Succinct The Broadstone Anthology of Short Poems

Over a century ago a young art student in New York City (the future poet Vachel Lindsay) lamented in a letter that the pace of "American Hurry" was too great to "read a poem twice." Fast forward (of course!) to our era of tweets and soundbites and his assessment seems even more the case. But what great poets - like the ones collected in this volume - have always known is that the short poem is the perfect vehicle to convey the maximum amount of content with the greatest economy of language; to be, in a word, succinct. The short poem may well be the perfect literary form to capture the attention and the imagination of readers in the midst of our own "American Hurry." Moreover, and however counterintuitively, the short poem serves as an antidote to acceleration. It often requires - indeed, demands - that we slow down to let each word speak to us. Like something glimpsed peripherally along the highway that causes us to pause, reverse, turn back, the short poem intrigues and invites us to read and re-read, giving up its meaning gradually. The poems collected here - over 150 of them - come to us across centuries and from many languages and cultures, but all share the power to stop us in our tracks,at least for a moment. The arrangement - alphabetically by author - makes for startling and illuminating juxtapositions. Whether philosophical or poignant, aggrieved or amused, bucolic or boisterous, each creates a little space containing a great wide world.