Conversation Pieces: Poems that Talk to Other Poems

I received my contributor's copy of this wonderful anthology today. The official release date is March 20th, but it's available for pre-order here. Edited by Kurt Brown & Harold Shechter with a forward by Billy Collins, the anthology includes original poems along with responding poem/poems. A stellar collection and a beautiful addition to any poetry library.

"This anthology gathers together poetic responses to other poems in a dialogue conducted across space and time. Here are poems which answer, argue with, update, elaborate upon, mock, interrogate, parody or pay tribute to their originals. Raleigh, Donne, William Carlos Williams, C. Day Lewis and Ogden Nash join a centuries-long debate with Marlow's Shepherd. Leda gives her view of the Swan; La Belle Dame Merci inspires unexpected sympathy; Arnold's 'Dover Bitch' is dissapointed by her night out, and a feisty Coy Mistress argues her case with Marvell. Philip Larkin replies to Sir Philip Sidney, Denise Levertov to Wordsworth, Galway Kinnell to Rilke, and Randell Jarrell to Auden. Contemporary poets respond to their peers with the same intriguing mixture of admiration and impatience. Approving or reproving, serious or humorous, these poems are not only engaging in themselves, but also cast a surprising new light on the poems which inspired them. "