Mark Van Doren: 100 Poems

by Mark van Doren

This is a collection of 100 of Van Doren's poems that he personally selected. He was a Pulitzer Prize winner.

128 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1967

About the author

Mark van Doren was an American poet, writer and critic. He was a scholar and a professor of English at Columbia University for nearly 40 years, where he inspired a generation of influential writers and thinkers including Thomas Merton, Robert Lax, John Berryman, Whittaker Chambers, and Beat Generation writers such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. He won the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Collected Poems 1922–1938 and he was literary editor of The Nation, in New York City (1924–1928), and its film critic, 1935 to 1938.

Reviews

[Robert Jr. · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is not my favorite book of poetry by far: there’s too much god and bees. I did like a few poems in here such as Former Barn Lot (the root of grass “like green fire” I guess), After Dry Weather (vivid imagery), Parent’s Recompense (kind of hit home especially after the last handful of years), I Went Among the Mean Streets, and The Dead Sentry (sort of gruesome, I dig it). I also liked the Comedy, Tragedy, Eternity’s Low Voice, and Cold Beauty quatrains.

There were also about three more that I appreciated more a stanza or a few lines than the entire poem. Of these is The Bitterest Things, the last five lines below:

The bitterest is the purest; but mistaken,
Most poisonous. To her, and then to him.
For he is last to know what lavish gold
He vinegared, what water, brackish now,
Is spiderless no more; and that he drinks it. [pg.63]

The third is Oldest Cemetery (not too predictable I hope), again, the last five lines:

It was all childish error, and these stones
But tilt above time’s waste. And whose the bones?
The verses tell. I ponder them, steadfast,
Expectant. No, the end is coming still
For such as these, on this forgotten hill. [pg.93]

Overall, if you like poetry, meh, I might mention this to you but I cannot really recommend this one as most of the poems are just blah. Whenever I came across a longer poem, a full page or more, I groaned. That’s all I have to say about this one.

So home by dark to moth and mouse. [last line from Little Trip, pg.64]