggler
Erich Fried 418 Conversation with a Survivor
Jackie Kay 419 Twelve Bar Bessie
Adrienne Rich 420 from An Atlas of the Dif?cult World
Genevieve Taggard 421 At Last the Women Are Moving
Carole Satyamurti 421 Ourstory
Marge Piercy 422 The low road
Luis Enrique Mejia Godoy 423 Revenge
Czeslaw Milosz 424 Dedication
Douglas Dunn 425 Ratatouille
Paul Durcan 426 In Memory: The Miami Showband - Massacred 31 July 1975
James Merrill 427 Casual Wear
Yehuda Amichai 428 The Diameter of the Bomb
Norman MacCaig 428 The Red and the Black
Sinead Morrissey 429 The Wound Man
John Burnside 430 History
C.K. Williams 432 The Hearth
W.H. Auden 434 Musee des Beaux Arts
Wislawa Szymborska 435 Reality Demands
Adam Zagajewski 436 Try to Praise the Mutilated World
Faiz Ahmed Faiz 437 A Prison Evening
Adrienne Rich 438 To the Days
Sheenagh Pugh 439 Sometimes
Eva Salzman 439 Spells
Helen Dunmore 440 Glad of these times
Jen Had?eld 441 Staple Island Swing
10 Ends and Beginnings
Philip Larkin 444 The Trees
M.R. Peacocke 444 Late Snow
C.P. Cavafy 445 Candles
Saadi Youssef 446 Night in Al-Hamra
Helen Dunmore 446 Candle poem
Mark Strand 447 A Piece of the Storm
Bernard O'Donoghue 448 Going Without Saying
Patrick Kavanagh 448 Wet Evening in April
W.S. Merwin 448 For the Anniversary of My Death
Adrienne Rich 449 Final Notations
Raymond Carver 450 Gravy
Jane Kenyon 450 In the Nursing Home
Jo Shapcott 451 Lovebirds
Sharon Olds 451 Beyond Harm
Roy Fisher 452 The Entertainment of War
Seamus Heaney 453 Mid-Term Break
Robert Kroetsch 454 Sounding the name
Stephen Dobyns 455 When a Friend
Edwin Brock 456 And another thing...
Michael Longley 457 Detour
Paul Durcan 458 Tullynoe: Tete-a-Tete in the Priest's Parlour
Bernard O'Donoghue 458 Concordiam in Populo
Elizabeth Smither 459 A cortege of daughters
Meg Bateman 460 After the Funeral
Virginia Hamilton-Adair 460 A Last Marriage
Anne Stevenson 461 Musician's Widow
Lauris Edmond 462 Anniversary
R.S. Thomas 463 A Marriage
Carol Muske-Dukes 463 Love Song
Ruth Stone 464 Poems
Antonio Machado 465 The Eyes
Ruth Stone 465 Curtains
Elizabeth Jennings 466 Not at Home
Jane Hirsh?eld 467 A Room
Brendan Kennelly 468 We Are Living
Marie Howe 469 What the Living Do
Norman Nicholson 470 Sea to the West
Lauris Edmond 471 Girls
Czeslaw Milosz 472 A Mistake
Tony Hoagland 472 Migration
Michael Hartnett 473 A Prayer for Sleep
Ruth Pitter 474 The Task
James K. Baxter 474 from Autumn Testament
Mary Oliver 476 Some Questions You Might Ask
M.K. Joseph 476 A Riddle: Of the Soul
Michael Hartnett 477 'There will be a talking...'
Gary Snyder 478 For the children
Ruth Stone 478 In the Next Galaxy
Jane Kenyon 479 Let Evening Come
T.S. Eliot 480 from Four Quartets
484 Further reading
487 Acknowledgements
496 Index of writers
502 Index of titles and first lines