From Publishers Weekly
Poets Katz (
The Garden Room) and Prufer (
Fallen from a Chariot;
The New Young American Poets), both editors of the journal
Pleiades, asked over five dozen poets (ranging from some of America's most well-known, like Billy Collins and John Ashbery, to rising talents, like D.A. Powell and Susan Wheeler) to each pick one obscure or underappreciated poem and to write an accompanying explanation of their choice. The resulting anthology gathers a host of surprising poems—works by Emily Dickinson, Sara Teasdale, Man Ray and Laura (Riding) Jackson all find their way here—along with passionate prose. Carol Muske-Dukes picked the tragically lush Thomas James ("...here is my new mouth,/ Chiseled with care") and Mary Jo Bang introduces a youthful Sylvia Plath ("I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead"). In one of the anthology's most moving moments, Stanley Plumly movingly revisits Elizabeth Bishop's "Poem," which he calls "more 'personal' and less 'finished' than what this inveterate writer is commonly committed to." While the curatorial process—which involves so many other people—ensures that few readers will like every poem, it also guarantees that most will find new favorites.
(Feb.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Creating an anthology of overlooked poems may not be original, but editors Katz and Prufer added a clever twist by including brief essays from the poets who submitted their personal favorites. Both little-heard voices and well-respected titans of the poetic universe are represented. Curiously, what becomes apparent is the randomness of their selections. Billy Collins aptly states, "One could probably locate a poem that deserved more attention by simply throwing a dart blindfolded at the wall of American poetry." Katz and Prufer claim to have simply set out to showcase forgotten works, but their anthology achieves a nobler outcome. It demonstrates that powerful poetry can be found anywhere. Poetry that, as Emily Dickinson so famously stated, causes us to feel as if the top of our heads were taken off is generated by the rarely published and the famous alike. And without randomness, preferences, and biases, readers would not have such a wide "wall of American poetry" at which to aim our passion-seeking darts.
Janet St. JohnCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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