[Janice D. Soderling]

I am using my fifth and final choice to continue in the direction of expansion of thought and craft. Though an individual poet can influence a fellow poet to develop the craft it is more imperative (IMO) to have access to many writers especially those outside one's language limits.

I have already submitted an anthology in my agenda of broadening the scope 51. These are not Sweet Girls: Poetry by Latin American Women

Tony has listed 15. Modern European Poetry, edited by Willis Barnstone and though I am sorely tempted to add "A Book of Women Poets from Antiquity to Now" (editors Aliki and Willis Barnstone), because of the special focus on women poets over the borders of time and national borders which might be encouraging to all whose voice is drowning in a flooding of male perspectives (yes, there is often a discernible difference) I have decided to go for broke and suggest as 76. A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry edited by Czeslaw Milosz.

As the editor says in his introduction: I have always felt that a poet participates in the management of the estate of poetry, of that in his own language and also that of world poetry. Thinking about that estate, such as it is at the present moment, I decided I could contribute to its possessions provided, however, that instead of theory, I brought to it something of practice. (...)

My proposition consists in presenting poems, whether contemporary or a thousand years old, that are, with few exceptions, short, clear, readable, and to use a compromised term, realist, that is loyal toward reality and attempting to describe it as concisely as possible. Thus they undermine the widely held opinion that poetry is a misty domain eluding understanding.

If I had to chose only one book of poetry to take with me to solitary confinement on a desert island or elsewhere, knowing I would never be allowed to leave that place or have any communication with anyone outside it, I would chose an anthology, perhaps not this one for I'd want a little mystery as well as realism, but it would certainly be an anthology rather than a single poet. (But the collected works of William Shakespeare would be my choice if the rules included drama.)

Now I have spent the last of my voting capital, every sou, but am the richer for this thread.

Thx again, Tony, for initiating the thread.