POEMS TO READ A New Favorite Poem Anthology Edited by Robert Pinsky and Maggie Dietz W.W. Norton: 416 pp., $27.95

Robert Pinsky’s tenure as U.S. poet laureate gave us an expanded vision of the job. In the spirit of his predecessors Joseph Brodsky and Robert Hass, (the former managed to slip volumes of poetry next to Gideon Bibles in motel rooms and the latter raised consciousness nationwide on literacy and the environment) Pinsky connected with a (seemingly) poetry-indifferent public. His “Favorite Poem Project” has proved that not only is the American public familiar with poetry, but almost every one of us has a favorite poem held close to the heart.

Pinsky believes that poems are learned and best expressed in one’s own voice, that the body is the instrument by which the poem lives in the world. His interest lies in enacting what is on the page--not in yet another manifestation of “performance.” How gratifying to know that, in a dying literary culture, great poems are alive within our memories, in our blood and bones. As a student of mine said, “Learn a poem by heart and it is yours forever.”

Pinsky’s first anthology in this tradition, “Americans’ Favorite Poems” (2000) featured poems printed with headers or comments by readers who had found something in the poems to muse upon. Now we have “Poems to Read,” in which Pinsky and co-editor Maggie Dietz take a more active role in the conversation. Here they’ve selected some of the poems themselves, often adding their own thoughts and thereby contextualizing the poems.

This is a fresh take on the ever new pleasure of reading poems and the alchemical process through which the poems speak to us as they are spoken. Pinsky and Dietz’s anthology is illuminating, energetic and very American.

*

MUSIC OF A DISTANT DRUM

Classical Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Hebrew Poems

Edited by Bernard Lewis

Princeton University Press:

224 pp., $19.95

This anthology is a selection of poems representing the forms and styles of Middle Eastern poetry from the 7th to the 18th century in the four leading literary traditions of the Middle East.

In the introduction, editor Bernard Lewis (who speaks all four of the languages of the poems) recounts an astonishing incident he witnessed that provides insight into the role of the poet in Middle Eastern culture. At a lunch given by the late King Hussein of Jordan for tribal chiefs in a tent in the desert, the tribe’s poet was called upon to recite an ode (qasida) in praise of the king. The ode was very long, written in literary Arabic, and the king sat with the others, cross-legged on the floor, listening.

When the poet finally paused, the king began to rise and offer thanks. But the poet hadn’t finished and cried out in colloquial Arabic the equivalent of, “Hold it, OK? I’m not done yet.” The king obediently sat down again and allowed the poet to go on. As Lewis asks, “Where else in the world would a poet feel free to address a head of state in this way?” Where else would a poet be given such estimable authority--except in (as these poems bear out) a culture steeped in respect and love for poetry?

These poems are revelatory: straightforward and yet filled with longing and desire. A quote from an anonymous Persian poem:

*

I used to shun my companion

if his religion was not like mine;

But now my heart accepts every form ....

Love alone is my religion, and whichever way

its horses turn, that is my faith and creed.

*

INVENTIONS OF FAREWELL

A Book of Elegies

Edited by Sandra M. Gilbert

W.W. Norton: 478 pp., $25.95

Poet and critic Sandra M. Gilbert’s anthology of poetic responses to loss, “Inventions of Farewell,” is a moving selection of elegies that chime against each other and seem to speak to one another in their grief and tenderness. A quick moment from Countee Cullen’s “A Brown Girl Dead”:

*

With two white roses on her breasts,

White candles at head and feet,

Dark Madonna of the grave she rests;

Lord Death has found her sweet.

*

These haunting poems span the centuries from the Middle Ages to the present. The universality yet originality of Gilbert’s selections are remarkable. The individual, often deeply personal, expressions of grief become an unforgettable chorus.