Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems to Read Aloud - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393066088 ISBN 13: 9780393066081

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009

Synopsis

A vibrant anthology and accompanying CD that revive a great American tradition: the joy of reciting poetry aloud.

This lively, abundant book is distinguished by its focus on hearing poetry read aloud. Robert Pinsky, beloved for his ability to bring poetry to life as spoken language, has collected poems that sound marvelous in a reader’s actual or imagined voice. Pinsky has organized the book into sections with brief introductions that emphasize the attentive, intuitive, and reflective process of listening to poetry. This structure provides an implicit, generous definition-by-example of poetry itself: beginning with “Short Lines, Frequent Rhymes” and “Long Lines” and proceeding through fundamental themes such as “Love Poems,” “Odes, Complaints, and Celebrations,” and “Jokes, Ripostes, Parodies, and Insults.”Essential Pleasures gives a fresh setting to traditional favorites, including poems by William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, and Robert Frost, placed among contemporary poems by John Ashbery, Louise Glu¨ck, Yusef Komunyakaa, and many others. This is an inviting and distinguished collection and an essential book for every home.

About this title

About the Author:

Robert Pinsky is the author of ten collections of poetry including, most recently, At the Foundling Hospital. His translation The Inferno of Dante won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry. His brief guide The Sounds of Poetry is used in acting classes. As a three-term United States Poet Laureate, Pinsky founded the Favorite Poem Project, in which thousands of Americans shared their favorite poems. That project gave rise to three previous anthologies, Americans’ Favorite Poems, An Invitation to Poetry, and Singing School. Pinsky lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and teaches at Boston University.

From Booklist:

Pinsky, poet, scholar, and poetry advocate, has been a motivating and innovative force in the great popularization of poetry. His Favorite Poem Project brought poetry lovers of all ages and tastes together in a stream of excellent anthologies, including Poems to Read (2002), and he continues to match erudition with unabashed fun in his latest dynamic endeavor. Pinsky’s mission is to share both the “intellectual and bodily” pleasures of poetry, the latter best appreciated when poetry is read out loud—hence this ebullient read-aloud anthology. With an oceanic knowledge of poetry and a musical ear, Pinksy has assembled an astonishingly vital, enjoyable, centuries-spanning array cleverly organized by form. Here are beautiful, mournful, and funny love poems; narrative poems; odes; complaints; celebrations; parodies; and insults by both celebrated and obscure poets. A CD of Pinsky’s expert readings accompanies the book, but the point is to do it yourself. Readers who read these wisely selected poems out loud, whether to themselves, a sweetheart, friend, cat, or plant, will be amazed at what they discover. --Donna Seaman

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0393066088
• ISBN 13: 9780393066081
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 508
• Editor: Pinsky Robert