Get your tickets for the 2025 UK UnConvention!
Early bird ticket pricing is currently available for the Unconvention in Sheffield in July. Get them HERE
Contemporary American Poets: American Poetry Since 1940
by Edited by Mark Strand | Poetry | This book has not been rated.
ISBN: 0451527836 Global Overview for this book
ISBN: 0451527836 Global Overview for this book
2 journalers for this copy...
Dear Reader,
Recently, I found this yellowing book that I'd had since the 1970s when I was a girl. Finding that I'd marked poems within, probably sometime in the 1980s after post-its were invented, I was suddenly ready to pay attention all over again. The paperback cover was separating from the beloved pages and as I read them again I did a little repair before sending the book off into the bookcrossing poetry stream. I was only able to do this after I'd found there were newer editions available. Well here is the newer, 2000 edition that I ordered to replace my dear book. When I found it was only a mass market, I searched for a first edition and found one. Yesterday the 41 year old hardback arrived here where I'm sure I will return to it again and again. I've decided to pass this little mass market along to someone in bookcrossing who will probably read it. It's an excellent anthology. I remember reading many of the poems here with a resounding thrill back when the book was new to me.
Looking at the book brings me back in touch with my past in so many ways. It's an experience akin to the poem by Richard Wilbur included here:
The Beautiful Changes
One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides
The Queen Anne's Lace lying like lilies
On water; it glides
So from the walker, it turns
Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of
you
Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes.
The beautiful changes as a forest is changed
By a chameleon's tuning his skin to it;
As a mantis, arranged
On a green leaf, grows
Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves
Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.
Your hands hold roses always in a way that
says
They are not only yours; the beautiful changes
In such kind ways,
Wishing ever to sunder
Things and things' selves for a second finding,
to lose
For a moment all that it touches back to
wonder.
Back when this book was just published, 1940 was only 39 years away. Generations have come and gone. Still, the poems within are fresh.
Recently, I found this yellowing book that I'd had since the 1970s when I was a girl. Finding that I'd marked poems within, probably sometime in the 1980s after post-its were invented, I was suddenly ready to pay attention all over again. The paperback cover was separating from the beloved pages and as I read them again I did a little repair before sending the book off into the bookcrossing poetry stream. I was only able to do this after I'd found there were newer editions available. Well here is the newer, 2000 edition that I ordered to replace my dear book. When I found it was only a mass market, I searched for a first edition and found one. Yesterday the 41 year old hardback arrived here where I'm sure I will return to it again and again. I've decided to pass this little mass market along to someone in bookcrossing who will probably read it. It's an excellent anthology. I remember reading many of the poems here with a resounding thrill back when the book was new to me.
Looking at the book brings me back in touch with my past in so many ways. It's an experience akin to the poem by Richard Wilbur included here:
The Beautiful Changes
One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides
The Queen Anne's Lace lying like lilies
On water; it glides
So from the walker, it turns
Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of
you
Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes.
The beautiful changes as a forest is changed
By a chameleon's tuning his skin to it;
As a mantis, arranged
On a green leaf, grows
Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves
Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.
Your hands hold roses always in a way that
says
They are not only yours; the beautiful changes
In such kind ways,
Wishing ever to sunder
Things and things' selves for a second finding,
to lose
For a moment all that it touches back to
wonder.
Back when this book was just published, 1940 was only 39 years away. Generations have come and gone. Still, the poems within are fresh.
CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:
A wonderful discovery from my past, stowing away with another book.
A wonderful discovery from my past, stowing away with another book.
These couldn't have come at a better time, cordelia-anne. Thank you so much!
