Uncommon Speech of Paradise: Poems on the Art of Poetry

Robert Hedin is the author, translator, and editor of more than two-dozen books of poetry and prose. The recipient of many honors and awards for his work, including three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships as well as fellowships from the Bush, McKnight, and Yaddo Foundations, he has taught at the University of Alaska, the University of Minnesota, St. Olaf College, and Wake Forest University. He is co-founder (with his wife, Carolyn) and former director of the Anderson Center, a residential artist retreat in Red Wing, Minnesota.

James Lenfestey is a former college professor, administrator, and award-winning editorial writer for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. He is the author of the memoir, Seeking the Cave: A Pilgrimage to Cold Mountain, a book of personal essays, as well as seven collections of poetry. He has also edited two poetry anthologies and co-edited Robert Bly in the World. As a journalist, he covers education, energy policy, and climate science. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

I.
In the Beginning
Gary Snyder, "Riprap"
William Carlos Williams, "A Sort of a Song"
Alberto Rios, "An Instruction to Myself"
Franny Choi, "We Used Our Words We Used What Words We Had"
Rita Dove, "Ö"
Joyce Sutphen, "It's Amazing"
Anne Sexton, "Words"
Mona Sa'udi, "Why Don't I Write"
W. S. Merwin, "The Unwritten"
Richard Foerster, "Early and Late"
Jack Gilbert, "The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart"
Linda Hogan, "First Language: Sandhill Cranes"
Francisco Aragón, "Poem with Citations from the O. E. D."
Heid Erdrich, "Offering: Words"
Julia Alvarez, "I, Too, Sing America"
Victor Hernández Cruz, "Lunequisticos"
Sandra M. Castillo, "Letter to Yeni on Peering into Her Life"
Albert Goldbarth, "Before"
Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, "The Language Issue"
Linda Gregg, "Searching for the Poem"

II.
Away from the World
T. S. Eliot, from "East Coker"
Adrienne Rich, from "Origins and History of Consciousness"
Ted Hughes, "The Thought-Fox"
Seamus Heaney, "Digging"
Gerald Stern, "Making the Light Come"
Robert Bly, "Words Rising"
Ursula Le Guin, from "Coming of Age"
Li-Young Lee, "In His Own Shadow"
Denise Levertov, "Writing in the Dark"
Mary Oliver, "At Great Pond"
Stanley Kunitz, "The Round"
Ray Carver, "At Least"



III.
The Knock at the Door
Juan Ramón Jiménez, "At First She Came To Me Pure"
Eleanor Wilner, "The Muse"
John Berryman, "Images of Elspeth"
Laura Kasischke, "The Enormous Cage"
Meena Alexander, "Muse"
Anna Akhmatova, "The Muse"
Carolyn Kizer, "A Muse of Water"
Paul Mariani, "Following the Light"
Medbh McGuckian, "Killing the Muse"
Louise Gluck, "Lute Song"

IV.
Putting Things Right
Jaroslav Seifert, "To Be a Poet"
Carolyn Kizer, "Singing Aloud"
James Tate, "Teaching the Ape to Write Poems"
Hu Xudong, "Mama Ana Paula Also Writes Poetry"
James Lenfestey, "Steady Work"
Dana Levin, "Ars Poetica"
Zhang Shuguang, "To Xuefei"
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, "Constantly Risking Absurdity"
Kimiko Hahn, "The Apiculturalist"
Wallace Stevens, "The Man on the Dump"
Elizabeth Spires, "The Woman on the Dump"
Pablo Neruda, "Ars Poetica (1)"
Cornelius Eady, "Dance at the Amherst County Public Library"
Ellen Bryant Voigt, "Dancing with Poets"
Patricia Hampl, "Mother-Daughter Dance"
Sharon Olds, "I Go Back to May 1937"
Lisel Mueller, "When I Am Asked"
Tess Gallagher, "I Stop Writing the Poem"
Ed Bok Lee, "Woke"
Marilyn Nelson, "Bali Hai Calls Mama"

V.
All This Fiddle
Marianne Moore, "Poetry"
Wislawa Szymborska, "Some People Like Poetry"
Dean Young, "Singing Underwater"
James Scully, "What Is Poetry"
Elizabeth Alexander, "Ars Poetica #100: I Believe"
B. H. Fairchild, "What He Said"
Czeslaw Milosz, "Ars Poetica?"
Eleanor Wilner, "Ars Poetica"
Tracy K. Smith, "An Old Story"
Louis Simpson, "The Unwritten Poem"
Sheryl Luna, "Lowering Your Standards for Food Stamps"
Terrance Hayes, "Ars Poetics with Bacon"
Layli Long Soldier, from "Vaporative"
Larry Levis, "The Poem You Asked For"
Tomas Tranströmer, "Morning Birds"
Stephen Dobyns, "Passing the Word"
Archibald MacLeish, "Ars Poetica"
George Oppen, "The Poem"
Galway Kinnell, "The Bear"

VI.
The Real Work
Jacques Prévert, "To Paint the Portrait of a Bird"
William Carlos Williams, "Tract"
Moira Linehan, "Ars Poetica"
Dorianne Laux, "Dust"
Olav H. Hauge, "Don't Come to Me with the Entire Truth"
Mahmoud Darwish, "Don't Write History as Poetry"
Gonzalo Rojas, "Don't Plagiarize Pound"
Carlos Drummond de Andrade, "In Search of Poetry"
John Yau, "In the Kingdom of Poetry"
Louise Erdrich, "Advice to Myself"
Betty Adcock, "Ars Poetica on an Island in the Cyclades"
Marianne Boruch, "The Art of Poetry"
Carolyn Forché, "Prayer"
Keki N. Daruwalla, "On a Bed of Rice"
Blaga Dimitrova, "Ars Poetica"
Martin Espada, "Barbaric Yawp Big Noise Blues"
Yusef Komunyakaa, "Blue Light Lounge Sutra for the Performance Poets
at Harold Park Hotel"
lucille clifton, "study the masters"
Robert Bly, "The Gaiety of Form"
Quincy Troupe, "What the Poetic Line Holds"
Billy Collins, "Sonnet"
Linda Pastan, "Prosody 101"
Kim Addonizio, "Prosody Pathétique"
Todd Boss, "Ars Poetica"
Thomas Lux, "Render, Render"

VII.
Lines Stitching Here to There
Rebecca Seiferle, "Poetic Voice"
Ishmael Reed, "Beware: Do Not Read This Poem"
Nikki Giovanni, "Kidnap Poem"
John Ashbery, "Paradoxes and Oxymorons"
June Jordan, "These Poems"
Hayden Carruth, "The Impossible Indispensability of the Ars Poetica"
Pattiann Rogers, "All the Elements of the Scene"
Lynn Emanuel, "Then, Suddenly-"
Eavan Boland, "The Oral Tradition"
Nikky Finney, "The Girlfriend's Train"
Natasha Trethewey, "At Dusk"

VIII.
Letters to the World
Michael Waters, "Creation"
Emily Warn, "The Word Between the World and God"
William Stafford, "Vocation"
Adam Zagajewski, "Try to Praise the Mutilated World"
Joy Harjo, "Remember"
Jane Hirshfield, "For the Lobaria, Usnea, Witches Hair, Map Lichen,
Ground Lichen, Shield Lichen"
Gregory Orr, from "How Beautiful the Beloved"
Wallace Stevens, "The Idea of Order at Key West"

About the Editors
Acknowledgments
Index of Poets, Titles, and First Lines