The Pushcart Book of Poetry: The Best Poems from Three Decades of the Pushcart Prize - Softcover

Murray, Joan

4.03

38 ratings by Goodreads

9781888889529: The Pushcart Book of Poetry: The Best Poems from Three Decades of the Pushcart Prize

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1888889527 ISBN 13: 9781888889529

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009

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More than one hundred poets are included: Seamus Heaney, Mary Oliver, John Ashbery, Stanley Kunitz, Amy Clampitt, and Adrienne Rich among them.

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Review:

Lovely work by some of the most remarkable Considered

Starred Review. This gigantic volume of recent verse is culled from Pushcart Prize annual anthologies, 1976 to the present, chosen by small-press editors and previous winners. Reappearing are 180 poems, in chronological order. The volume leads off with Adrienne Rich, marches through superb lyrics by Stanley Kunitz, Linda Gregerson and Rosanna Warren, and brandishes aphorisms from Derek Walcott ("all revolution is rooted in crime"), Philip Levine ("So many poems begin where they/ should end, and never end"), and others. Readers seeking clear situations and boldly stated emotion may find more to like than readers who prefer the everyone. The standouts are often the long poems, a rarity for anthologies, which this "best of the small presses," suggests writers rescued from obscurity, many poets here are mainstream names, like Levine, Heaney, Stern and Wright. Also included are less famous poets like the raw and haunting Brigit Pegeen Kelly--perhaps the strongest among the discoveries this big book permits.

The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses is the most anticipated literary anthology of the year. To celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary in 2001, the Pushcart Press published two retrospective "best of the best" collections, The Pushcart Book of Short Stories and The Pushcart Book of Essays. Now, at long last, the best poems volume arrives. Poet Murray worked with the nearly 50 other outstanding poets who have served as Pushcart poetry editors to construct this historic, illuminating, and thoroughly introduction is followed by 180 poems that exemplify the formal explorations of the last 30 years and reflect the ripple effect of watershed events and social change. Here are vital works by the late Joseph Brodsky and Amy Clampitt and clarion poems by poets who continue to enlighten and enthrall readers, among them Lisel Mueller, Gerald Stern, Natasha Trethewey, Pattiann Rogers, and Edward Hirsch. Etheridge Knight captures the spirit of the endeavor: "We free singers be."

About the Author:

More than 200 Contributing Editors and CO-Editors help select the annual volumes of The Pushcart Prize. The Pushcart Prize Editors come from almost every state in the USA and around the world. Every year more than 8,000 nominations are received for the Pushcart Prize.

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