Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms: 85 Leading Contemporary Poets Select and Comment on Their Poems

by David Lehman (Editor)

This unique anthology has as its focus the notion of form in contemporary poetry. No subject has attracted more vigorous discussion within the community of poets and critics in the past ten years. If we are to understand what form is and how it shapes poetic expression, we must turn to the poems themselves for clues. And if we are very lucky, we can listen to the voice of the poets who wrote them.
 In Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms, contemporary poets have selected one poem, commenting on the occasion of its creation and on the form the poem eventually took. Originally published in 1987 with a selection of 65 poets, this revised and expanded edition adds selections by twenty additional poets. Other revisions include an enlarged glossary of terms, and more expanded biographies of individual poets. The range of contributors is wide, and includes John Ashbery, John Cage, Rita Dove, Alice Fulton, Marilyn Hacker, Yusef Komunyakaa, James Merrill, Thylias Moss, Robert Pinsky, Charles Simic, and Richard Wilbur. Among the new contributions is Wyn Cooper's poem "Fun," which was the basis for Sheryl Crow's Grammy-award winning song "All I Wanna Do."

Genres: Poetry

228 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

David Lehman is a poet and the series editor for The Best American Poetry series. He teaches at The New School in New York City.

Reviews

[Ambrose Miles · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a hard book for me to rate. I vacillated between four and five stars with every poem and it’s “commentary” I read. 85 of them. There are some great poems here. I guess the hard part was the “commentary”, following each. I don’t want to use the word boring, but perhaps overdone were some of them, which tends to make five stars only four point two.

[Margaret Joyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing book! One has the pleasure of being introduced to a wide range of contemporary American poetry and of being gifted with detailed analysis by each respective poet re his process for each poem. I read first for the pleasure of the diction, then re-read each poem to see where and how the nuts and bolts were holding the thing together, as per the poet's explanation. Very instructive, not crazily academic - a fun read!