Yeah, Nemo, do you know anybody who is a Reverdy fan? :)

Janice,

Good call on A Book Luminous Things. I found my way to the T'ang Dynasty in that book, and it introduced me to a lot of poets I would not likely had paid attention to (Raymond Carver, Anna Swir, and Szymborska, to name a few). Plus, Milosz's commentary is clear, illuminating, and utterly unpretentious. The book is about as humane a teaching document as you can find.

David R.

(By the way -- I am looking forward to adding the Latina Women anthology to my collection of Latino anthologies. If I had more than five votes, I might have included one of those.)

Thanks again, Tony, for hosting this party. I look forward to when you collate a single list. Thanks, Nigel, for the Summoned By Bells recommendation. It was a real treat. What solid, inventive, unpretentious blank verse, and understatement of the main statement: that wisdom wasn't cramming for exams, "But humble love for what we sought and knew." And thanks, Janice, for calling my attention to Luminous Things, which I have neglected on the shelf for years. Happy Thanksgiving, all!

78 William Soutar - Poems in Scots
 

Like many others, I suspect, I have been agonising on my last choice - torn several ways but especially between, on the one hand, the concentration and eloquence in miniature of this masterpiece and, on the other, one of the great poetic pieces of dramatic writing of the last hundred years, Dylan Thomas's magical Under Milk Wood. In the end, however, I knew where I had to stand for Thomas will have many admirers - surely someone will propose his play - but few will know Soutar, especially at his tight, yet moving, best.

In 1935, amidst the minor storms of the 'Scottish literary renaissance' and the complacency of a government so coldly remote from ordinary lives, especially in the carefully labelled "Distressed Areas", the young but bed-ridden Soutar fashioned a poetry that ranged from sweet natural observation to the ambitions of his people. I've read from this to students and children, to partners and politicos, in times of happiness and of the greatest distress, and this gem of a collection always really speaks. Try the beautifully observed and evoked minor moments of the natural world in such poems as "The Gowk" (cuckoo), "At Tibbermuir" or "Evening Star"; then there are the deeply triste resonances of "Fear", "The Tryst" and right at the end of this wonderfully crafted collection "Song"; the reflective notes of "The Dark Lowe" and, no satelite images of earth available or even imagined, the remarkable "Indifference". Yet there was also space in these 46 pages for the more contentious and lengthy (15 pages) of, "The Auld Tree", a tribute to MacDiarmid and a contribution to the literay conflicts of the day.

In my past posts, I have refrained, as most have, from lengthy quotation but, since this volume is indeed hard to find (though many of its works are reprinted in the Canongate Selected edition) and the one copy that I've found on the net is £25 from a seller on Abe Books, this time I'm going to give two works for members to savour.

First, as a sample of his concentrated lyricism,

"Fear"

Aince in the mornin' early,
The mornin' o' the year,
I dug deep doun intill the yird
And happit a' my fear.

I happit owre my fractious fear
And cried: "Lie laich ye fule:"
But whan aince mair I gaed that gate
I heard the leaves o' dule.

I heard the chunnerin' leaves o' dule
And wudna bide to hear:
But when aince mair I gaed that gate
I saw the frucht o' fear.

I saw the heavy frucht o' fear
Sae mindfu' o' my youth:
And raxin' up a desolate hand
I gather'd in my ruth.

And lastly, a piece of what I'd call magical nationalism which is lit with the flair of legend; it is called

"Birthday"

There were three men o' Scotland
Wha rade intill the nicht
Wi' nae mune lifted owre their crouns
Nor onie stern for licht:

Nane but the herryin' houlet,
The broun mouse, and the taed,
Kent whan their horses clapper'd by
And whatna road they rade.

Nae man spak tae his brither,
Nor ruggit at the rein;
But drave straucht on owre burn and brae
Or half the nicht was gaen.

Nae man spak tae his brither,
Nor lat his hand draw in;
But drave straucht on owre ford and fell
Or nicht was nearly dune.

There came a flaucht o' levin
That brocht nae thunner ca'
But left ahint a lanely lowe
That wudna gang awa.

And richt afore the horsemen,
Whaur grumly nicht had been,
Stude a' the Grampian Mountains
Wi' the dark howes atween.

Up craigie cleuch and corrie
They rade wi' stany soun',
And saftly thru the lichted mirk
The switherin' snaw cam doun.

They gaed by birk and rowan,
They gaed by pine and fir;
Aye on they gaed or nocht but snaw
And the roch whin was there.

Nae man brac'd back the bridle
Yet ilka fute stood still
As thru the flichterin' floichan-drift
A beast cam doun the hill.

It steppit like a stallion,
Wha's heid haud's up a horn,
And weel the men o' Scotland kent
It was the unicorn.

It steppit like a stallion,
Snaw-white and siller-bricht,
And on its back there was a bairn
Wha' low'd in his ain licht.

And baith gaed by richt glegly
As day was at the daw;
And glisterin' owre hicht and howe
They saftly smool'd awa.

Nae man but socht his brither
And look't him in the e'en,
And sware that he wud gang a' gates
To cry what he had seen:

There were three men o' Scotland
A' frazit and forforn;
But on the Grampian Mountains
They saw the unicorn.

And for any who find their way to the original edition (Moray Press, 1935) there is an excellent glossary as well.

Like Bill, I look forward to final collated list - and congratulations again to Tony for his brilliant concept in the first place.

Best to all - and especially for Thanksgiving,
Nigel

I thought the attached list might be of some interest - it was sent by the Italian offshoot of the secondhand book site Abebooks, and is supposed to be an attempt at listing the best 100 books ever. Not a very good one, obviously, with a ridiculous bias towards the modern and several risible choices that most of us would not put in the best 100 books of their year, but it's depressing to see that not one (unless I missed it) book of 20th century poetry was included by a panel (presumably - it has the look of something compiled with increasing alcohol levels by a group of office employees down the pub) that would appear to have contained at least one educated suggester.
(Titles in Italian of course, but they are easy enough to guess)

100 Best Books of all time, according to Abebooks (Italia)

1984, George Orwell
Cent'anni di solitudine, Gabriel García Márquez
Delitto e castigo, Fedor Dostoevskij
L'Odissea, Omero
A sangue freddo, Truman Capote
Guerra e pace, Lev Tolstoj
Il ritratto di Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
Don Chisciotte, Miguel de Cervantes
Grandi speranze, Charles Dickens
Il Rosso e il Nero, Stendahl
La Divina Commedia, Dante Alighieri
Orgoglio e pregiudizio, Jane Austen
Faust, Johann Wolfgang Goethe
Pinocchio, Carlo Collodi
Il Conte di Montecristo, Alexandre Dumas
L'insostenibile leggerezza dell'essere, Milan Kundera
Furore, John Steinbeck
Demian, Herman Hesse
Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
Il tamburo di latta, Günter Grass
Il piccolo principe, Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Cime tempestose, Emily Brontë
Ulisse, James Joyce
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
L'importanza di chiamarsi Ernesto, Oscar Wilde
Pippi Calzelunghe, Astrid Lindgren
Amleto, William Shakespeare
I racconti di Canterbury, Geoffrey Chaucer
Tropico del cancro, Henry Miller
L'Iliade, Omero
Dracula, Bram Stoker
Il Decamerone, Giovanni Bocaccio
Il grande Gatsby, Scott Fitzgerald
Il giovane Holden, J.D. Salinger
Il giorno dello sciacallo, Frederick Forsyth
I miserabili, Victor Hugo
La signora Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
L'origine della specie, Charles Darwin
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
Moby Dick, Herman Melville
Cecità, José Saramago
Arancia meccanica, Anthony Burgess
Sulla strada, Jack Kerouac
Lo straniero, Albert Camus
La metamorfosi, Franz Kafka
Le cronache del ghiaccio e del fuoco, G. R. Martin
Alla ricerca del tempo perduto, Marcel Proust
L'idiota, Fëdor Dostoevskij
Il gattopardo, Tomasi di Lampedusa
Il signore degli anelli, J. R. R. Tolkien
L'ombra del vento, Carlos Ruiz Zafón
I viaggi di Gulliver, Jonathan Swift
Il tunnel, Ernesto Sabato
Così parlò Zaratustra, Friedrich Nietzsche
La Bibbia
Pedro Paramo, Juan Rulfo
Le mille e una notte
L'Eneide, Virgilio
Critica della ragion pratica, Immanuel Kant
Il profumo, Patrick Süskind
La forma dell'acqua, Andrea Camilleri
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
Monte cinque, Paulo Coelho
Thérèse Raquin, Èmile Zola
Il nome della rosa, Umberto Eco
L'isola del tesoro, Robert Louis Stevenson
Il deserto dei tartari, Dino Buzzati
Viaggio al centro della terra, Jules Verne
Il cacciatore di aquiloni, Khaled Hosseini
Le avventure di Huckelberry Finn, Mark Twain
La casa degli spiriti, Isabel Allende
Le anime morte, Nikolai Gogol
Casa di bambola, Henrik Ibsen
Uno studio in rosso Arthur Conan-Doyle
Il signore delle mosche, William Golding
Alice nel Paese delle Meraviglie, Lewis Carroll
Don Casmurro, Machado de Assis
Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
Il vecchio e il mare, Ernest Hemingway
Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling
Guglielmo Tell, Friedrich Schiller
Il Codice Da Vinci, Dan Brown
Il fu Mattia Pascal, Luigi Pirandello
I promessi sposi, Alessandro Manzoni
La coscienza di Zeno, Italo Svevo
Racconti dell'impossibile, Edgar Allan Poe
Il secondo sesso, Simone De Beauvoir
L'Aleph, Jorge Luis Borges
Le regole della casa del sidro, John Irving
Cappuccetto Rosso, fratelli Grimm
Via col vento, Margaret Mitchell
Storie, Erodoto
I fiori del male, Charles Baudelaire
Il buio oltre la siepe, Harper Lee
Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo, Galileo Galilei
Foglie d'erba, Walt Whitman
Momo, Michael Ende
Edipo a Colono, Sofocle
I pilastri della terra, Ken Follett
I tre moschettieri, Alexandre Dumas

79. The Collected Poems of Weldon Kees (1960)
 

I'm taking a break from exam preparations to use my second nomination before this list reaches 100. The Collected Poems of Weldon Kees is one of the better poetry books I've had the pleasure of reading, or more correctly devour, consume, gobble and wolf with drooling eyes. I don't think we need any elaborate explanation for this inclusion. It's the only Kees volume worth having: one shouldn't miss a single one of his poems.


EDIT: Thank you, Duncan! Those poems are delightful. I wish not for grass, but a fast countdown of days untill I can enjoy poetry again. That book is first on my list.

80. Archaic Smile by A. E. Stallings
 

It is her first book, but it is the only book of poetry that ever inspired me to write a fan letter without having met the author first. I think her subsequent books have lived up to the promise of this one and that she will be recognized as one of the consistently great poets of the late 20th-early 21st century. It is always hard to have any perspective on the writers of one's own time, so I started by naming poets who are dead or from a generation before mine, in which case they have developed a reputation that already stands on its own. But I am betting on Alicia to be one of my contemporaries whom later writers will look back on with admiration.

I want to add that I read Wislawa Szymborska's View with a Grain of Sand because of its inclusion on this list, and I am very glad I did. Though I do not know Polish, I am very impressed with Clare Cavanagh's translation as a work of poetry in English. I also read George Starbuck's Desperate Measures because of the recommendation here. I am very impressed with his wit and command of technique, but the content did not leave as deep an impression on me.

Susan

Susan - Thank you for this one, (Stallings' "Archaic Smile") quite unknown to me and, on a first sample, also quite marvellous.

Susan,

I am so glad (but not surprised) that you “discovered” Szymborska, and gratified that you voiced your appreciation!

I think you are right on Stallings: IMO, she has rare grace and polish to her writing, and striking deftness -- oh, magic -- with metaphor. As with Szymborska, I felt something of Melville’s “shock of recognition” when I first read Archaic Smile.

Like others, I am sifting through a pile of books from this thread, happily, and humming…

81. North of Boston
 

There hasn’t been any activity on this thread for a few days, and it looks like it’s finally winding down after quite a run! Since we’re still about 20 short of Tony’s stated goal of 100 books, I’ll use another of my allotted picks, though I hadn’t planned to.

It seems to me that two books not yet listed, though they’ve both been alluded to in the thread, cast a longer shadow over 20th-century poetry in English than any others—North of Boston and The Wasteland. (The Wasteland, though just a single poem, was brought out as a stand-alone book after its initial magazine publication.) So much of what has been written afterwards has been an attempt to emulate, or a violent reaction against, one or the other of these two disparate masterpieces that it seems impossible to ignore them. And while my own favorite individual books of Frost and Eliot are probably New Hampshire and Four Quartets, these two still amaze me as well. (I'll pick the Frost here, and leave Eliot to someone else.)

North of Boston contains the best blank verse from the first 40 years of Frost’s life. Most of his best lyric verse to that point (other than a couple that he included in North of Boston) appeared separately a year earlier in his first published book, the more uneven A Boy’s Will. Some of the best poems from North of Boston have been included in the anthologies for decades, such as “Mending Wall,” “The Death of the Hired Man,” “Home Burial,” and “After Apple Picking.” But the book also has various other poems that are well worth a second look, including “The Black Cottage” (one of my personal Frost favorites), “A Servant to Servants,” “The Wood Pile,” and the lovely “Good Hours,” which concludes the book.

I don’t have any qualms about North of Boston being the third Frost title on this list. (Others have already suggested Mountain Interval and New Hampshire, both excellent choices.) In fact, if I could pick only one book of 20th Century poetry that has more poems I’ve enjoyed and come back to over and over again, it would be one version or another of Frost’s complete or collected poems, since even Frost’s last volumes, though more uneven, all have poems I wouldn’t want to do without. But I gather the spirit of this list is to favor single volumes that hang best together as a book. North of Boston does that and, along with its companion volume A Boy’s Will, may have been more influential than any others.