Poems of New York (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets) [Hardcover]

Elizabeth Schmidt (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Everyman's Library Pocket Poets | Publication Date: August 13, 2002

New York City has always been a larger-than-life, half-mythical place, and this collection offers an appropriately stunning mosaic of its many incarnations in poetry–ranging from Walt Whitman’s exuberant celebrations to contemporary poets’ moving responses to the September 11 attack on the city.

All the icons of this greatest of cities swirl and flash through these pages: taxis and subways, bridges and skyscrapers, ghettos and roof gardens and fire escapes, from the South Bronx to Coney Island to Broadway to Central Park, and from Langston Hughes’s Harlem to James Merrill’s Upper East Side. Wallace Stevens, e. e. cummings, W. H. Auden, Dorothy Parker, Elizabeth Bishop, Allen Ginsberg, and Audre Lorde are just a few of the poets gathered here, alongside a host of new young voices.

Encompassing as many moods, characters, and scenes as this multifaceted, ever-changing metropolis has to offer, Poems of New York will be treasured by literary lovers of New York everywhere.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

From Walt Whitman's "Mannahatta" to Ted Berrigan's "Whitman in Black" and beyond to Hettie Jones's "Dust A Survival Kit, Fall 2001," Poems of New York collects poetic responses to Gotham's many facets. Selected and edited by Open City contributing editor and New York Times Book Review poetry reviewer Elizabeth Schmidt, the more than 125 poems here tend toward less familiar works from familiar names. Instead of Frank O'Hara's "A Step Away from Them" we get "Steps" ("all I want is a room up there/ and you in it") though Auden's "September 1, 1939" and Williams's famous "The Great Figure" the figure `5' glimpsed on a fire truck are here. As Schmidt notes in her introduction, "Poets who have written about New York are masters at preserving, and allowing us to cherish, moments of life in this theater of chance and change."
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From The New Yorker

In 1811, city planners unveiled the urban grid that would become the New York we know; not long afterward, the city's first poet, Walt Whitman, came along to chronicle its particular nexus of enthusiasm, expansiveness, and elegant ennui. This well-selected volume of New York poems, conceived in the days following September 11, 2001, includes not only the tried-and-true anthology pieces but an assortment of excellent lesser-known poems; we're reminded that in New York all things end "Too soon! Too soon!" (as Ferlinghetti exclaimed), although the city's sophisticated residents will murmur only "It gets so terribly late" (Elizabeth Bishop, teasing a friend). There are some stirring September 11th elegies here, but Whitman's words speak most consolingly, across the century, to the city's new sense of strength imperilled: "It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall, / The dark threw its patches down upon me also."
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Everyman's Library (August 13, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375415041
• ISBN-13: 978-0375415043
• Product Dimensions: 4.3 x 0.7 x 6.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #199,976 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect for NYC lovers, August 22, 2002

By 

Kevin C. Fitzpatrick (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Poems of New York (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets) (Hardcover)

If you are looking for something to read as 9/11 solace, get this book. I can't say enough about how good it is. As a Dorothy Parker fan, I was looking for something about NYC by classic poets, and came across "Poems of New York" by accident. It is a perfect gift book to give others.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous collection, even for folks who think they don't like poetry, September 30, 2005

By 

Writer44 (New York city) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Poems of New York (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets) (Hardcover)

I've given away several dozen copies of this book as gifts to friends who visit New York (including their teenage children), English teachers both American and foreign, and to new, literary friends who find it a fascinating introduction to the city I've lived in for over 25 years. It offers a comprehensive array of top-drawer writers in a focused, thematic collection. And the Everyman edition is beautiful--small and elegant with a gold ribbon bookmark. If you like NYC, or have an interest in cities and the writers who have lived in them, check this out.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Poetry For All, December 26, 2003

By 

FKC "FKC" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Poems of New York (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets) (Hardcover)

I've never been a fan of poetry. In fact this is the first book of poetry I have ever purchased, purchased out of a sense of loving my city. I have been continually amazed by the evocative imagery found throughout this excellently chosen group of poems. They bring a full sense of what New York City is and was, and provide both a sense of being here and that experience has not varied much over time.

What prevents a 5 star rating, and this is picky perhaps, is that the poet's names are printed after, rather than before the work, something which I found confusing when poems went on for several pages.