American Poetry & Literacy Project

What a pity I waited so long to read this. As I expected, the small volume contains excellent poems of Cummings, Emerson, Longfellow, Poe, Whitman, Dickinson, Gertrude Stein and Robert Frost.

But, the true delight was discovering unknown poets. Here are two of my favorites:

Ella Wheeler Wilcox
The description notes she was a prolific author all her life and wrote her first novel at the age of nine!

Solitude
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must show more borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills with anser;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink for voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go.
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.

Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all.
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life's fall

Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.

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After reading this, I thought of the blessings of friends who make life so much easier by caring and sharing. So many difficult times in my life were/are shared by loving friends.

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The real gem in this book of 101 Great American Poems took my breath away as I read and re-read the message.

I've never heard of Countee Cullen (1903-1946) but vow to find more of his works.

The descriptive sentences note that although he wished to be known primarily as a poet and not as a Negro poet. From 1943 until his death, he was a teacher in the New York City public schools.

Incident

Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, "Nigger."

I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That's all that I remember.

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What power in these few short paragraphs! As in any good writing, the images and thoughts take me on a road of remembrance. This poem elicited feelings of when, as a child of poverty, I experienced the cutting, sharp, nasty words of ignorance. show less

I bought this book years ago at a library sale in Poolesville. During high school, as a matter of fact, when I was a poetry-reading-and-writing fiend and wanted to better acquaint myself with old poems. You know, like you do. Well, this treasury of American poetry introduced me to the hilarious poem "Casey At The Bat" and the knowledge that my baseball loving boyfriend will look at me funny when I admit that I had never heard of the poem until yesterday. That was embarrassing.

Anyway, my true show more joy in this book did not come from revisting poems I used to know, or poets I had never heard of before, but from the fact that some (presumably high school) boy decided to write in it. A lot. And circle things like the word "breast" and page "69." In a bout of note passing he lamented the fact that Alex wouldn't dump her boyfriend for him until he promised to send her his picture. Though he wasn't "on the fone" with her.

Yeah, I love used books. show less

A decent collection of poetry based on the theme of travel on the open road, by sea, by rail, or other method. It also includes poems on coming back home. I rather enjoyed about 50 out of the 80 poems. I also learned of a few new posts to try out. I use this book as a quick poetry break to whatever longer book I was reading at the time. In this case, that would have been George Elliot's Middlenarch.

The purpose of this slim volume (just 80 pages) is to make great poetry more available. The book is currently selling for $1.50 on Amazon. The poems are arranged in chronological order starting in the 1600s and ending in the late 1900s and each is introduced with a short paragraph about the poet. A number of them I had read back in grade school but many were new to me. My favorites ended up being by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Edna St. Vincent Millay. This is a book that could easily be show more carried in a purse or briefcase and read when time permitted. I loved it and will be keeping it on my shelves. show less