The Four Seasons Poems (Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets)

Description

For the poet, even the most minute details of the natural world are starting points for flights of the imagination, and the pages of this collection celebrating the four seasons are brimming with an extraordinary range of observation and imagery.

Here are poets past and present, from Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Wordsworth to Whitman, Dickinson, and Thoreau, from Keats, Blake, and Hopkins to Elizabeth Bishop, Ted Hughes, Amy Clampitt, Mary Oliver, and W. S. Merwin. Here are poems that speak of the seasons as measures of earthly time or as states of mind or as the physical expressions of the ineffable. From Robert Frosts tribute to the evanescence of spring in Nothing Gold Can Stay to Langston Hughess moody Summer Night in Harlem, from the stopped woods in Marie Ponsots End of October to the chilling mind of winter in Wallace Stevenss The Snow Man, the poems in this volume engage vividly with the seasons and, through them, with the ways in which we understand and engage the world outside ourselves.

SPRING

John ClareFirst Sight of Spring
Thomas HardyThe Years Awakening
Emily DickinsonLight exists in Spring
Mary OliverSpring
William ShakespeareIt was a lover and his lass
Robert FrostNothing Gold Can Stay
Richard WilburMarch
Gerard Manley HopkinsSpring
Stevie SmithBlack March
Robert FrostSpring Pools
A. E. HousmanLoveliest of trees
Ted HughesMarch Morning Unlike Others
Robert FrostPutting in the Seed
William ShakespeareSpring
A. E. HousmanThe Lent Lily
Jean GarrigueSpring Song II
James MerrillAnother April
A. R. AmmonsResurrections
Elizabeth BishopCold Spring
William WordsworthLines Written in Early Spring
Kay RyanSonnet to Spring
Thomas NasheSpring
Robert HerrickCorinnas Going a-Maying
William Carlos WilliamsThe Widows Lament in Springtime
D. H. LawrenceThe Enkindled Spring
Charlotte MewI so liked Spring
Emily DickinsonA little Madness in the Spring
Christina RossettiAnother Spring
Henry ReedNaming of Parts
May SwensonApril Light
Richard WilburA Storm in April
Robert HerrickTo Daffodils
Sara TeasdaleThere Will Come Soft Rains
Robert BrowningHome-Thoughts, from Abroad
Lizette Woodworth ReeseApril in Town
E. E. Cummings[in Just-]
Walt WhitmanOut of Mays Shows Selected
Mary OliverSpring

SUMMER

Anon.Summer is y-comen in
Geoffrey ChaucerRoundel
Wallace StevensThe House was Quiet and the World was Calm
Emily DickinsonFurther in Summer than the Birds
Henry Howard, Earl of SurreyThe Sweet Season
Thomas HardyAt the Royal Academy
Henry David Thoreau “Woof of the sun
Mary OliverSummer Poem
Mona Van DuynEnd of May
James SchuylerI Think
John ClareSummer Moods
John KeatsOn the Grasshopper and the Cricket
H.D.Pear Tree
Langston HughesSummer Night
Phyllis McGinleyJune in the Suburbs
Howard NemerovTrees
Amy ClampittLindenbloom
H.D.Heat
Walt WhitmanA July Afternoon by the Pond
Lonie AdamsMidsummer
Anon. Summer Song
Ted HughesHeatwave
May SwensonFlag of Summer
William Cullen BryantSummer Wind
Henry David ThoreauThe Summer Rain
Alice MeynellThe Rainy Summer
Richard WilburMy Father Paints a Summer
David WagonerFalling Asleep in a Garden
Amy LowellDog-Days
Robert Penn WarrenAugust Moon
Seamus HeaneyAugust Moon
John HollanderLate August on the Lido
Robert FrostHyla Brook
Christina RossettiSummer is Ended
Emily Dickinson“As imperceptibly as God”
A.E. Housman“When summer’s end is nighing”

AUTUMN

John KeatsTo Autumn
Emily Dickinson“Summer begins to have the look”
Emily Bront“Fall, leaves, fall”
Robert FrostUnharvested
Walter de la MareAutumn
John ClareAutumn
Amy LowellAutumn
Edna St. Vincent MillayAutumn Chant
Percy Bysshe ShelleyOde to the West Wind
Ted HughesThe Seven Sorrows
Edith WhartonAn Autumn Sunset
Alexander PuskinAutumn
Louise BoganSimple Autumnal
Jean GarrigueThe Flux of Autumn
William Stanley BraithwaiteTurn me to my yellow leaves
Jones VeryThe Latter Rain
William BlakeTo Autumn
Amy LowellHoar-Frost
Mary TigheWritten in Autumn
Henry David ThoreauThe Fall of the Leaf
Wallace StevensAutumn Refrain
Howard NemerovThe Dying Garden
Anthony HechtAn Autumnal
Henry Wadsworth LongfellowAftermath
W.S. MerwinThe Love for October
Ted Hughes October Dawn
Helen Hunt Jackson October
Thomas Hardy Last Week in October
Marie Ponsot End of October
Robert Penn Warren Heart of Autumn
Thomas Hood No!
William Dean Howells November
Phyllis McGinley November
Adelaide Crapsey November Night
A.R. Ammons Late November
Thomas Hardy During Wind and Rain
Richard Wilbur Crows Nests
Garard Manley Hopkins Spring and Fall
John Hollander An Old-Fashioned Song
William Shakespeare That time of year thou mayst in me behold
E.E. Cummings [l(a]

WINTER

William ShakespeareWinter
Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset Winter
Emily Dickinson“It sifts from Leaden Sieves”
Henry David Thoreau“Pray to what earth does this sweet cold belong”
Anne BradstreetWinter
A.E. Housman“The night is freezing fast”
John ClareWinter Walk
James Russell LowellThe First Snow-Fall
James MerrillFrom a Notebook
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Snow-Storm
Gjertrud SchnackenbergThe Paperweight
John Greenleaf WhittierFromSnow-Bound 208
Donald HallThe Snow
William ShenstoneLines Written on a Window at the Leasowes at a Time of Very Deep Snow
Elinor WylieSilver Filigree
W.S. MerwinTo a Leaf Falling in Winter
Amy ClampittRunes, Blurs, Sap Rising
Anthony HechtCrows in Winter
Henry Wadsworth LongfellowSnow-Flakes
Robert FrostAfterflakes
Wallace StevensThe Snow Man
Thomas Campion“Now winter nights enlarge”
Angelina Weld GrimkA Winter Twilight
Kay RyanWinter Fear
Anthony HechtSestina dInverno
A.R. AmmonsWinter Scene
Emily Dickinson“Theres a certain Slant of light”
Richard WilburYear End
Ted HughesSnow and Snow
Emily Bront“The night is darkening round me”
Robert Frost“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
Karl ShapiroCalifornia Winter
William Carlos WilliamsWinter
Emily Dickinson“The Sky is low the Clouds are mean”
Richard WilburOrchard Trees, January
Edward ThomasFebruary Afternoon
James SchuylerFebruary 13, 1975

J. D. McClatchy is a poet and Professor of English at Yale University. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His bookHazmat(Alfred A. Knopf, 2002) was nominated for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize. He edits the “Voice of the Poet” series for Random House AudioBooks; and has written texts for musical settings, including eight opera libretti, for such composers as William Schuman, Ned Rorem, Lorin Maazel, Bruce Saylor, Lowell Liebermann, and Elliot Goldenthal. His honors include an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has also been one of the New York Public Literary Lions, and received the 2000 Connecticut Governor’s Arts Award. He received the 1991 fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, and served as an Academy Chancellor from 1996 until 2003. He has edited or co-edited four previous

Everyman’s Library Pocket Poet volumes.

Pub Date:June 03, 2008

0.8″ H x 6.3″ L x 4.4″ W

256 pages

hardcover