Customer Reviews

Americans' Favorite Poems

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Americans' Favorite Poems is not only a beautiful anthology of poetry but also a millennial document. The Favorite Poem Project staff under the direction of Maggie Dietz and Robert Pinsky, have gathered a sampling of poems which are meaningful to people living in America. Each selected poem was submitted with a letter revealing what that particular poem and poetry in general mean to the submitter. The selection of poetry could have stood elegantly on its own without the letters. The juxtaposition of the poems and the letters takes one on a fantastic journey of connections, separations, profound joys, tragic sorrows, awe and wonder through the human experience. I read one of the letters and its accompanying poem to a friend who was feeling a bit frazzled after a sleepless night. She sat back in a deep chair attending to the words with eyes closed. At the close of the poem she looked up. There is a wonderful joy in seeing the tearful eye of a friend just lifted out of the ordinary to a place of deep feeling and understanding.

I love this book, and I do not buy books of poetry, or read poetry. I began reading it on a Saturday morning, read the first 200 pages without a break. The poems are familiar, and also new, but in this book are presented with an entirely new purpose. . . .WHY THEY MATTER, WHO THEY HAVE INSPIRED AND SUPPORTED. What makes this book a rare gem are the detailed stories, written by everyone from a 6 year old to a 90 year old, of how these icons of literature have influenced individuals like ourselves, and have even changed our lives, including people who are not poetry lovers. I was moved by the details of how these poems influenced the lives of people. I never, ever, would have wanted a book of poems for Christmas. I got this one tho, and it was the best gift, really. Now I know the power of the written word in a way I could not have known before.

This book celebrates and typifies the resurgence of interest in poetry in our relentlessly digital age. It may be precisely because of the noisy pace of our technologically driven lives that poems appeal to us -- they are economical, artful, and surprising. Poems offer a few moments of thoughtful peace during which we can be with ourselves before returning to the fray. And they can be shared with others, which makes them both personal and communal. Poetry is also portable -- you can carry one on a scrap of paper that weighs next to nothing, or in a slim volume, or in your memory.

Pinsky and Dietz accomplish at least two things with this wide-ranging anthology. First, they gather together 200 poems that represent the breadth of the genre's history in many styles, voices, and themes, from Homer and other ancients up to current popular favorites like Mary Oliver and Robert Hass. Second, they give the children and women and men whose comments precede each poem the opportunity to define themselves through their response to the words, which in effect provides a picture of Americans around the turn of the millennium. This kind of self-exploration is innate to good poetry, for the best way to appreciate a poem is to engage your heart and mind with it. And your tongue -- in his book The Sounds of Poetry, Pinsky recommends reading a poem aloud (or hearing someone recite it) and listening for the cadence and the rhythm, the beauty of the sound, without worrying about the sense. You can always figure out the meaning later. For him, poetry is foremost a physical object brought into existence by the individual voice, and therefore a unique entity that cannot be duplicated, because each time it is said aloud it's different, each time created anew.

All the poems in this volume reward reading aloud, but are also, of course, a pleasure to read silently. Here are familiar poets such as Matthew Arnold, Coleridge, Emily Dickinson, Frost, Keats, Shakespeare, Dylan Thomas, Whitman, and Yeats. Here also are poets not often found in general anthologies, such as Anne Bradstreet, Federico Garcia Lorca, and the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska, and writers known primarily as novelists (Margaret Atwood, Herman Melville). The poems are filled with pathos, love, loss, memory, anger, and humor, with adventure and beauty, with stories. There is no discussion of technical achievement because that is out of the book's scope. "Difficult" poets like James Merrill are not included. Pinsky's Favorite Poem Project was intended to evoke the ecumenical texture of American society and maintain the momentum of interest in poetry by a careful selection from among the thousands of contributions he received. The resulting anthology is both pleasurable and instructive.

Americans' Favorite Poems is the result of Robert Pinsky's "Favorite Poem Project" in which he invited Americans to share their favorite poems. The result is a masterpiece, as people from all walks of life, of all ages, genders and from all parts of the country share a little about the poems moves them and why. There are the old stand-bys of Walt Whitman, William Shakespeare and the like, but also a number of poets I was previously unaware of - and am pleased to have been introduced to them. (James Dickey's "The Bee", Black Elk's "Everything the Power of the world does in a circle", Nazm Hikmet's Things I Didn;t Know I Loved" to mention a few.) The poems themselves are a rich variety, given further depth and meaning from the tidbits shared by those who participated in the project. I purchased the book on a whim; I have never regretted buying it. Few books have moved me to tears or laughter, or have caused me to simply pause and reflect like this anthology has. I highly recommend it.

Being a populist poet myself, I found this collection a joy to participate in and read.This proves what I thought all along: regular joes read poetry, not just high toned academics. I hope more collection of this ilk, will result because of Pinsky's and Diet's efforts.

Robert Pinsky, the 39th Poet Laureate of the United States, founded the Favorite Poem Project. Since its inception, the Project has been dedicated to celebrating, documenting and promoting poetry's role in Americans' lives. During a one-year open call for submissions, 18,000 Americans wrote to the project volunteering to share their favorite poems - Americans from ages 5 to 97, from every state, of diverse occupations, education and backgrounds. The Project's first anthology, "Americans' Favorite Poems," consists of 200 of the submitted poems, along with readers' comments about their attachments to the poems. The selections are by poets from all over the world, poems written centuries ago alongside contemporary poems, poignantly sad poetry, as well as spiritually uplifting works, and humorous poems. Many are translations.

I found so many of my own favorites in this extraordinary collection. I was also introduced to many wonderful new poems, I might never have read. And some of the comments from the folks who submitted the poems, are as moving as the poetry itself. The book emphasizes the pure joy of reading poetry. And poetry appreciation is alive and well in America!

There is Anna Akhmatova's "The Sentence," submitted by a woman from Georgia who remembers her brother "who returned from Vietnam, a broken man of 21," when reading this poem; and Margaret Atwood's "Variation On The Word Sleep," "the most beautiful love poem I have ever read," writes a woman from Queens, NY; Lewis Carroll's "Jaberwocky" is included, with the comment, "Where else can you find a tale of danger, adventure, triumph, and jubilation - all so utterly wrapped in nonsense?" There are wonders printed here, by Ranier Marie Rilke, Alexander Pope, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sylvia Plath, William Shakespeare, Wallace Stevens, Dylan Thomas and Allan Ginsberg...and so many more. It must have been a difficult task, indeed, to select 200 poems from so many worthy submissions.

I recommend this anthology to poetry lovers everywhere, and also to those who do not care for poetry. This collection may change your mind.

I personally prefer poem anthologies where the poetry is from a mix of poets, not just a collection of one poet's work. Americans' Favorite Poems will give you some very famous favorites, and also might surprise you with the works of lesser known (but still wonderful) writers.

What I also loved about this treasure of a book was the comments. Robert Pinsky compiled the poems that people from around the US sent him and printed their comments as to why each poem was their favorite. Reading the comments of all these people - firefighters, students, forest rangers, doctors, homemakers, basically people from all walks of life - is often very moving, entertaining, or surprising (you'll see some of your best loved poems from new and delightful angles). You get a feel for why people love poems as they explain that love, that attachment to a particular poem, in their own words.

This is a great sampler of all the wonderful poets of all times and represents all the different types of poetry. It is a journey into the past as well as the present. What a pleasure to read and share with others.

Americans' Favorite Poems is an amazing book. It is the result of the "favorite poem project" held across the nation. The poems in the collection are real Americans' favorites along with their own comments on why they chose that poem as their favorite. The compilation is great for the obvious. The poems selected come from everywhere (many different cultures and different styles of poetry are present), and they are outstanding. The thing that sets Americans' Favorite Poems apart from other collections is the commentary from regular people. The comments are at turns hilarious and moving. They are always profound. They show the real greatness of good poetry: it has the ability to relate to a person's life experiences and really touch that person.

I must say that my favorite selection in the book was "I May, I Might, I Must" by Marianne Moore mainly because of the reason behind its selection. The only complaint (it isn't much of one) I have about the book is that my favorite "I Thank You God for Most This Amazing" by ee cummings didn't make it, but hopefully, there will someday be a Americans' Favorite Poems Volume II, and it will.

This is the poetry book you pick-up open at random and enjoy. All the favorites are indeed favorites. Perfect when you're feeling nostalgic. Each poem will bring back all sorts of memories of friends, places, emotions, dreams, sights, times.