Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms: 65 Leading Contemporary Poets Select and Comment on Their Poems

by David Lehman (Editor)

Includes poems and essays by Cage, Ammons, Updike, Wilbur, Hecht, Oates, Disch, Morgan, Creeley, and Corn

Genres: Poetry

256 pages, Hardcover

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!