Essential Poems from the Staying Alive Trilogy Read online

  ESSENTIAL POEMS

  FROM THE

  STAYING ALIVE TRILOGY

  Staying Alive, Being Alive and Being Human have introduced many thousands of new readers to contemporary poetry, and have helped poetry lovers to discover the little known riches of world poetry.

  Each anthology in the Staying Alive trilogy has 500 poems to touch the heart, stir the mind and fire the spirit. These books have been enormously popular with readers, especially as gift books and bedside companions. The poems – by writers from many parts of the world – have emotional power, intellectual edge and playful wit.

  This new pocketbook selection of 100 essential poems from the trilogy is a Staying Alive travel companion. As well as selecting favourite poems from the trilogy – readers’ and writers’ choices as well as his own favourites – editor Neil Astley provides background notes on the poets and poems.

  These essential poems are all about being human, being alive and staying alive: about love and loss; fear and longing; hurt and wonder; war and death; grief and suffering; birth, growing up and family; time, ageing and mortality; memory, self and identity…all of human life in a hundred highly individual, universal poems.

  ‘Staying Alive is a magnificent anthology. The last time I was so excited, engaged and enthralled by a collection of poems was when I first encountered The Rattle Bag. I can’t think of any other anthology that casts its net so widely, or one that has introduced me to so many vivid and memorable poems’ – PHILIP PULLMAN

  ‘I love Staying Alive and keep going back to it. Being Alive is just as vivid, strongly present and equally beautifully organised. But this new book feels even more alive – I think it has a heartbeat, or maybe that’s my own thrum humming along with the music of these poets. Sitting alone in a room with these poems is to be assured that you are not alone, you are not crazy (or if you are, you’re not the only one who thinks this way!) I run home to this book to argue with it, find solace in it, to locate myself in the world again’ – MERYL STREEP

  ‘Being Human is…a poetic Babel, a library in one volume’ – ALAN TAYLOR, The Herald (Scotland)

  ‘When you choose your book for Desert Island Discs, this should be it. Staying Alive proves that poetry is the most sustaining and life-affirming of literary forms. A triumph’ – HELENA KENNEDY

  ‘The book I’d like to take is called Staying Alive…it is 500 wonderful poems… I can learn them off by heart…also I think they will sustain me emotionally while I’m there’ – ANNA FORD on Desert Island Discs

  ‘Staying Alive is a book which leaves those who have read or heard a poem from it feeling less alone and more alive. Its effect is deeply political – in a way that nobody ten years ago could have foreseen. Why? The 500 poems in it are not political as such. But they have become subversive because they contest the way the world is being (and has been) manipulated and spoken about. They refuse the lies, the arrogant complacencies, the weak-kneed evasions. They offer 500 examples of resistance’ – JOHN BERGER

  ‘Neil Astley’s indispensable, endlessly surprising trilogy… The newest and last of these [Being Human] contains all the manifold virtues of the earlier two: another startlingly varied, unexpected and entirely accessible collection of contemporary poems – 500 per volume, no small undertaking – exploring the stuff of life, what Louis MacNeice called “this mad weir of tigerish waters/A prism of delight and pain”’ – CATHERINE LOCKERBIE, The Scotsman

  ‘Usually if you say a book is “inspirational” that means it’s New Agey and soft at the center. This astonishingly rich anthology, by contrast, shows that what is edgy, authentic and provocative can also awaken the spirit and make its readers quick with consciousness. In these pages I discovered many new writers, and I’ve decided I’m now in love with our troublesome epoch if it can produce poems of such genius’ – EDMUND WHITE

  ‘Staying Alive is a blessing of a book. The title says it all. I have long waited for just this kind of setting down of poems – and the way they work together is wonderful – all come together to talk at the same table. Has there ever been such a passionate anthology? These are poems that hunt you down with the solace of their recognition’ – ANNE MICHAELS

  ‘A book that travels everywhere with me…It is full of beautiful writing that can blow your mind’ – BETH ORTON on Staying Alive

  ‘Hopefully, books like this will put poetry back into the mainstream’ – VAN MORRISON on Being Alive

  Cover photograph: Mariona (1988) by Carles Fargas

  ESSENTIAL POEMS

  FROM THE

  STAYING ALIVE TRILOGY

  edited by NEIL ASTLEY

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  INTRODUCTION Neil Astley

  Wild Geese Mary Oliver

  from Shape of Time Doris Kareva

  The Guest House Rumi

  ‘To be great, be whole…’ Fernando Pessoa

  Living Denise Levertov

  Table Edip Cansever

  Second-Hand Coat Ruth Stone

  Could Have Wisława Szymborska

  Dawn Revisited Rita Dove

  The door Miroslav Holub

  Otherwise Jane Kenyon

  Harlem [2] Langston Hughes

  Archaic Torso of Apollo Rainer Maria Rilke

  The Journey Mary Oliver

  Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota James Wright

  Temptation Nina Cassian

  Begin Brendan Kennelly

  As I Go Julius Chingono

  Ithaka C.P. Cavafy

  The Layers Stanley Kunitz

  The Road Not Taken Robert Frost

  The Way It Is William Stafford

  I drew a line Toon Tellegen

  Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening Robert Frost

  Migratory Mark Doty

  Alone Tomas Tranströmer

  Encounter Czesław Miłosz

  At the Fishhouses Elizabeth Bishop

  Snow Louis MacNeice

  A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford Derek Mahon

  Unwittingly John Burnside

  The Girl Lars Gustafsson

  Being the third song of Urias Ken Smith

  Starlight Philip Levine

  FROM Clearances Seamus Heaney

  Poem for a Daughter Anne Stevenson

  Love Kate Clanchy

  The Victory Anne Stevenson

  She Leaves Me Anna T. Szabó

  A Little Tooth Thomas Lux

  After Making Love We Hear Footsteps Galway Kinnell

  Great Things Have Happened Alden Nowlan

  This Hour Sharon Olds

  Snow Melting Gjertrud Schnackenberg

  Wild strawberries Helen Dunmore

  Strawberries Edwin Morgan

  For Desire Kim Addonizio

  You Don’t Know What Love Is Kim Addonizio

  Atlas U.A. Fanthorpe

  Love Song: I and Thou Alan Dugan

  Wedding Alice Oswald

  An Arundel Tomb Philip Larkin

  Love After Love Derek Walcott

  Missing God Dennis O’Driscoll

  Sheep Fair Day Kerry Hardie

  from Of Gravity and light John Burnside

  The Bright Field R.S. Thomas

  Stationery Agha Shahid Ali

  The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock T.S. Eliot

  A Confession Czesław Miłosz

  O Taste and See Denise Levertov

  From Blossoms Li-Young Lee

  The Simple Truth Philip Levine

  Sweetness, Always Pablo Neruda

  Happiness Jane Kenyon

  Trio Edwin Morgan

  The Present Michael Donaghy

&nbs
p; ‘The washing never gets done…’ Jaan Kaplinski

  A Man in His Life Yehuda Amichai

  Entirely Louis MacNeice

  An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow Les Murray

  Kindness Naomi Shihab Nye

  One Art Elizabeth Bishop

  Nothing Is Lost Dana Gioia

  The Weighing Jane Hirshfield

  Burlap Sack Jane Hirshfield

  Silence Mourid Barghouti

  A Brief for the Defense Jack Gilbert

  Musée des Beaux Arts W.H. Auden

  The fly Miroslav Holub

  The Place Where We Are Right Yehuda Amichai

  The Diameter of the Bomb Yehuda Amichai

  September Song Geoffrey Hill

  All of These People Michael Longley

  The Red and the Black Norman MacCaig

  Try to Praise the Mutilated World Adam Zagajewski

  Sweetness Stephen Dunn

  Though There Are Torturers Michael Coady

  It’s This Way Nâzim Hikmet

  Hijab Scene #7 Mohja Kahf

  They’ll say, ‘She must be from another country’ Imtiaz Dharker

  Aubade Philip Larkin

  Common and Particular David Constantine

  Funeral Blues W.H. Auden

  Memorial Norman MacCaig

  Darling Jackie Kay

  Eden Rock Charles Causley

  Gravy Raymond Carver

  Prayer Arundhathi Subramaniam

  FROM Four Quartets T.S. Eliot

  Postscript Seamus Heaney

  Late Fragment Raymond Carver

  NOTES ON POEMS AND POETS

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  INDEX OF WRITERS

  INDEX OF TITLES

  About the Author

  Copyright

  INTRODUCTION

  Staying Alive, Being Alive and Being Human have introduced many thousands of new readers to contemporary poetry, and have helped poetry lovers to discover the little known riches of world poetry. With each book in the trilogy already offering the reader 500 essential poems, choosing 100 essential poems for this pocketbook edition from their carefully chosen selections of 1500 poems was always going to be an impossible task.

  Staying Alive was never meant to be a definitive anthology of modern poetry, nor was its sequel Being Alive or its companion volume Being Human. Each was intended to be a helpful guide for new readers as well as a world poetry map showing more territory than most poetry readers would have come across. All three anthologies do of course include some of most significant poems of modern times, but that is not their purpose, so there would have been no point in producing a smaller anthology including just the poems said to have the highest critical standing. This is not a best of anthology but a compilation I’ve made for readers who’ve wanted a more portable travel companion drawn from the three chunky paperbacks, both in the form of this pocketbook and also as an e-book. I hope it may serve too as a taster for anyone unfamiliar with the individual anthologies.

  In drawing up my selection for this condensed edition, I have been especially conscious and respectful of how readers have come to view the three books in Staying Alive trilogy as testifying in a deeply personal way to their own love of poetry as well as somehow validating their relationship with particular poems which have been important to them in their lives.

  These anthologies are quite unlike any other books I’ve edited or published. These are books for which I receive fan mail from people from all walks of life, and the sense I get from the extraordinary correspondence they have generated, and from feedback offered all the time by people who come up to me at events, is that they really do have their own following, as if each book were an author with its loyal readership. People don’t just read these books and keep them by their bedside, they keep giving them as presents. And so this body of readers grows: all those people out there who see the three anthologies as their books, a kind of shared testament to our common humanity expressed in poems. When I edited the third anthology, Being Human – and then when assembling this one – I felt an acute sense of responsibility to that readership, a connection with all those people who’ve put their trust in me to deliver this particular kind of book which they won’t just read once but will re-read again and again; and who will feel a special bond with the poems, and will want to share them with others.

  Staying Alive is still being discovered by new readers. Ten years on I’m still receiving letters, postcards, phone calls and emails expressing people’s appreciation, all saying how much Staying Alive had helped or stimulated them and fired up their interest in poetry; and then that happened also with Being Alive and Being Human.

  Talismanic poems were a popular feature of Staying Alive, notably Mary Oliver’s ‘Wild Geese’ and ‘The Journey’. They then became integral to my selections for Being Alive and Being Human. These are the kinds of poems that people keep in their wallets, on fridges and noticeboards; poems copied to friends and read on special occasions. Such has been the appeal of Staying Alive and Being Alive that numerous readers wrote not only to express their appreciation of these books, but also to share poems which they had found helpful, empowering or affirming. I drew on this highly unusual publisher’s mailbag for Being Human, including many talismanic personal survival poems suggested by readers from all walks of life, along with others named by writers at readings and in newspaper articles and blogs. Examples of these include, in particular, poems by Robert Frost, Jane Hirshfield, Langston Hughes and Rilke.

  What many of these talismanic poems have in common is a wake-up call to people trying to live meaningful lives in a secular world without certainties, where so much that happens is outside anyone’s control, and the individual is pressured to conform to the will of others. And that acquiescence involves not only subservience to dominant political, social or religious codes of behaviour but also submission to capitalism’s market-driven, media-pandered consumer society. There are many different kinds of poets represented in these anthologies whose work stands in opposition to those forces and speaks for the crushed or embattled individual, from Ireland’s Louis MacNeice to Estonia’s Doris Kareva.

  Human understanding and intimacy are created not out of imposed order or striving for perfection but through acceptance of difficulty, inadequacy, imperfection, making do, shortage of time, as recognised here in poems by writers as various as Alan Dugan, U.A. Fanthorpe and Jaan Kaplinski. Yehuda Amichai’s ‘A Man in His Life’ concludes: ‘A man doesn’t have time in his life / to have time for everything.’ Warnings against wasting that one life and denying our hopes or dreams crop up again and again in these poems, most famously in Rainer Maria Rilke’s ‘Archaic Torso of Apollo’, which ends ‘You must change your life’, a call to action which has been picked up by numerous poets as well as by readers taking these poems to heart.

  As in the individual anthologies, I have “orchestrated” the selections here in such a way as to bring these kinds of connections between poems alive for the reader, so that poems will seem to talk to one another, with themes picked up and developed through several poems. Given this smaller space in which to present one poem after another, I’ve tried to give the whole selection a narrative arc, similar to that of the many readings I’ve done from the three anthologies at festivals and poetry venues over the past ten years. Those readings have been shared with poets, and my selections here include poems they’ve wanted to read at those events as well as poems which audiences have loved or connected with.

  Another popular feature of the three anthologies was my inclusion of brief notes on poets and poems in the short introductions to each section. I couldn’t do that for all 500 poems, but I have been able to add comments on the hundred poems in this selection at the back of the book. This is yet one more way in which I’ve tried to make this anthology responsive to what readers have wanted.

  And now it is your book, dear reader. I do hope it will travel with you and be a life companion in poems.

  NEIL ASTLEY

&
nbsp; Wild Geese

  You do not have to be good.

  You do not have to walk on your knees

  for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

  You only have to let the soft animal of your body

  love what it loves.

  Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

  Meanwhile the world goes on.

  Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

  are moving across the landscapes,

  over the prairies and the deep trees,

  the mountains and the rivers.

  Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

  are heading home again.

  Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

  the world offers itself to your imagination,

  calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –

  over and over announcing your place

  in the family of things.

  MARY OLIVER

  from Shape of Time

  You aren’t better than anyone.

  You aren’t worse than anyone.

  You have been given the world.

  See what there is to see.

  Protect what is around you,

  hold who is there beside you.

  All creatures in their own way

  are funny –

  and fragile.

  *

  The question isn’t

  how to be in style

  but

  how to live in truth

  in the face of all the winds?

  With mindfulness, courage,