The Open Door : One Hundred Poems, One Hundred Years of 'Poetry' Magazine

When Harriet Monroe founded "Poetry" magazine in Chicago in 1912, she began with an image: the "Open Door". "May the great poet we are looking for never find it shut, or half-shut, against his ample genius!" For a century, the most important and enduring poets have walked through that door - William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens in its first years, Rae Armantrout and Kay Ryan in 2011. And at the same time, "Poetry" continues to discover the new voices who will be read a century from now. "Poetry's" archives are incomparable, and to celebrate the magazine's centennial, editors Don Share and Christian Wiman combed them to create a new kind of anthology, energized by the self-imposed limitation to one hundred poems. Rather than attempting to be exhaustive or definitive - or even to offer the most familiar works - they have assembled a collection of poems that, in their juxtaposition, echo across a century of poetry. Adrienne Rich appears alongside Charles Bukowski; poems by Isaac Rosenberg and Randall Jarrell on the two world wars flank a devastating Vietnam War poem by the lesser-known George Starbuck; August Kleinzahler's "The Hereafter" precedes "Prufrock," casting Eliot's masterpiece in a new light. Short extracts from "Poetry's" letters and criticism punctuate the verse selections, hinting at themes and threads and serving as guides, interlocutors, or dissenting voices. The resulting volume is an anthology like no other, a celebration of idiosyncrasy and invention, a vital monument to an institution that refuses to be static, and, most of all, a book that lovers of poetry will devour, debate, and keep close at hand. Contents 6 Mastery and Mystery: Twenty-One Ways to Read a Century • Christian Wiman 12 Editors’ Note 30 Ezra Pound • In a Station of the Metro 32 Kay Ryan • Sharks’ Teeth 33 Marie Ponsot • Anti-Romantic 34 Roddy Lumsden • The Young 35 LeRoi Jones • Valéry as Dictator 36 Edwin Arlington Robinson • Eros Turannos 38 Ange Mlinko • It Was a Bichon Frisé’s Life . . . 40 Muriel Rukeyser • Song 41 August Kleinzahler • The Hereafter 42 T. S. Eliot • The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 44 Laura Kasischke • Look 50 Weldon Kees • From “Eight Variations” 51 Robert Creeley • For Love 52 Mary Karr • Disgraceland 55 Lucille Clifton • sorrows 57 A. E. Stallings • On Visiting a Borrowed Country House in Arcadia 59 Charles Wright • Bedtime Story 62 Delmore Schwartz • In the Naked Bed, In Plato’s Cave 63 William Matthews • Mingus at the Showplace 64 Donald Justice • Men at Forty 65 Ruth Stone • Forecast 67 Craig Arnold • Meditation on a Grapefruit 68 Josephine Miles • The Hampton Institute Album 69 P. K. Page • My Chosen Landscape 70 Theodore Roethke • Florist’s Root Cellar 72 Wallace Stevens • Tea at the Palaz of Hoon 74 Basil Bunting • From Briggfl atts 75 Louise Bogan • Night 81 Rodney Jack • After the Diagnosis 82 Margaret Atwood • Pig Song 83 Michael S. Harper • Blues Alabama 85 Isaac Rosenberg • Break of Day in the Trenches 86 George Starbuck • Of Late 87 Randall Jarrell • Protocols 88 Tom Disch • The Prisoners of War 89 Seamus Heaney • A Dog Was Crying To-Night in Wicklow Also 91 Hart Crane • At Melville’s Tomb 93 Robert Hayden • O Daedalus, Fly Away Home 94 Charles Bukowski • A Not So Good Night in the San Pedro of the World 96 Adrienne Rich • Final Notations 97 W. H. Auden • The Shield of Achilles 99 Albert Goldbarth • He Has 102 Alice Fulton • What I Like 103 Edna St. Vincent Millay • Rendezvous 104 Sylvia Plath • Fever 103° 105 Lisel Mueller • In the Thriving Season 108 Eleanor Wilner • Magnificat 109 Atsuro Riley • Hutch 111 Thomas Sayers Ellis • Or, 113 Marianne Moore • No Swan So Fine 115 John Berryman • The Traveler 116 Averill Curdy • Sparrow Trapped in the Airport 117 H. D. • His Presence 119 Rae Armantrout • Transactions 121 Gwendolyn Brooks • The Children of the Poor 123 E. E. Cummings • What If a Much of a Which of a Wind 125 Frederick Seidel • Mu‘allaqa 126 Geoff rey Hill • The Peacock at Alderton 130 May Swenson • Green Red Brown and White 132 Anne Stevenson • Inheriting My Grandmother’s Nightmare 133 Jeanne Murray Walker • Little Blessing for My Floater 135 Brooklyn Copeland • Prayer’s End 136 Jack Spicer • “Any fool can get into an ocean . . .” 138 Alan Dugan • Fabrication of Ancestors 139 Edward Dorn • Dark Ceiling 140 W. S. Merwin • Search Party 141 Lorine Niedecker • Three Poems 143 Denise Levertov • Our Bodies 145 James Wright • The Blessing 148 Robinson Jeffers • Grass on the Cliff 149 W. S. Di Piero • Big City Speech 150 Cid Corman • From “Cahoots” 152 Richard Wilbur • Hamlen Brook 154 Rita Dove • Old Folk’s Home, Jerusalem 156 Don Paterson • The Lie 157 Maxine Kumin • Nurture 158 William Carlos Williams • Paterson, Book V: The River of Heaven 159 Ted Hughes • Heatwave 161 John Ashbery • El Dorado 162 Reginald Dwayne Betts • “For you: anthophilous, lover of flowers” 164 Rachel Wetzsteon • On Leaving the Bachelorette Brunch 165 Adrian Blevins • How to Cook a Wolf 166 A. R. Ammons • Gravelly Run 167 Samuel Menashe • Here 170 Robert Duncan • Returning to Roots of First Feeling 171 Jacob Saenz • Sweeping the States 172 Langston Hughes • Blues in Stereo 173 James Schuyler • Korean Mums 175 George Oppen • Birthplace: New Rochelle 178 Gary Snyder • Song of the Tangle 179 Belle Randall • A Child’s Garden of Gods 180 Isabella Gardner • The Widow’s Yard 182 Thom Gunn • Lines for a Book 184 Frank Bidart • From “The Third Hour of the Night” 186 William Meredith • The Illiterate 188 Rhina P. Espaillat • Changeling 189 Maria Hummel • Station 190 James Merrill • The Mad Scene 191 W. S. Graham • The Beast in the Space 193 William Butler Yeats • The Fisherman 194 Acknowledgments 200 Contributors 206

When Harriet Monroe founded Poetry magazine in Chicago in 1912, she began with an image: the Open Door. “May the great poet we are looking for never find it shut, or half-shut, against his ample genius!” For a century, the most important and enduring poets have walked through that door—William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens in its first years, Rae Armantrout and Kay Ryan in 2011. And at the same time, Poetry continues to discover the new voices who will be read a century from now.

Poetry’s archives are incomparable, and to celebrate the magazine’s centennial, editors Don Share and Christian Wiman combed them to create a new kind of anthology, energized by the self-imposed limitation to one hundred poems. Rather than attempting to be exhaustive or definitive—or even to offer the most familiar works—they have assembled a collection of poems that, in their juxtaposition, echo across a century of poetry. Adrienne Rich appears alongside Charles Bukowski; poems by Isaac Rosenberg and Randall Jarrell on the two world wars flank a devastating Vietnam War poem by the lesser-known George Starbuck; August Kleinzahler’s “The Hereafter” precedes “Prufrock,” casting Eliot’s masterpiece in a new light. Short extracts from Poetry’s letters and criticism punctuate the verse selections, hinting at themes and threads and serving as guides, interlocutors, or dissenting voices.

The resulting volume is an anthology like no other, a celebration of idiosyncrasy and invention, a vital monument to an institution that refuses to be static, and, most of all, a book that lovers of poetry will devour, debate, and keep close at hand.

"When Harriet Monroe founded Poetry magazine in Chicago in 1912, she began with an image: the Open Door. 'May the great poet we are looking for never find it shut, or half-shut, against his ample genius!' For a century, the most important and enduring poets have walked through that door-William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens in its first years, Rae Armantrout and Kay Ryan in 2011. And at the same time, Poetry continues to discover the new voices who will be read a century from now. Poetry's archives are incomparable, and to celebrate the magazine's centennial, editors Don Share and Christian Wiman combed them to create a new kind of anthology, energized by the self-imposed limitation to one hundred poems. Rather than attempting to be exhaustive or definitive-or even to offer the most familiar works-they have assembled a collection of poems that, in their juxtaposition, echo across a century of poetry. Adrienne Rich appears alongside Charles Bukowski; poems by Isaac Rosenberg and Randall Jarrell on the two world wars flank a devastating Vietnam War poem by the lesser-known George Starbuck; August Kleinzahler's 'The Hereafter' precedes 'Prufrock, ' casting Eliot's masterpiece in a new light. Short extracts from Poetry's letters and criticism punctuate the verse selections, hinting at themes and threads and serving as guides, interlocutors, or dissenting voices. The resulting volume is an anthology like no other, a celebration of idiosyncrasy and invention, a vital monument to an institution that refuses to be static, and, most of all, a book that lovers of poetry will devour, debate, and keep close at hand"--Provided by publisher When Harriet Monroe founded Poetry magazine in Chicago in 1912, she began with an the Open Door. May the great poet we are looking for never find it shut, or half-shut, against his ample genius! For a century, the most important and enduring poets have walked through that doorWilliam Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens in its first years, Rae Armantrout and Kay Ryan in 2011. And at the same time, Poetry continues to discover the new voices who will be read a century from now. Poetry s archives are incomparable, and to celebrate the magazines centennial, editors Don Share and Christian Wiman combed them to create a new kind of anthology, energized by the self-imposed limitation to one hundred poems. Rather than attempting to be exhaustive or definitiveor even to offer the most familiar worksthey have assembled a collection of poems that, in their juxtaposition, echo across a century of poetry. Adrienne Rich appears alongside Charles Bukowski; poems by Isaac Rosenberg and Randall Jarrell on the two world wars flank a devastating Vietnam War poem by the lesser-known George Starbuck; August Kleinzahlers The Hereafter precedes Prufrock, casting Eliots masterpiece in a new light. Short extracts from Poetry s letters and criticism punctuate the verse selections, hinting at themes and threads and serving as guides, interlocutors, or dissenting voices. The resulting volume is an anthology like no other, a celebration of idiosyncrasy and invention, a vital monument to an institution that refuses to be static, and, most of all, a book that lovers of poetry will devour, debate, and keep close at hand. "If readers would like to sample the genius and diversity of American poetry in the last century, there's no better place to start." — World Literature Today When Harriet Monroe founded Poetry magazine in Chicago in 1912, she began with an image: the Open Door. For a century, the most important and enduring poets have walked through that door—William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens in its first years, Rae Armantrout and Kay Ryan in 2011. And at the same time, Poetry continues to discover the new voices who will be read a century from now. To celebrate the magazine's centennial, the editors combed through Poetr y's incomparable archives to create a new kind of anthology. With the self-imposed limitation to one hundred, they have assembled a collection of poems that, in their juxtaposition, echo across a century of poetry. Here, Adrienne Rich appears alongside Charles Bukowski; famous poems of the two world wars flank a devastating yet lesser-known poem of the Vietnam War; Short extracts from Poetry 's letters and criticism punctuate the verse selections, hinting at themes and threads and serving as guides, interlocutors, or dissenting voices. The resulting volume is a celebration of idiosyncrasy and invention, a vital monument to an institution that refuses to be static, and, most of all, a book that lovers of poetry will devour, debate, and keep close at hand. Poetry's archives are incomparable, and to celebrate the magazine's centennial, Don Share and Christian Wilman combed them to create a new kind of anthology, energized by the self-imposed limitation of one hundred poems. Rather than attempting to be exhaustive or definitive--or even to offer the most familiar works--they have assembled a collection of poems that, in their juxtapositions, echo across a century of poetry