Now and Then: The Poet's Choice Columns, 1997-2000
In 1997, former poet laureate Hass inaugurated the now famous Poet's Choice column in theWashington Post Book World, in which he chose a poem and accompanied it with explanation or context. The goal was to make poetry more accessible to the general reader. Now all of Hass's columns are collected chronologically in a single volume. In the early columns, Hass keeps his statements short, offering mostly background for the week's poem, from standbys like Whitman and Frost, as well as favorites like Plath (about whose troubled biography he says, "I felt like I was summarizing a soap opera"), as well as poets who were unknown then and are perhaps still too little known now, like D.A. Powell (whose work "reads like a handheld camera") and Susan Wheeler. Later, longer columns range across time and space, rounding up everything from experimental writer Fanny Howe to the Serbian epicThe Battle of Kossovo. Experienced poetry readers won't find surprises in Hass's good-humored, if sometimes slightly coddling, comments, but this book doubles as an unlikely anthology of poems that are easy to enjoy, and it makes a handy guide for those new to poetry and eager to experience its breadth.(Apr.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.