Karl Shapiro (1913–2000)
Author of Modern American and Modern British Poetry
About the Author
Karl Shapiro won the Pulitzer Prize in 1945 for V-Letter and Other Poems (1944). Born in Baltimore, he attended the University of Virginia and Johns Hopkins University. After service in the army, he was appointed consultant in poetry at the Library of Congress in 1946 and joined the faculty of show more Johns Hopkins. There he taught writing courses until his resignation in 1950 to become editor, for a period, of Poetry. Shapiro is an accomplished poet in a wide variety of styles. Like others of his generation, his early work displays a concern with life and institutions of modern society. His later work included a series of bold love poems, The White-Haired Lover (1968). Typical of critics' response to Shapiro is Ralph J. Mills, Jr.'s assessment of The Bourgeois Poet (1964), in which Shapiro "breaks with accepted metrical patterns to attempt a poetry of direct speech. . . ."The Bourgeois Poet' definitely has about it the air of a new imaginative release. Irony and social criticism are still there, but autobiography, invective, heavy doses of sexuality. . . and an occasional prophetic note are now blended together" (Contemporary American Poetry). (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Uncredited image found at Bucknell University website.
Series
Works by Karl Shapiro
Poets at Work: Essays Based on the Modern Poetry Collection at the Lockwood Memorial Library, University of Buffalo (1948) 14 copies
Poetry Magazine Vol. 86 No. 3, June 1955 — Editor — 2 copies
The place of love 1 copy
Travelogue for Exiles 1 copy
In difesa dell'ignoranza 1 copy
Auto Wreck {poem} 1 copy
The House 1 copy
Poems 1 copy
Associated Works
Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama (1995) — Contributor, some editions — 1,012 copies, 7 reviews
American Poetry: The Twentieth Century, Volume Two: E. E. Cummings to May Swenson (2000) — Contributor — 442 copies, 1 review
War No More: Three Centuries of American Antiwar and Peace Writing (2016) — Contributor — 109 copies, 2 reviews
The Poet's Work: 29 Poets on the Origins and Practice of Their Art (1979) — Contributor — 95 copies, 1 review
Out of the Best Books: An Anthology of Literature, Vol. 1: The Individual and Human Values (1964) — Contributor — 40 copies
Poetry in crystal; interpretations in crystal of thirty-one new poems by contemporary American poets (1963) — Contributor — 21 copies
Reader's Bookshelf of Amercan Literature; a Home Education Program in American Literature: Six Volume Set: Keys to Ameri (1960) 3 copies
New poems 1944. An anthology of American and British verse with a selection of poems from the armed forces. (1944) — Contributor — 2 copies
The Ethnic Image in Modern American Literature, 1900-1950, Volumes 1-2 (1984) — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1913-11-10
- Date of death
- 2000-05-14
- Gender
- male
- Awards and honors
- Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (1946)
Bollingen Prize for Poetry (1969)
Robert Kirsch Award (1989) - Nationality
- USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- USA
Members
Reviews
Read an essay by Shapiro in a collection about the writing life. His thoughts and writing were so intriguing I ordered his selected poems. Somewhat disappointing. there were a couple atmospheric poems (A Poet takes a Voyage, California Winter, Aubade) and one striking poem (Mongoloid Idiot), but most were full of scattered thoughts that never quite made a whole.
Modern American & Modern British Poetry, 1955, ed. Louis Untermeyer. I doubt that these poems could still be considered modern, but among them you will find timeless ideas and beauty. I especially like the story poems. Frost’s, The Witch of Coos, and E. A. Robinson’s, Mr. Flood’s Party. Individual lines like; “Mumbo-jumbo will hoo-doo you”, “but the rain is full of ghost’s tonight”, “human kind can not bear very much reality”, “Night or day, what’er befall / I must show more walk that desert land / Until I dare my fear and call / The lion out to lick my hand.”, “A snake came to my water-trough / On a hot, hot day” are a few of my favorites. Take this book to your local coffee shop and relax. show less
This is the best book for learning about the "tools of the trade" in poetry and literary writing. It is amazing what a good author, with a mastery of basic literary tools, can do with the sounds of a language. Really enjoyed.
Nice Glossary--useful especially for the many Greek words (retained in study because the English phrases are so long)--but does not include a definition of "Prosody". (!) {The patterns of stress and intonation in a language, usually as presented in a poem}.
Noting that Rossetti takes up the traditiona motif of the lament for a dead lady with a new turn in "The Blessed Damozel". He "determined to reverse the conditions and give utterance to the yearning of the loved one in heaven." [167]
Heaven show more is treated "with the tentativeness and marmoreal quality that seem appropriate; the lady's delicacy, passionate longing, and odd mixture of ethereality and voluptuousness are vividly rendered." The poem illustrates the various problems in the "sheer mechanics of scansion" [!]:
The sun | was gone | now; the | curled moon
Was like | a lit|tle feath|er
Fluttering | far down | the gulf; | and now
She spoke | through he | still weath|er.
Her voice | was like | the voice | the stars
Had when | they sang | togeth|er.
Contents:
1. Prosody as a Study
2. Poetry and Verse.
3. Syllables: Color, Stress, Quantity, Pitch
4. The Foot
5. The Line
6. Accentual and Syllabic Verse
7. Meter and Rhythm
8. the Uses of Meter
9. Tempo
10. Rhyme
11. The Uses of Rhyme
12. The Stanza
13. Stanza Forms
14. The Sonnet
15. Blank Verse
16. Free Verse
17. Classical Prosody
18. Prosody and Period
19. Scansions and Comments
With Glossary, Bibliography and Index. show less
Noting that Rossetti takes up the traditiona motif of the lament for a dead lady with a new turn in "The Blessed Damozel". He "determined to reverse the conditions and give utterance to the yearning of the loved one in heaven." [167]
Heaven show more is treated "with the tentativeness and marmoreal quality that seem appropriate; the lady's delicacy, passionate longing, and odd mixture of ethereality and voluptuousness are vividly rendered." The poem illustrates the various problems in the "sheer mechanics of scansion" [!]:
The sun | was gone | now; the | curled moon
Was like | a lit|tle feath|er
Fluttering | far down | the gulf; | and now
She spoke | through he | still weath|er.
Her voice | was like | the voice | the stars
Had when | they sang | togeth|er.
Contents:
1. Prosody as a Study
2. Poetry and Verse.
3. Syllables: Color, Stress, Quantity, Pitch
4. The Foot
5. The Line
6. Accentual and Syllabic Verse
7. Meter and Rhythm
8. the Uses of Meter
9. Tempo
10. Rhyme
11. The Uses of Rhyme
12. The Stanza
13. Stanza Forms
14. The Sonnet
15. Blank Verse
16. Free Verse
17. Classical Prosody
18. Prosody and Period
19. Scansions and Comments
With Glossary, Bibliography and Index. show less
Awards
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Statistics
- Works
- 93
- Also by
- 23
- Members
- 1,038
- Popularity
- #24,806
- Rating
- 3.9
- Reviews
- 10
- ISBNs
- 40
- Favorited
- 3
