Poetry Daily: Poems from the World's Most Popular Poetry Website

Rating:
Summary: Buy this book
Review: An excellent book. If you can restrict yourself to reading only one poem a day from this book, you're either very disciplined, very busy, or you hate poetry. First class all the way, just what you'd expect if you followed their web site.

Rating:
Summary: Poetry Daily
Review: An excellent collection; generously eclectic, profound and fulfilling. If you are familiar with the website then this book is your reward. Finally, a collection of the poems you have been reading throughout the past year(s), burning up your printer to make copies of and clipping together in files. If you are not familiar with the website this book will make you want to sign on. Poetry Daily provides that moment, when you sigh inwardly and say, "A-ha, yes". Don't forget to read the Introduction, you will be intrigued by the fact that the Poetry Daily founders are not English lit majors or academics, but just regular folks who love poetry. This is what makes the collection so marvelously accessible.

Rating:
Summary: A Poem a Day
Review: Before you can understand this book, you must understand the online site, Poetry Daily, from which these poems have been harvested. Poetry Daily publishes (or, rather, re-publishes) a new poem everyday, but the poems have all been previously published in a literary journal or book of poetry. Thus, at Poetry Daily, you may read a poem by William Matthews or A.E. Stallings, Rachel Hadas, Marilyn Hacker or Dana Gioia. And these poems may have been previously published almost anywhere, for the editors' taste is nothing if not eclectic. I have been reading Poetry Daily, almost daily, for almost all of the six years of its existence, and I can tell you that the poems published there do not reflect a particular agenda or school of poetry. Poetry Daily has published free verse, mostly, because that is what is mostly published in the journals, but you will also find there sonnets, villanelles, ballads, blues stanzas, translations, light verse, prose poems, you name it. What all the poems have in common is a kind of inner quality I can call only "brightness." The editors seem drawn to poems that are intelligent, that evoke honest emotion, that display an energetic diction, that have a distinctive voice, and that make use of images that are bright and clear. And, as these things are true of the poems published on the web site, they are even more true of the poems published in this book because this book represents a careful culling of the poems published on the web site. So, what you have, really, is a kind of best of the best of American poetry over the last six years. The book is a treat, and a good answer to the question--where is American poetry at right now?

The concept behind the book is that you read one poem a day for each of the 366 days of 2004. (Yep, it's a leap year.) So, you might want to keep this book on your nightstand and read one poem every night before you go to bed. If at the end of the year, you have read all 366 poems, you will have genuinely accomplished something rare because there are few people in the country who read even one contemporary poem a year, much less 366. And that's a shame because so much really good, if not great, poetry is being published, everyday. Oh, there is the usual amount of druck in the journals, to be sure. But every age has had its literary impostors who somehow, by force of personality or connections, make a name for themselves as poets even though they lack talent. And there have always been editors who lack taste. (Think of Emily Dickinson being rejected.) You won't find such poets here among Poetry Daily's 366 choice selections because these editors don't have tin ears.

What you will find are poems like "Those Graves in Rome" by Larry Levis (for November 17). It is a long poem, so I will quote only a few lines:

There are places where the eye can starve,
But not here. Here, for example is
The Piazza Navona, & here is his narrow room
Overlooking the Steps & the crowds of sunbathing
Tourists. And here is the Protestant Cemetery
Where Keats & Joseph Severn join hands
Forever under a little shawl of grass
And where Keats's name isn't even on
His gravestone, because it is on Severn's,
. . . .

And you will find poems like "North Point North," by John Koethe (April 30):

There may be nothing for the soul to say
In its defense, except to describe the way
It came to find itself at the impasse
Morning reveals in the glass--
The road that led away from home to here,
That began in wonderment and hope,
But that ended in the long slope
Down to loneliness and the fear of fear.

There is more, much more, to this poem (the editors seem to have a penchant for long poems), but let this suffice. There is no more distinctive voice in American poetry today than that of John Koethe, but all of these poems are written by poets with distinctive voices. What more could you want? Everyday of the year.

Rating:
Summary: A Poem a Day
Review: Before you can understand this book, you must understand the online site, Poetry Daily, from which these poems have been harvested. Poetry Daily publishes (or, rather, re-publishes) a new poem everyday, but the poems have all been previously published in a literary journal or book of poetry. Thus, at Poetry Daily, you may read a poem by William Matthews or A.E. Stallings, Rachel Hadas, Marilyn Hacker or Dana Gioia. And these poems may have been previously published almost anywhere, for the editors' taste is nothing if not eclectic. I have been reading Poetry Daily, almost daily, for almost all of the six years of its existence, and I can tell you that the poems published there do not reflect a particular agenda or school of poetry. Poetry Daily has published free verse, mostly, because that is what is mostly published in the journals, but you will also find there sonnets, villanelles, ballads, blues stanzas, translations, light verse, prose poems, you name it. What all the poems have in common is a kind of inner quality I can call only "brightness." The editors seem drawn to poems that are intelligent, that evoke honest emotion, that display an energetic diction, that have a distinctive voice, and that make use of images that are bright and clear. And, as these things are true of the poems published on the web site, they are even more true of the poems published in this book because this book represents a careful culling of the poems published on the web site. So, what you have, really, is a kind of best of the best of American poetry over the last six years. The book is a treat, and a good answer to the question--where is American poetry at right now?

The concept behind the book is that you read one poem a day for each of the 366 days of 2004. (Yep, it's a leap year.) So, you might want to keep this book on your nightstand and read one poem every night before you go to bed. If at the end of the year, you have read all 366 poems, you will have genuinely accomplished something rare because there are few people in the country who read even one contemporary poem a year, much less 366. And that's a shame because so much really good, if not great, poetry is being published, everyday. Oh, there is the usual amount of druck in the journals, to be sure. But every age has had its literary impostors who somehow, by force of personality or connections, make a name for themselves as poets even though they lack talent. And there have always been editors who lack taste. (Think of Emily Dickinson being rejected.) You won't find such poets here among Poetry Daily's 366 choice selections because these editors don't have tin ears.

What you will find are poems like "Those Graves in Rome" by Larry Levis (for November 17). It is a long poem, so I will quote only a few lines:

There are places where the eye can starve,
But not here. Here, for example is
The Piazza Navona, & here is his narrow room
Overlooking the Steps & the crowds of sunbathing
Tourists. And here is the Protestant Cemetery
Where Keats & Joseph Severn join hands
Forever under a little shawl of grass
And where Keats's name isn't even on
His gravestone, because it is on Severn's,
. . . .

And you will find poems like "North Point North," by John Koethe (April 30):

There may be nothing for the soul to say
In its defense, except to describe the way
It came to find itself at the impasse
Morning reveals in the glass--
The road that led away from home to here,
That began in wonderment and hope,
But that ended in the long slope
Down to loneliness and the fear of fear.

There is more, much more, to this poem (the editors seem to have a penchant for long poems), but let this suffice. There is no more distinctive voice in American poetry today than that of John Koethe, but all of these poems are written by poets with distinctive voices. What more could you want? Everyday of the year.

Rating:
Summary: 366 poems from 366 contemporary poets
Review: Collaboratively compiled, arranged and edited by Diane Boller, Don Selby and Chryss Yost, Poetry Daily offers 366 poems from 366 contemporary poets, including Dana Gioia, Jane Hirschfield, Albert Goldbarth and many more. Offering a different poem for every day of the year (even a leap year!), Poetry Daily is a vigorous, challenging, and delightful 470-page compilation recommended for poetry lovers everywhere. The Dancer: Say you came once as a dragonfly,/a one-inch serpent-twig, the suspended "I,"//its double pair of barely air-dried wings/sewing one moment to the next. Quietness//makes it clear: it's not an exact equation,/the weight of clouds and the dusty mirror//of the pond. The nymphs are always hatching./Something is always disturbing the surface,//changing the leeway: future perfect, past/imperfect, this green ocean of air in between. -- Margaret Holley

Rating:
Summary: Poetry Daily: Superlatives outweigh quibbles
Review: Poetry Daily's anthology offers 366 poems from the Net site by the same name. Edited by Diane Boller, Don Selby and Chryss Yost, the book does a solid job of assembling a variety of voices and styles. Most poetry fans will find something of interest, and there are poems that hang with you long after you've read them.

Scanning the credits, a number of familiar presses are represented, from established publishers such as Copper Canyon, Zoo Press, Sarabande Books and Alice James Books. University presses are represented abundantly. But poems come from less familiar quarters too, although those are fewer.

Some of my favorite poets are included; among them, Kim Addonizio, Bob Hicok, Rhina P. Espaillat, Tony Hoagland, Marie Howe and Marilyn Hacker. I've interviewed a few of my favorites for magazine articles, and I'm always glad to see their work put before a wide audience. Some of the poets I've communicated with in cyberspace, such as Patricia Fargnoli, whose work I was delighted to see included because her poetry always resonates with me. Other poets I met by way of their words in this book.

It's the sort of volume meant for thumbing through, the perfect companion to a peaceful moment when a reader can just curl up and enjoy a sort of poetic oasis in our hurry-up-and-go society. The selections are grouped by month and day, so that theoretically, a poem can be read like a devotional. I didn't care for that setup; it seems contrived, but that's a personal quibble that has to do with format rather than poetry. Poetry Daily the Net site aims to offer up a poem each day, but with a book, few people will grab the book, read one poem and be on their merry way. That's just not the involvement I see with a book of poems.

I began my reading with Fargnoli's poem because I spotted her name in the author list. "Lightning Spreads Out across the Water" makes use of very specific language choices in terms of alliterative words to tell a story and set a mood. A storm strikes suddenly. "It was already too late," the speaker notes, "when the swimmers began/to wade through the heavy/ water toward shore..." and we move through the water and the poem within a tale of tragedy. The poem progresses, ending with the pond that the speaker notes "smooths to a stillness/that gives back,/as though nothing could move it,/the vacant imponderable sky." What haunts the reader are simply constructed lines that describe the victims-- "the boy with the water-wings" and "...the woman/ in the purple tank suit."

Equally moving is Ted Kooser's "A Dog's Grave." The reader senses the struggle with the elements of nature and of the spirit as the speaker digs a grave in frozen ground. Finally, the job is finished-- "and then I unfolded the clay,/the warm yellow brown/of an old army blanket,/and dry as a place by the stove." Dog lovers will definitely be moved; the language is spare and the emotion held back so that the reader can experience the act of making a grave "next to a bent little tree/that tapped at my back/with its twigs..." The entire 17 line poem is a single sentence that flows well due to syntax and punctuation, emotion wrapped up by the hand of a skilled poet.

There are poems that I didn't care for, but that's to be expected with an anthology. For the life of me, I can't fathom why the editors chose to place "Nothing in That Drawer" by Ron Padgett on January 12. The entire poem consists of 14 six syllable lines (if you pronounce "drawer" with two syllables as I do because I'm Southern). Repeat "Nothing in that Drawer" fourteen times and you will have memorized the easiest poem to commit to memory in the English language, or at least that's my experience. I'm certain the stylistic device is meant to be clever and intellectually drawn, but it was a definite disappointment to this reader. I'd suggest moving that sort of thing to the back of the book under a subtitle along the lines of "The Emperor's New Clothes."

The good news is that there are far more good poems than weak ones, and some word clumps can be forgiven because the editors are, after all, trying to be fairly expansive in the selections. It's also a good thing that a poet has yet another anthology that offers a chance for exposure. The editors chose not to include a poem from my own collection, but I don't hold that against them. After all, they can't include everyone, and there's always another year. The book is far better than David Lehman's recent anthologies, and it's about as pleasing as Garrison Keillor's Good Poems, a favorite thumbing-through book of mine. I purchased several of the Poetry Daily and Keillor's collections to give as gifts, and the recipients seemed to be genuinely pleased.

Final quibbles for me are the shape of the book and the cover design. It's too wide to tuck into a small tote for carrying along to the coffee shop--the dimensions are 1.03 x 9.00 x 7.03. Keillor's book tucks better. The cover design is fairly bland, but then I don't like the way my own book looks and a case can be made that I am a quibbler when it comes to such matters.

All in all, I'd highly recommend this anthology for those who love poetry and for those who want to learn more about how to write good poetry. As an anthology, it represents diversity in a form I love and it does so with grace. That's about all a poet can ask.