Poetry Society of America's "Old School"

If you have a little time at work today, I'd highly recommend a brief trip over to the Poetry Society of America's "Old School" collection. Similar in some ways to the classic poems section of Slate, where David Lehman has located an 'overlooked masterpiece by Thomas Gray', Old School also pairs pre-19th Century poets with the contemporary poets who adore them. 

Find out about Matthew Rohrer's Shelley-inspired tattoo. Get brave with Yu Xuanji and Tina Chang. Experience Keats as a fragment of Ed Hirsch's consciousness, and hear George Herbert through the ears and mind of Alfred Corn. Oh I'm out on a kind of date there too, but my favorite pre-19th Century poet is wearing a wicked Invisibility Cloak. (And anyway, just between you and me, I think this poem of Robert Frost's might have competed hard as my top pick if I hadn't already written about it here.)

--Jenny Factor

Comments

[David Lehman]

Thank you, Jenny, for this excellent post. I share your enthusiasm for Frost's "Bereft." -- DL

[Jenny Factor]

Thanks, David. I hadn't been at all familiar with the Thomas Gray poem until I read your post. Was it hard for you to figure out which poem to write about for Slate?

I was so surprised to learn Frost wrote "Bereft" pre-1900, because it feels so markedly different from his other tiny early pieces from "A Boy's Will" (the poems he would have been writing around the same years).

I wonder why he waited so long to publish it? Was he uncomfortable perhaps at first with the poem's refusal of closure...or was he hiding raw shame or grief or atheism from public scrutiny? The "ear" on the poem feels different from other early shorter works too.