Introduction by John Hollander
         Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914?)
         from The Devil’s Dictionary
         Corporal
         Elegy
         Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935)
         Two Men
         A Mighty Runner
         Miniver Cheevy
         Carolyn Wells (1869–1942)
         Famous Baths and Bathers
         Arthur Guiterman (1871–1943)
         Elegy
         from The Lyric Baedeker
         Philadelphia
         Seattle
         Everything In Its Place
         On the Vanity of Earthly Greatness
         Guy Wetmore Carryl (1873–1904)
         The Embarrassing Episode of Little Miss Muffet
         The Harmonious Heedlessness of Little Boy Blue
         Robert Frost (1874–1963)
         The Wrights’ Biplane
         In Divýýs’ Dive
         In a Poem
         Don Marquis (1878–1937)
         the song of mehitabel
         archy at the zoo
         from mehitabel’s extensive past
         ballade of the under side
         Vachel Lindsay (1879–1931)
         Factory Windows Are Always Broken
         A Colloquial Reply: To Any Newsboy
         Niagara
         Kalamazoo
         Franklin P. Adams (1881–1960)
         Us Potes
         Ballade of Schopenhauer’s Philosophy
         The Rich Man
         To a Thesaurus
         “Lines Where Beauty Lingers”
         Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
         An Immorality
         Ancient Music
         T. S. Eliot (1888–1965)
         The Naming of Cats
         Macavity: The Mystery Cat
         Newman Levy (1888–1966)
         Tannhauser
         Carmen
         Rigoletto
         Pelleas and Melisande
         John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974)
         Survey of Literature
         Samuel Hoffenstein (1890–1947)
         from Love-songs, at Once Tender and Affirmative—An Unusual Combination in Verses of This Character
         from The Notebook of a Schnook
         from Poems in Praise of Practically Nothing
         from Songs About Life and Brighter Things Yet; A Survey of the Entire Earthly Panorama, Animal, Vegetable and Mineral, with Appropriate Comment by the Author, of a Philosophic, Whimsical, Humorous, or Poetic Nature-a Truly Remarkable Undertaking
         from Couplets, Rare, Medium and Well-Done: The Sexes
         Christopher Morley (1890–1957)
         Elegy Written in a Country Coal-Bin
         “A Pre-Raphaelite”
         Maxwell Bodenheim (1892–1954)
         Upper Family
         Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950)
         First Fig
         Second Fig
         Thursday
         Grown-Up
         Morris Bishop (1893–1973)
         Ozymandias Revisited
         Eschatology
         We Have Been Here Before
         “A joker who haunts Monticello”
         Flowers of Rhetoric
         Ah, To Be In …
         Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)
         Portrait of the Artist
         Chant for Dark Hours
         Unfortunate Coincidence
         Comment
         Words of Comfort to be Scratched on a Mirror
         News Item
         Song of One of the Girls
         Fighting Words
         Inscription for the Ceiling of a Bedroom
         Experience
         Neither Bloody Nor Bowed
         Bohemia
         Story
         Frustration
         Rýýsumýý
         One Perfect Rose
         Ballade at Thirty-Five
         Healed
         Pour Prendre Congýý
         Coda
         The Danger of Writing Defiant Verse
         The Actress
         E. E. Cummings (1894–1962)
         “the way to hump a cow”
         F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
         Obit on Parnassus
         David McCord (1897–1997)
         Sportif
         History of Education
         Convalescence
         John Wheelwright (1897–1940)
         Week End Bid I
         Week End Bid II
         Lion
         E. B. White (1899–1985)
         Marble-Top
         I Paint What I See
         Village Revisited
         Kenneth Fearing (1902–1961)
         Old Story
         Aphrodite Metropolis III
         Ballad of the Salvation Army
         Death and Transfiguration of Fourteenth Street
         Cultural Notes
         Dirge
         Ogden Nash (1902–1971)
         Spring Comes to Murray Hill
         Watchman, What of the First First Lady?
         Please Pass the Biscuit
         The Termite
         The Panther
         A Beginner’s Guide to the Ocean
         Kind of an Ode to Duty
         No Wonder Our Fathers Died
         A Necessary Dirge
         The Private Dining Room
         What’s in a Name? Some Letter I Always Forget
         Arthur
         The Song of Songs
         Phyllis McGinley (1905–1978)
         View from a Suburban Window
         Trinity Place
         Why, Some of My Best Friends Are Women
         Evening Musicale
         Blues for a Melodeon
         New England Pilgrimage
         The Day After Sunday
         Helen Bevington (1906–2001)
         Mr. Rockefeller’s Hat
         To Helen
         The Princess and the Pea
         Ballade of Poetic Material
         W. H. Auden (1907–1973)
         Under Which Lyre
         from Academic Graffiti:
         “My first name, Wystan”
         John Milton
         Oscar Wilde
         Parable
         William Cole (1919–2000)
         from Uncoupled Couplets
         Anthony Hecht (1923–2004)
         The Dover Bitch
         Handicap
         It Never Rains …
         Firmness
         From the Grove Press
         Down There on a Visit
         Edward Gorey (1925–2000)
         “From the bathing machine came a din”
         “The Proctor buys a pupil ices”
         Kenneth Koch (1925–2002)
         Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams
         La Ville de Nice
         James Merrill (1926–1995)
         Above All That?
         Neo-Classic
         Tomorrows
         X. J. Kennedy (b. 1929)
         Japanese Beetles
         George Starbuck (1931–1996)
         Said (“J Alfred Prufrock to”)
         Said (“Agatha Christie to”)
         Said (“Dame Edith Evans to”)
         Said (“J. Edgar Hoover to”)
         High Renaissance
         Working Habits
         Boston
         On the Antiquity of Warfare
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