Poet's Choice

by Paul Engle (editor), Joseph Langland (editor)

Few people work harder, and for less reward, than poets, especially American poets. In a country where only half the people read even one book of any kind a year, the poet is virtually ignored; his books sell badly and usually at a loss to the publisher; his readers number not many more than the sum total of his fellow poets and their students. There are some exceptions, but for every Robert Frost there are dozens of greatly talented and even important poets whose names are virtually unknown to educated people. It may be useless to chide the spirit of the times, but it is worth noting and applauding the fact that poetry refuses to be stilled. What makes Poet's Choice a collection of genuine and unusual interest is the diversity of voices that are heard and the variety of reasons given by the poets for their stubborn unwillingness to keep quiet.

Genres: Poetry

303 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1962

About the author

Engle was a noted American poet, editor, teacher, literary critic, novelist, and playwright. He is perhaps best remembered as the long-time director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. During his tenure (1941–1965), he was responsible for luring some of the finest writers of the day to Iowa City. Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Kurt Vonnegut and other prominent authors served as faculty under Engle. Additionally, Engle increased enrollment and oversaw numerous students of future fame and influence, including Flannery O'Connor, Raymond Carver and Robert Bly.
Born Paul Hamilton Engle, he attended Coe College, The University of Iowa, Columbia University, and Oxford University (where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar). Engle's first poetry collection "Worn Earth" won the Yale Series of Younger Poets and his second, "American Song" (1934), was given a rave front-page review in the New York Times Book Review.

Reviews

[Mir · Rating 5 out of 5]

I did not love every poem in this collection; in fact, there were quite a few that I found too pretentious, too opaque, or too boring. But there were also some amazing works, and the volume introduced me to several new poets, as well as reminding me of some I had forgotten about. I also enjoyed reading each poet's comments on why he (and it is almost always he) had chosen that particular piece for inclusion. Like the poems themselves, some of the poets were pretentious, obscure, or self-indulgent, but many were insightful, clever, or humorous.

My favorite new discoveries were Frost's "Choose Something Like a Star" -- a perfect choice to open the collection -- MacLeish's "Words in Time," Robert Francis' "Hallelujah," Philip Levine's "for Fran," and Cunningham's "Epitaph," which I include here as he has others with similar titles (most famously the very brief Naked I came, naked I leave the scene,/And naked was my pastime in between.)

When I shall be without regret
And shall mortality forget,
When I shall die who lived for this,
I shall not miss the things I miss.
And you who notice where I lie
Ask not my name. It is not I.

[Nancy Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Only one or two of these poems spoke to me, but it's clear that all of the poets included in the volume are well in control of their craft. I enjoyed reading the comments from each poet as to why they chose to submit their particular poem (Poet's Choice) to the collection. The two most common reasons were that the poem had been rejected for publication elsewhere, and that this poem was one of the few that just came to them without effort.

[Kelly Dean Jolley · Rating 5 out of 5]

As poetry collections go, and most of them, for me, can *go*, this is a keeper. The eds chose a variety of poets and asked each to choose one poem for the volume--and to explain or comment on the choice. The individual poems are terrific, by and large, and the explanations/commentary provide a useful, often enlightening perspective on the poem and on the poet.

[K · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book doesn't wear well at all. It was first compiled in the early '60s (published in 1962), and I'm sure it was a good idea at the time. But it's pretentious and jumbled and lacks any depth. Plus it suffers from all the blind spots of intellectuals (and all American culture) at the time -- sexism, racism, homophobia, blind trust in Christianity, etc. It's a book worth looking at for historical perspective, but not for the enjoyment of poetry.

Famous American poets were asked for their favorite of their poems and a short comment on why they chose that poem and/or what the poem means. Based on the essays, it seems many of them contributed reluctantly, as there's a plethora of "this isn't my best poem" or "this poem wrote itself" or "I don't have a favorite poem" comments. Not especially insightful.

The poems themselves are dreamy and often literary, just the sort of thing that turns off all but the most advanced readers. And this is a problem the two editors allude to in their brief introductions: nobody reads poetry except other poets. At least the problem was recognized at the time, and maybe more recent generations of poets have figured out how to make poems that are more accessible and timely so that a slightly wider audience will experience them. (I realize there's a justification for difficult poems as well, but I'm just saying that they have an extremely limited audience.)

There are a few lines and a few ideas that I thought were interesting and clever. Many of them referenced WWII or warfare in general, which was obviously on people's minds throughout the 1940s and 1950s. But there wasn't any immediacy to those poems, not really even any outrage. Weird, and it matched the overall flat tone of the book. Maybe America was worn out at the time, despite us thinking of the 1950s as this great period of economic growth and stability. I couldn't find any poems that I felt I wanted to read again, a shocking statement about a group of writers of this caliber.

A collection of great living poets today would have very different demographics and would have poems of much greater anger and urgency and sexuality. I'm not sure it would hang together any better, but it would at least be a cultural touchstone, much like this book tells you what the post-WWI and, especially, post-WWII American intellectual was doing.

[Cheryl]

Took me forever to get through as I kept trying. But I need ordinary-reader's choice, I guess.

Apparently the editors requested either favorite, most representative, or by any criteri0n chosen by the poet, because most notes of explanation seem to refer to one of the first questions, even if they use another criterion.

I didn't find most explanations helpful or interesting. Well, except, if the explanation went over my head, then I wouldn't make a special effort on the poem. I did like W.S. Merwin's "If I had to use one as an amulet I hope this one would serve." I like the words and some of the phrases of his poem "In the Night Fields" but I don't understand it at all.

Howard Moss's "Going to Sleep in the Country" is pretty good. I see from his explanation that really only one line gave him trouble... I read it omitting (not changing, just excising) that line, and cleaning up the rest to complement, and I like it a lot better. It has a lovely rhythm and imagery, and I'm sure there's literary stuff going on that's beyond me but I don't care. Particularly I like "The birds of the day disappear, As if the darkness were final. The harder it is to see, The louder the waterfall."

William H. Matchett's "Water Ouzel" is terrific fun to read aloud, a joy, even though it's not a silly poem. I will look for more by him... but his explanation does reveal that he considers this fairly light, or "soft" and that he usually pushes himself to write more intensely.

Finally 'finished' March 2022

[James S. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although there were four or five poems that I enjoyed, I can't imagine that most of the poems here would give readerly pleasure to anyone other than their authors, since for the most part they are totally incomprehensible. Here are some samples (most of the poems are like this):

Movement of stone within a woman's heart
abrupt & dominant. They gesture how
fings really are. Rarely a child sings now

My harpsichord weird as a koto drum
adagio for twilight, for the storm-worn dove
no more de-iced, and the spidery business of love.

Or like this:

Within
The crook of tutelary arm that cradled
The Corrib's urn, the subcutaneous waters
In their still blue as bright as blood shone out,
By healed-up puckers where his pre-divinity
Was scored and trenched. To him suppose a Daphne
Pursued by art Palladian, picturesque,
Or else Hispanic through the Galway Lynches,
Merchant adventurers turning Medici,
Virtu in freight.

In their introduction, the editors lament the decline of poetry in American public life (and this was in 1962, back when people still read anything!), but then they champion things like this. Homer, Shakespeare, Dante, Blake, Keats, Dickinson - these authors are accessible to most readers even today, and are they lesser for it? Many of the authors collected in this volume, I suspect, would say yes. Poetry is only a dead art because the poets killed it.

[Bea Krauss · Rating 3 out of 5]

What an interesting concept: ask living poets what their favorite self-authored poem is, and why they chose it. But have some care about which poets you choose; nowhere in the two introductions is the choice of poets explained. Yet, there are some treasures, both in poems and in reflections. I dog-eared a near dozen poems....and learned some came like a lightning bolt and others were labored over during years or hundreds of revisions. Some were very personal--that is why they were important to the author, and some were about war, poverty, social issues. But here you are....rediscover some poets, find new ones, wonder why one favorite leaves you cold and another unfreezes you.

[Kevin Debord · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really great collection of popular and obscure poets from the 60's. For reference, each poem is chosen by a different author, with said poem being their favorite work of theirs.

Some of the poems are hit or miss for me, but my favorite part of this book are the explanations of why the author of the poem chose it. Some are brief and don't explain much, while others write for multiple pages about their lives and how the poem came to be.

Great book.

[Josie · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I may not have enjoyed every poem included in the collection, it was very intriguing to get a glimpse into the poets' perspectives on their own work, and read about why they chose it as their favorite and what it may mean to them. A great collection that has inspired me to look deeper into the works of some of the poets included in it.

[Sasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume introduced me to some gorgeous poems, including "For Anne" by Leonard Cohen and "The Ballade of Lost Objects" by Phyllis McGinley which is one of the most underrated poems about kids growing up I've ever encountered. Plus, it is so neat to see the authors' signatures.

[E.J. Cullen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anne Sexton puts them all to shame. By miles.

[Robin Helweg-Larsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book contains a personal favourite poem by each of over 100 poets - American, British, Canadian, Irish, Jamaican - born from 1874 (Robert Frost) to 1934 (Leonard Cohen). And after each poem, a statement by the poet about why they chose it - ranging from 3 lines (William Carlos Williams, Leonard Cohen) to 3 almost pages (John Ciardi, John Wain).

Few of the poems are ones that I think will last. (My own favourite is Phyllis McGinley's "Ballade of Lost Objects" - humourous, wistful, and technically superb.) The real enjoyment is getting a peak inside the mind of so many familiar names, with their mentions of why they chose this particular piece, how or why they wrote it, and sometimes philosophic digressions:

Denise Levertov: "Poets have a genius for lying and an adoration for the truth, and it may be that the driving impulse of every poet is to maintain the dynamic interplay of these two passions."

Not always easily readable, but easily rereadable!

[Tim Nason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in 1962, the book includes well-known but possibly now less-read poets from publications of the 1940s to 1961. Poems appear in chronological order based on the birthdate of the poet, beginning with Robert Frost (1874) and concluding with Leonard Cohen (1934). Poets from America, England and Canada are predominant, plus one poet each from Ireland, Scotland and Jamaica.

The poets themselves chose the poems in this anthology, with each poet also contributing a brief commentary. Poems were sometimes selected because they were experimental or otherwise unique, not because they are favorites or representative of a larger body of writing. The commentary is sometimes erudite and analytical, and sometimes a bit snarky, but always provides some perspective on the poem or insight on the poet.

Two short introductions open the book. Very brief biographies of the poets appear at the end.

[Katy Lohman · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars = I like this book.

This is an interesting collection of modern/postmodern poems, some beautiful, some funny, some outright confusing. Right now, my favorite poem is EJ Pratt's "Silences".

"There is no silence upon the earth or under the earth like the silence under the sea." EJ Pratt

And the one that confuses me most is Oscar Williams' image-rich poem Dwarves of Disintegration. I like it for all the images, but it almost reads like a '60's psychedelic movie; funny as he wrote it in 1947.

"Holding in his grip the balloons of innumerable windows/And chased by the flowing malevolent army of the ceilings?"