The World below the Window: Poems 1937-1997

by William Jay Smith

This selection of William Jay Smith's work of sixty years covers the entire career of one of America's acknowledged poetic masters. It moves from the dark pre-war lyrics ( Quail in Autumn ) to the powerful long-lined free verse of the 1960s ( The Tin Can ). Here are memorable WWII lyrics ( Dark Valentine ) and masterful light verse ( The Tall Poets ), displaying the wit that enlivens all of Smith's work. Previously uncollected poems range from a haunting delineation of the ironies of age in "The Shipwreck" to the dramatic intensity of The Cherokee Lottery , which deals with the forced removal of Indian tribes east of the Mississippi. Praise for William Jay "A most gifted and original poet... One of the very few who cannot be confused with anybody else."―Richard Wilbur "William Jay Smith has been one of our best poets for more than sixty years, and The Cherokee Lottery is his taut, harrowing, eloquent, and profoundly memorable."―Harold Bloom "His best poems are unlike anything else in contemporary American literature... Although often based on realistic situations, Smith's compressed, formal lyrics develop language musically in a way which summons an intricate, dreamlike set of images and associations."―Dana Gioia "William Jay Smith has given us many of the truest and purest poems an American has the most resonantly musical, the most magical."―X. J. Kennedy

Genres: Poetry

264 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

William Jay Smith was an American poet. He was appointed the nineteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1968 to 1970.

Reviews

[Sirah · Rating 5 out of 5]

The World below the Window encompasses a huge variety of topics from bird watching to the trail of tears. It's not so much the topics that caught my attention, however. Smith has a frank way of noticing the world, and through the words of these poems, I feel connected and seen.

Of course, I did not love every poem. Some were boring and others were absolute head-scratchers, but 4 out of 5 were good or even great, and that's pretty good for such a varied collection. I'm looking forward to going through this book again and putting a few subtle annotations on my favorite pages. (For those collectors out there, I bought it with a broken spine, so it was never going to be "like new" again)

[Mills College Library]

811.54 S664w 1998