You'd think that there'd be something for everyone in such a diverse collection, but I'm finding it a slog. ?�It's been out from the library almost two months, and I'm still not done. ?áI think maybe Schmidt and I have differing tastes, in that we opine different poems worth inclusion. ?áStill, I do have some book darts, so I'd better record what they mark before I take the book back and maybe don't get it again to finish it.

Billy Collins, whose mission was to educate young students, writes, in Introduction to Poetry: I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light / like a color slide..../ But all they want to do / is tie the poem to a chair with a rope / and torture a confession out of it. / They begin beating it with a hose / to find out what it really means."

Robert Pinsky collected the voices of ordinary Americans reciting their favorite poems. ?áSee the website for the Favorite Poem Project.

Joseph Brodsky's To the President-elect is an example of how 'irreverent' many of these poets are about the government that honored them with this title, post, and stipend. ?áMany poems are angrier, but this one is brief and kinda cute, in its own way.

Richard Wilbur's Clearness is worth reading in its entirety, all six verses.

I really like the beginning lines of Revelation by Robert Penn Warren: "Because he had spoken harshly to his mother / The day became astonishingly bright...."

A Letter, by Anthony Hecht, is esp. meaningful to me as it has a personal relevance. ?áI still think of a man I dated, considered marrying, though my sons who liked him are now grown.

William Meredith:

A Major Work

Poems are hard to read
Pictures are hard to see
Music is hard to hear
And people are hard to love

But whether from brute need
Or divine energy
At last mind eye and ear
And the great sloth heart will move.

also from Meredith, a reference to their aging parents in

Winter Verse for His Sister: ?á"Our father built bookcases and little by little stopped reading, /?áOur mother cooked proud meals for common mouths."

Robert Hayden's Homage to the Empress of the Blues is immediately accessible to the inexperienced reader, but also intense and very wise. ?áFind and read it for yourself.

I think there's a lot going on that I don't get in Now Touch the Air Softly by William Jay Smith, but who can resist lines like "I'll love you till gravel is eaten for bread, / And lemons are orange, / And lavender's red."

Oh, and one more thing you might want to know about the book: it's backwards. ?áThe most recent laureates are at the front, and Robert Frost is near the end. ?áAlso, the poems end on p. 716; the rest is source notes, index, etc.

Reed Whittemore's Let it Blow is, at least on one level, a biting satire of those who are so rich they are dissatisfied. ?áKinda funny, and very sad.
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Ok done. ?áLast line I marked is from The Hard Structure of the World by Richard Eberhart. ?á"Hope always belaboring despair."

Now then. ?áMy rating is personal. ?áI am neither scholar nor poet, not even English Major. ?áI have no idea the worth of these selections. ?áBut I found over 700 pp a lot to slog through to access the few that I found meaningful, as shared above. ?á ?áAnd I came out with no desire to read more of any one of these poets, but only a desire to avoid anything else edited by Schmidt.

However, you must judge for yourself, of course.

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The Library of Congress recently collaborated with Elizabeth Hun Schmidt to collect a select group of poems from the 43 U.S. Poets Laureate in The Poets Laureate Anthology, which lays out the poems in reverse chronological order (click for a list of the poets laureate) from the current laureate W.S. Merwin through the first poet laureate Joseph Auslander. The table of contents also points out that poems in brackets listed for each laureate are considered their signature poems. The collection contains a foreword by former poet laureate Billy Collins and an introduction by the editor, Elizabeth Hun Schmidt.

In the foreword, Billy Collins reveals the ceremony or lack thereof that comes with the office of U.S. Poet Laureate, noting that there is no formal naming ceremony, simply a phone call from the Librarian of Congress who selects the latest laureate. The post does come with an office in the Jefferson Building, but each laureate approaches the appointment differently, though former laureate Howard Nemerov explained that the laureate spends more time explaining the duties he or she performs than actually accomplishing much.

Elizabeth Hun Schmidt’s introduction discusses the placement of the poet laureate’s office in a remote wing of the Library of Congress near the rooms used by U.S. House teenage pages, “You might think our country wants to both flaunt and to hide the fact that the only official job in the arts in the United States is for a poet” (page xiv of The Poets Laureate Anthology, published by W.W. Norton in association with the Library of Congress). The office of Poet Laureate actually receives mail, and appointed laureates often travel the country exposing new people and communities to poetry, but only Robert Frost was asked to read at a presidential inauguration.

Read the full review: http://savvyverseandwit.com/2011/04/the-poets-laureate-anthology-edited-by-eliza... ( )