Except, of course, sometimes we get imaginary toads in real gardens instead

[larryhammer]

The 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 :

1. Anonymous [?] - "Westron wind, when wilt thou blow"
   
2. John Skelton [c.1460-1529: courtier, rector of Diss] - To Mistress Margaret Hussey
   
3. Thomas Wyatt [1503-1542: courtier] - "They flee from me, that sometime did me seek"
   
4. George Gascoigne [c.1539-1578: soldier of fortune] - "And if I did, what then?"
   
5. Edmund Spenser [c.1552-1599: courtier, colonial landlord] - Epithalamion
   
6. Christopher Marlowe [1564-1593: playwright, spy] - Hero and Leander
   
7. Philip Sidney [1554-1586: courtier, soldier, novelist] - "With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies!"
   
8. Samuel Daniel [1562-1619: tutor, historian, farmer] - "And yet I cannot reprehend the flight"
   
9. Michael Drayton [1563-1631: poet] - "Since there's no help, come, let us kiss and part"
   
10. William Shakespeare [1564-1616: actor, playwright] - "Let me not to the marriage of true minds"
    
11. Mary Wroth [1587?-1651?: lady-in-waiting, novelist] - A Crown of Sonnets Dedicated to Love
    
12. Mary Herbert [1561-1621: noblewoman, translator] - Psalm 104
    
13. Aemelia Lanyer [1569-1645: lady-in-waiting, poet] - Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum
    
14. Ben Jonson [1572-1637: bricklayer, soldier, playwright] - On My First Daughter
    
15. Thomas Nashe [1567-1601: playwright, novelist, satirist] - "Adieu, farewell, earth's bliss"
    
16. Walter Ralegh [1552-1618: courtier, adventurer] - The Lie
    
17. John Harrington [1561-1612: courtier, inventor, translator, and satirist] - On Treason
    
18. John Davies [1569-1626: lawyer, member of parliament, attorney general, judge] - Orchestra
    
19. Richard Corbet [1582-1635: court chaplain, vicar, bishop] - The Fairies Farewell, or God a Mercy Will
    
20. John Donne [1572-1631: courtier, lawyer, member of parliament, dean of Saint Paul's (London)] - The Canonization
    
21. Thomas Campion [1567-1620: physician, song-writer] - "When to her lute Corinna sings" (with music)
    
22. Robert Herrick [1591-1674: vicar of Dean Prior] - Upon Julia's Clothes
    
23. Thomas Carew [c.1594-1640: courtier] - A Song: "Ask me no more where Jove bestows"
    
24. George Herbert [1593-1633: member of parliament, rector of Bemerton] - Jordan (II)
    
25. Anne Bradstreet [c.1612-1672: colonial housewife] - A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment
    
26. John Milton [1608-1674: parliamentary polemicist, foreign secretary, epic poet] - "Methought I saw my late espouséd saint"
    
27. Andrew Marvel [1621-1678: tutor, Milton's secretary, member of parliament] - To His Coy Mistress
    
28. John Suckling [1609-1642: courtier, member of parliament, Cavalier officer] - "Why so pale and wan, fond lover?"
    
29. Richard Lovelace [1618-1657: courtier, landowner] - To Lucasta, Going Beyond the Seas
    
30. John Dryden [1631-1700: playwright, poet laureate, critic, translator] - Ode for St. Cecilia's Day
    
31. Katherine "Orinda" Philips [1632-1664: parliamentary housewife, translator] - Orinda to Lucasia Parting, October, 1661, at London
    
32. Aphra Behn [1640-1689: playwright, novelist, spy] - To the Fair Clarinda, Who Made Love to Me
    
33. John Wilmot [1647-1680: courtier, rake] - The Disabled Debauchee
    
34. Anne Finch [1661-1720: lady-in-waiting, noblewoman] - The Change
    
35. Jonathan Swift [1667-1747: secretary, satirist, novelist, dean of Saint Patrick's (Dublin)] - Stella's Birthday March 13, 1719
    
36. Matthew Prior [1664-1721: diplomat, politician, satirist] - An Ode
    
37. John Gay [1670-1729: secretary, satirist, playwright] - To a Young Lady, With Some Lampreys
    
38. Sarah Dixon [1672-1765: ?] - Lines Occasioned by the Burning of Some Letters
    
39. Mary Wortley Montagu [1690-1762: travel writer] - A Summary of Lord Lyttleton's Advice to a Lady
    
40. Alexander Pope [1688-1744: poet, translator, conservative polemicist] - Epistle to Miss Blount, On Her Leaving the Town, After the Coronation
    
41. Mary Leapor [1722-1746: domestic servant] - Mira's Will
    
42. Christopher Smart [1722-1771: scholar, Grub Street hack, devotional poet] - "For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry" (from Jubilate Agno, fragment B)
    
43. Jean (or Jane) Elliot [1727-1805: noblewoman] - The Flowers of the Forest
    
44. George Crabbe [1754-1832: surgeon, vicar] - His Late Wife's Wedding Ring
    
45. Elizabeth Hands [fl.1789: domestic servant, housewife] - On an Unsociable Family
    
46. Robert Burns [1759-1796: farmer, song-writer, musical folklorist] - To a Louse
    
47. William Blake [1757-1827: artist, engraver, mystic] - For the Sexes: the Gates of Paradise (with plates)
    
48. Mary Robinson [c.1757-1800: actor, royal mistress, novelist] - "Is it to love, to fix the tender gaze"
    
49. Walter Landor [1775-1864: playwright, historical vignettist] - "Mother, I cannot mind my wheel"
    
50. Thomas Moore [1779-1852: singer, song-writer, actor] - "Believe me, if all those endearing young charms"
    
51. Leigh Hunt [1784-1859: critic, essayist, editor & publisher] - Rondeau
    
52. Samuel Coleridge [1772-1834: poet, critic, philosopher] - Kubla Khan
    
53. George Byron [1788-1824: a mad, bad, and dangerous to know nobleman] - The Vision of Judgment
    
54. Percy Shelley [1792-1822: poet, idealist] - Letter to Maria Gisborne
    
55. John Keats [1795-1821: surgeon] - Ode to a Nightingale
    
56. Thomas Beddoes [1803-1849: physician, playwright] - Dirge
    
57. Arthur Tennyson [1809-1892: poet, poet laureate] - In Memoriam A.H.H.
    
58. Henry Longfellow [1807-1882: language professor] - The Children's Hour
    
59. Ellizabeth Barrett Browning [1806-1861: poet] - "When our two souls stand up erect and strong"
    
60. Robert Browning [1812-1889: poet] - Two in the Campagna
    
61. Emily Bronte [1818-1848: schoolteacher, novelist] - "The night is darkening round me"
    
62. Walt Whitman [1819-1892: typesetter, journalist, editor, government clerk] - The Last Invocation
    
63. Adelaide Proctor [1825-1864: philanthropist, feminist] - A Lost Chord
    
64. Matthew Arnold [1822-1888: critic, educator] - Dover Beach
    
65. Arthur Clough [1819-1861: teacher, educator] - Amours de Voyage
    
66. "Lewis Carroll" [1832-1898: mathematician, deacon] - The Hunting of the Snark
    
67. Dante Rossetti [1828-1882: artist, poet, translator] - The Woodspurge
    
68. Christina Rossetti [1830-1894: poet] - Goblin Market
    
69. Algernon Swinburne [1837-1909: radical poet, playwright, critic] - Anactoria
    
70. James Thomson [1834-1882: soldier, office clerk, journalist, critic] - The City of Dreadful Night
    
71. William Morris [1834-1896: architect, artisan, interior designer, entrepreneur, publisher, socialist, novelist, poet, and prolific] - The Haystack in the Flood
    
72. Thomas Hardy [1840-1928: architect, novelist] - Your Last Drive
    
73. Emily Dickinson [1830-1886: gardener, recluce] - "There's a certain Slant of light"
    
74. Gerard Hopkins [1844-1889: Jesuit priest, teacher] - The Windhover
    
75. "Michael Field" [1846-1914 & 1862-1913 (joint pen-name): poet, playwright] - Nightfall
    
76. Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-1894: lawyer, novelist, travel writer] - Requiem
    
77. Oscar Wilde [1856-1900: playwright, short-story writer, critic, wit] - The Ballad of Reading Gaol
    
78. Arthur Symons [1865-1945: critic, editor, translator] - White Heliotrope
    
79. Ernest Dowson [1867-1900: office clerk, translator, short-story writer] - Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae
    
80. E. A. Robinson [1869-1935: poet] - Eros Turannos
    
81. Charlotte Mew [1869-1928: short-story writer] - A Quoi Bon Dire
    
82. A. E. Housman [1859-1936: patent clerk, classical scholar] - "The chestnut casts his flambeaux"
    
83. William Yeats [1865-1939: playwright, politician, creative mythographer] - Wild Swans at Coole
    
84. John Masefield [1878-1967: sailor, novelist, poet laureate] - Sea Fever
    
85. Rudyard Kipling [1865-1936: journalist, short-story writer, novelist] - The Sea and the Hills
    
86. Robert Service [1874-1958: banker, novelist] - The Spell of the Yukon
    
87. Robert Frost [1875-1963: farmer, teacher] - Hyla Brook
    
88. Edward Thomas [1878-1917: biographer, critic] - The Owl
    
89. Sara Teasdale [1884-1933: poet] - I Shall Not Care
    
90. Elinor Wylie [1885-1938: society wife, editor, novelist] - Wild Peaches
    
91. Edna Millay [1892-1950: poet, playwright] - Recuerdo
    
92. Siegfried Sassoon [1886-1967: cricket player, novelist, memoirist] - Survivors
    
93. Wilfred Owen [1893-1918: teacher, tutor] - Futility
    
94. E.E. Cummings [1894-1962: painter, playwright] - the bigness of cannon
    
95. Amy Lowell [1874-1925: poet, critic] - The Taxi
    
96. Ezra Pound [1885-1972: editor, critic, fascist polemicist] - The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter
    
97. T. S. Eliot [1888-1965: banker, publisher, playwright, critic] - La Figlia Che Piange
    
98. Wallace Stevens [1879-1955: lawyer, executive] - Sunday Morning
    
99. H.D. [1886-1961: novelist, memoirist] - Garden
    
100. 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.

Comments

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

The title of the poem in #60 has an error - it should be "Two in the Campagna."

Sounds cool.

[larryhammer]

Urg. Yes, it should be. Fixed. And thanks.

---L.