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The Best Poems of the English Language: from Chaucer through Robert Frost
Bloom, Harold
821.008 Best

Did you know that Bloom received his B.A. from Cornell in 1951? Currently a Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University, Bloom is one of America's best-known literary critics. From writing on Shakespeare to instructing readers the best way to read in How to Read and Why, Bloom believes poems are written in response to previous poetry. This anthology was created in Bloom's words "to be the anthology I've always wanted to possess." His introduction, "The Art of Reading Poetry", prepares readers to appreciate his selection of poems even more.

Brink Road: Poems
Ammons, A.R.
811 Ammons

This major American poet had a long teaching career at Cornell University until his death in 2001. Born in rural North Carolina, he grew up on a cotton and tobacco farm during the Depression. He later used his childhood experiences as inspiration for his poems. Ammons focused many of his poems on nature, and was often compared to e.e. cummings, Robert Frost, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. Brink Road contains more than 150 poems, dating from 1973 until 1996. Most of the poems are about nature, and for local people interested, Ammons writes "Brink Road lies off NY 96 between Candor and Catatonk."

The Collected Poems
Plath, Sylvia
811 Plath

This collection of poems comes from one of the most admired poets of the twentieth century. Edited by her ex-husband, Ted Hughes, it contains all of the poetry Plath wrote from 1956-1963. Arranged by year, Hughes used old manuscripts, final typed copies of her original poems, and personal memories to date the poems, which he then arranged in sequence. Many of her best-known poems were created during the last weeks of her life in 1963, when she took her life. The last part of this collection is a section entitled "Juvenilia" and is made up of fifty poems she wrote while in school at Smith College.

The Daily Mirror: a Journal in Poetry
Lehman, David
811 Lehman

While readers might recognize Lehman's name as the editor of the popular Best American Poetry anthologies, Lehman is a poet who also lives part of the year in Ithaca. Published in 2000, Lehman began writing a poem a day as an experiment in January 1996. According to Lehman, some poems were written while speaking on the phone, while driving, or even while waiting for dessert at a restaurant. The result is an eclectic collection of poems for each day of the year.

Delilah's Veils
Machan, Katharyn Howd
811 Machan

Did you know that Tompkins County has its own Poet Laureate? Machan, an Associate Professor of Writing at Ithaca College, was chosen to be the first Poet Laureate of the county in 2002. Delilah's Veils is a collection of poems that celebrate dance, especially bellydancing, around the world (Machan herself is a bellydancer).

The Holy Worm of Praise
Schultz, Philip
811 Schultz

When published in 2002, this collection was Schultz's newest collection in fifteen years. An author of several collections of poetry, his work has been published in magazines such as the New Yorker, the New Republic, and the Paris Review. The Holy Worm of Praise explores friendship, desire, the pain of loss, the wonder of love, and the newly dead - all offering praise "for what is most vulnerable, beautiful, and innocent in ourselves."

If I Were Writing This
Creeley, Robert
811 Creeley

Creeley began his career with being associated with the "Black Mountain Poets", a group of writers connected with an experimental, communal college in North Carolina. Soon branching out on his own, he is own of America's most respected poets. While often writing about his family and marriage, Creeley's current works have focused on his own mortality.

Meadowlands
Gluck, Louise
811 Gluck Louise

Gluck is the current United States Poet Laureate. Considered one of America's most talented contemporary poets, she is the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993. Meadowlands explores the dissolution of a marriage, along with parallel poems about Penelope, Telemachus, and Odysseus of The Odyssey.

Poetry Speaks: Hear Great Poets Read Their Work from Tennyson to Plath
Paschen, Elise and Rebekah Presson Mosby, editors
811 Poetry

This volume, containing three audio CDs, includes text and recordings of more than forty of the most famous poets. From cummings to Roethke, Ginsberg to Plath, this set allows listeners to hear poets read their works. Biographical sketches and critical essays written by fellow poets are included in the text portion of the volume.

The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni
Giovanni, Nikki
811 Giovanni

One of the strongest voices of contemporary black American poetry, Giovanni started her writing career in the turbulent 1960s. Now a professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, Giovanni was inactive for part of the 1980s and 1990s while she suffered from lung cancer. She has recently returned to poetry, and continues to teach and write. This collection is an excellent introduction to her work, from early writings to contemporary pieces.

These websites are a great way to explore poetry.

SG
Community Services Department
Tompkins County Public Library
April 2004

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