Staying Alive
real poems for unreal times
Published on 27. June 2002
Book
Paperback/Softback
496 pages
978-1-85224-588-7 (ISBN)
Description
Staying Alive is an international anthology of 500 life-affirming poems fired by belief in the human and the spiritual at a time when much in the world feels unreal, inhuman and hollow. These are poems of great personal force connecting our aspirations with our humanity, helping us stay alive to the world and stay true to ourselves. Many people turn to poetry only at unreal times, whether for consolation in loss or affirmation in love, or when facing other extremes and anxieties. Staying Alive includes many of the great modern love poems and elegies, but it also shows the power of poetry in celebrating the ordinary miracle, taking you on a journey around many of the different aspects of everyday life explored in poems. A strong poem is not just for crisis. Such a poem is there for all times, helping us face or embrace daily change and disruption. It will also speak to us when nothing seems to be happening, when the poem's importance is in helping us stay alive to the world and stay true to ourselves.
Staying Alive has reached a wider readership than any other anthology of contemporary poetry. It is a landmark in the history of literary publishing. The first in a series, Staying Alive was followed by a sequel, Being Alive (2004), 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 has reached a wider readership than any other anthology of contemporary poetry. It is a landmark in the history of literary publishing. The first in a series, Staying Alive was followed by a sequel, Being Alive (2004), 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
'These poems distil the human heart as nothing else... Staying Alive celebrates the point of poetry. It's invigorating and makes me proud of being human' - Jane Campion'Truly startling and powerful poems' - Mia Farrow
'Staying Alive is a blessing of a book. The title says it all. I have long waited for just this kind of setting down of poems - and the way they work together is wonderful - all come together to talk at the same table. Has there ever been such a passionate anthology? These are poems that hunt you down with the solace of their recognition' - Anne Michaels
'Staying Alive is a book which leaves those who have read or heard a poem from it feeling less alone and more alive' - John Berger
'Staying Alive is a magnificent anthology. The last time I was so excited, engaged and enthralled by a collection of poems was when I first encountered The Rattle Bag. I can't think of any other anthology that casts its net so widely, or one that has introduced me to so many vivid and memorable poems' - Philip Pullman
'Usually if you say a book is "inspirational" that means it's New Agey and soft at the center. This astonishingly rich anthology, by contrast, shows that what is edgy, authentic and provocative can also awaken the spirit and make its readers quick with consciousness. In these pages I discovered many new writers, and I've decided I'm now in love with our troublesome epoch if it can produce poems of such genius' - Edmund White
'A vibrant, brilliantly diverse anthology of poems to delight the mind, heart and soul. A book for people who know they love poetry, and for people who think they don't' - Helen Dunmore
'Staying Alive is a wonderful testament to Neil Astley's liftetime in poetry, and to the range and courage of his taste. It's also, of course, a testament to poetry itself: to its powers to engross and move us, to its ability to challenge and brace us, and to its exultation. Everyone who cares about poetry should own this book.' - Andrew Motion
'When you choose your book for Desert Island Discs, this should be it. Staying Alive proves that poetry is the most sustaining and life-affirming of literary forms. A triumph' - Helena Kennedy
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Tyne and Wear
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 219 mm
Width: 139 mm
Thickness: 32 mm
Weight
680 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-85224-588-7 (9781852245887)
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
08/2016
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
Various 18 Poets on poetry
Neil Astley 19 Introduction
Mary Oliver 28 Wild Geese
1 Body and soul
Denise Levertov 31 Living
Andrew Greig 31 Orkney / This Life
Alistair Elliot 32 Northern Morning
Raymond Carver 33 Happiness
James Merrill 33 My Father's Irish Setters
Vernon Scannell 35 Legs
Lucille Clifton 36 homage to my hips
Gwen Harwood 36 Naked Vision
Thom Gunn 37 The Hug
Tess Gallagher 38 The Hug
Elizabeth Bishop 39 Chemin de Fer
Alden Nowlan 40 He Sits Down on the Floor of a School for the Retarded
Les Murray 41 An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow
Michael Longley 43 A Prayer
Carol Ann Duffy 43 Prayer
Czeslaw Milosz 44 Encounter
Rainer Maria Rilke 44 from The Tenth Duino Elegy
Denise Levertov 45 Variation on a Theme by Rilke
Gjertrud Schnackenberg 46 from A Gilded Lapse of Time
Kevin Hart 47 Dark Angel
Nina Cassian 48 Temptation
Sylvia Plath 48 Poppies in October
Osip Mandelstam 49 'Eyesight of Wasps'
David Constantine 49 The Wasps
Charles Simic 50 The Old World
Robert Bly 50 Watering the Horse
Chase Twichell 51 Saint Animal
Carol Rumens 51 Jarrow
Stephen Dobyns 52 Where We Are
2 Roads and journeys
Robert Frost 55 The Road Not Taken
James K. Baxter 55 The Bay
Elizabeth Garrett 56 Tyranny of Choice
Stevie Smith 57 Not Waving but Drowning
Simon Armitage 57 Poem
Carl Sandburg 58 Choose
Vladimir Holan 58 Meeting in a Lift
E.E. Cummings 58 'i thank You God for most this amazing'
Dennis O'Driscoll 59 You
Brendan Kennelly 60 Begin
Louis MacNeice 60 Entirely
Adrienne Rich 61 Integrity
Galway Kinnell 63 The Bear
Delmore Schwartz 66 The Heavy Bear Who Goes with Me
John Berryman 67 from Dream Songs
Tracey Herd 67 from Some mangled dream songs for Henry
Freda Downie 68 Window
Miroslav Holub 69 The door
Kapka Kassabova 70 The Door
Robert Frost 71 Directive
Gillian Allnutt 72 The Road Home
Robert Frost 73 Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Louis MacNeice 74 Snow
Paul Muldoon 74 History
Maura Dooley 75 History
Vladimir Holan 75 Snow
Lawrence Sail 76 The Cablecar
Galway Kinnell 77 That Silent Evening
Mary Oliver 78 The Journey
Helen Dunmore 79 When You've Got
Muriel Rukeyser 80 Yes
Stephen Dunn 81 Happiness
Michael Donaghy 81 Machines
Tomas Transtroemer 82 Alone
Menna Elfyn 83 Couplings
William Stafford 84 Traveling through the Dark
John Burnside 84 Penitence
W.N. Herbert 86 Slow Animals Crossing
Elizabeth Bishop 87 The Moose
Thomas Lux 92 Wife Hits Moose
3 Dead or alive
Jaan Kaplinski 95 'To eat a pie and to have it...'
Louise Glueck 95 Trillium
Elizabeth Daryush 96 'I saw the daughter of the sun...'
Frieda Hughes 97 Stonepicker
Marin Sorescu 97 The Arrow
Christopher Logue 98 Be Not Too Hard
Charles Simic 99 Modern Sorcery
Vona Groarke 99 Tonight of Yesterday
Hayden Carruth 100 Sonnet
James Wright 100 Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm
William Empson 101 Missing Dates
Weldon Kees 101 Villanelle
Gjertrud Schnackenberg 102 Signs
Galway Kinnell 103 from When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone
Brendan Kennelly 103 My Dark Fathers
Kit Wright 104 Hoping It Might Be So
Charles Wright 105 Clear Night
Robert Bly 106 Defeated
Theodore Roethke 106 The Waking
Kapka Kassabova 107 Mirages
Eibhlin Nic Eochaidh 108 How to kill a living thing
Anne Michaels 109 from Sublimation
Chase Twichell 110 Horse
Eilean Ni Chuilleanain 111 Swineherd
Kathleen Jamie 111 The way we live
Connie Bensley 112 Apologia
Rosemary Tonks 113 Addiction to an Old Mattress
Fleur Adcock 113 Things
Elma Mitchell 114 Thoughts After Ruskin
Elizabeth Bartlett 115 Themes for Women
Maura Dooley 116 What Every Woman Should Carry
Ruth Fainlight 116 Handbag
Jenny Joseph 117 Warning
Theodore Roethke 117 Dolor
Elizabeth Bishop 118 One Art
Louise Glueck 119 Lamium
May Sarton 119 A Glass of Water
Stephen Dunn 120 Sadness
Stephen Dunn 121 Sweetness
Alden Nowlan 122 The Execution
James Wright 123 A Note Left in Jimmy Leonard's Shack
Bertolt Brecht 124 Epistle on Suicide
Stevie Smith 124 Harold's Leap
Anne Sexton 125 Her Kind
Tracey Herd 126 Anne Sexton's Last Letter to God
Robert Frost 128 My November Guest
Edward Thomas 128 She Dotes
R.S. Thomas 129 The Cry
Vachel Lindsay 130 The Leaden-Eyed
Ezra Pound 130 And the Days Are Not Full Enough
Douglas Dunn 130 A Removal from Terry Street
4 Bittersweet
Matthew Sweeney 133 Tube Ride to Martha's
Peter Reading 133 from Ukulele Music
Ken Smith 135 Against the grain
Wislawa Szymborska 135 The One Twenty Pub
Izet Sarajlic 137 Luck in Sarajevo
Michael Longley 137 All of These People
Muriel Rukeyser 138 Waking This Morning
Douglas Dunn 138 I Am a Cameraman
Philip Gross 140 from The Wasting Game
Leontia Flynn 143 Brinkwomanship
Ken Smith 144 Here
U.A. Fanthorpe 144 The Unprofessionals
Stewart Conn 145 Visiting Hour
Carole Satyamurti 145 from Changing the Subject
Nick Drake 150 The Cure
Charles Simic 150 Past-Lives Therapy
Adrienne Rich 151 Diving into the Wreck
Richard Wilbur 153 April 5, 1974
Michael Longley 154 At Poll Salach
Edward Thomas 154 Thaw
Michael Longley 154 Thaw
Fleur Adcock 155 Kissing
Leland Bardwell 155 How my true love and I lay without touching
Basil Bunting 156 'You idiot!...'
Randall Jarrell 157 90 North
E.J. Scovell 158 Listening to Collared Doves
David Constantine 159 Watching for Dolphins
Jo Shapcott 160 Goat
Peter Didsbury 161 The Drainage
Helen Dunmore 162 Three Ways of Recovering a Body
Ted Hughes 163 Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days
Sylvia Plath 164 Mushrooms
Derek Mahon 166 A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford
John Burnside 167 Unwittingly
5 Growing up
Ken Smith 171 Being the third song of Urias
Sujata Bhatt 172 White Asparagus
Alden Nowlan 173 It's Good To Be Here
Kathleen Jamie 174 Ultrasound
Helen Dunmore 178 Safe period
Kona Macphee 178 IVF
Jane Duran 180 Miscarriage
Maura Dooley 181 Freight
Sharon Olds 181 First Birth
Sharon Olds 182 Her First Week
Anne Stevenson 183 The Spirit is too Blunt an Instrument
Gavin Ewart 184 Sonnet: How Life Too Is Sentimental
Anne Stevenson 184 Poem for a Daughter
Ellen Bryant Voigt 185 Daughter
Adrian Mitchell 186 Beattie Is Three
W.D. Snodgrass 186 from Heart's Needle
Gjertrud Schnackenberg 191 Supernatural Love
Brendan Kennelly 193 Poem from a Three Year Old
Roger McGough 194 Cinders
Kenneth Rexroth 195 A Sword in a Cloud of Light
Janos Pilinszky 197 On the Back of a Photograph
Fleur Adcock 197 The Video
P.K. Page 197 Young Girls
Adrian Mitchell 198 A Puppy Called Puberty
Adrian Mitchell 199 A Dog Called Elderly
Paul Muldoon 199 Cuba
Michael Donaghy 200 My Flu
Charles Simic 201 'We were so poor...'
Robert Hayden 201 Those Winter Sundays
Julia Copus 202 The Back Seat of My Mother's Car
Louise Glueck 203 Mirror Image
Sylvia Plath 203 Mirror
Anne Carson 204 Father's Old Blue Cardigan
Philip Larkin 205 This Be the Verse
Caitriona O'Reilly 205 Possession
Randall Jarrell 206 A Night with Lions
Joseph Brodsky 207 from A Part of Speech
Edward Thomas 209 Old Man
Randall Jarrell 211 Thinking of the Lost World
Paul Muldoon 213 Quoof
Hart Crane 214 Forgetfulness
Billy Collins 214 Forgetfulness
W.S. Merwin 215 Unknown Forbear
David Scott 216 Groundsmen
6 Man and beast
Les Murray 218 Pigs
Dennis O'Driscoll 218 Experimental Animals
Alden Nowlan 219 Weakness
Stephen Dobyns 220 Spiritual Chickens
James Dickey 221 The Heaven of Animals
Nina Cassian 222 Sacrilege
Elena Shvarts 223 Remembrance of Strange Hospitality
Julie O'Callaghan 224 Federal Case
Frank O'Hara 224 Animals
Charles Simic 225 'The city had fallen...'
Robert Adamson 225 The stone curlew
Polly Clark 226 My Life with Horses
Sean O Riordain 227 Switch
James Wright 227 A Blessing
Michael Longley 228 The Horses
Seamus Heaney 229 The Skunk
Thom Gunn 229 Considering the Snail
Fleur Adcock 230 For a Five-Year-Old
Ted Hughes 231 Full Moon and Little Frieda
Frieda Hughes 231 Birds
John Montague 232 The Trout
Susan Wicks 233 Night Toad
Sheila Wingfield 233 A Bird
John Kinsella 234 Emu Hunt
Lavinia Greenlaw 234 Night Parrot
Ted Hughes 235 The Thought Fox
Michael Longley 236 Swans Mating
Michael Ondaatje 236 The Strange Case
Selima Hill 237 Cow
Katrina Porteous 238 Seven Silences
Jo Shapcott 239 Lies
Vicki Feaver 240 Glow Worm
Jorie Graham 241 Salmon
Richard Murphy 242 Seals at High Island
Chris Greenhalgh 243 Of Love, Death and the Sea-Squirt
Caitriona O'Reilly 244 Octopus
Pablo Neruda 245 Fable of the mermaid and the drunks
Stephen Knight 245 The Mermaid Tank
Edwin Morgan 246 The Loch Ness Monster's Song
Gwendolyn MacEwen 247 The Death of the Loch Ness Monster
Seamus Heaney 248 Oysters
7 In and out of love
Paul Durcan 250 My Beloved Compares Herself to a Pint of Stout
Deborah Randall 251 Finney's Bar
Tracy Ryan 252 Bite
Selima Hill 252 Desire's a Desire
Marge Piercy 253 Raisin Pumpernickel
C.K. Williams 254 Love: Beginnings
Pauline Stainer 255 The Honeycomb
Michael Longley 255 The Linen Industry
Sharon Olds 256 Last Night
Janos Pilinszky 257 Definition of Your Attraction
Michael Ondaatje 257 The Cinnamon Peeler
Sharon Olds 259 True Love
W.H. Auden 259 Lullaby
Julia Copus 261 In Defence of Adultery
Rita Ann Higgins 261 The Did-You-Come-Yets of the Western World
C.K. Williams 263 The Mistress
Sharon Olds 263 Ecstasy
D.H. Lawrence 264 New Year's Eve
Salvatore Quasimodo 265 Only if Love Should Pierce You
Jo Shapcott 265 Muse
Jo Shapcott 266 Life
Philippe Jaccottet 267 Distances
David Constantine 268 'As our bloods separate'
Judith Wright 268 Woman to Man
Gjertrud Schnackenberg 269 Snow Melting
Esta Spalding 270 August
Kevin Hart 274 The Room
Selima Hill 274 Don't Let's Talk about Being in Love
Katie Donovan 275 Yearn On
Carolyn Kizer 276 Bitch
Eleanor Brown 277 Bitcherel
Katherine Pierpoint 278 This Dead Relationship
Stephen Dunn 280 Each from Different Heights
Rosemary Tonks 280 Badly-Chosen Lover
Anne Stevenson 281 After the End of It
Janos Pilinszky 282 Relationship
Louise Glueck 282 Hesitate to Call
Nina Cassian 282 Lady of Miracles
Fleur Adcock 283 Advice to a Discarded Lover
Kit Wright 284 The All Purpose Country and Western Self Pity Song
James McAuley 286 Because
P.K. Page 287 Cross
Conrad Aiken 288 The Quarrel
Kapka Kassabova 289 And they were both right
Micheal O'Siadhail 290 Between
W.B. Yeats 290 When You Are Old
Kate Clanchy 291 Spell
Zbigniew Herbert 291 Conch
W.H. Auden 292 'O tell me the truth about love'
Meg Bateman 293 Lightness
James Fenton 294 In Paris with You
8 My people
Jaan Kaplinski 297 'The East West border...'
Kona Macphee 297 My People
Anna Akhmatova 298 Our Own Land
Richard Wilbur 299 A Summer Morning
Stuart Henson 299 The Heron
Jo Shapcott 300 A Letter to Dennis
Tony Harrison 301 Turns
David Constantine 301 The Door
Peter Reading 302 from Going On
Peter Didsbury 303 In Britain
Anne Rouse 304 England Nil
Joanne Limburg 304 Barton-in-the-Beans
Esther Morgan 305 The Reason
Philip Pacey 306 Charged Landscape: Uffington
Edward Thomas 307 The Combe
Norman Nicholson 307 Windscale
John Heath-Stubbs 308 The Green Man's Last Will and Testament
Robyn Bolam 309 Kith
G.F. Dutton 310 passage
Roddy Lumsden 311 An Outlying Station
Peter Reading 311 from Evagatory
Ken Smith 315 After Mr Mayhew's visit
Roy Fisher 315 The Nation
Kit Wright 316 Everyone Hates the English
Andrew Salkey 317 A song for England
Tom Leonard 317 The Voyeur
W.N. Herbert 318 The King and Queen of Dumfriesshire
R.S. Thomas 319 Reservoirs
Harri Webb 319 Synopsis of the Great Welsh Novel
Bernard O'Donoghue 320 Westering Home
Gillian Clarke 321 Overheard in Co. Sligo
Patrick Kavanagh 321 Inniskeen Road: July Evening
Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill 322 The Language Issue
Colette Bryce 323 Break
Seamus Heaney 323 The Toome Road
Paul Muldoon 324 The Sightseers
Charles Simic 324 Dream Avenue
E.E. Cummings 325 ' "next to of course god america i" '
Langston Hughes 326 I, Too
Fred Voss 326 Making America Strong
Imtiaz Dharker 327 They'll say, 'She must be from another country'
Jackie Kay 329 In my country
Shirley Geok-lin Lim 329 Modern Secrets
Moniza Alvi 330 Exile
Sophia de Mello Breyner 331 Exile
Jane Griffiths 331 Emigrants
Grace Nichols 332 Epilogue
Carol Ann Duffy 332 In Your Mind
Sophia de Mello Breyner 333 Homeland
Jo Shapcott 333 Motherland
Anna Akhmatova 334 'That city that I have loved'
Anne Michaels 335 from What the Light Teaches
Czeslaw Milosz 336 My Faithful Mother Tongue
Adam Zagajewski 337 Betrayal
Glyn Maxwell 338 We Billion Cheered
C.P. Cavafy 339 Waiting for the Barbarians
W.H. Auden 340 Gare du Midi
Weldon Kees 340 The Coming of the Plague
George Szirtes 341 Death by Meteor
Jamie McKendrick 342 Ancient History
9 War and peace
Kate Clanchy 345 War Poetry
Carl Sandburg 345 Grass
Miroslav Holub 346 The fly
Wilfred Owen 347 Anthem for Doomed Youth
Freda Downie 347 For Wilfred Owen
Siegfried Sassoon 348 Everyone Sang
Isaac Rosenberg 348 Returning, we hear the Larks
Edward Thomas 349 As the team's head-brass
Michael Longley 350 Ceasefire
Paul Durcan 351 The Bloomsday Murders, 16 June 1997
Gwendolyn MacEwen 352 from The T.E. Lawrence Poems
Keith Douglas 354 Vergissmeinnicht
Mairi MacInnes 355 The Old Naval Airfield
Geoffrey Hill 356 September Song
Bertolt Brecht 356 There is no greater crime than leaving
W.H. Auden 357 September 1, 1939
Bruce Weigl 360 On the Anniversary of Her Grace
Carolyn Forche 361 Selective Service
James Fenton 361 Cambodia
Jo Shapcott 362 Phrase Book
Robert Graves 363 The Persian Version
Tony Harrison 364 Initial Illumination
Ingeborg Bachmann 365 Every Day
Cesar Vallejo 366 from Spain, take away this cup from me
Wislawa Szymborska 367 The End and the Beginning
Thomas Lux 368 The People of the Other Village
10 Disappearing acts
Frances Horovitz 371 Rain - Birdoswald
Michael Longley 371 Bjoern Olinder's Pictures
Thomas Blackburn 372 Now Light Congeals
Charles Simic 372 Psalm
Dennis O'Driscoll 373 Someone
Philip Larkin 374 Aubade
Jaan Kaplinski 375 'Death does not come from outside...'
A.E. Housman 376 'Good creatures...'
Carolyn Kizer 376 Thrall
Tony Harrison 377 Bookends (I)
Ellen Bryant Voigt 378 For My Mother
Dylan Thomas 379 Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
Anon 379 'Do not stand at my grave and weep'
W.H. Auden 380 Funeral Blues
Michael Hartnett 381 Death of an Irishwoman
Michael Longley 381 Water-burn
Miroslav Holub 382 The dead
Goesta Agren 382 Death's Secret
G.F. Dutton 383 Death in October
David Constantine 383 'Pity the drunks'
David Scott 384 Scattering Ashes
Thom Gunn 384 The Gas-poker
David Constantine 386 Boy finds tramp dead
John F. Deane 387 On a Dark Night
Pamela Gillilan 388 Four Years
Caroline Smith 388 Metamorphosis
Liz Lochhead 389 Sorting Through
Alden Nowlan 389 This Is What I Wanted to Sign Off With
Tess Gallagher 390 Wake
P.K. Page 390 About Death
Howard Nemerov 391 The Vacuum
Jeanne Willis 392 Inside Our Dreams
Thom Gunn 392 The Reassurance
Theodore Roethke 392 She
Brendan Kennelly 393 A Glimpse of Starlings
Pablo Neruda 394 Dead Woman
Tess Gallagher 395 Yes
Andrew Motion 395 Close
Sophia de Mello Breyner 396 Inscription
E.E. Cummings 397 'Buffalo Bill 's'
Billy Collins 397 The Dead
Tadeusz Rozewicz 398 Proofs
Anne Carson 398 On Walking Backwards
Stephen Dobyns 399 Cemetery Nights
Stephen Dunn 400 Father, Mother, Robert Henley who hanged himself in the ninth grade, et al
Vladimir Holan 400 Resurrection
Charles Causley 401 Eden Rock
Jo Shapcott 402 When I Died
Dana Gioia 402 All Souls'
Philippe Jaccottet 403 from Lessons
August Kleinzahler 405 Where Souls Go
Brad Leithauser 405 A Mosquito
Louise Glueck 406 The Wild Iris
Derek Mahon 407 Antarctica
Paul Muldoon 407 Why Brownlee Left
Matthew Sweeney 408 Sleep with a Suitcase
Derek Mahon 409 As It Should Be
Amanda Dalton 409 How to Disappear
Vona Groarke 410 Folderol
Weldon Kees 411 Robinson
Sophia de Mello Breyner 411 Night and the House
Miroslav Holub 412 Distant Howling
11 Me, the Earth, the Universe
Janos Pilinszky 414 Homage to Isaac Newton
Robin Robertson 414 New Gravity
Adam Zagajewski 414 Moment
Yannis Ritsos 415 Morning
Moniza Alvi 415 The Other Room
Miroslav Holub 416 Brief reflection on accuracy
Simon Armitage 417 Zoom!
Seamus Heaney 418 from Lightenings
Ellen Hinsey 418 On the Uncountable Nature of Things
Amy Clampitt 420 The Sun Underfoot among the Sundews
James Harpur 421 'I stretch my arms'
James Merrill 421 A Downward Look
Charles Causley 422 I Am the Song
Vasko Popa 422 from Games
Derek Walcott 423 Earth
Sheila Wingfield 423 Waking
Ivan V. Lalic 424 Places We Love
R.S. Thomas 424 Moorland
Robin Robertson 425 Three Ways of Looking at God
Kerry Hardie 426 The Avatar
Alden Nowlan 426 Sacrament
T.S. Eliot 427 Journey of the Magi
Wallace Stevens 428 The Snow Man
Patrick Kavanagh 428 Sanctity
R.S. Thomas 429 Via Negativa
Charles Simic 429 To the One Upstairs
Tomas Transtroemer 430 Tracks
Elizabeth Jennings 431 Delay
Norman MacCaig 431 Summer farm
Iain Crichton Smith 432 Tinily a star goes down
Carol Rumens 432 Star Whisper
Gwyneth Lewis 433 from Zero Gravity
Jane Cooper 434 Rent
Elinor Wylie 435 Full Moon
Kapka Kassabova 435 Preparation for the big emptiness
Elizabeth Bishop 436 The Shampoo
Alice Oswald 437 Mountains
Kit Wright 437 The Other Side of the Mountain
12 The art of poetry
Philippe Jaccottet 440 from Songs from Below
Archibald MacLeish 441 Ars Poetica
W.S. Graham 442 The Beast in the Space
Alden Nowlan 443 An Exchange of Gifts
Helen Ivory 443 Note to the reader: this is not a poem
Robert Hass 444 Meditation at Lagunitas
Jaan Kaplinski 445 'Once I got a postcard...'
Tomas Transtroemer 445 From March 1979
Chase Twichell 446 Animal Languages
Vasko Popa 446 The Story of a Story
Wallace Stevens 447 Not Ideas about the Thing but the Thing Itself
Eamon Grennan 448 Detail
Rita Dove 448 OE
Mark Strand 449 Eating Poetry
Howard Nemerov 450 The Painter Dreaming in the Scholar's House
Robert Lowell 453 Epilogue
Galway Kinnell 454 Oatmeal
Patrick Kavanagh 455 Consider the Grass Growing
Joan Brossa 455 Note
Seamus Heaney 456 Postscript
Raymond Carver 456 Late Fragment
Neil Astley 458 The Sound of Poetry
464 Glossary
471 Further reading
473 Acknowledgements
480 Index of writers
486 Index of titles and first lines
Neil Astley 19 Introduction
Mary Oliver 28 Wild Geese
1 Body and soul
Denise Levertov 31 Living
Andrew Greig 31 Orkney / This Life
Alistair Elliot 32 Northern Morning
Raymond Carver 33 Happiness
James Merrill 33 My Father's Irish Setters
Vernon Scannell 35 Legs
Lucille Clifton 36 homage to my hips
Gwen Harwood 36 Naked Vision
Thom Gunn 37 The Hug
Tess Gallagher 38 The Hug
Elizabeth Bishop 39 Chemin de Fer
Alden Nowlan 40 He Sits Down on the Floor of a School for the Retarded
Les Murray 41 An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow
Michael Longley 43 A Prayer
Carol Ann Duffy 43 Prayer
Czeslaw Milosz 44 Encounter
Rainer Maria Rilke 44 from The Tenth Duino Elegy
Denise Levertov 45 Variation on a Theme by Rilke
Gjertrud Schnackenberg 46 from A Gilded Lapse of Time
Kevin Hart 47 Dark Angel
Nina Cassian 48 Temptation
Sylvia Plath 48 Poppies in October
Osip Mandelstam 49 'Eyesight of Wasps'
David Constantine 49 The Wasps
Charles Simic 50 The Old World
Robert Bly 50 Watering the Horse
Chase Twichell 51 Saint Animal
Carol Rumens 51 Jarrow
Stephen Dobyns 52 Where We Are
2 Roads and journeys
Robert Frost 55 The Road Not Taken
James K. Baxter 55 The Bay
Elizabeth Garrett 56 Tyranny of Choice
Stevie Smith 57 Not Waving but Drowning
Simon Armitage 57 Poem
Carl Sandburg 58 Choose
Vladimir Holan 58 Meeting in a Lift
E.E. Cummings 58 'i thank You God for most this amazing'
Dennis O'Driscoll 59 You
Brendan Kennelly 60 Begin
Louis MacNeice 60 Entirely
Adrienne Rich 61 Integrity
Galway Kinnell 63 The Bear
Delmore Schwartz 66 The Heavy Bear Who Goes with Me
John Berryman 67 from Dream Songs
Tracey Herd 67 from Some mangled dream songs for Henry
Freda Downie 68 Window
Miroslav Holub 69 The door
Kapka Kassabova 70 The Door
Robert Frost 71 Directive
Gillian Allnutt 72 The Road Home
Robert Frost 73 Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Louis MacNeice 74 Snow
Paul Muldoon 74 History
Maura Dooley 75 History
Vladimir Holan 75 Snow
Lawrence Sail 76 The Cablecar
Galway Kinnell 77 That Silent Evening
Mary Oliver 78 The Journey
Helen Dunmore 79 When You've Got
Muriel Rukeyser 80 Yes
Stephen Dunn 81 Happiness
Michael Donaghy 81 Machines
Tomas Transtroemer 82 Alone
Menna Elfyn 83 Couplings
William Stafford 84 Traveling through the Dark
John Burnside 84 Penitence
W.N. Herbert 86 Slow Animals Crossing
Elizabeth Bishop 87 The Moose
Thomas Lux 92 Wife Hits Moose
3 Dead or alive
Jaan Kaplinski 95 'To eat a pie and to have it...'
Louise Glueck 95 Trillium
Elizabeth Daryush 96 'I saw the daughter of the sun...'
Frieda Hughes 97 Stonepicker
Marin Sorescu 97 The Arrow
Christopher Logue 98 Be Not Too Hard
Charles Simic 99 Modern Sorcery
Vona Groarke 99 Tonight of Yesterday
Hayden Carruth 100 Sonnet
James Wright 100 Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm
William Empson 101 Missing Dates
Weldon Kees 101 Villanelle
Gjertrud Schnackenberg 102 Signs
Galway Kinnell 103 from When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone
Brendan Kennelly 103 My Dark Fathers
Kit Wright 104 Hoping It Might Be So
Charles Wright 105 Clear Night
Robert Bly 106 Defeated
Theodore Roethke 106 The Waking
Kapka Kassabova 107 Mirages
Eibhlin Nic Eochaidh 108 How to kill a living thing
Anne Michaels 109 from Sublimation
Chase Twichell 110 Horse
Eilean Ni Chuilleanain 111 Swineherd
Kathleen Jamie 111 The way we live
Connie Bensley 112 Apologia
Rosemary Tonks 113 Addiction to an Old Mattress
Fleur Adcock 113 Things
Elma Mitchell 114 Thoughts After Ruskin
Elizabeth Bartlett 115 Themes for Women
Maura Dooley 116 What Every Woman Should Carry
Ruth Fainlight 116 Handbag
Jenny Joseph 117 Warning
Theodore Roethke 117 Dolor
Elizabeth Bishop 118 One Art
Louise Glueck 119 Lamium
May Sarton 119 A Glass of Water
Stephen Dunn 120 Sadness
Stephen Dunn 121 Sweetness
Alden Nowlan 122 The Execution
James Wright 123 A Note Left in Jimmy Leonard's Shack
Bertolt Brecht 124 Epistle on Suicide
Stevie Smith 124 Harold's Leap
Anne Sexton 125 Her Kind
Tracey Herd 126 Anne Sexton's Last Letter to God
Robert Frost 128 My November Guest
Edward Thomas 128 She Dotes
R.S. Thomas 129 The Cry
Vachel Lindsay 130 The Leaden-Eyed
Ezra Pound 130 And the Days Are Not Full Enough
Douglas Dunn 130 A Removal from Terry Street
4 Bittersweet
Matthew Sweeney 133 Tube Ride to Martha's
Peter Reading 133 from Ukulele Music
Ken Smith 135 Against the grain
Wislawa Szymborska 135 The One Twenty Pub
Izet Sarajlic 137 Luck in Sarajevo
Michael Longley 137 All of These People
Muriel Rukeyser 138 Waking This Morning
Douglas Dunn 138 I Am a Cameraman
Philip Gross 140 from The Wasting Game
Leontia Flynn 143 Brinkwomanship
Ken Smith 144 Here
U.A. Fanthorpe 144 The Unprofessionals
Stewart Conn 145 Visiting Hour
Carole Satyamurti 145 from Changing the Subject
Nick Drake 150 The Cure
Charles Simic 150 Past-Lives Therapy
Adrienne Rich 151 Diving into the Wreck
Richard Wilbur 153 April 5, 1974
Michael Longley 154 At Poll Salach
Edward Thomas 154 Thaw
Michael Longley 154 Thaw
Fleur Adcock 155 Kissing
Leland Bardwell 155 How my true love and I lay without touching
Basil Bunting 156 'You idiot!...'
Randall Jarrell 157 90 North
E.J. Scovell 158 Listening to Collared Doves
David Constantine 159 Watching for Dolphins
Jo Shapcott 160 Goat
Peter Didsbury 161 The Drainage
Helen Dunmore 162 Three Ways of Recovering a Body
Ted Hughes 163 Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days
Sylvia Plath 164 Mushrooms
Derek Mahon 166 A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford
John Burnside 167 Unwittingly
5 Growing up
Ken Smith 171 Being the third song of Urias
Sujata Bhatt 172 White Asparagus
Alden Nowlan 173 It's Good To Be Here
Kathleen Jamie 174 Ultrasound
Helen Dunmore 178 Safe period
Kona Macphee 178 IVF
Jane Duran 180 Miscarriage
Maura Dooley 181 Freight
Sharon Olds 181 First Birth
Sharon Olds 182 Her First Week
Anne Stevenson 183 The Spirit is too Blunt an Instrument
Gavin Ewart 184 Sonnet: How Life Too Is Sentimental
Anne Stevenson 184 Poem for a Daughter
Ellen Bryant Voigt 185 Daughter
Adrian Mitchell 186 Beattie Is Three
W.D. Snodgrass 186 from Heart's Needle
Gjertrud Schnackenberg 191 Supernatural Love
Brendan Kennelly 193 Poem from a Three Year Old
Roger McGough 194 Cinders
Kenneth Rexroth 195 A Sword in a Cloud of Light
Janos Pilinszky 197 On the Back of a Photograph
Fleur Adcock 197 The Video
P.K. Page 197 Young Girls
Adrian Mitchell 198 A Puppy Called Puberty
Adrian Mitchell 199 A Dog Called Elderly
Paul Muldoon 199 Cuba
Michael Donaghy 200 My Flu
Charles Simic 201 'We were so poor...'
Robert Hayden 201 Those Winter Sundays
Julia Copus 202 The Back Seat of My Mother's Car
Louise Glueck 203 Mirror Image
Sylvia Plath 203 Mirror
Anne Carson 204 Father's Old Blue Cardigan
Philip Larkin 205 This Be the Verse
Caitriona O'Reilly 205 Possession
Randall Jarrell 206 A Night with Lions
Joseph Brodsky 207 from A Part of Speech
Edward Thomas 209 Old Man
Randall Jarrell 211 Thinking of the Lost World
Paul Muldoon 213 Quoof
Hart Crane 214 Forgetfulness
Billy Collins 214 Forgetfulness
W.S. Merwin 215 Unknown Forbear
David Scott 216 Groundsmen
6 Man and beast
Les Murray 218 Pigs
Dennis O'Driscoll 218 Experimental Animals
Alden Nowlan 219 Weakness
Stephen Dobyns 220 Spiritual Chickens
James Dickey 221 The Heaven of Animals
Nina Cassian 222 Sacrilege
Elena Shvarts 223 Remembrance of Strange Hospitality
Julie O'Callaghan 224 Federal Case
Frank O'Hara 224 Animals
Charles Simic 225 'The city had fallen...'
Robert Adamson 225 The stone curlew
Polly Clark 226 My Life with Horses
Sean O Riordain 227 Switch
James Wright 227 A Blessing
Michael Longley 228 The Horses
Seamus Heaney 229 The Skunk
Thom Gunn 229 Considering the Snail
Fleur Adcock 230 For a Five-Year-Old
Ted Hughes 231 Full Moon and Little Frieda
Frieda Hughes 231 Birds
John Montague 232 The Trout
Susan Wicks 233 Night Toad
Sheila Wingfield 233 A Bird
John Kinsella 234 Emu Hunt
Lavinia Greenlaw 234 Night Parrot
Ted Hughes 235 The Thought Fox
Michael Longley 236 Swans Mating
Michael Ondaatje 236 The Strange Case
Selima Hill 237 Cow
Katrina Porteous 238 Seven Silences
Jo Shapcott 239 Lies
Vicki Feaver 240 Glow Worm
Jorie Graham 241 Salmon
Richard Murphy 242 Seals at High Island
Chris Greenhalgh 243 Of Love, Death and the Sea-Squirt
Caitriona O'Reilly 244 Octopus
Pablo Neruda 245 Fable of the mermaid and the drunks
Stephen Knight 245 The Mermaid Tank
Edwin Morgan 246 The Loch Ness Monster's Song
Gwendolyn MacEwen 247 The Death of the Loch Ness Monster
Seamus Heaney 248 Oysters
7 In and out of love
Paul Durcan 250 My Beloved Compares Herself to a Pint of Stout
Deborah Randall 251 Finney's Bar
Tracy Ryan 252 Bite
Selima Hill 252 Desire's a Desire
Marge Piercy 253 Raisin Pumpernickel
C.K. Williams 254 Love: Beginnings
Pauline Stainer 255 The Honeycomb
Michael Longley 255 The Linen Industry
Sharon Olds 256 Last Night
Janos Pilinszky 257 Definition of Your Attraction
Michael Ondaatje 257 The Cinnamon Peeler
Sharon Olds 259 True Love
W.H. Auden 259 Lullaby
Julia Copus 261 In Defence of Adultery
Rita Ann Higgins 261 The Did-You-Come-Yets of the Western World
C.K. Williams 263 The Mistress
Sharon Olds 263 Ecstasy
D.H. Lawrence 264 New Year's Eve
Salvatore Quasimodo 265 Only if Love Should Pierce You
Jo Shapcott 265 Muse
Jo Shapcott 266 Life
Philippe Jaccottet 267 Distances
David Constantine 268 'As our bloods separate'
Judith Wright 268 Woman to Man
Gjertrud Schnackenberg 269 Snow Melting
Esta Spalding 270 August
Kevin Hart 274 The Room
Selima Hill 274 Don't Let's Talk about Being in Love
Katie Donovan 275 Yearn On
Carolyn Kizer 276 Bitch
Eleanor Brown 277 Bitcherel
Katherine Pierpoint 278 This Dead Relationship
Stephen Dunn 280 Each from Different Heights
Rosemary Tonks 280 Badly-Chosen Lover
Anne Stevenson 281 After the End of It
Janos Pilinszky 282 Relationship
Louise Glueck 282 Hesitate to Call
Nina Cassian 282 Lady of Miracles
Fleur Adcock 283 Advice to a Discarded Lover
Kit Wright 284 The All Purpose Country and Western Self Pity Song
James McAuley 286 Because
P.K. Page 287 Cross
Conrad Aiken 288 The Quarrel
Kapka Kassabova 289 And they were both right
Micheal O'Siadhail 290 Between
W.B. Yeats 290 When You Are Old
Kate Clanchy 291 Spell
Zbigniew Herbert 291 Conch
W.H. Auden 292 'O tell me the truth about love'
Meg Bateman 293 Lightness
James Fenton 294 In Paris with You
8 My people
Jaan Kaplinski 297 'The East West border...'
Kona Macphee 297 My People
Anna Akhmatova 298 Our Own Land
Richard Wilbur 299 A Summer Morning
Stuart Henson 299 The Heron
Jo Shapcott 300 A Letter to Dennis
Tony Harrison 301 Turns
David Constantine 301 The Door
Peter Reading 302 from Going On
Peter Didsbury 303 In Britain
Anne Rouse 304 England Nil
Joanne Limburg 304 Barton-in-the-Beans
Esther Morgan 305 The Reason
Philip Pacey 306 Charged Landscape: Uffington
Edward Thomas 307 The Combe
Norman Nicholson 307 Windscale
John Heath-Stubbs 308 The Green Man's Last Will and Testament
Robyn Bolam 309 Kith
G.F. Dutton 310 passage
Roddy Lumsden 311 An Outlying Station
Peter Reading 311 from Evagatory
Ken Smith 315 After Mr Mayhew's visit
Roy Fisher 315 The Nation
Kit Wright 316 Everyone Hates the English
Andrew Salkey 317 A song for England
Tom Leonard 317 The Voyeur
W.N. Herbert 318 The King and Queen of Dumfriesshire
R.S. Thomas 319 Reservoirs
Harri Webb 319 Synopsis of the Great Welsh Novel
Bernard O'Donoghue 320 Westering Home
Gillian Clarke 321 Overheard in Co. Sligo
Patrick Kavanagh 321 Inniskeen Road: July Evening
Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill 322 The Language Issue
Colette Bryce 323 Break
Seamus Heaney 323 The Toome Road
Paul Muldoon 324 The Sightseers
Charles Simic 324 Dream Avenue
E.E. Cummings 325 ' "next to of course god america i" '
Langston Hughes 326 I, Too
Fred Voss 326 Making America Strong
Imtiaz Dharker 327 They'll say, 'She must be from another country'
Jackie Kay 329 In my country
Shirley Geok-lin Lim 329 Modern Secrets
Moniza Alvi 330 Exile
Sophia de Mello Breyner 331 Exile
Jane Griffiths 331 Emigrants
Grace Nichols 332 Epilogue
Carol Ann Duffy 332 In Your Mind
Sophia de Mello Breyner 333 Homeland
Jo Shapcott 333 Motherland
Anna Akhmatova 334 'That city that I have loved'
Anne Michaels 335 from What the Light Teaches
Czeslaw Milosz 336 My Faithful Mother Tongue
Adam Zagajewski 337 Betrayal
Glyn Maxwell 338 We Billion Cheered
C.P. Cavafy 339 Waiting for the Barbarians
W.H. Auden 340 Gare du Midi
Weldon Kees 340 The Coming of the Plague
George Szirtes 341 Death by Meteor
Jamie McKendrick 342 Ancient History
9 War and peace
Kate Clanchy 345 War Poetry
Carl Sandburg 345 Grass
Miroslav Holub 346 The fly
Wilfred Owen 347 Anthem for Doomed Youth
Freda Downie 347 For Wilfred Owen
Siegfried Sassoon 348 Everyone Sang
Isaac Rosenberg 348 Returning, we hear the Larks
Edward Thomas 349 As the team's head-brass
Michael Longley 350 Ceasefire
Paul Durcan 351 The Bloomsday Murders, 16 June 1997
Gwendolyn MacEwen 352 from The T.E. Lawrence Poems
Keith Douglas 354 Vergissmeinnicht
Mairi MacInnes 355 The Old Naval Airfield
Geoffrey Hill 356 September Song
Bertolt Brecht 356 There is no greater crime than leaving
W.H. Auden 357 September 1, 1939
Bruce Weigl 360 On the Anniversary of Her Grace
Carolyn Forche 361 Selective Service
James Fenton 361 Cambodia
Jo Shapcott 362 Phrase Book
Robert Graves 363 The Persian Version
Tony Harrison 364 Initial Illumination
Ingeborg Bachmann 365 Every Day
Cesar Vallejo 366 from Spain, take away this cup from me
Wislawa Szymborska 367 The End and the Beginning
Thomas Lux 368 The People of the Other Village
10 Disappearing acts
Frances Horovitz 371 Rain - Birdoswald
Michael Longley 371 Bjoern Olinder's Pictures
Thomas Blackburn 372 Now Light Congeals
Charles Simic 372 Psalm
Dennis O'Driscoll 373 Someone
Philip Larkin 374 Aubade
Jaan Kaplinski 375 'Death does not come from outside...'
A.E. Housman 376 'Good creatures...'
Carolyn Kizer 376 Thrall
Tony Harrison 377 Bookends (I)
Ellen Bryant Voigt 378 For My Mother
Dylan Thomas 379 Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
Anon 379 'Do not stand at my grave and weep'
W.H. Auden 380 Funeral Blues
Michael Hartnett 381 Death of an Irishwoman
Michael Longley 381 Water-burn
Miroslav Holub 382 The dead
Goesta Agren 382 Death's Secret
G.F. Dutton 383 Death in October
David Constantine 383 'Pity the drunks'
David Scott 384 Scattering Ashes
Thom Gunn 384 The Gas-poker
David Constantine 386 Boy finds tramp dead
John F. Deane 387 On a Dark Night
Pamela Gillilan 388 Four Years
Caroline Smith 388 Metamorphosis
Liz Lochhead 389 Sorting Through
Alden Nowlan 389 This Is What I Wanted to Sign Off With
Tess Gallagher 390 Wake
P.K. Page 390 About Death
Howard Nemerov 391 The Vacuum
Jeanne Willis 392 Inside Our Dreams
Thom Gunn 392 The Reassurance
Theodore Roethke 392 She
Brendan Kennelly 393 A Glimpse of Starlings
Pablo Neruda 394 Dead Woman
Tess Gallagher 395 Yes
Andrew Motion 395 Close
Sophia de Mello Breyner 396 Inscription
E.E. Cummings 397 'Buffalo Bill 's'
Billy Collins 397 The Dead
Tadeusz Rozewicz 398 Proofs
Anne Carson 398 On Walking Backwards
Stephen Dobyns 399 Cemetery Nights
Stephen Dunn 400 Father, Mother, Robert Henley who hanged himself in the ninth grade, et al
Vladimir Holan 400 Resurrection
Charles Causley 401 Eden Rock
Jo Shapcott 402 When I Died
Dana Gioia 402 All Souls'
Philippe Jaccottet 403 from Lessons
August Kleinzahler 405 Where Souls Go
Brad Leithauser 405 A Mosquito
Louise Glueck 406 The Wild Iris
Derek Mahon 407 Antarctica
Paul Muldoon 407 Why Brownlee Left
Matthew Sweeney 408 Sleep with a Suitcase
Derek Mahon 409 As It Should Be
Amanda Dalton 409 How to Disappear
Vona Groarke 410 Folderol
Weldon Kees 411 Robinson
Sophia de Mello Breyner 411 Night and the House
Miroslav Holub 412 Distant Howling
11 Me, the Earth, the Universe
Janos Pilinszky 414 Homage to Isaac Newton
Robin Robertson 414 New Gravity
Adam Zagajewski 414 Moment
Yannis Ritsos 415 Morning
Moniza Alvi 415 The Other Room
Miroslav Holub 416 Brief reflection on accuracy
Simon Armitage 417 Zoom!
Seamus Heaney 418 from Lightenings
Ellen Hinsey 418 On the Uncountable Nature of Things
Amy Clampitt 420 The Sun Underfoot among the Sundews
James Harpur 421 'I stretch my arms'
James Merrill 421 A Downward Look
Charles Causley 422 I Am the Song
Vasko Popa 422 from Games
Derek Walcott 423 Earth
Sheila Wingfield 423 Waking
Ivan V. Lalic 424 Places We Love
R.S. Thomas 424 Moorland
Robin Robertson 425 Three Ways of Looking at God
Kerry Hardie 426 The Avatar
Alden Nowlan 426 Sacrament
T.S. Eliot 427 Journey of the Magi
Wallace Stevens 428 The Snow Man
Patrick Kavanagh 428 Sanctity
R.S. Thomas 429 Via Negativa
Charles Simic 429 To the One Upstairs
Tomas Transtroemer 430 Tracks
Elizabeth Jennings 431 Delay
Norman MacCaig 431 Summer farm
Iain Crichton Smith 432 Tinily a star goes down
Carol Rumens 432 Star Whisper
Gwyneth Lewis 433 from Zero Gravity
Jane Cooper 434 Rent
Elinor Wylie 435 Full Moon
Kapka Kassabova 435 Preparation for the big emptiness
Elizabeth Bishop 436 The Shampoo
Alice Oswald 437 Mountains
Kit Wright 437 The Other Side of the Mountain
12 The art of poetry
Philippe Jaccottet 440 from Songs from Below
Archibald MacLeish 441 Ars Poetica
W.S. Graham 442 The Beast in the Space
Alden Nowlan 443 An Exchange of Gifts
Helen Ivory 443 Note to the reader: this is not a poem
Robert Hass 444 Meditation at Lagunitas
Jaan Kaplinski 445 'Once I got a postcard...'
Tomas Transtroemer 445 From March 1979
Chase Twichell 446 Animal Languages
Vasko Popa 446 The Story of a Story
Wallace Stevens 447 Not Ideas about the Thing but the Thing Itself
Eamon Grennan 448 Detail
Rita Dove 448 OE
Mark Strand 449 Eating Poetry
Howard Nemerov 450 The Painter Dreaming in the Scholar's House
Robert Lowell 453 Epilogue
Galway Kinnell 454 Oatmeal
Patrick Kavanagh 455 Consider the Grass Growing
Joan Brossa 455 Note
Seamus Heaney 456 Postscript
Raymond Carver 456 Late Fragment
Neil Astley 458 The Sound of Poetry
464 Glossary
471 Further reading
473 Acknowledgements
480 Index of writers
486 Index of titles and first lines