Please note: This list has been made for the use of J. Rambo’s Advanced Poetry Workshop at Wittenberg University. It lists poems and sources for poets taught in this course and found in our required texts; therefore, it is not all-inclusive. Many poets will be left out. Page numbers refer students to pages in Penguin Academic Contemporary American Poetry eds. Gwynn & Lindner. Poets whose names are listed in purple text are not included in either of these anthologies.

 

Poets anthologized in Contemporary American Poetry (Lindner & Gwynn eds.)

 

Week Two: (Academic Formalism & New Formalism)

Recommended Reading

Essay on the place of form in contemporary poetry “The fortunes of formalism” by David Yezzi in New Criterion

A Brief Guide to New Formalism at Academy of American Poetry website

“Expansive Moment: Introduction to New Expansive Poetryby R.S. Gwynn

Ira Sadoff: "Neo-Formalism: A Dangerous Nostalgia" The American Poetry Review, January/February 1990

 

“Anthony Hecht p33, Howard Nemerov p4, Richard Wilbur, and Mona Van Duyn p26 had continued to explore the possibilities of form during the 1960s and '70s, they had been schooled by New Critics, including Yvor Winters, John Crowe Ransom, and Allen Tate, who had been outspoken in defense of formalist verse all along.” New Formalism's most noted poets include Charles Martin, Brad Leithauser p431, Timothy Steele p354, Molly Peacock p344, Phillip Levin, Marilyn Hackerp300, Mark Jarman p421, and Dana Gioia p402, among others.

 

ANTHONY HECHT

3NY Times article on Hecht

POEMS:

Hecht’s “The Dover Bitch” & Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” alongside each other

The anonymous figure to whom Arnold addresses his poem becomes the subject of Hecht's poem. In Hecht's poem she "caught the bitter allusion to the sea", imagined "what his whiskers would feel like / On the back of her neck", and felt sad as she looked out across the channel. "And then she got really angry" at the thought that she had become "a sort of mournful cosmic last resort." After which she says "one or two unprintable things."

analysis of the poem “More Light! More Light!”

Third Avenue in Sunlight

The Feast of Stephen

The Book of Yolek

NPR audio Pulitzer-Winning Poet Anthony Hecht Dies by Michele Norris

 

X. J. Kennedy

b. August 21, 1929

In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus One Day.

First Confession.

Cross Ties.

Little Elegy.

September Twelfth, 2001.

 

Donald Justice

3Listen to Donald Justice read Ode to a Dressmaker’s Dummy

3New Criterion essay “The memory of Donald Justice by David Yezzi” (Justice’s criticism of the prose poem)

“In the 1960s Justice—once again with most poets of his generation—discarded rhyme and meter for free verse. But whereas his contemporaries generally began writing autobiographical poems, Justice became a serious experimentalist. He not only discarded traditional form but also, eventually, conventional notions of genre, sequential exposition, originality, and even authorial control. "Experimental" poetry is usually a name given to an interesting artistic mess, the critical equivalent of an "A for effort." But Justice's experiments virtually all succeed. To each new method, he brought an extraordinary control, a formal tightness one rarely associates with experimental verse, especially the sort which displays no overt principles of organization.” –Dan Goia

3Notes on Donald Justice, The Study of Prosody

 

Carolyn Kizer

POEMS:

The Ungrateful Garden.

Bitch.

From “Pro Femina,” Three.

On a Line from Sophocles.

 

Howard Nemerov

History of a Literary Movement.

Goose-Fish.

A Primer of the Daily Round.

The Fourth of July.

Mousemeal.

The Human Condition.

 

Louis Simpson

POEMS:

Listen to Simpson read “A Clearing”

 

Richard Wilbur

View video of interview with Richard Wilbur

Poetry Foundation page on Richard Wilbur

Slate Magazine essay: “The Overlooked Master: How poetic history conspired against Richard Wilbur.”

POEMS:

 Poetry readings: "Love Calls Us to the Things of This World"

Commentary on On "Love Calls Us to the Things of This World"

Introduction to "The Writer"

Reading “The Writer”

Reading: "Hamlen Brook"

 

James Dickey

POEMS:

The Performance

The Heaven of Animals

on Sheep Child

Adultery

 

Alan Dugan

3Listen to National Book Award winner Alan Dugan's conversation with Linda Wertheimer

POEMS:

On a Seven-Day Diary

Love Song: I and Thou

Listen to Dugan recite his poem "Closing Time at the Second Avenue Deli". Closing Time at 2nd Ave. Deli

Surviving Hurricane

For Kafka

 

Richard Hugo

On Hugo’s advice to young poets in The Triggering Town

“The world inevitably sends you to language—to your language: "you are after those words you can own and ways of putting them in phrases and lines that are yours by right of obsessive musical deed….Your words used your way will generate your meanings. Your obsessions lead you to your vocabulary. Your way of writing locates, even creates, your inner life. The relation of you to your language gains power.”

“Writing off the Subject” from The Triggering Town

POEMS:

Degrees of Gray in Phillipsburg.

On the subject of “Repetition” & Hugo’s poem “My Buddy”

Bay of Recovery

 

Gerald Stern

Elizabeth Farnsworth discusses inspiration and poetry with The National Book Award for Poetry winner Gerald Stern

POEMS:

Behaving Like a Jew

The Dancing

The Sounds of Wagner

 

Maxine Kumin

POEMS:

At the End of the Affair.

Listen to Maxine Kumin read “Woodchucks” (in our text)

 

Week Three: Confessionals and New Confessionals

Recommended Reading

Confessional Poetry & the Artifice of Honestyby David Yezzi

Essay Examining the Poetry of Confession and Autobiography

 

W. D. Snodgrass

Fleda Brown and W.D. Snodgrass Listen to Audio Webcast (56:03 minutes)

POEMS:

Mementos, I.

The Examination.

After Experience Taught Me.

 

Anne Sexton

Short clips of Anne Sexton reciting some poetry

POEMS:

Unknown Girl in the Maternity Ward.

All my Pretty Ones.

The Truth the Dead Know.

In Celebration of my Uterus.

Cinderella.

 

Sylvia Plath

POEMS:

The Colossus.

Morning Song --Plath's daughter, Frieda Hughes, talks about Ariel in NPR interview

Edge.

Daddy. View a video clip of the Sylvia Plath poem "Daddy".

Lady Lazarus

The Rival

The Moon and the Yew Tree

Sexton reading Her Kind

Read Slate Magazine’s Ariel ReduxThe latest chapter in the Sylvia Plath controversy by Meghan O'Rourke

 

Sharon Olds

POEMS:

The One Girl at the Boys Party.

Topography.

I Go Back to May 1937.

The Girl.

Video Olds reading Self-Portrait Rear View

 

Kim Addonizio

Real Audio format: New Letters radio interview with Robert Stewart, hosted by Angela Elam

POEMS:

First Poem for You.

Fine.

Target.

Poetry Flash interview with Addonizio: “I wanted to ask you about alcohol. Many of your poems and stories deal with addiction and obsession, and alcohol seems to play a big role in them. Let me quote Billy Collins, who said that your poems are "intensified versions of the barroom ballad." Do you agree with that?”

 

 

Week Four: Deep Image & The Beats

Recommended Reading

Ullman, Leslie, “Deep Imagists: The Subconscious as Medium” (Word doc)

Bushell, Kevin, "Leaping Into the Unknown: The Poetics of Robert Bly's Deep Image"

 

Robert Bly

Robert Bly reading his poetry

Poetry Breaks I - Video

Robert Bly and Bill Moyers - Video

POEMS:

After Drinking All Night With a Friend, We Go Out in a Boat at Dawn to See Who Can Write the Best Poem.

Where We Must Look For Help.

For my son Noah, 10 Years Old.

The Scandal.

 

James Wright

Groundbreaking Book: The Branch Will Not Break by James Wright (1963)

POEMS:

Saint Judas. (essays on the poem)

A Note Left in Jimmy Leonard's Shack.

Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio (comments on the poem)

Two Poems About President Harding.

A Blessing.

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota - James Wright reads / Thom Gunn remarks

 

Charles Simic

Charles Simic named as 15th U.S. poet laureate

NPR Live Interview - Simic Reflects On Poet Laureate Honor

Lannan Readings and Conversations - Charles Simic with David Lehman, March 14, 2007

POEMS:

Fork – Listen to Simic read the poem

Stone.

“I was stolen by the gypsies...”

Listen to Charles Simic read Shelley

 

Louise Gluck

Video of interview with Louise Gluck

Louise Glück - A collection of critical, historical, and biographical information at the Modern American Poetry site.

POEMS:

The Mirror.

Mock Orange.

The Reproach.

Daisies.

 

Robert Kelly (also associated with Deep Image)

 

W. S. Merwin

(b. September 30. 1927)

The Drunk in the Furnace.

For the Anniversary of My Death.

The Last One.

The Judgement of Paris.

Yesterday.

 

Donald Hall

(b. September 20, 1928)

“During the sixties, Hall, like other poets of his generation, found a degree of freedom and room for experiment in syllabics. More or less simultaneously, a freer verse emerges, some of it joining Robert Bly and James Wright in their pursuit of Latin American surrealism and the "deep image." (Iowa Review)

POEMS:

The Young Watch Us.

To a Waterfowl.

Names of Horses.

Woolworth's.

 

Beat Poets: Brautigan, Gregory Corso, William Everson, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Kenneth Patchen, Kenneth Rexroth, Diane Wakoski, Anne Waldman, Diane DiPrima

Allen Ginsberg

The Allen Ginsberg Trust homepage

POEMS:

Audio of Ginsberg reading “A Supermarket in California”

 

Charles Bukowski

(b. August 16, 1920, d. March 9. 1994)

Bukowski links

 

Gregory Corso

b. March 26, 1930, d. January 17, 2001

Marriage

 

Gary Snyder

b. May 8, 1930

Riprap.

Hay For the Horses.

A Walk.

The Bath.

 

Week Five: Black Mountain School and New York School

Black Mountain period poets: Robert Creeley, Denise Levertov, Robert Duncan

Robert Creeley

Audio & video at this homepage

 

Denise Levertov

(b. October 24, 1923, d. December 20, 1999)

Some notes on organic form

POEMS:

The Secret.

What Were They Like?

Song for Ishtar

 

New York School Poets: John Ashbery, Ted Berrigan, Barbara Guest,,  Koch, Kenneth, Alice Notley, Frank O’Hara,  James Schuyler, James

Frank O'Hara    

(b. June 27, 1926, d. July 25, 1966).

Poem-Painting -- Frank O'Hara & Norman Bluhm

Poem on Painting: On Seeing Larry Rivers' "Washington Crossing the Delaware" at the Museum of Modern Art

A class with Anne Waldman reading and discussing Frank O'Hara's

POEMS:

Why I Am Not a Painter

The Day Lady Died. (Philip Levine reads the poem)

Poem.

 

John Ashbery

(b. July 28, 1927).

Modern Poets: Frank O'Hara at MoMA: memories of O'Hara and his love for poetry and art during his time at MoMA

Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape.

Daffy Duck in Hollywood.

The Other Tradition.

Paradoxes and Oxymorons

"A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island"

 

Denise Duhamel

 (b. June 13, 1961)

Ego

 

Philip Levine

b. January 10, 1928

Animals are Passing From Our Lives.

They Feed They Lion.

Genius.

What Work Is.

 

Adrienne Rich

b. May 16, 1929

Aunt Jennifer's Tigers.

Living in Sin.

Diving into the Wreck.

Rape.

Final Notations.

From “An Atlas of the Difficult World,” XIII (Dedications).

 

Galway Kinnell

b. February 1, 1927

After Making Love We Hear Footsteps.

The Bear.

Little Sleep's Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight.

Goodbye.

Saint Francis and the Sow.

 

A. R. Ammons

(b. February 18, 1926, d. February 25, 2001)

"On 'Corson's Inlet'" by Richard Gray on the Modern American Poetry site

Watch streaming video of former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky remembers A.R. Ammons

 

James Merrill

b. March 3, 1926, d. February 6, 1995

Charles on Fire.

The Broken Home.

Days of 1964.

Casual Wear.

 

Week Six:

 

Thom Gunn

b. August 29, 1929 d. 2004

Porn stars & Englishmen, Thom Gunn's contradictions

A reading from "Boss Cupid" by Thom Gunn for The New York Times on the Web, August 2, 2000.

POEMS:

In the Tank.

From the Wave.

Terminal.

 

Mark Strand

b. April 11, 1934

The Tunnel.

The Marriage.

Eating Poetry.

Keeping Things Whole.

The Great Poet Returns.

 

Lucille Clifton

b. June 27, 1936

homage to my hips

wishes for sons.

lee.

Slaveships.

 

Russell Edson

b. April 9. 1935

When the Ceiling Cries.

An Old Man in Love.

Mama's Duck.

 

Susan Howe

b. June 10, 1937

Closed Fist Withholding an Open Palm.

 

Ted Kooser

b. April 25, 1939

Audio/Video

Poems:

Selecting a Reader.

Abandoned Farmhouse.

The Salesman.

The Tattooed Lady.

 

Stephen Dunn

b. June 24, 1939

The Sacred.

A Secret Life.

The Sexual Revolution.

 

Michael S. Harper

Lunch Poems video

 

MILLER WILLIAMS

b. April 8, 1930

The Book.

Let Me Tell You.

The Curator.

Folding his USA Today.

He Makes His Point in the Blue Star Café.

 

Rhina Espaillat

b. January 20, 193

Visiting Day.

Bra.

Reservation.

 

Linda Pastan

b. May 27, 1932

Ethics.

Crocuses.

1932-.

 

Gerald Barrax

b. June 21, 1933

Strangers like Us: Pittsburgh, Raleigh, 1945-1985.

Pittsburgh, 1948: The Music Teacher.

 

Robert Mezey

b. February 28, 1935

Hardy.

My Mother.

 

Mary Oliver

b. September 10, 1935

The Black Snake.

University Hospital, Boston.

The Buddha's Last Instruction.

The Egret.

 

Fred Chappell

b. May 28, 1936

Narcissus and Echo.

My Grandmother Washes Her Feet.

Ave Atque Vale.

 

Nancy Willard (b. June 26, 1936).

A Humane Society.

How to Stuff a Pepper.

A Hardware Store as Proof of the Existence of God.

 

C. K. Williams (b. November 4, 1936).

The Critic.

Hooks.

Peace.

Harm.

The Dress.

 

Robert Phillips (b. February 2, 1938).

Running on Empty.

The Stone Crab: A Love Poem.

Compartments.

 

Jared Carter (b. January 10, 1939).

Interview.

Drawing the Antique.

The Gleaning.

The Purpose of Poetry.

 

Tom Disch (b. February 2, 1940).

Ballade of the New God.

The Rapist's Villanelle.

Zewhyexary.

 

Pattiann Rogers (b. March 23, 1940).

Discovering Your Subject.

Foreplay.

 

Robert Pinsky (b. October 20, 1940).

The Want Bone.

Shirt.

ABC.

 

Peter Makuck (b. October 26, 1940).

Against Distance.

 

Robert Hass (b. March 1, 1941).

Meditation at Lagunitas.

Forty Something.

A Story About the Body.

Forty Something.

 

Billy Collins (b. March 22, 1941).

Schoolsville.

Nostalgia.

Litany.

Poem prompt from Collin’s poem “Marginalia”

Poem prompt from Collin’s poem “The Lanyard”

 

Gibbons Ruark (b. December 10, 1941).

The Visitor.

Polio.

Lecturing My Daughters.

 

Charles Martin (b. June 25, 1942).

E.S.L.

Victoria's Secret.

How My Queer Uncle Died at Last.

 

Henry Taylor (b. June 21, 1942).

Artichoke.

Underpass.

 

William Matthews (b. November 11, 1942, d. November 12, 1997).

The Search Party.

Housecooling.

Onions

 

Marilyn Hacker (b. November 27, 1942).

Wagers.

Ghazal on Half a Line by Adrienne Rich.

Omelette.

 

Sydney Lea (b. December 22, 1942).

The Feud.

 

Ellen Bryant Voigt (b. May 9, 1943).

Daughter.

The Lesson.

 

Michael Palmer (b. May 11, 1943).

Voice and Address.

[A word is coming up on the screen...]

Untitled [O you in that little bark...]

 

James Tate (b. December 8, 1943).

The Blue Booby.

The Lost Pilot.

Teaching the Ape to Write Poems.

 

Shirley Geok-Lin Lim (b. December 27, 1944).

Pantoum for Chinese Women.

Riding into California.

Starlight Haven.

 

Robert Morgan (b. October 3, 1944).

Finding an Old Newspaper in the Woods.

Sigodlin.

Mountain Bride.

 

Dick Davis (b. April 8, 1945).

Farewell to the Mentors.

Duchy and Shinks.

A Monorhyme for the Shower.

 

Kay Ryan (b. September 11, 1945).

Turtle.

Bestiary.

Drops in the Bucket.

Mockingbird.

 

B.H. Fairchild (b. October 17, 1945).

Beauty.

A Photograph of the Titanic.

 

Leon Stokesbury (b. December 5, 1945).

To His Book.

The Day Kennedy Died.

The Composition of “The Eve of St. Agnes” Followed in Mid-April by “La Belle Dame Sans Merci.”

 

Marilyn Nelson (b. April 26, 1946).

Lonely Eagles.

The Ballad of Aunt Geneva.

Minor Miracle.

 

Molly Peacock (b. June 30, 1947).

Buffalo.

Why I am not a Buddhist.

A Favor of Love.

 

Ai (b. October 21, 1947).

Child Beater.

She Didn't Even Wave.

 

Yusef Komunyakaa (b. April 29, 1947).

Facing It.

My Father's Love Letters.

Ode to the Maggot.

 

Jim Hall (b. July 4, 1947).

Maybe Dats Your Pwoblem Too.

Sperm Count.

White Trash.

 

Amy Uyematsu (October 18, 1947).

Lessons from Central America.

 

Timothy Steele (b. January 22, 1948).

Prosody for 21st-Century Poets

Sapphics Against Anger.

From “Short Subjects,” Social Reform.

Life Portrait.

 

Albert Goldbarth (b. January 31, 1948).

Dog, Fish, Shoes (or Beans).

Rarified.

Rembrandt/Panties.

 

Thomas Lux (b. December 10, 1948).

Graveyard by the Sea.

Kwashiorkor; Marasmus.

Refrigerator, 1957.

Daughter poems

 

Wendy Rose (b. May 7, 1948).

Robert.

Alfalfa Dance.

Grandmother Rattler.

 

Lynn Emanuel (b. March 14, 1949).

Frying Trout While Drunk.

The Sleeping.

Outside Room Six.

 

David St. John (b. July 24, 1949).

I Know.

Los Angeles, 1954.

My Tea with Madame Descartes.

 

Sarah Cortez (b. February 11, 1950).

Tu Negrito.

Rosie Working Plain Clothes.

How to Undress a Cop.

 

Rodney Jones (b. February 11, 1950).

Winter Retreat: Homage to Martin Luther King, Jr.

On the Bearing of Waitresses.

 

Carolyn Forché (b. April 28, 1950).

The Colonel.

Expatriate.

Strangers on a Train.

 

Chase Twichell (b. August 20, 1950).

From The Ghost of Eden:

XVIII. The City in the Lilac.

VII. Car Alarm.

XXI. Corporate Geese.

 

Jorie Graham (b. May 9, 1950).

I Watched a Snake.

Two Paintings by Gustav Klimt.

At Luca Signorelli's Resurrection of the Body.

 

Emily Grosholz (October 17, 1950).

Letter from Germany.

November.

 

Mekeel McBride (b. July 3, 1950).

Aubade.

Kettle.

If That Boaty Pink Cadillac from 1959 With The Huge Fins.

 

Timothy Murphy (b. January 10, 1950).

The Track of a Storm.

Case Notes.

 

Dana Gioia (b. December 24, 1950).

Planting a Sequoia.

The Next Poem.

Elegy with Surrealist Proverbs as a Refrain.

 

Joy Harjo (b. May 9, 1951).

She Had Some Horses.

Song for the Deer and Myself to Return On.

 

Naomi Shihab Nye (b. March 12, 1952).

Famous.

The Traveling Onion.

Yellow Glove.

 

Andrew Hudgins (b. April 22, 1951).

Air View of an Industrial Scene.

From “Saints and Strangers,” Where the River Jordan Ends.

Heat Lightening During Drought.

 

Judith Ortiz Cofer (b. February 24, 1952).

The Lesson of the Teeth.

The Latin Deli: An Ars Poetica.

 

Mark Jarman (b. June 5, 1952).

After Disappointment.

Ground Swell.

 

Rita Dove (b. August 28, 1952).

Adolescence—III.

Parsley.

American Smooth.

Poem prompt – “Math”

 

Brad Leithauser (b. February 27, 1952).

A Quiled Quilt, A Needle Bed.

The Odd Last Thing She Did.

 

Alberto Ríos (b. September 18, 1952).

The Purpose of Altar Boys.

Madre Sofia.

 

Harryette Mullen (b. ? 1953).

Dim Lady.

Any Lit.

 

Julia Alvarez (b. March 27, 1953).

How I Learned to Sweep.

From 33.

Bilingual Sestina.

 

Mark Doty (b. August 10, 1953).

Tiara.

Bill's Story.

No.

Poem prompt - “Heaven” poem

 

Gjertrud Schnackenberg (b. August 27, 1953).

Nightfishing.

Signs.

Supernatural Love.

 

Michael Donaghy (b. May 24, 1954).

Cadenza.

Pentecost.

Black Ice and Rain.

 

Mary Jo Salter (b. August 15, 1954).

Welcome to Hiroshima.

Dead Letters.

 

David Mason (b. December 11, 1954).

Spooning.

Song of the Powers.

 

Ginger Andrews (b. May 16, 1956).

Primping in the Rearview mirror.

 

H. L. Hix (b. November 24, 1960).

Selections from “Orders of Magnitude”: 46, 48 and 83.

 

Catherine Tufariello (b. April 9, 1963).

Useful Advice.

 

Greg Williamson (b. June 26, 1964).

Kites at the Washington Monument.

 

Raphael Campo (b. November 24, 1964).

Oysters.

 

Christian Wiman (b. August 31, 1966).

Afterwards.

 

Diane Thiel (b. May 9, 1967).

Memento Mori in Middle School.

 

Suji Kwock Kim (b. ? 1968).

Occupation.

 

A. E. Stallings (b. July 2, 1968).

Hades Welcomes His Bride.

 

Wilmer Mills (b. October 1, 1969).

Ghost Story.

 

Morrie Creech (b. September 15, 1970).

Broken Glass.

 

Beth Ann Fennelly (b. May 22, 1971).

Asked for a Happy Memory of her Father, She Recalls Wrigley Field.