20th-Century Poetry and Poetics provides in-depth selections from the work of each poet and, where possible, places the poems in the significant context of the poets' own views on poetics. In addition there are useful biographies and comments on the poets in the form of headnotes that appear at the beginning of each poet's work. The final section includes an extensive poetics section, where 30 poets talk, in various forms, about writing and reading poetry.

* denotes new selection Preface POETRY William Butler Yeats When You Are Old Who Goes with Fergus? The Folly of Being Comforted The Wild Swans at Coole The Fisherman Easter 1916 The Second Coming A Prayer for my Daughter Sailing to Byzantium Leda and the Swan Among School Children For Anne Gregory Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop Long-Legged Fly The Circus Animals' Desertion Politics Ezra Pound Portrait d'une Femme The Garden Commission Dance Figure In a Station of the Metro Alba L'Art, 1910 The Tea Shop The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter from Hugh Selwyn Mauberley: E.P. Ode pour l'election de son sepulchre Mr Nixon Canto I Canto XIII William Carlos Williams Aux Imagistes Danse Russe This is Just to Say To Waken an Old Lady Tract Spring and All The Red Wheelbarrow Nantucket The Yachts The Dance The Rewaking To a Dog Injured in the Street Robert Frost Mending Wall After Apple-Picking Birches Fire and Ice Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening Acquainted with the Night Departmental Desert Places Neither Out Far Nor In Deep Design Provide, Provide One Step Backward Taken Directive *D.H. Lawrence *Love on the Farm *Piano *Gloire de Dijon *Song of A Man Who Has Come Through *Letter from Town: The Almond Tree *Snake *Hummingbird *The Elephant Is Slow to Mate *Andraitz--Pomegranate Flowers *The Argonauts *Whales Weep Not *Bavarian Gentians *The Ship of Death *H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) *Sea Rose *Garden *Pear Tree *Oread *Fragment 113 *Helen *Let Zeus Record *from Sigil XV *from The Walls Do Not Fall 4 *from Tribute to the Angels 29 *from Flowering of the Rod 10 T.S. Eliot The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Preludes The Hollow Men Journey of the Magi Burnt Norton Wilfred Owen Strange Meeting Greater Love Arms and the Boy Anthem for Doomed Youth Dulce Et Decorum Est *Marianne Moore *Critics and Connoisseurs *You Say You Said *Poetry *The Steeple Jack *Half Deity *The Pangolin *What Are Years *In Distrust of Merits *Nevertheless *The Mind Is an Enchanting Thing *The Sycamore E.E. Cummings Chansons Innocentes my sweet old etcetera i sing of Olaf somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond anyone lived in a pretty how town my father moved through dooms of love love is more thicker than forget dying is fine)but Death i thank God for most this amazing Wallace Stevens The Emperor of Ice Cream Sunday Morning The Idea of Order at Key West The Man on the Dump The Motive for Metaphor Credences of Summer The Poem that Took the Place of a Mountain W.H. Auden As I Walked Out One Evening Lullaby Musee des Beaux Arts In Memory of W.B. Yeats The Unknown Citizen The Shield of Achilles Dylan Thomas The force that through the green fuse drives the flower If I were tickled by the rub of love And death shall have no dominion A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London Do not go gentle into that good night In my craft or sullen art Fern Hill A.M. Klein Heirloom Autobiographical Political Meeting Lone Bather Portrait of the Poet as Landscape Theodore Roethke Prayer Big Wind Dolor Praise to the End! The Waking I Knew a Woman The Far Field In a Dark Time Earle Birney Vancouver Lights Anglosaxon Street From the Hazel Bough David Bushed A Walk in Kyoto The Bear on the Delhi Road Haiku for a Young Waitress Al Purdy The Cariboo Horses *Wilderness Gothic *At the Quinte Hotel Eskimo Graveyard Arctic Rhododendrons Lament for the Dorsets Poem *Papyrus *Naked with Summer in Your Mouth Robert Lowell The Holy Innocents Christmas in Black Rock After the Surprising Conversions The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket Memories of West Street and Lepke Skunk Hour For the Union Dead Mr Edwards and the Spider Philip Larkin Lines on a Young Lady's Photograph Album Wants Church Going Toads Poetry of Departures If, My Darling Faith Healing Irbing Layton The Birth of Tragedy Look, the Lambs Are All Around Us! The Cold Green Element The Bull Calf Sacrament by the Water Whatever Else Poetry Is Freedom Berry Picking Keine Lazarovitch 1870-1959 A Tall Man Executes a Jig Elizabeth Bishop The Map The Imaginary Iceberg At the Fishhouses Cape Breton Arrival at Santos Questions of Travel Squatter's Children 12 O'Clock News Santarem P.K. Page Young Girls T-Bar The Stenographers The Landlady Stories of Snow Photos of a Salt Mine The Permanent Tourists The Glass Air Deaf Mute in the Pear Tree *Planet Earth Denise Levertov A Map of the Western Part of the County of Essex in England Come into Animal Presence The Ache of Marriage Hypocrite Women Second Didactic Poem An Interim He-Who-Came-Forth 'The Poem Rising By Its Own Weight' She and the Muse Brother Ivy Charles Olson The Kingfishers As the Dead Prey upon Us Maximus, to Himself John Berryman The Dispossessed A Professor's Song from 77 Dream Songs Adrienne Rich At a Bach Concert Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law The Burning of Paper Instead of Children Diving into the Wreck The Phenomenology of Anger Frame North American Time Robert Creeley Je vois dans le hasard tous les biens que j'espere After Lorca The Awakening The Rain The Pool 'I Keep to myself such measures' For My Mother: Genevieve Jules Creeley Self Portrait Bresson's Movies Echoes Epic Lawrence Ferlinghetti In Goya's greatest scenes we seem to see Constantly risking absurdity and death Junkman's Obbligato Modern Poetry is Prose (But It Is Saying Plenty) *History of the Airplane Allen Ginsberg Howl (I & II) A Supermarket in California America Phyllis Webb A Tall Tale Love Story To Friends Who Have Also Considered Suicide Poetcis Against the Angel of Death Occasions of Desire For Fyodor Treblinka Gas Chamber Prison Report from Water and Light: Ghazals and Anti Ghazals John Ashbery The Orioles Our Youth Forties Flick A Man of Words And Ut Pictura Poesis Is Her Name The Absence of a Noble Presence On the Empress's Mind The Old Complex Gary Snyder Piute Creek Riprap Journeys (section six) Song of the Taste Kai, Today Front Lines *Falling from a Height, Holding Hands Ted Hughes The Though-Fox Invitation to the Dance Six Young Men Hawk Roosting from Crow A Childish Prank Crow's First Lesson A Disaster Dehorning *Perfect Light *The Table Margaret Avison *Snow The World Still Needs To Professor X, Year Y The Swimmer's Moment Voluptuaries and Others Pace Black-White Under Green: May 18, 1965 July Man In a Season of Unemployment *Rising Dust Sylvia Plath Two Views of a Cadaver Room The Colossus Black Rook in Rainy Weather Blue Moles The Disquieting Muses Lady Lazarus Tulips Ariel Daddy Two Campers in Cloud Country Leonard Cohen Elegy Story You have the lovers As the mist leaves no scar Now of Sleeping The Genius Style The Music Crept by Us Disguises How to Speak Poetry Gwendolyn MacEwen Poems in Braille Manzini: Escape Artist Poem Improvised Around a First Line The Red Bird You Wait For The Discovery Dark Pines Under Water Memoirs of a Mad Cook The Child Dancing from The T.E. Lawrence Poems Apologies Nitroglycerine Tulips Deraa Ghazala's Foal Tall Tales Notes from the Dead Land The Transparent Womb The Loneliness of the Long Distance Poet You Can Study It If You Want Eavan Boland Ode to Suburbia Anorexic Mastectomy Mise Eire The Black Lace Fan My Mother Gave Me Lava Cameo Time and Violence *Quarantine Robert Bly Driving Toward the Lac Qui Parle River Counting Small-Boned Bodies Driving Through Minnesota During the Hanoi Bombings The Dead Seal Finding the Father Fifty Males Sitting Together Snowbanks North of the House In Rainy September Winter Poem What We Provide The Horse of Desire The Mushroom Derek Walcott *Parang A Far Cry from Africa Orient and Immortal Wheat Islands The Castaway A Map of Europe Crusoe's Island North and South Early Pompeian XV Philip Levine For Fran Coming Home, Detroit, 1968 Late Moon Starlight Lost and Found Let Me Begin Again The Fox The Voice A Theory of Prosody What Work Is The Simple Truth *The Mercy Margaret Atwood It Is Dangerous to Read Newspapers Progressive Insanities of a Pioneer Backdrop Addresses Cowboy Death of a Young Son by Drowning You Take My Hand Marrying the Hangman Notes Towards a Poem That Can Never Be Written Morning in the Burned House *Sor Juana Works in the Garden Galway Kinnell First Song The Bear Under the Maud Moon After Making Love We Hear Footsteps *That Silent Evening *The Cellist Patrick Lane Ten Miles in from Horsefly Elephants Passing Into Storm Mountain Oysters Stigmata Albino Pheasants There is a Time *Ghazal Fathers and Sons *The Ward Cat *The Garden Temple Seamus Heaney Digging Death of a Naturalist Mid-Term Break Personal Helicon Requiem for the Croppies Bogland Summer Home Bog Queen From the Frontier of Writing *Mint Michael Ondaatje Elizabeth from Billy the Kid Letters & Other Worlds White Dwarfs Bearhug Red Accordion - an immigrant song A Gentleman Compares his Virtue to a Jade *Last Ink BP Nichol Blues from 'The Captain Poetry Poems' What is Can Lit Allegory #6 Landscape:I The Mouth continental trance Daphne Marlatt Alcazar, Cecil, Belmont, New Fountain, names Imagine: a town A by-channel; a small backwater Listen healing The difference three makes: a narrative Seeing it go up in smoke *(is love enough?) Louise Gluck For My Mother Epithalamium Dedication to Hunger Mock Orange Legend Horse Brown Circle Trillium End of Winter Retreating Light *Unwritten Law *Moonbeam *Michael Longley *Galapagos *Wounds *Irish Poetry *Carrigskeewaun *Love Poem *Wreaths *The Linen Industry *Detour *Laertes *The Ice-Cream Man *Ceasefire Gary Geddes Sandra Lee Scheuer Jimmy's Place Human Rights Commission from Hong Kong *What Does A House Want? *Homework *Reading Akio Chida's Translations Robert Hass Song Meditation at Lagunitas A Story About the Body Human Wishes Natural Theology My Mother's Nipples Don McKay The Great Blue Heron Fridge Nocturne Adagio for a Fallen Sparrow Esthetique du Chien The Poem, to be Slow as Evening Listen at the Edge Waking at the Mouth of the Willow River *Big Alberta Clouds *Stray *Song for the Song of the Wood Thrush *Nocturnal Migrants *Camber *Quick Carol Ann Duffy Standing Female Nude War Photographer A Healthy Meal Model Village Psychopath Warming Her Pearls Prayer *History *The Light Gatherer Robert Kroetsch Seed Catalogue *Billy Collins *Advice to Writers *Questions about Angels *The Death of Allegory *First Reader *Osso Buco *Dancing Toward Bethlehem *Pinup *Man in Space *Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes *The Night House *Sonnet *The Iron Bridge *Ave Atque Vale Lorna Crozier Forms of Innocence The Child Who Walks Backwards from The Sex Lives of Vegetables Onions Peas Fathers, Uncles, Old Friends of the Family Living Day By Day Inventing the Hawk *Packing for the Future: Instructions *What I Gave You, Truly *Sands from the Gobi Desert Roo Borson Abundance Talk Waterfront Flowers A Sad Device The Garden Beauty Intermittent Rain Snowlight on the Northwood Path City Lights Rubber Boots *Dismembered Villanelle *Hello Desire *Seven Variations on the Word Silk *Heather McHugh *In Praise of Pain *Tendencies *Fable *Reservation *Blue Streak *Breath *I Knew I'd Sing *The Oven Loves the TV Set *What He Thought *Fast *Coming *Ghazal of the Better Unbegun *A Dearth in the Dreamboat Department Erin Moure empire, york street Post-Modern Literature Divergences Being Carpenter Tropic Line Toxicity Miss Chatelaine Betty Gorgeous *Ephedra, or 'Smoke of the Villages' *XXI If I could chew the whole earth Sharon Olds Indictment of Senior Officers First Night Station Fishing Off Nova Scotia The Death of Marilyn Monroe Miscarriage The Connoisseuse of Slugs Summer Solstice, New York City Still Life The Green Shirt The Glass The Lifting The Swimmer I Wanted to Be There When My Father Died *First Thanksgiving *First Weeks Sharon Thesen Discourse The Landlord's Tiger Lilies Women Like Me Elegy, the Fertility Specialist September, Turning, the Long Road Down to Love Animals *Afternoon with Liver *Hey, I Think That's Me *Oh Hello, Count, How Are You, Do Come In *Nameless Dread *Summer Twilight Bronwen Wallace The Woman In This Poem All That Uneasy Spring A Simple Poem for Virginia Woolf Common Magic Thinking With the Heart Particulars Rita Dove Nigger Song: An Odyssey The Secret Garden The House Slave Adolescence II Boccaccio: The Plague Years from Thomas and Beulah The Event Variation on Pain The Stroke Thomas at the Wheel Taking in Wash Daystar The Great Palaces of Versailles Pastoral After Reading Mickey in the Night Kitchen for the Third Time Before Bed *Anne Carson *The Glass Essay Tim Lilburn Names of God Pumpkins Touching An Elephant In A Dark Room In the Hills, Watching Learning a Deeper Courtesy of the Eye Discipline of Secrecy How To Be Here? *Quiet, Quiet *Boom Boom Boom *Jan Zwicky *Your Body *Open Strings *Bill Evans: 'Here's That Rainy Day' *The Geology of Norway *Passing Sangudo *Prairie *Theories of Personal Identity *String Practice *History *Glenn Gould: Bach's Italian Concerto *Carolyn Forche *Early Night *Kalaloch *The Colonel *Expatriate *Elegy *The Garden Shukkei-en *Blue Hour *Prayer *Don Paterson *Prologue *A Private Bottling *Imperial *To the Great Zero *St Brides: Sea-Mail *Waking with Russell *The Thread *The Sea at Brighton *The White Lie POETICS Margaret Atwood Conversations W.H. Auden from The Poet and the City from The Virgin and the Dynamo Robert Bly Looking for Dragon Smoke Evan Boland The Politics of Eroticism Robert Creeley A Sense of Measure Lorna Crozier from 'Who's Listening?' E.E. Cummings Three Statements T.S. Eliot Tradition and the Individual Talent from The Music of Poetry from Hamlet and his Problems Robert Frost The Figure a Poem Makes Allen Ginsberg Notes for Howl and Other Poems Seamus Heaney Feelings into Words Ted Hughes On Poetry Denise Levertov Some Notes on Organic Form (1965) Philip Levine The Poet in New York in Detroit Robert Lowell from An Interview Don McKay Some Remarks on Poetry and Poetic Attention *Quick Daphne Marlatt musing with mothertongue BP Nichol Some thots on THE MARTYROLOGY BOOK VI 'After Reading the Chronology' Narrative in Language: The Long Poem Charles Olson Projective Verse Sylvia Plath An Interview Ezra Pound A Retrospect Al Purdy An Interview Adrienne Rich Excerpts from What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics Theodore Roethke from Some Remarks on Rhythm from Open Letter Gary Snyder Poetry and the Primitive Some Yips & Barks in the Dark Wallace Stevens from Adagia Dylan Thomas Notes on the Art of Poetry Phyllis Webb On the Line Letter from Gary Geddes to Phyllis Webb William Carlos Williams A New Measure On Measure - Statement for Cid Corman William Butler Yeats from Magic from The Symbolism of Poetry from A General Introduction to My Work