The Anthologist Read Online Free PDF

death of Swinburne.
    Immediately I realized that this was not a change for the better, and I changed it back. And then here's what I did. I'll pass it on to you as a tip. I read what I'd written aloud to myself. Which is what you always do. But this time I used a foreign accent. The foreign accent is the twist that helps. I chose Charles Simic's Serbian twang. Other foreign accents that can help you hear your own poem better are Welsh, Punjabi, and Andrei Codrescu's Romanian. If those don't work, try using a juicy Dorchester accent, or a Beatles Liverpool accent, or a perfectly composed Isabella Rossellini accent. Or read it as if you were Wystan Auden and you'd smoked a million cigarettes and brought a bottle of bine to wed with you every night. See if that helps. It didn't help me much with the beginning of this poem, but it has helped me in the past and maybe it'll help you.
    I MET MY FRIEND T IM for a drink at the Press Room, a bar, and I told him Roz was gone. He was somewhat sympathetic. "You drove her away," he said. "You didn't give her anything to believe in."
    I asked him how his book was coming. Tim's book, which he's going to call Killer Queen, is a look at Queen Victoria's dark, imperialistic side. Tim split up with his wife several years ago, and he took up eating. He teaches at Haffner College.
    Tim leaned forward. "I work away at this book, and I describe how the Queen oversaw this huge system of plunder and destruction that wrecked people's lives all over the globe, and I've raked together all this knowledge, and I enjoy doing it because I feel I'm getting at the truth--"
    I nodded.
    "But it means so much less to me," Tim went on, "than if I were sitting on a couch talking to a woman of grace and intelligence who was wearing an attractive sweater."
    I made agreeing noises. "And beads over the sweater," I said. "Roz strings the most exceptional beads."
    Tim announced that he was going to a pick-your-own blueberry field with a woman he'd met. She had a friend. Would I like to go? I said sure. Then I asked him a question. "Is there any chance Haffner would take me back?"
    "I'll sound out the dean if you'd like," Tim said, but he looked doubtful. "You kind of alienated them when you quit so suddenly last time."
    "I had a scare," I said.
    "My advice is: get that anthology out," said Tim. "That's your ticket back to the classroom. Tell people why rhyme exists. Give them a big, fancy neurobiological explanation. People love fancy neurobiological explanations." Then he slapped his legs. "I'm off."
    When I got home there was a tax bill, and a box from Amazon that held James Fenton's anthology, The New Faber Book of Love Poems. Fenton's introduction is only twelve pages long, and it feels like the perfect length. He includes six of his own poems, which I must say shocked me. When Sara Teasdale edited her book of love poems by women, The Answering Voice, she didn't include even one of her own, even though hers were better than almost all the others, except maybe Millay's and Christina Rossetti's. But Fenton's right to include himself. His poem about being stuck in Paris is probably the best love lyric in the book, and we would feel cheated if it wasn't there. I wish to gimbleflap I'd written that poem.
    Fenton also includes six quite good Wendy Cope poems. I once met Wendy Cope at a radio show in London. Her poem "The Aerial" is in my anthology. Unfortunately I see that it's also in Fenton's anthology. But that can happen, and it's not necessarily a bad thing, is it? Call it anthology rhyme--when a familiar poem tumbles around in a new setting.
    I WANT TO TELL YOU why poetry is worth thinking about--from time to time. Not all the time. Sometimes it's a much better idea to think about other things.
    Most of us have a short period of intense thinking about poetry, when we take a class in college, and then that's about it. And that's really all you need. One intense time, when you master your little heap of names--Andrew