Reading Guides
06.24.09: Reading Guide
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"'That woman will be able to do anything,' declared Robert Frost after reading Louise Bogan's 'A Tale,' the opening poem in her first book, Body of This Death. At the time of the book’s publication in 1923, Bogan was just 26 but had already experienced marriage, motherhood, estrangement, and widowhood, as well as launched a career as an incisive critic and technically masterful lyric poet." Caitlin Kimball on Louise Bogan's "A Tale." READ MORE» A Tale This youth too long has heard the break
Of waters in a land of change.
He goes to see what suns can make
From soil more indurate and strange.
He cuts what holds his days together
And shuts him in, as lock on lock:
The arrowed vane announcing weather,
The tripping racket of a clock;
Seeking, I think, a light that waits
Still as a lamp upon a shelf, —
A land with hills like rocky gates
Where no sea leaps upon itself.
But he will find that nothing dares
To be enduring, save where, south
Of hidden deserts, torn fire glares
On beauty with a rusted mouth, —
Where something dreadful and another
Look quietly upon each other.
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READING GUIDESMargaret Avison Linda Bierds Elizabeth Bishop Louise Bogan Robert Browning Lucille Clifton Hart Crane James Dickey Emily Dickinson John Donne Robert Duncan Kenneth Fearing Nikky Finney Thom Gunn Robert Hass Robert Hayden Seamus Heaney Gerard Manley Hopkins Philip Larkin Amy Lowell Robert Lowell Charlotte Mew Josephine Miles Linda Pastan Sylvia Plath Alexander Pope Donald Revell Stevie Smith May Swenson César Vallejo Walt Whitman William Carlos Williams William Carlos Williams RX FOR THE PERPLEXEDHow to Read a Poem (and Fall in Love with Poetry) Curious about poetry, but don't know where or how to begin? We've reprinted the first chapter from the book How to Read a Poem by Edward Hirsch. Its 16 sections provide strategies for reading poems, and each section has plenty of links to examples of poems in our archive to illustrate the points. |
