AFTER FROST An Anthology of Poetry from New England Edited with an introduction and commentary by Henry Lyman UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS PRESS Amherst Published in association with THE NEW ENGLAND FOUNDATION FOR THE HUMANITIES Boston
Table of Contents Introduction The Will of the Wind An Old Man's Winter Night The Snow Man The Farm The Reading of the Psalm Youth and Age Sky The Image-Maker The Prospect Before Us Sandpiper Water Country Stars The Loon on Forrester's Pond An Event Note: The Sea Grinds Things Up Noted in The New York Times Species Farm Picture Whale 1 25 30 31 32 34 35 36 38 39 40 41 43 44 46 47 49 50 52 53
Donald Hall Derek Walcott Charles Simic Wesley McNair Names of Horses Grounds of Winter Midsummer: XXXI Green Rock, Winthrop Bay Pitch Pines Windy Evening The Drive In House in Spring The Copperhead Witchgrass Long Walks in the Afternoon August Rain, after Haying The Music of Astronomy 54 56 57 58 59 61 62 63 64 65 67 68 69 My Own Desert Places 71 Donald Hall Desert Places Less and Less Human, O Savage Spirit The Old Gray Couple Identity 'If I could only live at the Pitch that is near Madness' Better Than Counting Sheep Quinnapoxet Perspective In the Waiting Room For Sale Parents Lost In Limbo Not to Choose My Father's Neckties Supposition with Qualification The Room Santa Mr. Wakeville on Interstate 90 The Angler's Story 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 84 86 89 90 92 94 96 98 99 100 101 103 104 AFTER FROST
Derek Walcott Charles Simic Wesley McNair For Adrian The Colossus A Green Evening Shirt The Families Album The Minister's Death To Be Here Field Flowers Beginner's Mind Potato The Toolmaker Unemployed 105 107 109 111 112 114 116 117 118 120 121 III. Fences Donald Hall Derek Walcott Mending Wall Idiom of the Hero Long Hot Summer Blood Stains Spite Fence Dream, Dump-Heap, and Civilization Robin Redbreast Pro Patria Varick Street For the Union Dead Effort at Speech The Mountain A Finished Man On Trading Time for Life by Work Saga Game The Tragedy of Bricks Mr. Mine from The One Day A Late Fourth Midsummer. XXX Night Shift A Photo of Miners 123 128 130 131 132 133 134 135 137 139 141 144 146 148 149 150 152 154 157 158 160 161 162 163 CONTENTS - vii
Charles Simic Wesley McNair Grocery Makin' Jump Shots My Brother Running: V The Shopping-Bag Lady Daisies Wars Back from the City Mi Vida: Wings of Fright 164 165 166 169 170 171 173 174 The Road There 177 Donald Hall Derek Walcott Charles Simic Birches Martial Cadenza Where the Hayfields Were The Sound I Listened For On a Squirrel Crossing the Road in Autumn, in New England Timeless, Twinned The Snakes of September Journey Anaphora Hawthorne The Cheer Song: So Often, So Long I Have Thought Advice to a Prophet Thesis, Antithesis, and Nostalgia The Excrement Poem Presence Saint Francis and the Sow I Remember Granite and Grass One of Our Walks The Season of Phantasmal Peace Poems, Potatoes Great Blue Spring History as Apple Tree 182 184 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 195 196 198 200 201 202 204 205 206 208 209 211 212 214 215 AFTER FROST
Wesley McNair Hunt Walking Esta The Red Poppy Learning a New Language Portrait of a Figure near Water When Songs Become Water Directive 217 218 219 220 221 222 224 Brief Biographies Sources Notes to Introduction Acknowledgments 227 235 237 239 CONTENTS