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larryhammerThe problem with calling this anthology "100 People, 1 Poem Each" is the obvious collision and confusion with another book I'm trying to sell. But that name would exactly describe what this is: a single poem each by a hundred different authors written in English between the late 15th century and 1922. The former boundary is soft, and merely reflects when Early Modern English became Modern enough to need minimal glossing.* The latter is as hard as legislation can make it, publication in '23 being the copyright horizon in the United States. If I lived in a country where copyright is life+70, I would have made different choices. But then, were I willing to put in the time and money to get permissions for copyrighted works, the choices would be even more different. It's not that people didn't keep writing good poems after that year, but this is a non-commercial collection.
It is also a personal selection -- the poem I see representing each person. Some are obvious choices, anthology staples for good reason. Some are less obvious. Some, I suspect, will be new discoveries for all but the very well-read. All are works I consider Good Stuff, poetry that proves itself upon my pulse, to use Keats's guideline. Poetry I want people to know and love, and that together make a good reading anthology -- one with enough variety of styles and subjects to entertain.
In general, each poem is a complete work -- the exceptions being I allowed myself one excerpt, on the grounds that we don't have the complete text of Jubulate Agno anyway, and one supposed fragment, because I don't believe in the person from Porlock. I followed the convention that a sonnet can be detached as a separate poem from a sequence, and likewise a song from a play, but otherwise multisection works are not partable, especially when there's a connected narrative. As for "people," I've slightly stretched the definition there as well: one is indefinite, while another is a two-person collaboration. The arrangement is loosely chronological by birthdate, with the exact sequence shifted slightly to bring out the conversation.
At the moment, I'm only linking to texts rather than compiling an ebook, for the same crass commercial reason cited above -- unless a title can be found that dodges around it. Suggestions welcome, as it would be an interesting project.
Version 0.9 of the TOC :
Feedback, including complaints and ideas for improvements, is appreciated (though of course not required). Also, a title.
ETA: Oh hello -- possible alternatives for #32-33: Behn's The Disappointment and Wilmot's The Imperfect Enjoyment. Possibly even in the reverse order. ETA2: Actually, no -- that would replace two queer poems with straight, if satirically explicit, ones.
* If you ignore the mickle o' Scots behind that curtain.
---L.
It is also a personal selection -- the poem I see representing each person. Some are obvious choices, anthology staples for good reason. Some are less obvious. Some, I suspect, will be new discoveries for all but the very well-read. All are works I consider Good Stuff, poetry that proves itself upon my pulse, to use Keats's guideline. Poetry I want people to know and love, and that together make a good reading anthology -- one with enough variety of styles and subjects to entertain.
In general, each poem is a complete work -- the exceptions being I allowed myself one excerpt, on the grounds that we don't have the complete text of Jubulate Agno anyway, and one supposed fragment, because I don't believe in the person from Porlock. I followed the convention that a sonnet can be detached as a separate poem from a sequence, and likewise a song from a play, but otherwise multisection works are not partable, especially when there's a connected narrative. As for "people," I've slightly stretched the definition there as well: one is indefinite, while another is a two-person collaboration. The arrangement is loosely chronological by birthdate, with the exact sequence shifted slightly to bring out the conversation.
At the moment, I'm only linking to texts rather than compiling an ebook, for the same crass commercial reason cited above -- unless a title can be found that dodges around it. Suggestions welcome, as it would be an interesting project.
Version 0.9 of the TOC :
- Anonymous [?] - "Westron wind, when wilt thou blow"
- John Skelton [c.1460-1529: courtier, rector of Diss] - To Mistress Margaret Hussey
- Thomas Wyatt [1503-1542: courtier] - "They flee from me, that sometime did me seek"
- George Gascoigne [c.1539-1578: soldier of fortune] - "And if I did, what then?"
- Edmund Spenser [c.1552-1599: courtier, colonial landlord] - Epithalamion
- Christopher Marlowe [1564-1593: playwright, spy] - Hero and Leander
- Philip Sidney [1554-1586: courtier, soldier, novelist] - "With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies!"
- Samuel Daniel [1562-1619: tutor, historian, farmer] - "And yet I cannot reprehend the flight"
- Michael Drayton [1563-1631: poet] - "Since there's no help, come, let us kiss and part"
- William Shakespeare [1564-1616: actor, playwright] - "Let me not to the marriage of true minds"
- Mary Wroth [1587?-1651?: lady-in-waiting, novelist] - A Crown of Sonnets Dedicated to Love
- Mary Herbert [1561-1621: noblewoman, translator] - Psalm 104
- Aemelia Lanyer [1569-1645: lady-in-waiting, poet] - Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum
- Ben Jonson [1572-1637: bricklayer, soldier, playwright] - On My First Daughter
- Thomas Nashe [1567-1601: playwright, novelist, satirist] - "Adieu, farewell, earth's bliss"
- Walter Ralegh [1552-1618: courtier, adventurer] - The Lie
- John Harrington [1561-1612: courtier, inventor, translator, and satirist] - On Treason
- John Davies [1569-1626: lawyer, member of parliament, attorney general, judge] - Orchestra
- Richard Corbet [1582-1635: court chaplain, vicar, bishop] - The Fairies Farewell, or God a Mercy Will
- John Donne [1572-1631: courtier, lawyer, member of parliament, dean of Saint Paul's (London)] - The Canonization
- Thomas Campion [1567-1620: physician, song-writer] - "When to her lute Corinna sings" (with music)
- Robert Herrick [1591-1674: vicar of Dean Prior] - Upon Julia's Clothes
- Thomas Carew [c.1594-1640: courtier] - A Song: "Ask me no more where Jove bestows"
- George Herbert [1593-1633: member of parliament, rector of Bemerton] - Jordan (II)
- Anne Bradstreet [c.1612-1672: colonial housewife] - A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment
- John Milton [1608-1674: parliamentary polemicist, foreign secretary, epic poet] - "Methought I saw my late espouséd saint"
- Andrew Marvel [1621-1678: tutor, Milton's secretary, member of parliament] - To His Coy Mistress
- John Suckling [1609-1642: courtier, member of parliament, Cavalier officer] - "Why so pale and wan, fond lover?"
- Richard Lovelace [1618-1657: courtier, landowner] - To Lucasta, Going Beyond the Seas
- John Dryden [1631-1700: playwright, poet laureate, critic, translator] - Ode for St. Cecilia's Day
- Katherine "Orinda" Philips [1632-1664: parliamentary housewife, translator] - Orinda to Lucasia Parting, October, 1661, at London
- Aphra Behn [1640-1689: playwright, novelist, spy] - To the Fair Clarinda, Who Made Love to Me
- John Wilmot [1647-1680: courtier, rake] - The Disabled Debauchee
- Anne Finch [1661-1720: lady-in-waiting, noblewoman] - The Change
- Jonathan Swift [1667-1747: secretary, satirist, novelist, dean of Saint Patrick's (Dublin)] - Stella's Birthday March 13, 1719
- Matthew Prior [1664-1721: diplomat, politician, satirist] - An Ode
- John Gay [1670-1729: secretary, satirist, playwright] - To a Young Lady, With Some Lampreys
- Sarah Dixon [1672-1765: ?] - Lines Occasioned by the Burning of Some Letters
- Mary Wortley Montagu [1690-1762: travel writer] - A Summary of Lord Lyttleton's Advice to a Lady
- Alexander Pope [1688-1744: poet, translator, conservative polemicist] - Epistle to Miss Blount, On Her Leaving the Town, After the Coronation
- Mary Leapor [1722-1746: domestic servant] - Mira's Will
- Christopher Smart [1722-1771: scholar, Grub Street hack, devotional poet] - "For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry" (from Jubilate Agno, fragment B)
- Jean (or Jane) Elliot [1727-1805: noblewoman] - The Flowers of the Forest
- George Crabbe [1754-1832: surgeon, vicar] - His Late Wife's Wedding Ring
- Elizabeth Hands [fl.1789: domestic servant, housewife] - On an Unsociable Family
- Robert Burns [1759-1796: farmer, song-writer, musical folklorist] - To a Louse
- William Blake [1757-1827: artist, engraver, mystic] - For the Sexes: the Gates of Paradise (with plates)
- Mary Robinson [c.1757-1800: actor, royal mistress, novelist] - "Is it to love, to fix the tender gaze"
- Walter Landor [1775-1864: playwright, historical vignettist] - "Mother, I cannot mind my wheel"
- Thomas Moore [1779-1852: singer, song-writer, actor] - "Believe me, if all those endearing young charms"
- Leigh Hunt [1784-1859: critic, essayist, editor & publisher] - Rondeau
- Samuel Coleridge [1772-1834: poet, critic, philosopher] - Kubla Khan
- George Byron [1788-1824: a mad, bad, and dangerous to know nobleman] - The Vision of Judgment
- Percy Shelley [1792-1822: poet, idealist] - Letter to Maria Gisborne
- John Keats [1795-1821: surgeon] - Ode to a Nightingale
- Thomas Beddoes [1803-1849: physician, playwright] - Dirge
- Arthur Tennyson [1809-1892: poet, poet laureate] - In Memoriam A.H.H.
- Henry Longfellow [1807-1882: language professor] - The Children's Hour
- Ellizabeth Barrett Browning [1806-1861: poet] - "When our two souls stand up erect and strong"
- Robert Browning [1812-1889: poet] - Two in the Campagna
- Emily Bronte [1818-1848: schoolteacher, novelist] - "The night is darkening round me"
- Walt Whitman [1819-1892: typesetter, journalist, editor, government clerk] - The Last Invocation
- Adelaide Proctor [1825-1864: philanthropist, feminist] - A Lost Chord
- Matthew Arnold [1822-1888: critic, educator] - Dover Beach
- Arthur Clough [1819-1861: teacher, educator] - Amours de Voyage
- "Lewis Carroll" [1832-1898: mathematician, deacon] - The Hunting of the Snark
- Dante Rossetti [1828-1882: artist, poet, translator] - The Woodspurge
- Christina Rossetti [1830-1894: poet] - Goblin Market
- Algernon Swinburne [1837-1909: radical poet, playwright, critic] - Anactoria
- James Thomson [1834-1882: soldier, office clerk, journalist, critic] - The City of Dreadful Night
- William Morris [1834-1896: architect, artisan, interior designer, entrepreneur, publisher, socialist, novelist, poet, and prolific] - The Haystack in the Flood
- Thomas Hardy [1840-1928: architect, novelist] - Your Last Drive
- Emily Dickinson [1830-1886: gardener, recluce] - "There's a certain Slant of light"
- Gerard Hopkins [1844-1889: Jesuit priest, teacher] - The Windhover
- "Michael Field" [1846-1914 & 1862-1913 (joint pen-name): poet, playwright] - Nightfall
- Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-1894: lawyer, novelist, travel writer] - Requiem
- Oscar Wilde [1856-1900: playwright, short-story writer, critic, wit] - The Ballad of Reading Gaol
- Arthur Symons [1865-1945: critic, editor, translator] - White Heliotrope
- Ernest Dowson [1867-1900: office clerk, translator, short-story writer] - Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae
- E. A. Robinson [1869-1935: poet] - Eros Turannos
- Charlotte Mew [1869-1928: short-story writer] - A Quoi Bon Dire
- A. E. Housman [1859-1936: patent clerk, classical scholar] - "The chestnut casts his flambeaux"
- William Yeats [1865-1939: playwright, politician, creative mythographer] - Wild Swans at Coole
- John Masefield [1878-1967: sailor, novelist, poet laureate] - Sea Fever
- Rudyard Kipling [1865-1936: journalist, short-story writer, novelist] - The Sea and the Hills
- Robert Service [1874-1958: banker, novelist] - The Spell of the Yukon
- Robert Frost [1875-1963: farmer, teacher] - Hyla Brook
- Edward Thomas [1878-1917: biographer, critic] - The Owl
- Sara Teasdale [1884-1933: poet] - I Shall Not Care
- Elinor Wylie [1885-1938: society wife, editor, novelist] - Wild Peaches
- Edna Millay [1892-1950: poet, playwright] - Recuerdo
- Siegfried Sassoon [1886-1967: cricket player, novelist, memoirist] - Survivors
- Wilfred Owen [1893-1918: teacher, tutor] - Futility
- E.E. Cummings [1894-1962: painter, playwright] - the bigness of cannon
- Amy Lowell [1874-1925: poet, critic] - The Taxi
- Ezra Pound [1885-1972: editor, critic, fascist polemicist] - The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter
- T. S. Eliot [1888-1965: banker, publisher, playwright, critic] - La Figlia Che Piange
- Wallace Stevens [1879-1955: lawyer, executive] - Sunday Morning
- H.D. [1886-1961: novelist, memoirist] - Garden
- Marianne Moore [1887-1972: secretary, librarian, editor, critic] - Poetry
Feedback, including complaints and ideas for improvements, is appreciated (though of course not required). Also, a title.
ETA: Oh hello -- possible alternatives for #32-33: Behn's The Disappointment and Wilmot's The Imperfect Enjoyment. Possibly even in the reverse order. ETA2: Actually, no -- that would replace two queer poems with straight, if satirically explicit, ones.
* If you ignore the mickle o' Scots behind that curtain.
---L.
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no subject
Date: 13 April 2012 02:51 pm (UTC)One note--my copy editor's eye sees that you've got "goal" where you want "gaol" in Wilde's poem title.
I think it's altogether excellent.
no subject
Date: 13 April 2012 03:25 pm (UTC)And indeed, the Ogura Hyakkunin Isshu is just such a private collection -- put together by Teika for his son's father-in-law's villa. And we have others of his as well.
---L.
no subject
Date: 13 April 2012 03:29 pm (UTC)D'oh! Yes of course :-P Sometimes I surprise myself with my cluelessness!
no subject
Date: 13 April 2012 04:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 13 April 2012 04:22 pm (UTC)Which of course makes it an interesting design challenge. Hmm ...
no subject
Date: 13 April 2012 04:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 13 April 2012 04:40 pm (UTC)---L.
no subject
Date: 13 April 2012 08:21 pm (UTC)Sounds cool.
no subject
Date: 13 April 2012 08:26 pm (UTC)---L.
no subject
Date: 13 April 2012 09:38 pm (UTC)I've given your dilemma, (no reference to "if life gives you dilemmas, make dilemmanaid", please!), in-depth and serious consideration (for at least 8 seconds) and reached the conclusion that you are correct:
imaginary toads in real gardens would be more acceptable than the reverse; real toads in imaginary gardens...
Of course, the other two side of the box would be just plain silly. That is, 'imaginary gardens in real toads' and, 'real gardens in imaginary toads'.
All this to say that Semantics is the key to your title problem.
100 poems 100 (authors) people
1 poem, 1 person, 100 times
poems
*100*
people
well, you get the idea.
no subject
Date: 14 April 2012 12:29 am (UTC)I've also considered variations on "A Hundreth Sundry Flowers," playing off a title of one of #4's collections. Or otherwise not mentioning the poets in the title, just in the description. Or subtitle. If a suitable title can be found.
---L.
no subject
Date: 14 April 2012 02:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 14 April 2012 04:22 pm (UTC)---L.
no subject
Date: 14 April 2012 05:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 16 April 2012 01:10 am (UTC)Also, for real Heian authenticity I think you need to copy this out by hand. Don't forget to modernize the grammar or orthography of the occasional line, just to keep future philologists guessing.
--Matt
no subject
Date: 16 April 2012 03:12 am (UTC)Authenticity be damned, though -- that's what caligraphic fonts are for.
---L.
no subject
Date: 16 April 2012 03:26 am (UTC)Aw, but you let Shakespeare in. Or should I say... FRANCIS BACON?! --Matt
no subject
Date: 16 April 2012 03:38 am (UTC)---L.