Good Poems for Hard Times - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143037676 ISBN 13: 9780143037675

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2006

Synopsis

Chosen by Garison Keillor for his readings on public radio's The Writer's Almanac, the 185 poems in this follow-up to his acclaimed anthology Good Poems are perfect for our troubled times.

Here, readers will find solace in works that are bracing and courageous, organized into such resonant headings as "Such As It Is More or Less" and "Let It Spill." From William Shakespeare and Walt Whitman to R. S. Gwynn and Jennifer Michael Hecht, the voices gathered in this collection will be more than welcome to those who've been struck by bad news, who are burdened by stress, or who simply appreciate the power of good poetry.

About this title

About the Author:

Garrison Keillor, author of nearly a dozen books, is founder and host of the acclaimed radio show A Prairie Home Companion and the daily program The Writer's Almanac. He is also a regular contributor to Time magazine.

From Booklist:

Having revived the radio variety program with A Prairie Home Companion Garrison Keillor turned to broadcasting poetry in the daily short feature The Writer's Almanac. In any given week, probably more people hear him read poems than attend poetry readings and slams. That's good because his taste is excellent. But then, his criteria are golden. For him, a poem is good if it's memorable, recitable, and accessible. The almost-unheard-of-for-poetry sales of Good Poems (2002) suggest that many endorse his taste and criteria, and the sequel to that success gives them no reason to change their minds. As before, the range of poets represented is broad contemporarily (the majority are alive or very recently deceased) and historically (sixteenth to twenty-first century), though not internationally, for, with one exception (Psalm 51), English is these poems' language of origin. As before, too, these are predominantly poems of domesticity and ordinary things, and when a poem touches the genuinely extraordinary, it is related to everyday life; for instance, Stephen Dobyns' "Thelonious Monk" relates a particular instance of a kind of experience virtually everyone has--the discovery of greatness. Even those tired of Lake Wobegon, or who think Keillor's a bigoted Democrat (especially after Homemade Democrat, 2004), should grant that he knows good poetry. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0143037676
• ISBN 13: 9780143037675
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368
• Editor: Garrison Keillor