Sample
Poem:
Don’t Leave Hungry
by
Eleanor Ross Taylor
|
Don’t
Leave Hungry
Fifty Years of Southern Poetry Review
Edited by James Smith
Foreword by Billy Collins
The best poems from this influential
journal
“This superb selection from an enduring, flagship journal
holds work by many of our most indispensable poets and, remarkably
often, what went on to become their signature poems. This
anthology reminds us of those poems’ first public life:
in the pages of a ‘small’ magazine with, as it
turns out, a freighter-sized wake. The prose introductions
to each section are lucid microcosms, outlining each decade’s
shifting cultural concerns. If some imagined Alexandrian Library
of American Poetry were to burn, this anthology could, on
its own, convey an important part of our literary seed-stock.”
—Jane Hirshfield, author of Nine Gates: Entering
the Mind of Poetry and After: Poems
“No reader will leave this harvest table hungry—here
is nourishment for all. Eleanor Ross Taylor’s title
poem invites us to a playful sacrament: eat the ‘bright
flesh’ of birdsong, drink the ‘momentary blood’
of a wave, and ‘All thy sins are teggen away, teggen
away.’ Fifty years of the best American poetry is spread
out before us, grouped by decade with James Smith’s
extraordinarily helpful essays giving us a quick context for
each, from the ‘Me Decade’ of the seventies to
the ‘Greed Decade’ of the eighties and our current
‘Security Decade.’ These poems epitomize their
eras yet move beyond, rise beyond as poetry always does, capturing
time and place and lived life in a way no other art can manage.
. . . This fine collection offers us fare for the journey.”
—Lee Smith, author of On Agate Hill
This substantial anthology charts the development of this
influential journal decade by decade, making clear that although
it has close ties to a particular region, it has consistently
maintained a national scope, publishing poets from all over
the United States. SPR’s goal has been to celebrate
the poem above all, so although there are poems by major poets
here, there are many gems by less famous, perhaps even obscure,
writers too. Here are 183 poems by nearly as many poets, from
A. R. Ammons, Kathryn Stripling Byer, James Dickey, Mark Doty,
Claudia Emerson, David Ignatow, and Carolyn Kizer to Ted Kooser,
Maxine Kumin, Denise Levertov, Howard Nemerov, Sharon Olds,
Linda Pastan, and Charles Wright.
James
Smith is associate professor of English at
Armstrong Atlantic State University and associate editor of
Southern Poetry Review.
Billy Collins
was the U.S. Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2003. His first book
was The Apple That
Astonished Paris, and his most recent collection
is Ballistics: Poems.
January
5 1/2 x 8 1/2, 380 pages
$24.95 (s) paper
ISBN 978-1-55728-893-6 | 1-55728-892-5
$54.95 (s) unjacketed cloth
ISBN 978-1-55728-892-9 | 1-55728-892-5
|
