The Top 500 Poems

...Having choChristian Vocation and 500, Edwin Arlington Robinson's "Luke sen to provide less rather than more, how- Global Citizenship Havergal," to turn the pages through the ever, Harmon can only be criticized when November 8-12, 1993 ever-more-popular, delighting at once in he opts for the quirky or insubstantial the juxtapositions and the contests, as over the informative...

...tion of The Norton said to myself repeatedly, this is it...

...Given that the aim PAUL SCOTT WILSON lists, such as The Fortune 500 and "Amer- seems to be to aid readers, a little more Preaching Hope in ican Top 40," he imitates the sources of detail would have been useful in certain Troubled Times: Advent his data and presents the poems in chrono- cases...

...These, plus postwar acKelly, Random House, $23, 354 pp...

...Turning to the of paraphrase would have done the trick...

...we shout in response, exchanging clusions about the war, which it sees as stance, adds selections from the writings high fives in celebration of the inclusion Saddam's responsibility and as his great of Dame Julian of Norwich, thus record- of our favorites-"Kubla Khan," "Jabgamble to recover from his desperate eco- ing the developments of the past decade berwocky," "The Road Not Taken," "To nomic situation...

...Of course, an editor not bound to the poem betrays the inherent weakness of the Letting the Scriptures Speak: value of quantity might choose to include principle of selection, or rather, election...

...by Kipling's "Recessional...

...mined the diplomatic initiatives promoted Harmon remarks in his introduction by the French and the Soviets...

...All It offers a crisp and thoughtful set of con- Anthology of English Literature, for in- right...

...ty of states, and it was successfully resecretary...

...Kelly was one of the few journaltion, degradation, torture, and murder...

...29.95, place by appearing more frequently in account of the course of events, and is par- 1,132 pp...

...Washington National Cathedral selection of poems by Robert Herrick, for The remarks Harmon makes after each instance, readers encounter exactly the poem, providing that necessary "bit of poems they expect...

...While I applaud the attempt to make in English was, he says, for other people it more accessible, Harmon's moderniza- told us so...

...HERBERT O'DRISCOLL ger's...

...BRUCE BIRCH Harmon does not let the tally dictate his Each poem occupies its own page, or Preaching for a New World every move...

...lot more fun to open the book to poem No...

...Some of the very oldest "rough-and-ready" modernization, de- anthologies of poetry in English collect- For further information: spite the fact that these very lines in Middle ed poems mourning the deaths of sovEnglish may be more frequently commit- ereigns...

...Thus, the organizing premise of the This strategy allows Harmon to convey in- The Art of the Homily anthology also renders it superfluous...

...My main regret is that the authors' argument for accepting a much least as effectively as the products of William Harmon does not carry out his idea lower estimate of Iraqi military casualties scholarly consensus...

...traneous...

...As the war shrinks to an abstraction and First from Baghdad, as the air war began in January, one the debate about its political and moral justifications-or dispatch included a mind-bending description of a "smart" lack thereof-proceeds, Mr...

...Next, the rout of ists to elude military control...

...Having nothing to say about a WILLIAM WILLIMON RICHARD LISCHER son...

...The nineteenth-century American mark as to its antiquity (debatable) and its March 21-25, 1994 poets are here, including Longfellow and use, as a title of another anthology (irrelWhittier, not only Whitman and Dickin- evant...

...Kelly's book is both a corbomb turning a corner...

...Li under occupation or in exile, or the Palestinians in Kuwait and after expulsion...

...1 poem...

...important book...

...Then, after the ground war freed rective (to the abstractions) and a vivid reminder of the Kuwait, came the stories of the victims of Iraqi humilia- people on the ground...

...formation without deforming his texts October 18-22, 1993 Although Harmon's true models are with footnote markers...

...Too bad...

...That he also knew how to the Iraqi forces outside Kuwait City caught with the spoils see, how to write, and how to tell a story is a gift and a tool of war in an allied air trap was captured in the telling de- to those who continue to puzzle over the Gulf War...

...Perhaps it is reassur- commentary," range in their usefulness ing to think that a new reader of poetry from most illuminating to peculiarly ex- Coll¢~or t'rea~~es will also cast her eyes upon Julia's clothes...

...other anthologies (according to The ticularly informative on the ways in which Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry, 9th Saddam first encouraged and then under- Suzanne Keen edition), than any other poems in English...

...This is what poetry 3510 Woodley Road, NW Washington, DC 20016 guage...

...I think most read- JOHN CLAYPOOL Yeats's "Easter, 1916" takes the lead, by ers of Blake's "And Did Those Feet in Preaching as Pastoral Responsiveness a hair's breadth, over Stevens's "The Em- Ancient Time" would find it more help- January 31-February 4, 1994 peror of Ice-Cream"-both to be edged out ful to know that the poem refers to the leg- BRIAN WREN (wow...

...Harmon has made his volume COLLEGE OF PREACHERS ted to memory than any others in the lan- accidentally elegiac...

...Finally, while the book is in scholarship, criticism, and classroom Autumn," and "Annabel Lee""-now that's not driven by a just-war argument, it makes practice...

...Only in the age of compumany points that are clearly relevant to an rather than the seminar room, William terized databases and instantaneous word evaluation of the war in terms of just-war Harmon's new anthology, The Top 500 searches could the task of editing be so theory...

...Notes to 1993-94 Academic Year Highlights other existing anthology of English poet- older poems often include discrete glossry (or at least in those indexed by Gran- es of hard, or deceptively familiar words...

...but their THE HIT PARADE absence precludes the human depth, immediacy, and poignancy that should be present in a major study of war...

...he prints both versions of pages...

...best that has been written in the shorter Western partners than with the more closed The most recent edi- poetic forms for about 750 years...

...some will wonder what Speaking Out in the World the opening lines of "The General has really been written in the latter part of May 16-20, 1994 Prologue" to The Canterbury Tales in a our own century...

...Especially notable in this regard is Poems, captures the ethos of the 1990s at blithely abandoned...

...The Gulf that "these 500 poems, with a bit of comConflict also pays considerable attention to nthologies are indeli- mentary, will serve as a splendid way for the diverse political interests within the bly marked by the time somebody to become acquainted with the coalition, though it does this better with the of their compilation...

...Johnson refer in their poems...

...A Columbia Anthology poems, from "Sumer is icumen in" to Nonetheless, the book is a very valuable William Harmon, editor Sylvia Plath's "Daddy," have earned their resource...

...Wouldn't it be a recognize the people to whom Pope and WILLIAM SLOANE COFFIN, JR...

...The March 14-18, 1994 selection lies in the inclusion of old chest- interesting quatrain or fragment, "Western Louis WEIL nuts that have not been collected recent- Wind" (oddly punctuated to isolate the sec- Preaching, Children and the ly, though they have been collected many ond line from the first), elicits only a re- Nature of Worship times...

...Some readers will rejoice that May 9-13, 1994 Keats's "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," a there's nary a newfangled entry to chal- DAVID BUTTRICK fine decision...

...It also means that many of the issues that most concern the moral critics of the Gulf War THE TOP 500 POEMS made by statistical analysis: these 500 are not illuminated...

...O 202/537-6380 Commonweal 7 May 1993: 2...

...phyllo-dough sheets of other anthologies...

...As I have and secretive Arab members of the alliance...

...tails of bodies frozen in flight from the searing flames of MARGARET O'BRIEN STEINFELS given in a five-page listing of dramatis per- vitiated by systematic overestimates of an unjustifiable act of aggression, it was sonae, which includes almost no one the number of Iraqi soldiers in the theater condemned by an overwhelming majoribelow the level of ambassador or under- of war before hostilities...

...These are points that we should perience of the war by the soldiers, the The Gulf Conflict serves to remind us of some not lose sight of in a season of moral disWestern and other hostages, the Kuwaitis crucial facts: Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was satisfaction...

...No interest groups more boldly...

...than the initial 100,000, which they see as or theoretical trends can affect a selection Depending so completely on familiar26: 7 May 1993 Commonweal ity, a volume such as The Top 500 Poems tion ruins Chaucer's poetry...

...Preaching from the Bible these old-fashioned poems, as he might The Top 500 Poems is a handsome May 2-6, 1994 choose others, forgotten by his fellow-an- book, made with decent paper, unlike the thologists, or only recently discovered...

...A longish note can promise no surprises...

...only because uniformity demands that all The "I" and the "Eye" of the Preacher The benefit of the statistical method of the poems have notes beneath them...

...Designed for the bedside table a Dream Team...

...Very little is said about the ex- Despite the limitations I've mentioned, versed...

...Most helpful, and truest to the But the very premise of the book guaran- idea of the book, are those notes directtees us that this reader would have found ing readers to other poems related in genre, "that liquefaction of her clothes" in every mode, form, theme, or topic...

...It provides a readable and reliable Columbia University Press...

...Har- endary visit of Christ to England, than that Gender, Language and Preaching mon chooses the "story of poetry" over Blake's lines "furnished the movie title February 21-25, 1994 the drama of the countdown, which would Chariots of 'Fire...

...For instance, many readers won't October 25-29, 1993 logical order...

...Perhaps more disapmove inexorably toward the top ten and pointing are those notes that seem to exist JOHN & CAROLINE WESTERHOFF Blake's "Tiger"-the No...

...counts of Kurdish rebels and refugees and the citizens of During the Gulf War, some of the most detailed and as- Baghdad still living under the dual siege of Saddam Hussain tute reports were published in the New Republic and came and economic sanctions are gathered in this readable and from Michael Kelly, now a reporter at the New York Times...

...Of course, such perspectives would have lengthened an already long book...

...On the other hand, he puts lenge or confuse...