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 poetry

A TURNING BACK TO POETRY

AN ANTHOLOGY OF CONTEMPORARY POEMS

SELECTED AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

BILLY COLLINS
Poet Laureate of the United States
ABOUT THE EDITOR

billy COLLINS is the author of seven

collections of poetry, including Nine Horses;

Sailing Alone Around the Room; Questions

About Angels-, The Art of Drowning; and Picnic,

Lightning. He is a Distinguished Professor of

English at Lehman College of the City

University of New York. Collins is the Poet

Laureate of the United States.

Random House Tra&e Paperbacks New York
 poetry 18 o

TURN N C A C K T O POETRY

Selected and with an Introduction by

Billy Collins
A RANDOM HOUSE TRADE PAPERBACK ORIGINAL

Copyright © ?oo3 by Billy Collins

All rights reserved under International and

Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the

United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks,

a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and
simultaneously in Canada by Random House of

Canada Limited, Toronto.

RANDOM HOUSE TRADE PAPERBACKS and colophon

are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Owing to limitations of space, permission acknowledgments

begin on page 3i3.

LIBRARY OF CONCRESS CATALOGING- IN - PUBLICATION DATA

Poetry 180: a turning back to poetry/ selected and

with an introduction by Billy Collins.

p. cm. i

Includes index.

ISBN 0-8129-6887-5
I. American poetry— 21st century. I. Title: Poetry One
hundred eighty. II. Collins, Billy.

PS615 P6245 2003

81 1'. 608— dcai 2002036949

Random House website address: www.atrandom.com

Printed in the United States of America

6897

Book design by Barbara M. Bachman

contents

Introduction by Billy Collins xv

Introduction to Poetry |
001 Billy Collins 3

Selecting a Reader I
002 • Ted Kooser 4

Not Bad, Dad, Not Bad |

003 * Jan Heller Levi 5

Singing Back the World |

004 • Dorianne Laux 6

The Pink Car j

005 • Mark Halliday 8

Acting I
006 * Suzanne Cleary 10

The Cord |
007 • Leanne O'Sullivan 12

Ode: The Capris |

008 Mark Halliday 14

Bringing My Son to the Police Station to Be

Fingerprinted |
009 * Shoshauna Shy 17

On the Death of a Colleague |

010 • Stephen Dunn 19

The Space Heater j

011 • Sharon Olds 21

Numbers |
012 * Mary Cornish 23

Lines |
013 • Martha Collins 25

Listen |
014 Miller Williams 26

Unholy Sonnets |
015 • Mark Jarman 27

Poem for Salt |

016 * Leroy V. Quintana 28

The Hand |
017 • Mary Ruefle 29

Where I Was 018 |

• Dan Brown 30

CONTENTS I
vii
 hoop snake |
019 Rebecca Wee 32

Bestiary for the Fingers of My Right Hand |

ofco

Charles Simic 34

The Summer I Was Sixteen |

021 * Geraldine Connolly 36

Did I Miss Anything? |

022 Tom Wayman 37

Song of Smoke |
023 Kevin Young 39

Autobiographia |
024 • C. E. Patterson 41

White Towels |
025 * Richard Jones 42

To You I
026 * Kenneth Koch 43

It's Raining in Love |

027 • Richard Brautigan 44

Moderation Kills (Excusez-Moi, je Suis Sick

as a Dog) |
028 • David Kirby 46

Mrs Midas |
029 » Carol Ann Duffy 49

The Oldest Living Thing in L.A. |

030 * Larry Levis 53

Little Father |
031 Li-Young Lee 54

Alzheimer's |
032 Bob Hicok 55

The Book of Hand Shadows I

033 • Marianne Boruch 56

Sidekicks |
034 • Ronald Koertge 57

A Poetry Reading at West Point |

035 «

William Matthews 58

Only One of My Deaths 036 |

* Dean Young 60

I'm a Fool to Love You |

037 • Cornelius Eady 6i

Love Poem 1990 |

038 * Peter Meinke 63

Passer-by, these are words . . .

|
039 • Yves Bonnefoy 65

Wheels |
040 • Jim Daniels 66

Rain |
041 « Naomi Shihab Nye 68

A Myopic Child |
042 « Yannis Ritsos 69

At the Other End of the Telescope |

043 •

Ceorge Bradley 70

v i i i
praise song |
044 » Lucille Clifton 73

The Man into Whose Yard You Should Not Hit Your

Ball I
045 • Thomas Lux 74

The Farewell |
046 * Edward Field 76

The Partial Explanation |

047 • Charles Simic 77

Poem for Adlai Stevenson and Yellow jackets |

048 •

David Young 78

The Late Passenger |

049 C. S. Lewis 80

On a 372 Oz. Lesser Yellowlegs, Departed Boston

August 28, Shot Martinique September 3 |

050 •

Eamon Crennan 83

Tour I
051 • Carol Snow 84

After Us |
052 • Connie Wanek 85

Poetry |
053 • Don Paterson 87

The Fathers j
054 • Elizabeth Holmes 88

The High School Band |

055 * Reed Whittemore 89

The Bell |
056 • Richard Jones 90

Dearborn North Apartments Chicago, Illinois |

057 •

Lola Haskins 91

Gouge, Adze, Rasp, Hammer |

058 Chris Forhan 92

The Bruise of This |

059 * Mark Wunderlich 94

1-800-HOT-RIBS I
060 Catherine Bowman 95

The Printer's Error |

061 Aaron Fogel 97

Cartoon Physics, part 1 |

062 • Nick Flynn 101

Advice from the Experts |

063 * Bill Knott 103

She Didn't Mean to Do It |

064 • Daisy Fried 104

Snow 065 I
David Berman 105

Six One-Line Film Scripts |

066 * Tom Andrews 107

I Finally Managed to Speak to Her |

067 Hal Sirowitz 108

CONTENTS
 Before She Died |
068 « Karen Chase 109

In the Well \
069 1 Andrew Hudginst » no
The Sonogram |
070 • Paul Muldoon 111

Love Like Salt |

071 * Lisel Mueller 112

Through the Window of the Ail-Night

Restaurant |
072 • Nicholas Christopher 113

The Assassination of John Lennon as Depicted by the

Madame Tussaud Wax Museum, Niagara Falls,

Ontario, 1987 |
073 • David Wojahn 115

Barbie's Ferrari |
074 • Lynne McMahon 116

A Romance for the Wild Turkey |

075 • Paul Zimmer 118

Ye White Antarctic Birds |

076 • Lisa Jarnot 119

St. Francis and the Sow 077 |

• Calway Kinnell 120

Killing the Animals |

078 Wesley McNair 121

The Old Liberators |

079 Robert Hedin 122

Sentimental Moment or Why Did the Baguette Cross

the Road? |
080 • Robert Hershon 123

Grammar |
081 • Tony Hoagland 124

Plague Victims Catapulted over Walls into

Besieged City |
082 • Thomas Lux 125

In Tornado Weather |
083 • Judith Kerman 126

The Portuguese in Mergui |

084 * Ceorge Creen 127

No Return |
085 William Matthews 129

The Panic Bird |

086 Robert Phillips 130

A Hunger |
087 Benjamin Saltman 132

Otherwise |
088 * Jane Kenyon 133

Happy Marriage |
089 • Taslima Nasrin 134

At Navajo Monument Valley Tribal School |

090 •

Sherman Alexie 136

X
Hamlet Off-Stage: Laertes Cool |
091 • D. C. Berry 138

Lesson |
092 * Forrest Homer 139

Football I
093 ' Louis Jenkins 140

Fat Is Not a Fairy Tale |

094 • Jane Yolen 141

Sister Cat |
095 - Frances Mayes 142

The Bagel |
096 • David Ignatow 143

On Swimming 097 |
* Adam ZagaJewski 144

Song Beside a Sippy Cup |

098 Jenny Factor 145

Watching the Mayan Women 099 |

Luisa Villani 146

Queen Herod |
too * Carol Ann Duffy 148

Video Blues |
101 Mary Jo Salter 152

Smoking |
102 • Elton Closer 153

Old Men Playing Basketball |

103 • B. H. Fairchild 154

Gratitude to Old Teachers I

104 • Robert Bly 156

June 11 I
105 • David Lehman 157

Vegetarian Physics |
106 • David Clewell 158

My Life |
107 * Joe Wenderoth 159

Nuclear Winter |
108 • Edward Nobles 161

Message: Bottle #32 |

109 •
J. Allyn Rosser 162

Waves I
no • Robin Robertson 163

no. 6 I
111 • Charles Bukowski 164

Tuesday Morning, Loading Pigs |

112 • David Lee 166

For Mohammed Zeid, Age 15 |

113 • Naomi Shihab Nye 168

Small Comfort |
114 * Katha Pollitt 170

Skin I
115 • Lucia Perillo 171

Telephone Repairman |
116 • Joseph Millar 173

What I Would Do |
117 * Marc Petersen 175

The Meadow I
118 * Kate Knapp Johnson 177

Rotary |
119 * Christina Pugh 178

CONTENTS
 Sax's and Selves |
120 Mark Halliday 181

Black Leather Because Bumblebees L«ok Like* It |

121 «

Diane Wakoski 183

Beyond Recall |
122 * Sharon Bryan 185

Alley Cat Love Song |

123 • Dana Cioia 187

Goodbye to the Old Life |

124 Wesley McNair 188

For "Fiddle-De-De" |
125 • John Hollander 191

Country Fair |
126 • Charles Simic 194

Part of Eve's Discussion |

127 • Marie Howe 195

Birth Day |
128 • Elise Paschen 196

On Not Flying to Hawaii |

129 • Alison Luterman 197

The Poem of Chalk |

130 * Philip Levine 199

My Father's Hats |
131 * Mark Irwin 202

Of Politics & Art |

132 • Norman Dubie 203

Loud Music |
133 • Stephen Dobyns 205

Elevator Music |
134 • Henry Taylor 207

A Wreath to the Fish |

135 Nancy Willard 208

ballplayer |
136 • Evie Shockley 210

The Green One over There |

137 • Katia Kapovich 212

May I
138 Bruce Weigl 215

The Quest |
139 Sharon Olds 217

In Simili Materia |
140 * Timothy Russell 219

Words for Worry |

141 » Li-Young Lee 220

In Praise of BIC Pens |

142 David Hilton 221

The Other World |

143 • Robert Wrigley 223

The Grammar Lesson |

144 * Steve Kowit 225

Fast Break |
145 Edward Hirsch 226

The Invention of Heaven |

146 « Dean Young 228

Saturday at the Canal |

147 * Gary Soto 229

x i i
Doing Without |
148 David Ray 230

The Death of Santa Claus |

149 Charles Webb 231

Ladies and Gentlemen in Outer Space |

150

Ron Padgett 233

Thanksgiving |
151 • Mac Hammond 234

Dog's Death |
152 1 John Updike 235

Hound Song I

153 • Donald Finkel 236

A Metaphor Crosses the Road |

154 Martha McFerren 237

The Swan at Edgewater Park |

155 Ruth L. Schwartz 238

The Blizzard |
156 * Phillis Levin 239

Where Is She? |
157 • Peter Cherches 241

Coffee in the Afternoon |

158 * Alberto Rios 242

One Morning |
159 Eamon Crennan 243

Animals |
160 • Miller Williams 244

Cod Says Yes to Me |

161 Kaylin Haught 245

The Perfect Heart |

162 Shara McCallum 246

The Birthday |
163 • Elizabeth Seydel Morgan 247

Not Swans |
164 • Susan Ludvigson 248

I Wish in the City of Your Heart |

165 Robley Wilson 249

The Accompanist |
166 William Matthews 250

The Wolf of Cubbio I

167 William Matthews 252

49
th
Birthday Trip (What Are You On?) |
168 .

Samuel Menashe 254

How Many Times I

169 Marie Howe 255

The History of Poetry I

170 Peter Cooley ' 256

The Dead |
171 • Susan Mitchell 258

Social Security |
172 • Terence Winch 259

The Student Theme |

173 * Ronald Wallace 261

Smell and Envy |

174 * Douglas Coetsch 262

CONTENTS I
xiii
 The Yawn |
175 • Paul Blackburn 263

Blue Willow I
176 Jody Cladding f * 264

Tuesday 9:00 AM |
177 • Denver Butson 265

Ordinance on Arrival |
178 • Naomi Lazard 267

96 Vandam |
179 • Ceroid Stern 268

What He Thought |
180 • Heather McHugh 269

Notes on the Contributors 273

Index of Contributors 305

Index of Titles 309

Permission Credits 313

x i v
poetry !80: AN INTRODUCTION

Billy Collins

FEW YEARS AGO I FOUND MYSELF ON A CIRCUIT OF

readings, traveling around the Midwest from podium to

podium. One stop was at an enormous high school south of

Chicago. Despite its daunting size— picture a row of lockers
receding into infinity— the school holds a "Poetry Day" every
year featuring an exuberant range of activities, including
poems set to music by students and performed by the high
school chorus and a ninety-piece orchestra. As featured poet
that year, I found myself caught up in the high spirits of the

day, which seemed to be coming directly from the students

themselves, rather than being faculty- imposed. After read-
ing to a crowded auditorium, I was approached by a student

who presented me with a copy of the school newspaper con-

taining an article she had written about poetry. In that arti-

cle, I found a memorable summary of the discomfort so

many people seem to experience with poetry. "Whenever I

INTRODUCTION
read a modern poem.*" this teenage girl wrote, "it's like my
brother has his foot on the back of*ny ne<?k in the swimming
pool."

Poetry 180 was inspired by the desire to remove poetrv

far from such scenes of torment. The idea behind this

printed collection, which is a version of the Librarv of Con-

gress "180" website, was to assemble a generous selection of

short, clear, contemporary poems which any listener could

basically "get** on first hearing— poems whose injection of
pleasure is immediate. The original website, which contin-
ues to be up and running strong, www.loc.gov/poetry/ 180, is

part of a national initiative I developed shortly after being

appointed United States Poet Laureate in 2001. The program
is called "Poetry 180: A Poem a Day for American High
Schools." In creating it, I had hoped the program would sug-
gest to young people the notion that poetrv* can be a part of

everyday life as well as a subject to be studied in the class-

room. On the website, I ask high school teachers and admin-

istrators to adopt the program by having a new poem read
every day—one for each of the roughly 180 days of the school

year— as part of the public announcements. Whether the

poems are read over a PA system or at the end of a school as-

sembly, students can hear poetry- on a daily basis without

feeling any pressure to respond. I wanted teachers to refrain

from commenting on the poems or asking students "liter-

ary" questions about them. No discussion, no explication, no

quiz, no midterm, no seven -page paper—just listen to a

poem every morning and off you go to your first class.

I might not have come up with such an ambitious na-
tional plan—or any plan at all—were it not for the energetic

efforts made bv previous laureates to spread the word of

poetry far and wide. Prior to the democratizing efforts of

Joseph Brodsky, who envisioned poetry being handed out at

supermarkets and planted in the bed tables of motel rooms

next to the Gideon Bible, the post of poet laureate was cen-

tered at the Library of Congress in Washington, specifically

in a spacious suite of rooms at the top of the magnificent Jef-

ferson Building, complete with a balcony and, as one visi-

tor put it, a "CNN view" of the Capitol. In those days, the
position was called "Consultant in Poetry to the Library

of Congress"— admittedly, a mouthful with a businesslike

sound. It was the habit of many Consultants to relocate to

Washington, go to the office a few days a week, and— I can

only imagine—wait for the phone to ring. You never knew
when some senator would be curious to know who wrote
"Two Tramps in Mud Time." According to Mary Jarrell's

memoir, she and Randall took advantage of his tenure in the

nation's capital by enjoying cultural offerings such as the

Budapest string quartet. Maxine Kumin invited Washington-

area schoolchildren to the Poetry Room. Robert Penn War-
ren wisely devoted one of his terms to the writing of All the
Kings Men. But by the time I took office, the laureateship had
evolved into a seat from which resourceful plans for the na-
tional dissemination of poetry were being launched. And so
Poetry 180 became my contribution.
High school is the focus of my program because all too

often it is the place where poetry goes to die. While poetry of-

fers us the possibility of modulating our pace, adolescence is

commonly driven by the wish to accelerate, to get from zero

to sixty in a heartbeat or in a speed-shop Honda. And de-
spite the sometimes heroic efforts of dedicated teachers,

many adolescents find poetry—to use their term of ultimate

INTRODUCTION
condemnation—boring. What some students experience when
they are made to confront a poem*mighti)e summed up in a
frustrating syllogism:

I understand English.
This poem is written in English.
I have no idea what this poem is saving.

What is "the misfit witch blocks mv quantum path?" a reader

might well ask. What's up with "a waveform leaps in mv
belly*"? What's a reader to do in the face of such unyielding
obtuseness?
But let us hear from the other side of the room. If there is

no room in poetry- for difficulty, where is difficulty to go?

Just as poetry provides a home for ambiguity, it offers diffi-

culty a place to be dramatized if not solved. "Even in our

games." asserts John Ciardi. "we demand difficulty." Which
explains why hockey is played on ice and why chess involves
more than two warring queens chasing each other around
the board. During the heyday of Pound. Eliot. Stevens, and

Crane—that Mount Rushmore of modernism—difficulty be-

came a criterion for appraising poetic value. The difficulty of
composition was extended to the compass of the reader's ex-
perience. Opacity became so closely associated with mod-
ernist poetry that readers fled in droves into the waiting

arms of novelists, where they could relax in the familiar sur-

roundings of social realism. Of course, the conceptual de-

mands some poems make on their reader can provide an

essential pleasure, but this is hardly a recommended starting

place for readers interested in reclaiming their connection

to poetry. Lacking the experience to distinguish between le-

gitimate difficulty and obscurity for its own sake, some read-
ers give up entirely. Randall Jarrell said that poetry was so
difficult to write, why should it be difficult to read. Clarity is

the real risk in poetry. To be clear means openingyourself up

to judgment. The willfully obscure poem is a hiding place

where the poet can elude the reader and thus make appraisal
impossible, irrelevant— a bourgeois intrusion upon the

poem. Which is why much of the commentary on obscure

poetry produces the same kind of headache as the poems
themselves.
Of course, the more difficult the poem, the more de-
pendent students are on their teachers. Knotty poems give
teachers more to explain; but the classroom emphasis on
what a poem means can work effectively to kill the poetry

spirit. Too often the hunt for Meaning becomes the only
approach; literary devices form a field of barbed wire that
students must crawl under to get to "what the poet is try-

ing to say," a regrettable phrase which implies that every

poem is a failed act of communication. Explication may
dominate the teaching of poetry, but there are other ways
to increase a reader's intimacy with a poem. A reader can
write the poem out, just as Keats or Frost did, or learn how
to say a poem out loud, or even internalize a poem by
memorizing it. The problem is that none of these activities

requires the presence of a teacher. Ideally, interpretation

should be one of the pleasures poetry offers. Unfortu-
nately, too often it overshadows the other pleasures of
meter, sound, metaphor, and imaginative travel, to name
a few.

INTRODUCTION | xix
POETRY 180 WAS ALSO* MEANT TO EXPOSE HIGH SCHOOL
students to the new voices in contemporary poetry. Even if

teachers try to keep up with the poetry of the day, textbooks

and anthologies typically lag behind the times. My rough

count of one popular introductory text has dead authors
beating out living ones at a ratio of nine to one. And oddly
enough, many of the poems that are still presented as exam-
ples of "modern" poetry— Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock" or Williams's "The Red Wheelbarrow"—were writ-
ten more than seventy-five years ago. With a few exceptions,
the poems selected for the Poetry 180 website and this book
were chosen with the idea of catching the sounds, rhythms,
and attitudes of poetry written much more recently. Some of

the poems culled from literary magazines are no more than a

year or two old. I ruled out any poem that had become a stan-
dard offering in textbooks and anthologies. I wanted also to

include voices that were not well known. Quite a few of these

poems were written by poets I had not heard of before I

started scouting for the poems that would suit the purposes
of Poetry 180. Assembling this anthology gave me a chance to
further the cause of some of my favorite poems and also to

discover poets who were new to me. The more I searched for
poems, the more I became convinced that regardless of what

other kinds of poems will be written in years to come, clear,

reader- conscious poems are the ones that will broaden the

audience of poetry beyond the precincts of its practitioners.

ADMITTEDLY. SOME OF THESE POEMS WERE SELECTED TO

appeal to the interests of high school students. Mark Hal-
liday and Jim Daniels both have poems about cars. Nick
Flynn writes about the suspension of physical laws in car-
toons. Edward Hirsch has a poem about basketball, and
Louis Jenkins has one on football. There are poems about
mothers and sons, fathers and daughters. And poems about
teaching and learning. Tom Wayman's hilarious and touch-
ing "Did I Miss Anything?" will appeal to anyone who has
ever missed a class and then had the temerity to ask the

teacher that impertinent question. But this anthology is

meant for everyone, even if you somehow managed to avoid

high school—that crucible where character is formed and

where, as one student pointed out, they even make you read
The Crucible.
One of the most haunting topics in literary discussion

(right up there with the "Death of the Novel") is the disap-

pearance of the audience for poetry. Joyce Carol Oates has

pointed out the lamentable fact that the number of poetry
readers in this country is about the same as the number of

people who write poetry. Based on my confrontations with

students who want to write poetry but have no interest in
reading it, I would say the poets might slightly outnumber
the readers. Such a ratio should be kept in mind whenever
we hear people extolling the phenomenon of a "poetry re-

naissance" in America. Yes, more poetry books are being

published, and there are more contests, prizes, slams, open-
mike nights, and MFA programs? but a large part of these ac-
tivities take place within a closed circuit. In recent years,

poetry has gained momentum as a cultural force, but much of

its energy is expended tracing the same circle it has always

moved in, appealing to the same insider audience.

Poetry need not be read by everyone— lots of intense ac-

tivities have small audiences— but surely this distressing ratio

INTRODUCTION | xx
can be changed so that poetry is enjoyed by people who have
no professional interest in becoming poats. Poetry 180 is one
of many efforts to change the ratio, to beckon people back to
poetry by offering them a variety of poems that might snag
their interest. I am convinced that for every nonreader of
poetry there is a poem waiting to reconnect them to poetry. If
a student hears a poem every day, the odds of he or she en-

countering the right poem increases dramatically. Ideally,

Poetry 180 was aimed at creating a cognitive dissonance in

students who "hate poetry" by exposing them to a poem they

find themselves loving irresistibly.

THIS COLLECTION IS NOT AN EXACT TRANSCRIPTION OF

the poems on the Poetry 180 website. Putting the poems into

book form made it possible to include longer poems as well

as poems that came to my attention after the website was put

up. The website itself has movable parts; it is a kind of poetry
jukebox where the songs can be changed and updated to keep
the offerings fresh, especially for schools that want to con-

tinue to use the program one semester after another. This

book, like all printed books, is fixed, but it includes as many

different voices as possible to give a sense of the diverse cho-

rus that is singing the songs of American poetry these days.

Unlike a book of prose fiction, which you read straight
through following the rabbit of the plot, there are all sorts of

ways to read a collection of poems. You can look up poets you

are familiar with, you can flip through the pages looking for a

title that grabs you, a shape that invites you in. Or you can
read the collection cover to cover, forwards or backwards.
But with Poetry 180, there is something to be said for starting
at the beginning and reading just a poem or two each day.
Like pills, for the head and the heart.

FOR MY OWN PART, POETRY 180 HAS BEEN A PLEASURE

and a challenge. Finding the first one hundred poems was
fairly easy. I just spun my mental Rolodex of contemporary
poems that I liked well enough to remember. Locating the
remaining eighty was harder, which might say something
about the narrow bounds of my taste or the limited store of
smart, clear, contemporary poems. I experienced the privi-
lege of any anthologizer of being in control of the selections

and thus being able to express through publication the kind

of poetry I favor. With its original focus on high school audi-
ences, Poetry 180 has a public service ring to it, but it is also,

admittedly, a big bouquet of poems that I happen to like. To

borrow Fran Liebowitz's musical aesthetics: good poems are
poems I like and bad poems are poems I don't like. Putting

that egocentric position aside, welcome to Poetry 180. Flip

through the book and pick a poem, any poem. I know every

one is an ace, or at least a face card, because I personally

rigged the deck.

POETRY 180 IS THE WORK OF MANY HANDS WHOSE EFFORTS

I would like to acknowledge here. Thanks to the members of

the Library of Congress staff who formed the original team

that got the program up and running: Prosser Gifford,

Jill Brett, and Craig D'Ooge for their encouragement and di-
rection-, Michael Hughes for handling the permissions is-

sues along with Sara Anderson and Sheryl Cannady; Rob

INTRODUCTION | xxiii
 Sokol, Glenn Ricci, and" Dominique Pickett for forming the

team led by John Sayers in charge of designing and main-

taining the website; Jennifer Rutland for her invaluable

multitasking. Thanks are also due to those who suggested

poems: Robert Wrigley, Annie Finch, and Rachel Simon, my
assistant, who contributed to all aspects of the project.

Thanks to Poets House in New York for the use of their im-
mense library. Thanks to Michele Rosenthal for her diligent
editorial suggestions. At Random House, thanks to my edi-
tor, Tim Farrell, and also to Ivan Held of the trade paperback
program, publicist Alexa Cassanos, and, for her benevolent
overseeing, Ann Godoff. Abiding gratitude to my friend

Chris Calhoun for his chivalric support and to Diane for

more than can be expressed here.

x x i v
poetry 180
Billy Collins

INTRODUCTION TO POETRY | 001

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem

and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room

and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski

across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with rope

and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose

to find out what it really means.

POETRY 180 3
Ted Kooser
!
SELECTING A READIER | 002

First, I would have her be beautiful,

and walking carefully up on my poetry

at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck

from washing it. She should be wearing

a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.

She will take out her glasses, and there

in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,

"For that kind of money, I can get

my raincoat cleaned." And she will.
Jan Heller Levi
NOT BAD, DAD, NOT BAD | 003

I think you are most yourself when you're swimming;

slicing the water with each stroke,

the funny way you breathe, your mouth cocked

as though you're yawning.

You're neither fantastic nor miserable

at getting from here to there.

You wouldn't win any medals, Dad,

but you wouldn't drown.

I think how different everything might have been

had I judged your loving
like I judge your sidestroke, your butterfly,
your Australian crawl.

But I always thought I was drowning

in that icy ocean between us,

I always thought you were moving too slowly to save me,

when you were moving as fast as you can.

POETRY 180
DorianneLaux
SINGING BACK THt WO'rLD

I don't remember how it began.

The singing. Judy at the wheel

in the middle of Sentimental Journey.

The side of her face glowing.

Her full lips moving. Beyond her shoulder

the little houses sliding by.
And Geri. Her frizzy hair tumbling
in the wind wing's breeze, fumbling
with the words. All of us singing

as loud as we can. Off key.

Not even a semblance of harmony.

Driving home in a blue Comet singing
III Be Seeing You and Love Is a Rose.
The love songs of war. The war songs
of love. Mixing up verses, eras, words.

Songs from stupid musicals.

Coming in strong on the easy refrains.

Straining our middle aged voices

trying to reach impossible notes,

reconstruct forgotten phrases.

1

Cole Porter s Anything Goes.

Shamelessly la la la-ing

whole sections. Forgetting

the rent, the kids, the men,
the other woman. The sad goodbye.
The whole of childhood. Forgetting

the lost dog, Polio. The grey planes

pregnant with bombs. Fields
of white headstones. All of it gone
as we struggle to remember
the words. One of us picking up

where the others leave off. Intent

on the song. Forgetting our bodies,

their pitiful limbs, their heaviness.

Nothing but three throats

beating back the world— Laurie's

radiation treatments. The scars

on Christina's arms. Kim's brother.

Molly's grandfather. Jane's sister.

Singing to the telephone poles

skimming by. Stoplights

blooming green. The road,

a glassy black river edged

with brilliant gilded weeds. The car

an immense boat cutting the air

into blue angelic plumes. Singing

Blue Moon and Paper Moon

and Mack the Knife, and Nobody Knows
the Trouble We Seen.
Mark Halliday
THE PINK CAR 1,005*

The pink car is in my head.

It rolls calmly and calmly.
Across the carpet in 1957 and in my head.

Why is it pink? The question does not come up.

The pink car is just what it is and glad so.

Pink is its own color, of its own, being that,

calmly along the quiet roads.

(Pink not anything about sex

and not anything about femininity
and not anything about embarrassment or socialism
those meanings are from outside

whereas this pink car is not coming from an idea

it is a way of being its own self.)

The pink car rolls slowly along a pale green lane

till it needs to go fast then it goes very fast
while still quiet. It knows what it is,

it is the pink car!

Along the lanes to be what it is

it goes around hard corners and far across a wide plain

and back again whenever it wants.
Other cars can be all those other colors

the pink car doesn't care they can be loud and big

the pink car doesn't care that is why it can roll

so quietly and go slow until it goes fast for a while.

Other cars might honk their horns to seem big—

the pink car doesn't honk and doesn't worry
it just goes along the pale green lane
and around a sharp corner and down another lane
to stop in a special spot. Why is the spot special?
Because the pink car stopped there!

Stopping quiet but ready to go, to go

and be the pink car which is all it wants.

And when will I, when can

I ever be the man
implied by that sedan?

POETRY 180 I 9
 Suzanne Cleary
ACTING I
006, »

I most remember the class where we lie

on our backs, on the cold floor, eyes closed, listening

to a story set in tall grasses, a land of flash floods.

Ten babies slept in a wagon as a stream risen from nothing

trampled like white horses toward them.
We heard the horses, pulling their terrible silence.
Then he asked us to open our eyes. Our teacher
took from his pocket an orange square, dropped it:

this had wrapped one of the babies.

This was found after the water receded.

I remember the woman with red hair

kneeling before the scarf, afraid to touch it,

our teacher telling her she could stop

by saying, OK, Good.
I remember the boy named Michael, who
once told me he loved me. Michael
approached with tiny steps, heel to toe,

as if he were measuring land,

and, all at once, he fell

on the scarf. It could have been funny,

loud, clumsy. Another context, another moment,

it would have been ridiculous.
Head down, he held the scarf to his eyes.

1 o
My turn, I didn't move. I stared

at the orange scarf, but not as long

as I'd have liked to, for this was a class

and there were others in line for their grief.

I touched it, lightly, with one hand,

folded it into a square, a smaller square, smaller.

What is lived in a life?

Our teacher making up that story

as he watched us lie on the dusty floor,
our rising, one by one,
to play with loss, to practice,

what is lived, to live! What was that desire

to move through ourselves to the orange
cotton, agreed upon, passed

from one to another?

POETRY 180 I
11
Leanne 0 'Sullivan
THECORD | oof '

I used to lie on the floor for hours after

school with the phone cradled between

my shoulder and my ear, a plate of cold

rice to my left, my school books to my right.

Twirling the cord between my fingers

I spoke to friends who recognised the

language of our realm. Throats and lungs
swollen, we talked into the heart of the night,

toying with the idea of hair dye and suicide,

about the boys who didn't love us,

who we loved too much, the pang

of the nights. Each sentence was

new territory, like a door someone was

rushing into, the glass shattering
with delirium, with knowledge and fear.
My Mother never complained about the phone
what it cost for her daughter to disappear

behind a door, watching the cord

stretching its muscle away from her.
Perhaps she thought it was the only way
she could reach me, sending me away

to speak in the underworld.

As long as I was speaking
she could put my ear to the tenuous earth
and allow me to listen, to decipher.
And these were the elements of my Mother,
the earthed wire, the burning cable,

as if she flowed into the room with

me to somehow say, Stay where I can reach you,
the dim room, the dark earth. Speak of this

and when you feel removed from it

I will pull the cord and take you

back towards me.

POETRY 180 I
13
Mark Halliday
ODE: THE CAPRIC | !> o8

How do I feel about "There's a Moon Out Tonight"

by the Capris?
I thought you'd never ask.

Marcia Koomen lived across Cherry Lane

getting tall, taller than me in fifth grade
and smiling behind her glasses, she knew something.
The summer nights in Raleigh were thick
with something bright in the dark; you could ride
bikes under the moon and in and out of
lampshine at the corner of Wade and Dogwood,

not caring about touching a girl, or, later,

not caring much still but happy to be a boy

who could some day "have" a girl, and conscious of
a shivering beauty caught in the word girl

There s a girl at my side

that I adore

—the Capris knew something all together

and it called for this new verb, to adore;

something out there ahead of my bicycle in the dark;

I cared a lot about Paladin on "Have Gun—Will Travel"
but did I adore him? Scotty Koomen, years older,
got sort of pale and brittle when he went to visit
a certain girl in his class, he seemed to have trouble
breathing . . .

There 's a glow in my heart

I never felt before

—not exactly in my heart yet but it was

what would be there if I rode just maybe deeper down
Dogwood Lane in the busy dark.

Across Dogwood lived Ann Dailey

who had freckles and an awesome kind of largeness,
not fat but big and this made my eyes feel hot and burny;
she moved slowly doing chores in her yard,

her long tanning thighs seemed sarcastic

as if she knew soon her freckled beauty must positively
carry her somehow out, out and away . . . And
Shelby Wilson one night kissed her on the lips.

I saw it happen— on the sofa in the basement—

her folks weren't home. Right on the lips!

Amazing lips are in your future, boy. That's

what the Gapris were telling me; the North Carolina moon
is natural and it can find you anywhere:
you have to let the moon paint you and your bike
and the picture of Elvis in your pocket

POETRY 180 I 1$
and it shines down on Marcia's hair
and on the thought of the green eyes of Ann Dailey.

Ride and wait, wait and watch;

you laugh, you shiver in the summer- cool- dark,
you speak of the Yankees and the Pirates but
cut a side glance at Marcia's tall shape

but when she says anything serious exasperate her

yelling Little Richard's wop bop alu bop

but this dodging, dodging will end-

somewhere—
the Capris being on Marcia's side.

Baby, I never felt this way before

I guess it's because there's a moon out tonight

and once that shining starts

no amount of irony will ever quite ride the Capris out of

town.

I picture a deep pool with yellow flowers drifting

on the surface. The song pours up

out of that pool.
Shoshauna Shy
BRINGING MY SON TO THE POLICE
STATION TO BE FINGERPRINTED 009 |

My lemon-colored
whisper -weight blouse
with keyhole closure

and sweetheart neckline is tucked

into a pastel silhouette skirt

with side -slit vents

and triplicate pleats
when I realize in the sunlight

through the windshield

that the cool yellow of this blouse clashes

with the buttermilk heather in my skirt

which makes me slightly queasy
however

the periwinkle in the pattern on the sash

is sufficiently echoed by the twill uppers
ofmy buckle -snug sandals
while the accents on my purse

pick up the pink

in the button stitches

and then as we pass

through Weapons Check

POETRY lio I
it's reassuring to note

how the yellows momentarily mesh

and make an overall pleasing

composite
Stephen Dunn
ON THE DEATH OF A COLLEAGUE | 010

She taught theater, so we gathered

in the theater.

We praised her voice, her knowledge,

how good she was
with Godot and just four months later

with Gigi.

She was fifty. The problem in the liver.

Each of us recalled
an incident in which she'd been kind
or witty.

I told about being unable to speak

from my diaphragm
and how she made me lie down, placed her hand
where the failure was
and showed me how to breathe.
But afterwards
I only could do it when I lay down
and that became a joke

between us, and I told it as my offering

to the audience.

I was on stage and I heard myself

wishing to be impressive.
Someone else spoke of her cats
and no one spoke
of her face or the last few parties.

POETRY- 180 I 19
The fact was
I had avoided her for months.

It was a student's turn to speak, a sophomore,

one of her actors.
She was a drunk, he said, often came to class

reeking.

Sometimes he couldn't look at her, the blotches,

the awful puffiness.

And yet she was a great teacher,

he loved her,
but thought someone should say

what everyone knew

because she didn't die by accident.

Everyone was crying. Everyone was crying and it

was almost over now.

The remaining speaker, an historian, said he'd cut

his speech short.

And the Chairman stood up as if by habit,

8a i (1 something about loss

and thanked us for coming. None of us moved

except some students
t o t he student who'd spoken, and then others

moved to him, across dividers,

(J own aisles, to his side of the stage.
Sharon Olds
THE SPACE H EATER | on

On the ten-below-zero day, it was on,

near the patients' chair, the old heater
kept by the analyst's couch, at the end,

like the infant's headstone that was added near the foot
of my father's grave. And it was hot, with the almost
laughing satire of a fire's heat,

the little coils like hairs in Hell.

And it was making a group of sick noises—

I wanted the doctor to turn it off

but I couldn't seem to ask, so I just

stared, but it did not budge. The doctor

turned his heavy, soft palm

outward, toward me, inviting me to speak, I

said, "If you're cold— are you cold? But if it's on

for me ..." He held his palm out toward me,
I tried to ask, but I only muttered,

but he said, "Of course," as if I had asked,

and he stood and approached the heater, and then
stood on one foot, and threw himself
toward the wall with one hand, and with the other hand
reached down, behind the couch, to pull
the plug out. I looked away,
I had not known he would have to bend
like that. And I was so moved, that he
would act undignified, to help me,

POETRY 180 I
that I cried, not trying to stop, but as if

the moans made sentences which bore

some human message. If he would cast himself toward the
outlet for me, as if bending with me in my old
shame and horror, then I would rest

on his art— and the heater purred, like a creature

or the familiar of a creature, or the child of a familiar,

the father of a child, the spirit of a father,

the healing of a spirit, the vision of healing,

the heat of vision, the power of the heat,

the pleasure of the power.

Mary Cornish
NUMBERS I
012

I like the generosity of numbers.

The way, for example,

they are willing to count

anything or anyone:
two pickles, one door to the room,
eight dancers dressed as swans.

I like the domesticity of addition-

add two cups of milk and stir—
the sense of plenty: six plums

on the ground, three more

falling from the tree.

And multiplication's school

of fish times fish,

whose silver bodies breed

beneath the shadow
of a boat.

Even subtraction is never loss,

just addition somewhere else:

five sparrows take away two,

the two in someone else's

garden now.
There's an amplitude to long division,

as it opens Chinese take -out

box by paper box,
inside every folded cookie

a new fortune.

And I never fail to be surprised

by the gift of an odd remainder,
footloose at the end:

forty- seven divided by eleven equals four,

with three remaining.

Three boys beyond their mothers' call,

two Italians off to the sea,

one sock that isn't anywhere you look.
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
Government is allowing precious days to pass by without
profiting by them, and by its dilatoriness may perhaps lose all
the advantages that are calculated to put an end to our
troubles. Could you believe, dear friend of mine, that it is
proposed to put off the expedition for some weeks!...
However, I feel less disquieted over it all when I reflect that
we must have a great many supporters, and very powerful
ones, among those who are playing the rôle of the enemy, for
all these troubles in the interior not to have produced more
effect in the Assembly. Indeed, if some advantage is not
derived from this, those at fault in the matter should be placed
in a lunatic asylum. For myself, without knowing Puisage, I
should certainly give my vote for his being made Constable if
he succeeds in spite of all that can be said, because it will be
to him that the King will be under the greatest obligations. And
if any one were to ask me the name of the woman whom the
King has most reason to love, I should tell him to become my
rival, and should declare that, King though he was, he could
never repay the heart that has suffered so much for him.
“I have seen M. W[indham], and after giving me a number
of evasive replies, at last, on my insisting that I wanted to be
off, he answered rather warmly: ‘Oh, I can send you off at
once if you like; but what do you propose to do? I have
nothing definite to put in your hands. I have others to carry my
packets, and I have no one except yourself to carry out the
mission I have in my mind for you. Do have a little patience,
and if you follow my advice you will be all right. Be sure that I
have my eye on you all the time.’ So you see I am still in this
state of suspense. If only you had been able to remain I
should not have found the time so long. Unable to get away to
serve my King, I should have consoled myself as much as
possible in the presence of Madame....”
Letter from Reinhard, Representative of the Directoire in the
Hanseatic Towns, to the Foreign Minister, Delacroix.[78]
Very private.
Extract to be made for the
Directoire and Police;
name of Colleville to be
kept secret.
(14th Prairial) Altona. This 1st Prairial, Year
IV. of
Citizen Giraudet the French Republic,
To be sent at once to one and undivisible.
the Minister of Police. (May 20th, 1796).
“Citizen Minister,
“I hasten to reply to your despatch, dated the 20th floréal,
which accords remarkably with one I sent you from here on
the 21st. It even seems that we have had the same sources
of inspiration, and I shall not be surprised to find that the
same Baron d’Auerweck, whom I denounced to you, had
been in his turn the denouncer of Le Cormier. From the
impressions I have been given of his character and principles,
it is quite possible. However that may be, I have lost no time
in having an interview with Colleville, who had already told me
of the arrival of the Bishop of Arras, and who then further
informed me (before he knew what my business with him
was) that this person had written to him yesterday that his
arrival was postponed, and that perhaps it would not take
place at all, on account of the prolonged stay of the King of
Verona with Condé’s army. The King (Colleville assured me)
would not leave this army, as it had been averred that he
would.
“I began by telling Colleville that I had had a favourable
reply from you about his affairs. He assured me of his
gratitude, and at once spoke to me of his favourite idea of
obtaining permission to serve you elsewhere than at Hamburg
—a very natural desire, whether one explains it by his
conviction that he would play a more active part somewhere
else, or by his possible apprehension that his relations with us
may be in the end discovered.
 “I thought it better not to tell the man all I knew. I told him
that before leaving Hamburg he would have to throw some
light upon the things that were going on in that town; and I
said enough to him to explain what I meant and to put him on
his mettle. He replied that he knew nothing whatever of the
meeting I had mentioned; that he was sure that if there was a
question of it, Le Cormier, whom he saw every day, would
have told him; and that the latter had been thinking for some
days past of going into the country with M. de Bloom (who
was formerly Danish Minister in Paris), but that it seemed that
he would not now go. He added that he knew enough of the
emigrants at Hamburg to be certain that, with the exception of
Le Cormier, there was not an enterprising man in the ‘Ancien
Régime’ section; that if such a plan had existed, he thought it
was more than likely that the King of Verona’s change of
position would have caused another to be substituted for it;
and that, in any case, he would investigate and explain, and
might depend on his giving me all the information he could
get. He further said that the Prince of Carawey, whom he
knew privately, was expected at Hamburg from Lucerne within
the fortnight, and if there was anything to be learnt from him,
he (Colleville) would make it his business to learn it. I asked
him what Lord Mc. Cartally had come here for. He did not
know. I hope that I shall have found out whether he has left or
not before the courier goes.
“In fact, Citizen Minister, Colleville’s absolute ignorance of
the meeting you speak of leads me to have some doubt of its
reality. But I shall not leave it at that. I have already taken
measures to get hold of my man, and also to have the plotters
whom you indicate to me well watched from other quarters. I
am aware that with men of Colleville’s stamp there is always
the evil, if not of being spied on in our turn—which is easily
avoided with a little prudence—at any rate of being given
information with a double purpose. It was as such that I
regarded what he told me of a general plan of the émigrés,
which was to operate in the very heart of the Republic, and to
re-establish the Monarchy by the organs of the Law itself. He
thought himself sure of a man in the Legislative body (he told
me his name was Madier). He knew all the details of the
system they were to follow, and the details of the prosecution
of the 2nd of September were actually to enter into it. As to
the 2nd of September, I answered, every Frenchman regards
it with horror, and the scoundrel ought to be punished. The
Government will certainly take care that an act of justice does
not become an anti-revolutionary instrument.
“Le Cormier has a brother-in-law called Buter (sic), who
goes and comes from Paris to Boulogne, Calais, and Dunkirk,
carrying despatches and money from England. Dr. Theil, who
is settled in London, continues to serve as go-between for the
Princes’ correspondence. At Hamburg a man named
Thouvent does the business.
“The prime mover in the new Royalist manœuvres, and the
designer of the plan they are conducting in the interests of the
Republic, is (so Colleville says) the Duc de le Vanguyon.
Maduron, that brother of de la Garre, whom I once denounced
to you, said that he had been arrested once or twice at Paris,
and taken before the police, but that he had got out of it by
means of his Swiss passport. It is certain that the émigrés,
when they talk of a journey to France, do not anticipate any
more dangers than if they were going from Hamburg to
Altona. An Abbé de Saint-Far, residing at Hamburg, has, it is
said, a quantity of arms in his house. I told you some time ago
that he had contracted for some millions of guns. I suppose it
was at that time for England. My next despatch, Citizen
Minister, shall contain more positive information on the matter
you desire me to investigate. If the meeting is actually to take
place, I think I shall certainly be able to solve the problem you
suggest to me.
“Greetings and respects,

“Reinhard.”
Letter of the Princess de Tarente to Lady Atkyns.
 “St. Petersburg, August 14-25, 1797.
“To-day, dearest Charlotte, is, by the old style, the birthday
of the King of France, and also that of one of his most
devoted, though least useful subjects—myself. This month is
one of sad memories. It was in this month that her birthday
also fell; that she left the Tuileries and entered the Temple
prison; indeed, August is filled with dates unforgettable at all
times to the faithful, remembered the more poignantly when
the day itself recalls them. I had your letter yesterday: it gave
me pleasure, dear Charlotte. When I read it I was nearly
asleep, for it was three in the morning, and I had come back
from a stupid ball that I had been obliged to go to.
“You are always talking to me about a diary, my dear, but I
have not the courage to tell you the wretched history of my
life. I am just a machine wound up. I go on for ever, but
without pleasure or interest in what I do. I live on in anguish,
and my letters would be very doleful if they were a faithful
portrait of myself; but we are so far apart, my dear, you and I,
and letters pass through so very many hands, that we must
only guess at one another’s meaning—we cannot speak out.
You know my heart—it will always be the same, and despite
appearances, my feelings have not altered, I swear to you.
But one has to be careful, when one can’t speak face to face.
It is a sacrifice; but who has not sacrifices to make? How
many I’ve made in the last two months! I’ve left everything to
come to a country where I know nobody. Here I am friendless
among strangers; naturally I am criticised, and severely. All
the kindness of LL.MM.II. has aroused great expectations in
society; I feel that, and, shy as I always am, I get shyer and
shyer. But indeed I ought to be grateful, for I am received and
treated with consideration by many people here; they take a
pleasure in showing their admiration for my conduct. My
conduct! Ah! when fate brought one into contact with Her, was
it possible to help adoring her? What merit was there in being
faithful to Her, when one could not possibly have been
anything else?
 “I am sorry, dear Charlotte, for all the worries that the storm
caused you on shore; to tell the truth, I felt best at sea. Do
believe that I am not a coward, and that I was scarcely
frightened at all. The weather was rough only twice, when we
were entering the Cattegat, before the Sound; I think it must
have been a tribute to the shock caused by the encounter of
the two seas. Then on Friday, or rather Thursday the 27th,
when we were arriving at Cronstadt, the weather was very
bad, and I must confess that that evening and night I did feel
uneasy. It wasn’t cowardice. The captain himself was anxious,
and, indeed, the heavy rain and the darkness of the night,
besides the number of small rocks that stick out of the water
here, and could not be seen at all on account of the darkness,
made our situation pretty serious, I assure you. Thank
Heaven, though, I got on very well. When the captain came to
say we were at anchor, I felt a wonderful gladness, and yet,
all of a sudden, I began to cry, for I could not help saying to
myself: ‘Yes, I’m here! And what have I come for? Where shall
I find any friends?’
“Well, Heaven has not forsaken me. If it had not found
friends for me, at any rate it has found benefactors, and I am
as comfortable as I could possibly have expected to be. At
Court, while I stayed there, every one, beginning at the very
top, was eager to show me respect and interest; and, here in
the town, many people help to make my life happy and
tranquil. There are little groups in which I am certain I shall
enjoy myself when I am more at my ease. I am received most
cordially and flatteringly; it seems a kindly, quiet sort of set;
every one is eager to be nice to me, and there are not too
many people. Ease, without which there is no such thing as
society, is the dominant note in this set. But, Charlotte dear,
don’t imagine that I’m already devoted to these folk. I shall
never care deeply for any one again, nor make any other
close friendship. It was She who drew us together, Charlotte;
my love for you shall be my last and dearest devotion, I
promise you. Good-bye, my dear; I think of you a thousand
times a day; I am happy now, for I am doing something for
you, and to prove my love for you is one of the ways to make
me happy. If you see H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, lay my
respectful homage at his feet, and tell him that my prayers
follow him always. Yesterday I bought a carriage which is
really quite new, and yet it only cost me 115 louis; I drove to
my ball in it last night (about 13 miles from here) over a
pavement that no one could imagine if they had not driven
over it! My dear, in one minute I spent as much money as I
did in the whole of the last year I lived in England. I use only
four horses, and that shows how moderate I am, for a lady in
my position ought not to have less than six. They threaten me
with having to order the ‘St. Catherine’ liveries, which would
cost 1200 roubles, that is, 150 louis. Compare this picture,
dear Charlotte, with that of two months ago, when, with my
linen frock tucked up under my arm, I was going about alone
in the streets, knocking at Charlotte’s door—and now, driving
about in my own carriage, drawn by four horses, with two
lackeys behind, dressed out, feathers in my hair—in short, a
lady of fashion! Doesn’t it seem like a dream, Charlotte? I
assure you it does to me; and I assure you also, my dear, that
the idea of coming seemed impossible—this world is not like
the one we lived in then. The sacrifice was necessary; it had
to be made; that was inevitable for both of us. I believed, at
any rate, that I had to make it; and every minute I
congratulate myself on having done so. Adieu! I hope you will
have noticed the date of one of my letters; I am the more
particular about this, since receiving yours of yesterday. Send
my letters under cover to M. Withworth, your Minister here;
and don’t let them be quite so thick, so as not to tax your
Government too severely.

“P.S.—A thousand loving remembrances to your mother

and your son. What a mania for marriage you’ve got, all of a
sudden, and where are all your husbands? You hid them very
well from me, for a whole year. I never beheld one of them;
and you have two, my dear! I had a good laugh, I can tell you!
What are their names? And when is either of the two
marriages to come off?”
St. Petersburg, October 15, 1797.
“I am alone to-day, my Charlotte; a year ago this very day I
was with you; I had the relief of speech, but I could not feel
more deeply than I do now the terrible anniversary which this
shameful day marks for us. At this hour we were on the
Richmond Road. Yes, Charlotte dear, I am thinking sadly of
her, whom I loved more than all the world besides, to whom I
would have sacrificed anything. That thought is my one
solace now; that thought stays with me still, the thought of
Her, of Her alone.... It is eleven o’clock now. Where was She
then? I evoke it all—the whole scene, afresh; I have read
again the lamentable story of her final sufferings, and my
heart is oppressed—I feel almost crazy—I know not what I
want to say! I assure you, Charlotte, that it makes me happier
to tell you all this; particularly to-day, when I’m so miserable,
my friendship with you is a consolation—ah! you see I cannot
write coherently. I feel so ill I wish I could talk to somebody,
and tell them about myself; but how can I? There is no one at
all to listen to me. For who can understand all that we feel
about her? No one, no one. It’s better to say nothing, and I
have said nothing; I haven’t spoken of the anniversary, not
even to M. de C. If I wasn’t feeling so serious, I’d tell you that
he bores me to death. He’s the most exacting creature in the
world, and I am only sorry that I brought him with me. He has
done not a bit of good here, and he is going back to you.
Don’t tell him that I’ve spoken of him like this; he would be
horrified. Now enough of him!
“For a whole week I’ve been thinking sadly of to-morrow.
The little circle of people I know best were to play a little
comedy for the King of Poland. I thought that the 16th was the
day they had fixed on. The idea came into my head at a party
—a supper-party, on Thursday evening, at the Prince
Kowakin’s. I never like to speak of my feelings and my
memories; one must suffer in silence. I was quite determined
not to go, Charlotte; you won’t, I hope, imagine that I debated
that for a moment; but I was worried, for I didn’t quite know
how I was going to get out of it without saying why. A lady,
who is always very very kind to me, saw by my face that I was
unhappy about something. ‘What is it, chou?’ she said to me.
‘You’re sad.’ I said, ‘Oh no! it’s nothing.’ ‘But I see you; I see
there’s something wrong.’ And at last I had to tell her.... The
little entertainment came off yesterday. It was charming, but it
made me so sad that I could not hide my sadness. All things
of that kind have a most curious effect upon me quite different
from what they have of other people. Still, I must admit (the
Comedy was well acted, by people whom I see a great deal
of), I was interested—very much insulted; and yet, when it
was over, there was nothing but melancholy in my heart. I
came home to bed, and to thoughts of Her and you; and this
morning, I had an immense letter from you which I’ll answer
to-morrow. I have read it; and I was very near being late for a
long long mass—it took two hours. This evening, I had
intended to spend here, all by myself. I refused a supper
invitation from a kind young woman of whom M. de Cl. will tell
you; and I meant to return here. Another lady (the one I
mentioned first) sent her husband to tell me that she was ill,
and that she would be alone and would I not come? So when
I had been to a tea-party that I was engaged for, I did go
there, but indeed I was very sad, and more silent than usual.
(How people can treat me as they do in this country, I don’t
know—they are certainly most kind). I was determined, at any
rate, to leave the party before ten o’clock. They tried to
prevent me, but I insisted. At ten o’clock I put on my gloves,
but they said: ‘You shan’t go!’ and at last the mistress of the
house, thinking of what I had confided to her a couple of days
before, said to me: ‘What day is to-day?’... Seeing that she
had guessed, I said, turning away with my poor heart
swelling: ‘Don’t speak to me of the day!’... I came back here
alone to weep for my Queen, and to implore God to make me
worthy to be with her again, and that soon—if he will indeed
permit me to see her again, where she surely is. I have much
to atone for—I feel it, know it; but I do in truth even now atone
for much. I swear to you, Charlotte, I have never dared to put
into words with you what you speak of to me to-day,—and
with an ‘again’ underlined. Do you think that I wished it to be
so—tell me, do you? No, no; Charlotte could never think that!
If I did ever tell you, Charlotte, all that I could tell you, it’s
because I love you with all my heart, and because I’m sad,
and haunted by memories.... To-morrow, I shall be alone all
day; I won’t see my brother-in-law, or any one else. My door
will be fast shut, and I shall return to you, and tell you all I am
feeling.”
St. Petersburg, October 16, 1797.
“The date, my dear Charlotte, will be enough to tell you
what I am mournfully thinking of. I began my day by going to
church to hear a mass for Her; and to listen there to those
dear sacred names of Hers. The mass was said by two
Trappists, and I was very sorry that I had not asked the Abbé
to say it.... What odd incidents there are in the history of our
revolution! I await the portrait with a respectful interest, and I
thank you in advance for all the pleasure it will give me. Ah,
my dear Charlotte, what a sad day! My heart aches so deeply
and feels so heavy that it’s as if I were carrying a load, and if I
don’t think clearly, I am soon enough reminded of everything
by the pain of it. I can’t speak of anything but Her. To-day is
mail-day; so I must defer until next time my answer to your
last letter, for I must go and talk about her to some other
friends, who loved her too. I have the dress, and it’s
charming. That’s all I can say about it, Adieu. I love you for
Her and for yourself, with all my heart.”
St. Petersburg, October 16, 1797.
“When I stopped writing to you last night, I went to bed and
to rest my poor head. I read for half an hour that lovely
romance of Paul and Virginia. My candle went out. Just like
that, four years ago, some hours earlier—one of the world’s
choicest treasures went out to.... I gave myself up to sad
thoughts; I imagined to myself all that she, so lowly
tormented, must have suffered then. But somehow I fell
asleep, and I slept on until the fatal hour when She must have
realized how few more hours were left to her on that earth
where she was so worshipped. All my thoughts were fixed on
her, I lay awake for several hours in great agitation; then I
went to sleep again, and at eight o’clock I was awakened so
as to go to hear the mass where her loved name should fall
once more upon my ears. I set off, accompanied by a French
nobleman, whom I love and esteem, because he regrets his
Sovereigns as I do. His kind heart comforted mine; the time I
spent with him instilled solace into my soul, and I was not so
unhappy when I came back from mass. I constantly read over
with him all that I have written, especially all that I remember
her having said in and before the days of her long martyrdom.
He will put it all in order, and make these fragments as
interesting as they ought to be. I was interrupted in this
occupation by a man who belongs to this place, and whom I
met in France, when LL.MM.II. came there to see the objects
of my love and sorrow. This man—whom I like better than any
other I have met here—has given me a thousand proofs of his
interest in me, which I prize as coming from a heart like his.
He knew the anniversary, and spoke to me reverently of it; he
is the only person I have seen to-day. But my dear Charlotte, I
must shut out all extraneous thoughts and think only that She
exists no more, and that her end was hastened by the villany
and foul revenge of human beings, formerly her subjects,
formerly her worshippers, beings with hearts—no! they had
no hearts, since they shed ... since they put an end to that
existence ... when her rank, her character, her face....
“Last year I was with you all through this day; we wept
together for the Queen of Love; to-day, alone with my sad
heart, I can only write to you. Distance separates our bodies;
but our souls and our thoughts and our feelings are the same,
and I know that Charlotte and Louise are together to-day.”
 After dinner.
“I dined alone. I ate little, Charlotte. Last year, I dined at
your bedside, and I remember that when our dinner had been
served, you told me an anecdote about the little Prince which
made me cry. This year I did not cry at dinner; but I felt even
sadder than I had felt then. The solitude and isolation, and the
want of intimate friends, made me doubly sad. But I must not
let myself think of myself. A voice ordered me to do as I did
and I was bound to follow it—’twas the voice of Right and
Well-doing.”

Before going to bed.

“I want to talk to you one moment longer about this sad day,
now that it is wrapped in night’s shadows. The crime is
committed, and I bury it in the bottom of my heart; the
memory of it lives there for ever; but I will speak no more of it,
Charlotte. All to-day I was Her’s alone; I forgot every one else,
and I lived only for my old friends, just as if I were not in
Russia at all. M. de Crussol came while I was at supper, and
at half-past eleven he told me, without my in the least wanting
to know, where he had supped....”

Morning of the 17th.

“Many things have happened to distract me since I came
here, my Charlotte, as you may see from the fact of my
having written to you on the tenth, 7th August, without
noticing the date. I should never forgive myself for it, if I had
really forgotten, if those events had not been as present to my
poor heart as they always are, and always will be, I should be
angry with myself; and I should tell you the truth quite frankly,
even if I were to lose by doing so what I should not wish to
have on false pretences—but that fault (if it was one) was not
through want of heart. No! I can answer for my heart; it is
good and true. Since you wished it, I wish I had written to you
on St. Louis’ day; but I would swear that I never did write to
you unless it was mail-day; and that that was the first time I
wrote to you several days running. The sad circumstance was
certainly enough for one to do something out of the way. Don’t
scold me, if you can help it. You’re really too fond of scolding.
To-day it’s about a watch; the next, about yourself! My dear,
you are very good at curing one of little fancies; you’ve quite
cured me of mine for my little watch, and I no longer think at
all of the pleasure it used to give me; but only of what it gives
you, since it comes from me. You must admit that that’s a very
nice way of speaking about a sacrifice, for I won’t conceal
from you that it was one for me. And as to your watch,
Charlotte, I think the watchmaker must have sold it—I’ve been
vainly asking for it, for the last six weeks. When you write
several sheets do number them....”
“St. Petersburg, November 6 (1797).
“Mr. Keith has arrived, my dear Charlotte, and the morning
of the very day of his arrival (Friday) he sent me your letters;
and this evening he sent the case, which I think charming,
especially the top. I assure you that it gave me intense
pleasure; but what sacrifice have you made me—where did
you get all that hair? It can’t be of recent cutting; there are so
few white hairs that I should scarcely recognize them for
those dear tresses. In London you showed me only a tiny bit.
Where did you get these? I thank you most gratefully for such
a sacrifice; I confess that it would have been beyond me, and
so I feel all the more grateful. I’m so afraid of breaking either
of the glasses; the case is so high. I must have seen her like
that, but I do not remember it; the earliest memory I have of
her is seeing her twenty-one years ago at some races; and I
remember her dress better than her charming face. The copy
is very well done, and I have had the pleasure of examining it
twice. It was given to me by artificial light, and next day it
seemed quite different, the daylight improved it ever so much;
I thank you a thousand times. It is the most delightful gift I
could have had. The cameo is very pretty. I imagine it would
fain be your portrait, and is really the portrait of Thor’s
daughter; she is rather elongated, poor little lady, but
apparently the qualities of her heart atone for the defects of
her face. My dear, you’re mad with your ‘fashions’! Let me tell
you that, except when I go to Court, I’m just as I was in
London, almost always in black-and-white linen gown. All the
women, you know, dress themselves up, if you please, nearly
every day. I never cared about that kind of thing—indeed, I
detested it; and having to dress myself up four times a week
makes me incredibly lazy on the days that, with joy untold, I
can rest from all that bother. My friends are always laughing
at me for my dowdiness—so you see what I’ve come to. As to
having to wear warm clothing in Russia, as you think one has,
you are quite mistaken. Once inside the street door, the
houses are so warm that a very thin dress is by far the best to
wear. So muslin is better than warm materials. One has to
wear fur-cloaks, and well padded ones too, when one is going
out, even from one house to another. That is necessary here;
but indoors one would be suffocated in padded clothes. I used
to think the same as you. I had a dress made in London, and
I’ve only worn it once or twice, and then I thought I would die
of heat; so you see it will hang in my wardrobe for a long time.
“Yes, I like caricatures; why not? I don’t see anything wrong
about them. And I don’t care whether they’re of Bonaparte, or
any other of those gentlemen. To tell you the truth, I wish they
would do something worse to them than only make fun of
them; but now, with the way Lord Nelson of the Nile has
disposed of Bonaparte, one certainly can have a good laugh
at him. He doesn’t carry the austerity of his principles as far
as you do, my dear Charlotte.
 “I shall have the inscription of the Queen’s portrait changed;
her name is wrong. It ought to be ‘M. A. de Lorraine,
Archduchess of Austria.’ The portrait is charming, but all the
same it is not the Queen we knew; and I loved her so much
better than when that portrait was done. Adorable lady! She
was always beautiful and sweet. My dear, I’m ashamed to say
I’ve forgotten to tell you that the portrait, though it didn’t come
on our day of mourning, did arrive on November 2, her natal
day. I thought of Her all day long; and when Mr. Keith came, it
quite distracted me, for everything that reminds me of
England puts me in such a state of mind. I talked to him about
the case; and he tells me that he had given it to the captain
and begged him to put it in his pocket, and that he was to see
him again in the afternoon. Imagine my uneasiness and
impatience! I made a lackey wait at my house all day, and
about eight o’clock the precious case was brought to me. I
thank you for it with all my heart. I wish I could send you
something as precious, but I haven’t an idea what to send.
For the rest, I haven’t got anything, not even the black glass
for my friend. My dear Charlotte, you will never cure yourself
of giving little coups de patte; you know that I never guess
anything; but still...! That black glass must be for some one
who draws, and since I take the trouble of doing your
commissions, it must be for some one I like. Adieu, my dear!
Forgive this small reflection. But though you’re so used to
liberty, you don’t allow me many liberties, I think. Well, it’s
better to give them back than to have them stolen—and so I
do, you see! A thousand kisses!”
Letter from Count Henri de Frotté to Lady Atkyns.
“Tuesday, January 1, 1805.
“Nobody does you more justice than I do, madame; nobody
reveres you more. The devotion which the French people
displayed during the Revolution was no more than their duty.
They owed the sacrifice of their lives to the cause of the
restoration of the Monarchy, and of order to the country.
 “But you, madam, a native of England, you, with your
feeling heart, have undertaken for this just cause more than
could have been hoped for from a lady, and a lady who was a
foreigner, and whom nothing bound in any way to our
sovereigns, our country, and our troubles. By risking your life,
as you have done several times, you have acquired a right to
the respectful gratitude of all honourable Frenchmen.
“My own present troubles may make me more unhappy in
certain circumstances, but shall never make me unjust.
Appearances may be against me. On your return I shall open
my heart to you, and you shall judge. All I can say here is,
that I have lost everything. I have a son still, but he is in the
enemy’s chains, and that enemy has means of intelligence
everywhere, which informs him both of what is and of what is
not. I ought to be more circumspect than others; but, all the
same, no consideration shall prevent me from keeping my
promises. If I meet unjust men as I go along, so much the
worse for the master whom they serve, and for the faithful
subjects who may have relations with them, particularly in
these critical times. What I now have the honour to write to
you, will be an enigma to you for the present. I will explain to
you when you return, but I think I may presume that your
discernment will have given you an indication to the solution.
No, madam, it was not because the money was not delivered
to me at the time you arranged that I had ceased to ask for it.
I remember very well that you were kind enough to say you
would lend the 200 francs which I asked you for, if it was
possible for you to do so. The impulse which moved me in
that matter was natural in an unhappy father, deserted and
mourned for by those who ought to have protected him. I
added, in speaking to you then, that I had inherited some
means from my father, which would put me in a position to be
able to pay this debt; but that heritage was in reality such a
small affair I dare not run the risk of embarrassing my friends
if God were to cut short my career. And that is why I ask you
not to do anything further in that affair.
 “Accept my deep regrets for having troubled you at a
moment which must be so painful to you. I have shared your
too-just regrets, and all through my life I shall sympathize with
anything that concerns your affections. It is the natural
consequence of my respectful and undying attachment for the
friend of my unfortunate son.
“My friend assures you of his respect, and of the sympathy
he felt in the cruel loss which you have suffered.”
Will of Lady Atkyns.
“January 6, 1835.
“I, Charlotte Atkyns, give to Victoire Ilh, my maid-servant, at
present in my service, all effects of furniture, linen, wearing-
apparel and silver that I possess; and, generally, all objects
which may be found in my room, in my house, or lodging, at
the date of my decease, whatever they may be; and also my
carriage. I give moreover to the said Victoire Ilh, the sum of
£120 sterling, which is due to me to-day from Nathaliel
William Peach, of 13, Saville Street, London, and of
Ketteringham in the County of Norfolk, or from his heirs,
which sum shall be payed on demand to the said Victoire Ilh,
after my decease. I further give to Victoire Ilh the sum of
£1000 sterling, which shall be paid to her within three months
of my death.
“I charge these gifts on the Norfolk property, which is at
present in the possession of the said Nathaliel W. Peach as a
guarantee for all my debts, I having mortgaged the said
property in favour of my sister-in-law, the late Mary Atkyns, for
£18,000 sterling, and in addition for an annuity of £500
sterling payable quarterly each year; and as in consequence
the freehold belongs to me, I charge it with the payment of my
lawful debts, and of my funeral expenses.
“I desire that my body be taken to Ketteringham and
interred in the family vault; and that my name and age be
inscribed on a plain marble stone, near the monument of my
 late dear son. I have mentioned in another will the names of
some friends from whom I beg acceptance of some souvenirs
of my consideration and esteem. I give the box which I have
left with Messrs. Barnard and Co., N. Bankers, Cornhill,
London, to Mr. Nathaliel W. Peach. It contains some pieces of
silver. I left it there, I think, on November 10, 1832. I give the
freehold of all my properties in Norfolk to Nathaliel W. Peach
for the payment of all charges and debts, present and future. I
give £100 sterling to my servant, Jean-Baptiste Erard, native
of Switzerland, who has served me faithfully for five years,
and whose conduct has always been regular. As to that of
Victoire Ilh, ever since she came into my service, it has been
beyond all praise. This girl was not born to wait upon others;
she belonged to a very respectable family of Munich. I appoint
Nathaliel W. Peach my executor. I request that immediately
after my death the Counsel for the British Embassy, Mr. Okey
(or whoever may be Counsel at the time) be sent for; and I
desire him to be good enough to act for Mr. Nathaliel W.
Peach here at Paris.
“In the name of God, I sign the present testament.”

FOOTNOTES:
[77] Baron d’Auerweck.
[78] Note in Lady Atkyns’ handwriting at the foot of a letter from
Cormier, dated June 3, 1795.

THE END

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON

AND BECCLES.
 Transcriber’s Notes
A few minor inconsistencies or omissions in punctuation have been corrected.
Page 26: “pot which had been arranged” changed to “plot which had been arranged”
Page 149: “Mme. de Tarante” changed to “Mme. de Tarente”
Page 172: “for his on first attempt” changed to “for on his first attempt”
Page 194: “of Rothemburg” changed to “of Rothenburg”
Page 214: “the year 1604” changed to “the year 1804”
Page 246: “made be doubly sad” changed to “made me doubly sad”
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