Being Human
the companion anthology to Staying Alive and Being Alive
Published on 30. March 2011
Book
Paperback/Softback
512 pages
978-1-85224-809-3 (ISBN)
Description
Being Human is the third book in the Staying Alive series of anthologies. Staying Alive and its sequel Being Alive have introduced many thousands of new readers to contemporary poetry. Being Human is a companion volume to those two books - a world poetry anthology offering poetry lovers an even broader, international selection of 'real poems for unreal times'. It was followed by a fourth volume, Staying Human: new poems for Staying Alive (2020).
The range of poetry here complements that of the first two anthologies: hundreds of thoughtful and passionate poems about living in the modern world; poems that touch the heart, stir the mind and fire the spirit; poems about being human, about love and loss, fear and longing, hurt and wonder. There are more great poems from the 20th century as well as many recent poems of rare imaginative power from the first decade of the 21st century.
But this book is also rare in reflecting the concerns of readers from all walks of life. Such has been the appeal of Staying Alive and Being Alive that many people have written not only to express their appreciation of these books, but also to share poems which have been important in their own lives. Being Human draws on this highly unusual publisher's mailbag, including many talismanic personal survival poems suggested by our readers.
The range of poetry here complements that of the first two anthologies: hundreds of thoughtful and passionate poems about living in the modern world; poems that touch the heart, stir the mind and fire the spirit; poems about being human, about love and loss, fear and longing, hurt and wonder. There are more great poems from the 20th century as well as many recent poems of rare imaginative power from the first decade of the 21st century.
But this book is also rare in reflecting the concerns of readers from all walks of life. Such has been the appeal of Staying Alive and Being Alive that many people have written not only to express their appreciation of these books, but also to share poems which have been important in their own lives. Being Human draws on this highly unusual publisher's mailbag, including many talismanic personal survival poems suggested by our readers.
Reviews / Votes
A book that makes the heart sing, which shows that the best of today's poetry...is a joy to behold, "charged", as Ezra Pound said, "with meaning to the utmost degree". Being Human, which runs to more than 500 pages, offers a glut of poetry from across the globe and, in so doing, renders redundant the "difficult" tag which so dogs the art. Above all it is a celebration of our capacity to embrace whatever's thrown at us... But subjects do not make poems, poets do. Astley's taste is catholic and inclusive and drawn to those who write with lyrical clarity and a keen eye... Being Human is not easy to summarise. It is a poetic Babel, a library in one volume. -- Alan Taylor * The Herald (Scotland) * Astley is wonderful at selecting poems with the kind of talismanic lines that really speak to people... Not only are the poems clustered by broad theme, with a lively introduction to each section by Astley, but within those groupings they speak to each other, in substance or across time...This collection certainly continues the excellent work of its predecessors, bringing new work and poets to audiences, and drawing new readers to poetry, and at a mere GBP12 for 500 poems, no one will be deterred from taking a risk. Being Human is stimulating, inspiring, intelligent, witty and life-affirming, the perfect companion on a journey, literal and otherwise. -- Peggy Hughes * Scotland on Sunday * Where Staying Alive and Being Alive were filled with poems that felt exigent, essential (even, in the case of Mary Oliver's subsequently much-quoted "Wild Geese", talismanic), the atmosphere of Being Human, as its title suggests, is more contemplative. Time - its passage and our relationship to it - is the overarching subject, and the section that tackles it specifically, "About time", sits at the heart of the book. Trains and rivers wind their way through the poems, memory is interrogated, and the moments of suspension in which, as Louis MacNeice has it, "Time was away and somewhere else", are rejoiced in... That act of noticing is what poetry ought to do, and what many of the superb poems in this anthology achieve. Let's hear it for modern verse. -- Sarah Crown * Guardian * Neil Astley's indispensable, endlessly surprising trilogy... The newest and last of these contains all the manifold virtues of the earlier two: another startlingly varied, unexpected and entirely accessible collection of contemporary poems - 500 per volume, no small undertaking - exploring the stuff of life, what Louis MacNeice called "this mad weir of tigerish waters/A prism of delight and pain". -- Catherine Lockerbie * The Scotsman *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Tyne and Wear
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 222 mm
Width: 141 mm
Thickness: 33 mm
Weight
694 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-85224-809-3 (9781852248093)
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 Being Human
Doris Kareva 22 from Shape of Time
Anna Kamienska 23 Funny
Kerry Hardie 23 Humankind
Rumi 24 The Guest House
Micheal O'Siadhail 25 Human
Adrian Mitchell 25 Human Beings
Julie O'Callaghan 27 The Sounds of Earth
Raymond Queneau 28 The Human Species
Vernon Scannell 29 Here and Human
Ruth Stone 30 Being Human
Stephen Edgar 30 Another Country
Anna Swir 31 Happiness
John Montague 32 To Cease
Elizabeth Alexander 33 Ars Poetica #100: I Believe
T.S. Eliot 34 The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Dennis O'Driscoll 38 The Vigil
2 The stuff of life
Michael Blumenthal 40 What I Believe
Selima Hill 41 What Do I Really Believe?
Sujata Bhatt 42 What Is Worth Knowing
John Burnside 43 Anniversary
Bei Dao 44 The Answer
Julius Chingono 45 As I Go
Thomas A. Clark 46 In Praise of Walking
Ruth Stone 49 Train Ride
Galway Kinnell 50 The Road Between Here and There
Rosemary Tonks 51 The Sofas, Fogs and Cinemas
Adam Zagajewski 52 To Go to Lvov
Jack Gilbert 54 A Brief for the Defense
Jane Hirsh?eld 55 Burlap Sack
Edip Cansever 56 Table
Oktay Rifat 56 Table Laid
Pablo Neruda 57 The great tablecloth
David Scott 58 A Long Way from Bread
Brendan Kennelly 60 Bread
E.A. Markham 61 Don't Talk to Me about Bread
Nikki Giovanni 62 Quilts
Ruth Stone 63 Second-Hand Coat
Kerry Hardie 64 Helplessness
Olav H. Hauge 64 Don't Give Me the Whole Truth
Izumi Shikibu 64 'Although the wind'
Didem Madak 65 Sir, I Want to Write Poems with Flowers
Charles Brasch 66 Winter Anemones
Tracy K. Smith 67 Duende
Derek Mahon 69 Thunder Shower
Derek Mahon 70 Kinsale
Jen Had?eld 71 Daed-traa
Raymond Carver 72 Where Water Comes Together with Other Water
Vona Groarke 73 The Local Accent
Greta Stoddart 74 Counting
Bei Dao 74 Midnight Singer
Frances Leviston 74 Moon
Nazim Hikmet 76 Things I Didn't Know I Loved
Linda Pastan 79 Things I Didn't Know I Loved
Louis MacNeice 81 Sunlight on the Garden
Peter Didsbury 81 Pastoral (after Ralf Andtbacka)
John F. Deane 82 The Colours
Lavinia Greenlaw 83 Blue Field
Anne Stevenson 84 On Harlech Beach
Rainer Maria Rilke 85 Archaic Torso of Apollo
Mark Doty 85 A Green Crab's Shell
Coral Bracho 87 Wasp on Water
Tua Forsstroem 87 Amber
Jane Hirsh?eld 88 The Weighing
Stanley Kunitz 89 The Layers
William Stafford 90 The Way It Is
Fernando Pessoa 90 'To be great, be whole...'
Toon Tellegen 91 I drew a line
Robert Frost 91 The Armful
Gregory Corso 92 The Whole Mess... Almost
James Fenton 93 The Skip
3 Life history
Agha Shahid Ali 96 A Lost Memory of Delhi
Sharon Olds 97 I Go Back to May 1937
Anna Swir 98 Woman Unborn
Thomas Lux 99 Upon Seeing an Ultrasound Photo of an Unborn Child
Kate Clanchy 100 Infant
Kevin Young 100 Crowning
Maura Dooley 104 The Weighing of the Heart
Helen Dunmore 105 All the Things You Are Not Yet
Louise Glueck 106 Lullaby
Maria Negroni 107 The Baby
Thomas Lux 107 A Little Tooth
Kevin Grif?th 108 Spinning
Naomi Shihab Nye 108 Shoulders
Dan Chiasson 109 Man and Derailment
Evan Jones 109 Generations
Langston Hughes 110 Mother to Son
Terrance Hayes 111 Mother to Son
Lorna Goodison 112 I Am Becoming My Mother
A.K. Ramanujan 112 Self-portrait
Samuel Menashe 113 Autobiography
Rebecca Edwards 113 The Mothers
Catherine Smith 114 The Fathers
Rita Ann Higgins 115 Grandchildren
Penelope Shuttle 116 Delicious Babies
Anna T. Szabo 117 She Leaves Me
Linda Pastan 118 To a Daughter Leaving Home
Norman MacCaig 119 Small boy
Paul Farley 119 Monopoly
Natasha Trethewey 120 Mythmaker
Eavan Boland 121 The Pomegranate
Imtiaz Dharker 123 How to Cut a Pomegranate
Susan Wicks 123 Persephone
Robert Wrigley 124 Moonlight: Chickens on the Road
Simon Armitage 126 'My father thought it bloody queer'
Anthony Lawrence 127 The Drive
Robyn Rowland 128 Ausculta
Molly Peacock 129 Say You Love Me
Pascale Petit 131 Self Portrait with Fire Ants
Carol Ann Duffy 132 We Remember Your Childhood Well
A.D. Hope 132 Crossing the Frontier
Nii Ayikwei Parkes 134 The Makings of You
Kathleen Jamie 135 Crossing the Loch
Lynda Hull 136 At Thirty
Adrian Blevins 136 Life History
Lucille Clifton 138 'the thirty-eighth year...'
Mary Stanley 140 The Wife Speaks
Donald Justice 141 Men at Forty
David Campbell 141 Mothers and Daughters
Patricia Beer 142 Middle Age
Bernard O'Donoghue 143 Nel Mezzo del Cammin
Arvind Krishna Mehrotra 143 Approaching Fifty
Marie Howe 144 The World
Randall Jarrell 144 The Woman at the Washington Zoo
Franz Wright 145 Untitled
Francesc Parcerisas 146 Shave
Kwame Dawes 147 Fat Man
Sharon Olds 148 Self-portrait, Rear View
Elaine Feinstein 149 Getting Older
Arun Kolatkar 149 An Old Woman
Dom Moraes 151 from After the Operation
Paul Durcan 153 Golden Mothers Driving West
Elizabeth Jennings 154 Rembrandt's Late Portraits
Mark Strand 155 Old Man Leaves Party
W.S. Merwin 156 Still Morning
Samuel Menashe 156 Salt and Pepper
Jorge Luis Borges 157 In Praise of Darkness
Derek Mahon 158 Ignorance (after Philippe Jaccottet)
Yehuda Amichai 159 A Quiet Joy
Samuel Menashe 159 Voyage
Samuel Menashe 160 The Niche
Salvatore Quasimodo 160 And Suddenly It's Evening
Lars Gustafsson 160 The Girl
4 About time
Samuel Menashe 162 The Shrine Who Shape I Am
Fleur Adcock 162 Water
C.D. Wright 163 Our Dust
Luljeta Lleshanaku 165 Vertical Realities
Elizabeth Bishop 166 In the Waiting Room
Moya Cannon 168 The Train
Dan Pagis 169 Ein Leben
Patricia Hampl 170 This Is How Memory Works
Seamus Heaney 171 A Sofa in the Forties
Julia Copus 173 Raymond, at 60
Luljeta Lleshanaku 174 from Monday in Seven Days
Eilean Ni Chuilleanain 174 The Bend in the Road
Luljeta Lleshanaku 175 Memory
Ruth Stone 176 Memory
Keith Althaus 177 Ladder of Hours
Stuart Henson 177 The Price
Michael Hartnett 178 The Killing of Dreams
Langston Hughes 179 Harlem [2]
Rodney Jones 179 Salvation Blues
Jorge Luis Borges 180 Matthew XXV: 30
Francis Harvey 181 News of the World
George Seferis 181 from Mythistorema
Jaan Kaplinski 182 'The washing never gets done...'
Yehuda Amichai 183 A Man in His Life
Stewart Conn 184 Carpe Diem
Emma Lew 185 Riot Eve
Carole Satyamurti 185 Sathyaji
Rita Dove 187 Dawn Revisited
Adam Zagajewski 187 Lava
Wislawa Szymborska 188 Could Have
Yusef Komunyakaa 189 Thanks
Philip Gross 190 Caught
Iain Crichton Smith 191 Listen
Louis MacNeice 192 Meeting Point
Rosemary Dobson 193 The Three Fates
Philip Hodgins 194 Leaving
Alan Gillis 195 Progress
Alice Oswald 196 The mud-spattered recollections of a woman who lived her life backwards
Sheenagh Pugh 198 Pause: Rewind
Vasko Popa 199 The Little Box
Yehuda Amichai 199 Inside the Apple
Jean Follain 200 Life
Dana Gioia 201 Nothing Is Lost
Toeti Heraty 201 A Woman's Portrait 1938
Thom Gunn 202 In Santa Maria del Populo
Matthew Sweeney 203 Black Moon
Roberto Juarroz 204 'Life draws a tree'
John Glenday 205 Etching a Line of Trees
Sarah Holland-Batt 206 The Art of Disappearing
Rainer Maria Rilke 207 Childhood
Peter Handke 208 Song of Childhood
Peter Handke 210 Angels talking in Wings of Desire
George Szirtes 213 Cerulean Blue: Footnote on Wim Wenders
Robert Hass 214 Privilege of Being
Harry Clifton 216 God in France
Czeslaw Milosz 217 A Confession
Adam Zagajewski 218 Fruit
Wislawa Szymborska 218 A Note
Christine Evans 219 Callers
Nissim Ezekiel 220 Poet, Lover, Birdwatcher
Henri Thomas 221 Audides
Pablo Neruda 221 Keeping quiet
Rumi 223 Quietness
Lynne Wycherley 223 Apple Tree in Blossom
Robert Frost 224 The Oven Bird
Frances Horovitz 224 Flowers
Denise Levertov 225 The Life Around Us
Leslie Norris 226 Burning the Bracken
Eeva-Liisa Manner 227 'The trees are bare...'
Elizabeth Jennings 227 Song at the Beginning of Autumn
Stanley Kunitz 228 The Snakes of September
John Burnside 229 September Evening: Deer at Big Basin
W.B. Yeats 230 The Wild Swans at Coole
Samuel Menashe 231 Autumn
Tess Gallagher 231 Blue Grapes
Robert Frost 231 Nothing Gold Can Stay
Eamon Grennan 232 A Few Facts
Edwin Morgan 232 Trio
John F. Deane 233 Canticle
Margaret Avison 234 New Year's Poem
Norman MacCaig 235 February - not everywhere
Tomas Transtroemer 235 April and Silence
Paula Meehan 236 Seed
Esther Morgan 236 This Morning
Louise Glueck 237 Matins
Eamon Grennan 237 What It Is
Kerry Hardie 238 May
Katha Pollitt 239 The Old Neighbors
Derek Walcott 240 Midsummer, Tobago
Norman MacCaig 240 So many summers
Mark Wunderlich 241 Amaryllis (after Rilke)
Louise Glueck 242 Screened Porch
Faustin Charles 243 Landscape
Jaan Kaplinski 244 'Every dying man...'
5 Fight to the death
Jane Kenyon 246 Having It Out with Melancholy
Jane Kenyon 249 Back
Susana Thenon 250 Nuptial Song
Ravi Shankar 251 Plumbing the Deepening Grove
Lucia Perillo 252 Shrike Tree
Miller Williams 253 Thinking About Bill, Dead of AIDS
Mark Doty 254 Faith
Joan Margarit 257 Dark Night in Balmes Street
Joan Margarit 258 The eyes in the rear-view mirror
Joan Margarit 259 Young partridge
Bill Manhire 259 Kevin
Raymond Carver 260 What the Doctor Said
Philip Hodgins 260 Death Who
Anna Swir 262 Tomorrow They Will Carve Me
Jo Shapcott 263 Procedure
Nissim Ezekiel 263 Process
Janet Frame 264 The Suicides
Sylvia Plath 265 Fever 103 degrees
Ted Hughes 266 Fever
Sylvia Plath 268 The Rabbit Catcher
Ted Hughes 269 Life after Death
Stanley Kunitz 271 The Portrait
Ruth Stone 272 Turn Your Eyes Away
Grace Paley 273 This Life
Kenneth Patchen 274 I Feel Drunk All the Time
Robert Wrigley 274 Heart Attack
Roger McGough 275 Defying Gravity
Sharon Olds 276 The Race
Lawrence Sail 278 At the Bedside
John Burnside 279 Marginal jottings on the prospect of dying
Rebecca Elson 280 Antidote to the Fear of Death
Richard Blessing 281 Directions for Dying
Andrew Motion 281 The Cinder Path
Marin Sorescu 282 Pure Pain
Marin Sorescu 282 'What hurts the most'
Marin Sorescu 283 Balance Sheet
Marin Sorescu 283 A Ladder to the Sky
Marin Sorescu 284 'So this is it'
Patricia Pogson 284 Breath
Lauris Edmond 285 The pace of change
Larry Levis 285 The Morning After My Death
William Matthews 286 My Father's Body
Tony Harrison 288 Timer
Tony Harrison 288 Marked with D.
U.A. Fanthorpe 289 Only a Small Death
David Constantine 290 Common and Particular
Julia Kasdorf 291 What I Learned from My Mother
Amjad Nasser 292 The House After Her Death
Douglas Dunn 293 Dining
Christopher Reid 294 from The Unfinished
Norman MacCaig 297 Memorial
R.S. Thomas 298 Comparisons
Herman de Coninck 299 Ann
Mary Jo Bang 300 Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
Mary Jo Bang 301 You Were You Are Elegy
Mary Jo Bang 302 Ode to History
R.S. Thomas 302 No Time
Ken Smith 303 Years go by
Adrian Mitchell 304 Death Is Smaller Than I Thought
Jackie Kay 305 Darling
Susan Mitchell 305 The Dead
Billy Collins 306 No Time
Susan Wicks 306 Branches
6 War and survival
Heather McHugh 308 What He Thought
Czeslaw Milosz 310 Campo Dei Fiori
W.H. Auden 312 The Fall of Rome
Anthony Hecht 313 'More Light! More Light!
Irena Klepfisz 314 Dedications to Bashert
Paul Celan 316 Deathfugue
C.K. Williams 317 Jew on Bridge
Carolyn Forche 321 The Visitor
Robert Hass 321 I Am Your Waiter Tonight and My Name Is Dimitri
Laurie Lee 324 The Long War
Miklos Radnoti 324 Letter to My Wife
Paul Celan 326 Aspen Tree
Ho Thien 326 The Green Beret
Doug Anderson 328 Night Ambush
Keith Douglas 328 How to Kill
Brian Turner 329 Here, Bullet
Dunya Mikhail 330 The War Works Hard
Yehuda Amichai 331 The Place Where We Are Right
Tatjana Lukic 332 nothing else
Sarah Maguire 333 The Pomegranates of Kandahar
Mourid Barghouti 334 A Night Unlike Others
Brian Turner 336 16 Iraqi Policeman
Mourid Barghouti 336 Silence
Aharon Shabtai 337 War
Ronny Someck 337 A Poem of Bliss
Taha Muhammad Ali 338 Abd el-Hadi Fights a Superpower
Paul Muldoon 339 Truce
Alan Gould 339 A U-Boat Morning, 1914
Gillian Clarke 341 The Field-Mouse
Robert Adamson 342 The Goldfinches of Baghdad
Lam Thi My Da 343 Garden Fragrance
Michael Coady 343 Though There Are Torturers
Michael Longley 344 The Ice-Cream Man
Andrew Motion 344 To Whom It May Concern
Michael Longley 345 Wreaths
X.J. Kennedy 346 September Twelfth, 2001
Deborah Garrison 347 I Saw You Walking
Alan Smith 348 Kidding Myself in Kuta, Bali: A Pantoum
Gyula Illyes 349 While the Record Plays
Charles Simic 350 Fear
Heberto Padilla 351 In trying times
Nazim Hikmet 352 On Living
Tony Curtis 354 Soup
Irina Ratushinskaya 355 I will live and survive
Jack Mapanje 356 Skipping Without Ropes
Priscila Uppal 357 Sorry I Forgot To Clean Up After Myself
Nazim Hikmet 358 It's This Way
Else Lasker-Schueler 358 My Blue Piano
David Constantine 359 Soldiering On
Ernesto Cardenal 360 'For Those Dead, Our Dead...'
Martin Espada 361 Sleeping on the Bus
Sargon Boulus 362 News About No One
Chenjerai Hove 363 You Will Forget
7 Living in hope
John Hewitt 366 from Freehold
Patrick Kavanagh 368 Epic
Patrick Kavanagh 369 Shancoduff
Liam O Muirthile 369 The Parlour
Ikkyu 370 My real dwelling
Adelia Prado 371 Denouement
James Merrill 372 The Broken Home
Ko Un 375 Back Home
Ko Un 375 Hometown
Richard Hugo 376 Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg
Paul Batchelor 377 Conurbation
Olav H. Hauge 378 Leaf-Huts and Snow-Houses
George Oppen 379 Street
Louis Simpson 379 An American Classic
Jimmy Santiago Baca 380 from Poem VI
Dennis O'Driscoll 382 Them and You
John Ormond 383 Cathedral Builders
Geoff Page 384 Grit
Ali Cobby Eckermann 385 Intervention Pay Day
Harry Martinson 389 Cable-ship
Martin Espada 389 Imagine the Angels of Bread
Nick Makoha 391 Beatitude
Dunya Mikhail 392 I Was in a Hurry
Nadia Anjuman 393 The Silenced
Nora Nadjarian 393 Mother Tongue
Partaw Naderi 394 My Voice
Partaw Naderi 394 The Mirror
Anne Stevenson 395 It looks so simple from a distance...
Henrik Norbrandt 395 Local
Stanislav Baranczak 396 A Second Nature
Carol Ann Duffy 397 Foreign
Farzaneh Khojandi 397 Must Escape
Mohja Kahf 398 Hijab Scene #7
Karen Press 399 Application for Naturalisation
Imtiaz Dharker 400 Front door
James Berry 401 Englan Voice
Jean 'Binta' Breeze 402 from The arrival of Brighteye
Grace Nichols 404 Wherever I Hang
Daljit Nagra 405 Look We Have Coming to Dover!
John Agard 406 Half-caste
Moniza Alvi 407 Half-and-Half
Gustavo Perez Firmat 408 Bilingual Blues
Linda Hogan 409 The Truth Is
Katia Kapovich 410 Painting a Room
Philip Levine 411 The Mercy
Seamus Heaney 412 Miracle
Hans Magnus Enzensberger 413 Optimistic Little Poem
Ivan V. Lalic 413 The Spaces of Hope
Lisel Mueller 414 Hope
Edith Soedergran 415 Hope
Imtiaz Dharker 415 Living Space
Ruth Bidgood 416 Little of Distinction
Pablo Neruda 417 Emerging
Brendan Kennelly 418 Yes
Adrian Mitchell 419 Yes
James Wright 419 Yes, But
Langston Hughes 420 Dreams
8 Body and soul
Henri Cole 422 Ape House, Berlin Zoo
Stephen Dunn 423 With No Experience in Such Matters
Lars Gustafsson 424 Elegy for a Dead Labrador
Oktay Rifat 426 Looking at the Invisible
Stephen Dunn 426 From Underneath
Roderick Ford 428 Giuseppe
Vicki Feaver 429 The Gun
Chase Twichell 430 City Animals
Robert Lowell 432 Skunk Hour
Elizabeth Bishop 433 The Armadillo
Brigit Pegeen Kelly 434 Song
Philip Larkin 436 The Mower
Judith Beveridge 437 The Caterpillars
Ruth Stone 438 Another Feeling
Larry Levis 438 The Oldest Living Thing in LA
Thomas Lux 439 Tarantulas on the Lifebuoy
Eugenio Montale 440 The Eel
Les Murray 441 The Cows on Killing Day
Gottfried Benn 443 Little Aster
David Huerta 443 Poem by Gottfried Benn
C.P. Cavafy 444 Body, Remember...
Osip Mandelstam 444 'A body is given to me...'
Eleanor Ross Taylor 445 Disappearing Act
Padraic Fallon 446 Body
A.K. Ramanujan 446 A Hindu to His Body
Sarah Holland-Batt 447 Pocket Mirror
John Updike 448 Mirror
Sonnet L'Abbe 448 Theory My Natural Brown Ass
Sarah Holland-Batt 449 The Idea of Mountain
Brendan Kennelly 450 Proof
Wislawa Szymborska 451 View with a Grain of Sand
R.S. Thomas 452 The Bright Field
Mark Strand 453 Keeping Things Whole
Alex Skovron 453 Almost
Alastair Reid 454 Oddments, inklings, omens, moments
Pedro Serrano 455 Feet
A.D. Hope 455 The Gateway
William Stafford 456 The Gift
Kerry Hardie 457 Flesh
Julia Hartwig 457 Toward the End
C.P. Cavafy 458 The God Abandons Antony
Jane Hirsh?eld 459 Tree
Harry Clifton 459 The Garden
Olga Broumas 460 Sweeping the Garden
John Burnside 461 from Of Gravity and light
Michael Laskey 462 Nobody
Kenji Miyazawa 462 Strong in the Rain
Arundhathi Subramaniam 463 Prayer
Dana Gioia 464 Prayer
9 More to love
Kim Addonizio 466 You Don't Know What Love Is
Kim Addonizio 466 Like That
Jericho Brown 467 Track 1: Lush Life
Edwin Morgan 468 Strawberries
Arda Collins 469 Low
Dorianne Laux 470 The Shipfitter's Wife
W.R. Rodgers 470 The Net
Thom Gunn 471 Tamer and Hawk
Eliza Griswold 472 Tigers
Tony Hoagland 473 Romantic Moment
Faiz Ahmed Faiz 474 Before You Came
Norman MacCaig 474 True Ways of Knowing
E.E. Cummings 475 i carry your heart with me
Dana Gioia 476 The Song (after Rilke)
W.B. Yeats 476 He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
Langston Hughes 477 The Dream Keeper
Michael Donaghy 477 The Present
Sharon Olds 478 This Hour
Garrison Keillor 479 Supper
Sinead Morrissey 479 & Forgive Us Our Trespasses
Maram al-Massri 480 from A Red Cherry on a White-tiled Floor
Norman MacCaig 482 Sounds of the day
Pablo Neruda 483 'If I die...'
Annabelle Despard 483 Should You Die First
Grace Paley 484 Anti-Love Poem
Eavan Boland 485 Love
Herman de Coninck 485 For Each Other
Lorraine Mariner 486 Say I forgot
Alan Dugan 486 Love Song: I and Thou
Michael Blumenthal 487 A Marriage
Anna Swir 488 Thank You, My Fate
489 Acknowledgements
496 Index of writers
503 Index of titles and first lines
1 Being Human
Doris Kareva 22 from Shape of Time
Anna Kamienska 23 Funny
Kerry Hardie 23 Humankind
Rumi 24 The Guest House
Micheal O'Siadhail 25 Human
Adrian Mitchell 25 Human Beings
Julie O'Callaghan 27 The Sounds of Earth
Raymond Queneau 28 The Human Species
Vernon Scannell 29 Here and Human
Ruth Stone 30 Being Human
Stephen Edgar 30 Another Country
Anna Swir 31 Happiness
John Montague 32 To Cease
Elizabeth Alexander 33 Ars Poetica #100: I Believe
T.S. Eliot 34 The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Dennis O'Driscoll 38 The Vigil
2 The stuff of life
Michael Blumenthal 40 What I Believe
Selima Hill 41 What Do I Really Believe?
Sujata Bhatt 42 What Is Worth Knowing
John Burnside 43 Anniversary
Bei Dao 44 The Answer
Julius Chingono 45 As I Go
Thomas A. Clark 46 In Praise of Walking
Ruth Stone 49 Train Ride
Galway Kinnell 50 The Road Between Here and There
Rosemary Tonks 51 The Sofas, Fogs and Cinemas
Adam Zagajewski 52 To Go to Lvov
Jack Gilbert 54 A Brief for the Defense
Jane Hirsh?eld 55 Burlap Sack
Edip Cansever 56 Table
Oktay Rifat 56 Table Laid
Pablo Neruda 57 The great tablecloth
David Scott 58 A Long Way from Bread
Brendan Kennelly 60 Bread
E.A. Markham 61 Don't Talk to Me about Bread
Nikki Giovanni 62 Quilts
Ruth Stone 63 Second-Hand Coat
Kerry Hardie 64 Helplessness
Olav H. Hauge 64 Don't Give Me the Whole Truth
Izumi Shikibu 64 'Although the wind'
Didem Madak 65 Sir, I Want to Write Poems with Flowers
Charles Brasch 66 Winter Anemones
Tracy K. Smith 67 Duende
Derek Mahon 69 Thunder Shower
Derek Mahon 70 Kinsale
Jen Had?eld 71 Daed-traa
Raymond Carver 72 Where Water Comes Together with Other Water
Vona Groarke 73 The Local Accent
Greta Stoddart 74 Counting
Bei Dao 74 Midnight Singer
Frances Leviston 74 Moon
Nazim Hikmet 76 Things I Didn't Know I Loved
Linda Pastan 79 Things I Didn't Know I Loved
Louis MacNeice 81 Sunlight on the Garden
Peter Didsbury 81 Pastoral (after Ralf Andtbacka)
John F. Deane 82 The Colours
Lavinia Greenlaw 83 Blue Field
Anne Stevenson 84 On Harlech Beach
Rainer Maria Rilke 85 Archaic Torso of Apollo
Mark Doty 85 A Green Crab's Shell
Coral Bracho 87 Wasp on Water
Tua Forsstroem 87 Amber
Jane Hirsh?eld 88 The Weighing
Stanley Kunitz 89 The Layers
William Stafford 90 The Way It Is
Fernando Pessoa 90 'To be great, be whole...'
Toon Tellegen 91 I drew a line
Robert Frost 91 The Armful
Gregory Corso 92 The Whole Mess... Almost
James Fenton 93 The Skip
3 Life history
Agha Shahid Ali 96 A Lost Memory of Delhi
Sharon Olds 97 I Go Back to May 1937
Anna Swir 98 Woman Unborn
Thomas Lux 99 Upon Seeing an Ultrasound Photo of an Unborn Child
Kate Clanchy 100 Infant
Kevin Young 100 Crowning
Maura Dooley 104 The Weighing of the Heart
Helen Dunmore 105 All the Things You Are Not Yet
Louise Glueck 106 Lullaby
Maria Negroni 107 The Baby
Thomas Lux 107 A Little Tooth
Kevin Grif?th 108 Spinning
Naomi Shihab Nye 108 Shoulders
Dan Chiasson 109 Man and Derailment
Evan Jones 109 Generations
Langston Hughes 110 Mother to Son
Terrance Hayes 111 Mother to Son
Lorna Goodison 112 I Am Becoming My Mother
A.K. Ramanujan 112 Self-portrait
Samuel Menashe 113 Autobiography
Rebecca Edwards 113 The Mothers
Catherine Smith 114 The Fathers
Rita Ann Higgins 115 Grandchildren
Penelope Shuttle 116 Delicious Babies
Anna T. Szabo 117 She Leaves Me
Linda Pastan 118 To a Daughter Leaving Home
Norman MacCaig 119 Small boy
Paul Farley 119 Monopoly
Natasha Trethewey 120 Mythmaker
Eavan Boland 121 The Pomegranate
Imtiaz Dharker 123 How to Cut a Pomegranate
Susan Wicks 123 Persephone
Robert Wrigley 124 Moonlight: Chickens on the Road
Simon Armitage 126 'My father thought it bloody queer'
Anthony Lawrence 127 The Drive
Robyn Rowland 128 Ausculta
Molly Peacock 129 Say You Love Me
Pascale Petit 131 Self Portrait with Fire Ants
Carol Ann Duffy 132 We Remember Your Childhood Well
A.D. Hope 132 Crossing the Frontier
Nii Ayikwei Parkes 134 The Makings of You
Kathleen Jamie 135 Crossing the Loch
Lynda Hull 136 At Thirty
Adrian Blevins 136 Life History
Lucille Clifton 138 'the thirty-eighth year...'
Mary Stanley 140 The Wife Speaks
Donald Justice 141 Men at Forty
David Campbell 141 Mothers and Daughters
Patricia Beer 142 Middle Age
Bernard O'Donoghue 143 Nel Mezzo del Cammin
Arvind Krishna Mehrotra 143 Approaching Fifty
Marie Howe 144 The World
Randall Jarrell 144 The Woman at the Washington Zoo
Franz Wright 145 Untitled
Francesc Parcerisas 146 Shave
Kwame Dawes 147 Fat Man
Sharon Olds 148 Self-portrait, Rear View
Elaine Feinstein 149 Getting Older
Arun Kolatkar 149 An Old Woman
Dom Moraes 151 from After the Operation
Paul Durcan 153 Golden Mothers Driving West
Elizabeth Jennings 154 Rembrandt's Late Portraits
Mark Strand 155 Old Man Leaves Party
W.S. Merwin 156 Still Morning
Samuel Menashe 156 Salt and Pepper
Jorge Luis Borges 157 In Praise of Darkness
Derek Mahon 158 Ignorance (after Philippe Jaccottet)
Yehuda Amichai 159 A Quiet Joy
Samuel Menashe 159 Voyage
Samuel Menashe 160 The Niche
Salvatore Quasimodo 160 And Suddenly It's Evening
Lars Gustafsson 160 The Girl
4 About time
Samuel Menashe 162 The Shrine Who Shape I Am
Fleur Adcock 162 Water
C.D. Wright 163 Our Dust
Luljeta Lleshanaku 165 Vertical Realities
Elizabeth Bishop 166 In the Waiting Room
Moya Cannon 168 The Train
Dan Pagis 169 Ein Leben
Patricia Hampl 170 This Is How Memory Works
Seamus Heaney 171 A Sofa in the Forties
Julia Copus 173 Raymond, at 60
Luljeta Lleshanaku 174 from Monday in Seven Days
Eilean Ni Chuilleanain 174 The Bend in the Road
Luljeta Lleshanaku 175 Memory
Ruth Stone 176 Memory
Keith Althaus 177 Ladder of Hours
Stuart Henson 177 The Price
Michael Hartnett 178 The Killing of Dreams
Langston Hughes 179 Harlem [2]
Rodney Jones 179 Salvation Blues
Jorge Luis Borges 180 Matthew XXV: 30
Francis Harvey 181 News of the World
George Seferis 181 from Mythistorema
Jaan Kaplinski 182 'The washing never gets done...'
Yehuda Amichai 183 A Man in His Life
Stewart Conn 184 Carpe Diem
Emma Lew 185 Riot Eve
Carole Satyamurti 185 Sathyaji
Rita Dove 187 Dawn Revisited
Adam Zagajewski 187 Lava
Wislawa Szymborska 188 Could Have
Yusef Komunyakaa 189 Thanks
Philip Gross 190 Caught
Iain Crichton Smith 191 Listen
Louis MacNeice 192 Meeting Point
Rosemary Dobson 193 The Three Fates
Philip Hodgins 194 Leaving
Alan Gillis 195 Progress
Alice Oswald 196 The mud-spattered recollections of a woman who lived her life backwards
Sheenagh Pugh 198 Pause: Rewind
Vasko Popa 199 The Little Box
Yehuda Amichai 199 Inside the Apple
Jean Follain 200 Life
Dana Gioia 201 Nothing Is Lost
Toeti Heraty 201 A Woman's Portrait 1938
Thom Gunn 202 In Santa Maria del Populo
Matthew Sweeney 203 Black Moon
Roberto Juarroz 204 'Life draws a tree'
John Glenday 205 Etching a Line of Trees
Sarah Holland-Batt 206 The Art of Disappearing
Rainer Maria Rilke 207 Childhood
Peter Handke 208 Song of Childhood
Peter Handke 210 Angels talking in Wings of Desire
George Szirtes 213 Cerulean Blue: Footnote on Wim Wenders
Robert Hass 214 Privilege of Being
Harry Clifton 216 God in France
Czeslaw Milosz 217 A Confession
Adam Zagajewski 218 Fruit
Wislawa Szymborska 218 A Note
Christine Evans 219 Callers
Nissim Ezekiel 220 Poet, Lover, Birdwatcher
Henri Thomas 221 Audides
Pablo Neruda 221 Keeping quiet
Rumi 223 Quietness
Lynne Wycherley 223 Apple Tree in Blossom
Robert Frost 224 The Oven Bird
Frances Horovitz 224 Flowers
Denise Levertov 225 The Life Around Us
Leslie Norris 226 Burning the Bracken
Eeva-Liisa Manner 227 'The trees are bare...'
Elizabeth Jennings 227 Song at the Beginning of Autumn
Stanley Kunitz 228 The Snakes of September
John Burnside 229 September Evening: Deer at Big Basin
W.B. Yeats 230 The Wild Swans at Coole
Samuel Menashe 231 Autumn
Tess Gallagher 231 Blue Grapes
Robert Frost 231 Nothing Gold Can Stay
Eamon Grennan 232 A Few Facts
Edwin Morgan 232 Trio
John F. Deane 233 Canticle
Margaret Avison 234 New Year's Poem
Norman MacCaig 235 February - not everywhere
Tomas Transtroemer 235 April and Silence
Paula Meehan 236 Seed
Esther Morgan 236 This Morning
Louise Glueck 237 Matins
Eamon Grennan 237 What It Is
Kerry Hardie 238 May
Katha Pollitt 239 The Old Neighbors
Derek Walcott 240 Midsummer, Tobago
Norman MacCaig 240 So many summers
Mark Wunderlich 241 Amaryllis (after Rilke)
Louise Glueck 242 Screened Porch
Faustin Charles 243 Landscape
Jaan Kaplinski 244 'Every dying man...'
5 Fight to the death
Jane Kenyon 246 Having It Out with Melancholy
Jane Kenyon 249 Back
Susana Thenon 250 Nuptial Song
Ravi Shankar 251 Plumbing the Deepening Grove
Lucia Perillo 252 Shrike Tree
Miller Williams 253 Thinking About Bill, Dead of AIDS
Mark Doty 254 Faith
Joan Margarit 257 Dark Night in Balmes Street
Joan Margarit 258 The eyes in the rear-view mirror
Joan Margarit 259 Young partridge
Bill Manhire 259 Kevin
Raymond Carver 260 What the Doctor Said
Philip Hodgins 260 Death Who
Anna Swir 262 Tomorrow They Will Carve Me
Jo Shapcott 263 Procedure
Nissim Ezekiel 263 Process
Janet Frame 264 The Suicides
Sylvia Plath 265 Fever 103 degrees
Ted Hughes 266 Fever
Sylvia Plath 268 The Rabbit Catcher
Ted Hughes 269 Life after Death
Stanley Kunitz 271 The Portrait
Ruth Stone 272 Turn Your Eyes Away
Grace Paley 273 This Life
Kenneth Patchen 274 I Feel Drunk All the Time
Robert Wrigley 274 Heart Attack
Roger McGough 275 Defying Gravity
Sharon Olds 276 The Race
Lawrence Sail 278 At the Bedside
John Burnside 279 Marginal jottings on the prospect of dying
Rebecca Elson 280 Antidote to the Fear of Death
Richard Blessing 281 Directions for Dying
Andrew Motion 281 The Cinder Path
Marin Sorescu 282 Pure Pain
Marin Sorescu 282 'What hurts the most'
Marin Sorescu 283 Balance Sheet
Marin Sorescu 283 A Ladder to the Sky
Marin Sorescu 284 'So this is it'
Patricia Pogson 284 Breath
Lauris Edmond 285 The pace of change
Larry Levis 285 The Morning After My Death
William Matthews 286 My Father's Body
Tony Harrison 288 Timer
Tony Harrison 288 Marked with D.
U.A. Fanthorpe 289 Only a Small Death
David Constantine 290 Common and Particular
Julia Kasdorf 291 What I Learned from My Mother
Amjad Nasser 292 The House After Her Death
Douglas Dunn 293 Dining
Christopher Reid 294 from The Unfinished
Norman MacCaig 297 Memorial
R.S. Thomas 298 Comparisons
Herman de Coninck 299 Ann
Mary Jo Bang 300 Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
Mary Jo Bang 301 You Were You Are Elegy
Mary Jo Bang 302 Ode to History
R.S. Thomas 302 No Time
Ken Smith 303 Years go by
Adrian Mitchell 304 Death Is Smaller Than I Thought
Jackie Kay 305 Darling
Susan Mitchell 305 The Dead
Billy Collins 306 No Time
Susan Wicks 306 Branches
6 War and survival
Heather McHugh 308 What He Thought
Czeslaw Milosz 310 Campo Dei Fiori
W.H. Auden 312 The Fall of Rome
Anthony Hecht 313 'More Light! More Light!
Irena Klepfisz 314 Dedications to Bashert
Paul Celan 316 Deathfugue
C.K. Williams 317 Jew on Bridge
Carolyn Forche 321 The Visitor
Robert Hass 321 I Am Your Waiter Tonight and My Name Is Dimitri
Laurie Lee 324 The Long War
Miklos Radnoti 324 Letter to My Wife
Paul Celan 326 Aspen Tree
Ho Thien 326 The Green Beret
Doug Anderson 328 Night Ambush
Keith Douglas 328 How to Kill
Brian Turner 329 Here, Bullet
Dunya Mikhail 330 The War Works Hard
Yehuda Amichai 331 The Place Where We Are Right
Tatjana Lukic 332 nothing else
Sarah Maguire 333 The Pomegranates of Kandahar
Mourid Barghouti 334 A Night Unlike Others
Brian Turner 336 16 Iraqi Policeman
Mourid Barghouti 336 Silence
Aharon Shabtai 337 War
Ronny Someck 337 A Poem of Bliss
Taha Muhammad Ali 338 Abd el-Hadi Fights a Superpower
Paul Muldoon 339 Truce
Alan Gould 339 A U-Boat Morning, 1914
Gillian Clarke 341 The Field-Mouse
Robert Adamson 342 The Goldfinches of Baghdad
Lam Thi My Da 343 Garden Fragrance
Michael Coady 343 Though There Are Torturers
Michael Longley 344 The Ice-Cream Man
Andrew Motion 344 To Whom It May Concern
Michael Longley 345 Wreaths
X.J. Kennedy 346 September Twelfth, 2001
Deborah Garrison 347 I Saw You Walking
Alan Smith 348 Kidding Myself in Kuta, Bali: A Pantoum
Gyula Illyes 349 While the Record Plays
Charles Simic 350 Fear
Heberto Padilla 351 In trying times
Nazim Hikmet 352 On Living
Tony Curtis 354 Soup
Irina Ratushinskaya 355 I will live and survive
Jack Mapanje 356 Skipping Without Ropes
Priscila Uppal 357 Sorry I Forgot To Clean Up After Myself
Nazim Hikmet 358 It's This Way
Else Lasker-Schueler 358 My Blue Piano
David Constantine 359 Soldiering On
Ernesto Cardenal 360 'For Those Dead, Our Dead...'
Martin Espada 361 Sleeping on the Bus
Sargon Boulus 362 News About No One
Chenjerai Hove 363 You Will Forget
7 Living in hope
John Hewitt 366 from Freehold
Patrick Kavanagh 368 Epic
Patrick Kavanagh 369 Shancoduff
Liam O Muirthile 369 The Parlour
Ikkyu 370 My real dwelling
Adelia Prado 371 Denouement
James Merrill 372 The Broken Home
Ko Un 375 Back Home
Ko Un 375 Hometown
Richard Hugo 376 Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg
Paul Batchelor 377 Conurbation
Olav H. Hauge 378 Leaf-Huts and Snow-Houses
George Oppen 379 Street
Louis Simpson 379 An American Classic
Jimmy Santiago Baca 380 from Poem VI
Dennis O'Driscoll 382 Them and You
John Ormond 383 Cathedral Builders
Geoff Page 384 Grit
Ali Cobby Eckermann 385 Intervention Pay Day
Harry Martinson 389 Cable-ship
Martin Espada 389 Imagine the Angels of Bread
Nick Makoha 391 Beatitude
Dunya Mikhail 392 I Was in a Hurry
Nadia Anjuman 393 The Silenced
Nora Nadjarian 393 Mother Tongue
Partaw Naderi 394 My Voice
Partaw Naderi 394 The Mirror
Anne Stevenson 395 It looks so simple from a distance...
Henrik Norbrandt 395 Local
Stanislav Baranczak 396 A Second Nature
Carol Ann Duffy 397 Foreign
Farzaneh Khojandi 397 Must Escape
Mohja Kahf 398 Hijab Scene #7
Karen Press 399 Application for Naturalisation
Imtiaz Dharker 400 Front door
James Berry 401 Englan Voice
Jean 'Binta' Breeze 402 from The arrival of Brighteye
Grace Nichols 404 Wherever I Hang
Daljit Nagra 405 Look We Have Coming to Dover!
John Agard 406 Half-caste
Moniza Alvi 407 Half-and-Half
Gustavo Perez Firmat 408 Bilingual Blues
Linda Hogan 409 The Truth Is
Katia Kapovich 410 Painting a Room
Philip Levine 411 The Mercy
Seamus Heaney 412 Miracle
Hans Magnus Enzensberger 413 Optimistic Little Poem
Ivan V. Lalic 413 The Spaces of Hope
Lisel Mueller 414 Hope
Edith Soedergran 415 Hope
Imtiaz Dharker 415 Living Space
Ruth Bidgood 416 Little of Distinction
Pablo Neruda 417 Emerging
Brendan Kennelly 418 Yes
Adrian Mitchell 419 Yes
James Wright 419 Yes, But
Langston Hughes 420 Dreams
8 Body and soul
Henri Cole 422 Ape House, Berlin Zoo
Stephen Dunn 423 With No Experience in Such Matters
Lars Gustafsson 424 Elegy for a Dead Labrador
Oktay Rifat 426 Looking at the Invisible
Stephen Dunn 426 From Underneath
Roderick Ford 428 Giuseppe
Vicki Feaver 429 The Gun
Chase Twichell 430 City Animals
Robert Lowell 432 Skunk Hour
Elizabeth Bishop 433 The Armadillo
Brigit Pegeen Kelly 434 Song
Philip Larkin 436 The Mower
Judith Beveridge 437 The Caterpillars
Ruth Stone 438 Another Feeling
Larry Levis 438 The Oldest Living Thing in LA
Thomas Lux 439 Tarantulas on the Lifebuoy
Eugenio Montale 440 The Eel
Les Murray 441 The Cows on Killing Day
Gottfried Benn 443 Little Aster
David Huerta 443 Poem by Gottfried Benn
C.P. Cavafy 444 Body, Remember...
Osip Mandelstam 444 'A body is given to me...'
Eleanor Ross Taylor 445 Disappearing Act
Padraic Fallon 446 Body
A.K. Ramanujan 446 A Hindu to His Body
Sarah Holland-Batt 447 Pocket Mirror
John Updike 448 Mirror
Sonnet L'Abbe 448 Theory My Natural Brown Ass
Sarah Holland-Batt 449 The Idea of Mountain
Brendan Kennelly 450 Proof
Wislawa Szymborska 451 View with a Grain of Sand
R.S. Thomas 452 The Bright Field
Mark Strand 453 Keeping Things Whole
Alex Skovron 453 Almost
Alastair Reid 454 Oddments, inklings, omens, moments
Pedro Serrano 455 Feet
A.D. Hope 455 The Gateway
William Stafford 456 The Gift
Kerry Hardie 457 Flesh
Julia Hartwig 457 Toward the End
C.P. Cavafy 458 The God Abandons Antony
Jane Hirsh?eld 459 Tree
Harry Clifton 459 The Garden
Olga Broumas 460 Sweeping the Garden
John Burnside 461 from Of Gravity and light
Michael Laskey 462 Nobody
Kenji Miyazawa 462 Strong in the Rain
Arundhathi Subramaniam 463 Prayer
Dana Gioia 464 Prayer
9 More to love
Kim Addonizio 466 You Don't Know What Love Is
Kim Addonizio 466 Like That
Jericho Brown 467 Track 1: Lush Life
Edwin Morgan 468 Strawberries
Arda Collins 469 Low
Dorianne Laux 470 The Shipfitter's Wife
W.R. Rodgers 470 The Net
Thom Gunn 471 Tamer and Hawk
Eliza Griswold 472 Tigers
Tony Hoagland 473 Romantic Moment
Faiz Ahmed Faiz 474 Before You Came
Norman MacCaig 474 True Ways of Knowing
E.E. Cummings 475 i carry your heart with me
Dana Gioia 476 The Song (after Rilke)
W.B. Yeats 476 He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
Langston Hughes 477 The Dream Keeper
Michael Donaghy 477 The Present
Sharon Olds 478 This Hour
Garrison Keillor 479 Supper
Sinead Morrissey 479 & Forgive Us Our Trespasses
Maram al-Massri 480 from A Red Cherry on a White-tiled Floor
Norman MacCaig 482 Sounds of the day
Pablo Neruda 483 'If I die...'
Annabelle Despard 483 Should You Die First
Grace Paley 484 Anti-Love Poem
Eavan Boland 485 Love
Herman de Coninck 485 For Each Other
Lorraine Mariner 486 Say I forgot
Alan Dugan 486 Love Song: I and Thou
Michael Blumenthal 487 A Marriage
Anna Swir 488 Thank You, My Fate
489 Acknowledgements
496 Index of writers
503 Index of titles and first lines