Talkin' to Myself: Blues Lyrics, 1921-1942 Book

What a joy to read through this anthology. The editor John Daniel contributed one poem, "Spring Burning", which is a good one, and he has equally good taste in choosing other people's work. The introduction indicates that the poetry page of Wilderness magazine, where Daniel first printed most of these selections, became highly popular, and he was receiving three to four thousand submissions a year, as well as soliciting some. Eighty-three gems chosen, then, from famous and little-known poets.

The attitudes of the poets vary; while many evoke moments of connection, either with another living being (for example the robin in "In Late October" by E. G. Burrows) or with something vast ("Camping in the Cascades" by Joseph Powell), others express doubt ("San Rafael Mountain" by Paul Willis) or the knowledge that they cannot know or harmonize with nature. Some writers, like Wendell Berry, have an explicitly Christian point of view, others not. I can hardly begin to list all the poems I liked on first reading: "Another Little God" and "In My Time" by Pattiann Rogers; "Byng Inlet, Ontario" by Marc Harshman; "Cygnet" by Tom Sexton; "Arches" and "The Grand Canyon" by Stephen Lefebure; "Artichoke" by Jody Gladding; "The River" by C. L. Rawlins; "A Slant Message" and "Walking at the Beach" by William Stafford; "The Raven" by Reg Saner; "The Road Is Not a Metaphor" and "What Is There" by Carol Snyder Halberstadt; "On the Beach" by Jane Hirshfeld; "Early Snow" by Joseph Powell; "The Ghost Towns" by John Haines; "Lonely, White Fields" by Mary Oliver"; "Blackbirds" by Russell Kesler; "The Naturalist" by Leonard Nathan; "Fishing: The Late Wish" by Greg Glazner... I'm overlooking some there, I know, and really I'd have to list three-quarters of the table of contents.