Copyright
Compilation of text and Author Materials
(excluding public domain poems and licensed poems credited in the permissions) copyright © 2020 by Mary Ann Hoberman and Carolyn Hopley
Cover design by Mario J. Pulice
Cover photograph © Hiroshi Higuchi / Getty Images
Cover copyright © 2020 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the authors’ intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the authors’ rights.
Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group
1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104
littlebrown.com
twitter.com/littlebrown
facebook.com/littlebrownandcompany
First ebook edition: April 2020
Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to hachettespeakersbureau.com or call
(866) 376-6591.
ISBN 978-0-316-42492-9
E3-20200312-JV-NF-ORI
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
Editors’ Preface
1. “YOU READING THIS, BE READY”
William Stafford: You Reading This, Be Ready
Linda Pastan: A Glass of Cold Water
W. S. Merwin: Dew Light
Louise Glück: Lament
Jeffrey Harrison: Enough
Ursula K. Le Guin: My Birthday Present
Jane Hirshfield: The Decision
Stanley Kunitz: The Round
2. “THE SOUND OF TIME”
William Stafford: Fall Wind
Theodore Roethke: Slow Season
Clive James: Season to Season
Elaine Feinstein: Long Life
William Stafford: The Way It Is
Eleanor Lerman: Starfish
Elizabeth Alexander: Alice at One Hundred and Two
W. H. Auden: Posthumous Letter to Gilbert White
Jorge Luis Borges: Ars Poetica
C. P. Cavafy: Ithaca
Margaret Randall: Immigration Law
3. “THE GRACE OF THE WORLD”
Wallace Stevens: Sunday Morning (excerpt)
Jim Harrison: Bridge
Wendell Berry: The Peace of Wild Things
Walt Whitman: Night on the Prairies
Debora Greger: To an Eastern Bluebird
Bronislaw Maj: A Leaf
Gerard Manley Hopkins: Binsey Poplars
Denise Levertov: Threat
John Hollander: An Old-Fashioned Song
Philip Booth: Species
Kurt Vonnegut: Requiem
A. R. Ammons: Gravelly Run
Kathleen Raine: Winter Paradise
Zbigniew Herbert: Pebble
Robert Frost: Dust of Snow
4. “BODY MY HOUSE”
May Swenson: Question
Joyce Sutphen: Living in the Body
Diane Louie: Sunset from the Window of a Rented Summer House
Grace Paley: Here
W. D. Snodgrass: Lasting
Thomas Lynch: Refusing at Fifty-Two to Write Sonnets
W. B. Yeats: A Song
Carol Ann Duffy: Mrs Rip Van Winkle
Muriel Rukeyser: Myth
Marjorie Agosín: Mi Estomago (My Belly)
Han Yu: Losing My Teeth
Hyam Plutzik: Cancer and Nova
Wendell Berry: The Burial of the Old
5. “THE GRAND AND DAMAGING PARADE”
Kay Ryan: Things Shouldn’t Be So Hard
Edna St. Vincent Millay: Dirge Without Music
Marie Ponsot: Orphaned Old
A. R. Ammons: In View of the Fact
Gavin Ewart: The Last Things
Elizabeth Bishop: One Art
Dylan Thomas: Do Not Go Gentle into That
Good Night
Emily Dickinson: Those–dying then
Wendell Berry: Except
Mary Ann Hoberman: Mary No More
Ted Kooser: Father
Seamus Heaney: Clearances (excerpt)
Lucille Clifton: oh antic God
Wislawa Szymborska: Parting with a View
Alice Walker: “Good Night, Willie Lee, I’ll See You in the Morning”
6. “INTIMATIONS OF MORTALITY”
Mary Ann Hoberman: Finally
John Ashbery: Fear of Death
Philip Larkin: Aubade
Langston Hughes: As Befits a Man
Clive James: Star System
Wallace Stevens: The Snow Man
John Hall Wheelock: Intimations of Mortality
Maxwell Bodenheim: Old Age
W. S. Merwin: For the Anniversary of My Death
Linda Pastan: The Cossacks
Wislawa Szymborska: A Contribution to Statistics
Ursula K. Le Guin: In the Borderlands
7. “YES, THAT WAS I”
Hilda Morley: I Begin to Love
Ted Kooser: That Was I
W. B. Yeats: After Long Silence
Stanley Kunitz: I Dreamed That I Was Old
Robert Frost: Carpe Diem
Wendell Berry: They
W. B. Yeats: Why Should Not Old Men Be Mad?
Billy Collins: Forgetfulness
Bill Knott: There’s the Rub
Richard Eberhart: Youth and Age
Archibald MacLeish: With Age Wisdom
8. “A SOLACE OF RIPE PLUMS”
Tony Hoagland: Quiet
Richard Wilbur: A Finished Man
Robert Frost: Provide, Provide
William Meredith: Country Stars
Kay Ryan: Why We Must Struggle
Tomas Tranströmer: Allegro
William Carlos Williams: To a Poor Old Woman
Billy Collins: Consolation
Derek Walcott: Untitled #51
Janet Lewis: Out of a Dark Wood
9. “LATE RIPENESS”
D. H. Lawrence: Beautiful Old Age
Elaine Feinstein: Getting Older
Grace Paley: Hand-Me-Downs
Ogden Nash: Old Is for Books
Robert Browning: Rabbi Ben Ezra (excerpt)
Kathian Poulton: Untitled
C. K. Williams: Glass
Anacreon: Youthful Eld
Czeslaw Milosz: Late Ripeness
Mary Ann Hoberman: Reconsideration
Molly Peacock: A Face, a Cup
Ralph Waldo Emerson: Terminus
Langston Hughes: Mother to Son
10. “GLAD TO THE BRINK OF FEAR”
Wendell Berry: Why
Ron Padgett: Words from the Front
W. S. Merwin: One of the Butterflies
Denise Levertov: Joy
Elizabeth Bishop: Sonnet
William Stafford: Any Morning
Gunilla Norris: Good
Li-Young Lee: From Blossoms
Marianne Moore: What Are Years?
Billy Collins: Today
Alicia Ostriker: The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog
11. “TOWARD WHAT UNDREAMT CONDITION”
Jalal al-Din Rumi: Wean Yourself
Adrienne Rich: Final Notations
Raymond Carver: The Window
Louise Glück: The Night Migrations
W. B. Yeats: Sailing to Byzantium
Richard Wilbur: A Measuring Worm
Louise Glück: Vespers
Alan Dugan: Note: The Sea Grinds Things Up
Albert Goldbarth: The Way
A. R. Ammons: The City Limits
12. “NOW FOR LUNCH”
Kay Ryan: Least Action
Derek Walcott: Love After Love
D. H. Lawrence: A Living
Wallace Stevens: The Well Dressed Man with a Beard
W. H. Auden: After Reading a Child’s Guide to Modern Physics
Wislawa Szymborska: The End and the Beginning
E. E. Cummings: love is a place
Ted Kooser: The Leaky Faucet
Kay Ryan: Ticket
John Hall Wheelock: To You, Perhaps Yet Unborn
William Meredith: The Cheer
Ron Padgett: The Death Deal
Billy Collins: Days
Langston Hughes: Advice
Acknowledgments
Discover More
Permissions
About the Poets
To our readers:
May poetry enrich their lives,
as it has ours,
as they come to age.
Explore book giveaways, sneak peeks, deals, and more.
Tap here to learn more.
INTRODUCTION
This book started with a single, simple idea. We would gather together a group of poems that dealt with the subject of age and aging. Because we ourselves had found inspiration and joy in poetry throughout our lives, we thought that others would, too, particularly if it dealt with the existential questions that occupy us ever more urgently as we grow older.
The title came to us as a play on words. The familiar expression “coming of age” refers to that stage of life when one enters into adulthood, leaving youth for maturity. Coming to age suggests something other, an arrival rather than a departure. Entering this last stage, each newcomer may experience it differently. Yeats dwelled on his lost youth; Milosz celebrated his newfound fellowship.
If we are fortunate enough to live into our later years, we come to know what old age is firsthand. What does that mean? We have or will soon become founding members of the “old old,” now the fastest growing segment of the over-sixty-five population. At eighty the novelist Penelope Lively wrote: “Our experience is one unknown to most of humanity, over time. We are the pioneers.” And if we are pioneers, we owe it to those who follow to make something worthwhile of our good fortune.
Just as we read newspapers for news of the world, we read poetry for news of ourselves. Poets, particularly those who have lived and written into old age, have much to tell us. But along with acquiring new insights from their poems, we are reminded of what we already know. A line, a phrase, or even a single word, placed in the right context, can illuminate some part of our own experience, revealing a deeper significance, even a spiritual sustenance.
Reading these poems, we are joined to others whose lives span place and time. We discover unexpected connections in our common humanity. Topics that might not be brought up in everyday conversation can be alluded to in the metaphoric and distilled language of poetry. The late Adrienne Rich put it this way: “Wherever I turn these days, I’m looking, as from the corner of my eye, for a certain kind of poetry whose balance of dread and beauty is equal to the chaotic negations that pursue us… A complex, dialogic, coherent poetry to dissolve both complacency and despair.”
A “poetry to dissolve both complacency and despair”… that is what we have tried to present in this anthology. The current clichés—Live in the moment; Cultivate acceptance; Keep busy—are only generalities, thin gruel all. A poem is substantial. It conveys one individual’s particular experience in language. It is as much an object as a painting or a piece of music, using words as its medium. And like other art objects, it can become a precious talisman.
This last period of our lives can be many things. It can be a time of harvesting, of gathering together the various strands of our past and weaving them into a coherent fabric. It can also be a new beginning, an exploration of the unknown. We speak of “growing old.” And indeed we are growing, growing into a new stage of life, one that can be a fulfillment of all that has come before. To everything there is a season. Poetry speaks to them all.
—Mary Ann Hoberman and Carolyn Hopley, editors
EDITORS’ PREFACE
Compiling this anthology was a joyous task. We read several thousand poems to arrive at the present collection. In winnowing them down to a final number, we had to omit dozens of equally good and relevant poems, both by the poets found here and by many others. We hope this book acts as a springboard for you, the reader, to search out other poems to complement the ones we have included.
Among the criteria we used in choosing poems was the matter of accessibility. Unfortunately many potential readers are put off by modern poetry’s reputation of being difficult to understand; and indeed some of it is. However, “difficult” does not mean “impossible.” Some poems offer up their meanings easily; others benefit from repeated readings. But none of the poems in this book are of the variety that limit themselves to an in-group coterie.
To this point we sometimes make brief comments on a poem’s form, references, and/or language. We also may note how a poem speaks to others in the collection. You will undoubtedly make further connections of your own. And while the twelve divisions of this book hold in a general way, many of the poems defied easy classification. A poem slotted under the passage of time is also about memories of childhood; one about the loss of a loved one describes in detail the natural world once shared.
We envision this book as either atop a pile on your bedside table or as the catalyst for group reading and discussion—or both. Reading poetry to oneself is one of life’s great pleasures. Reading it with others can be another. For more than ten years Mary Ann has led a monthly poetry-reading group in her home, with Carolyn as a charter member. During that time we have read aloud the works of most of the poets included here. It continues to surprise us how a collaborative reading can reveal new dimensions of a poem, especially when read and spoken simultaneously.
These poems run the gamut of style and substance, from traditional to free verse, from formal to colloquial language, from serious to silly. Some of them are concerned directly with age and aging, others touch on the subject tangentially. Their authors range from Nobel laureates to the recently published; a few lived more than a thousand years ago while others are alive today. While the majority of the poems were written in English, others are presented here in translation. But all of them answer our primary criteria: they speak to us directly and honestly, and they are pertinent in some way to coming to age.
1
“YOU READING THIS, BE READY”
These first poems place us squarely in the present moment, the here and now. We spend so much of our time mulling over the past—regrets, mistakes, nostalgia—or anticipating the future that the present often escapes our attention. But realizing that the present moment is the only one we have can sharpen our awareness of what it is to be alive. Since the poet is concerned with the particular—this time, this place—a poem by example might encourage us to look at the wonder of our own situation as the gift that it is. We might call it, as Ursula K. Le Guin does, the present as a present.
YOU READING THIS, BE READY
Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?
Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right no
w? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?
When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life—
What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?
William Stafford
A GLASS OF COLD WATER
Poetry is not a code
to be broken
but a way of seeing
with the eyes shut,
of short-circuiting
the usual
connections until
lioness and
knee become
the same thing.
Though not a cure
it can console,
the way cool sheets
console
the dying flesh,
the way a glass of cold
water can be
a way station
on the unswerving
road to thirst.
Linda Pastan
This poem is placed early in the book to remind us at the outset of what a poem is and is not. It is not an enigmatic paraphrase of some secret meaning, designed to baffle and thwart the uninitiated reader. Rather, as the poet says, it is “a way of seeing… short-circuiting the usual connections.”
No two readers will read a poem identically. Nor will they necessarily take away exactly what the poet intended to convey. But if a poem touches a nerve or calls up a lost memory, if one of its images pleases or some of its sounds tickle the ear, consider these as doorways into the poem.
DEW LIGHT
Now in the blessed days of more and less
when the news about time is that each day
there is less of it I know none of that
as I walk out through the early garden
only the day and I are here with no
before or after and the dew looks up
without a number or a present age
W. S. Merwin
LAMENT
Suddenly, after you die, those friends
who never agreed about anything
agree about your character.
They’re like a houseful of singers rehearsing
Coming to Age Page 1
