Succinct: The Broadstone Anthology of Short Poems

Short poem, be brief and tell us everything Charles Simic This volume demonstrates the power of the short poem to fulfill Simic's charge extraordinarily well. For over a dozen years editors Greene and West have poured over the best short verse (defined here as less than sonnet length) from around the world and over the centuries, with their results compiled here. Over 150 poets are represented, each by one poem, and their appearance in alphabetical order by author makes for startling and illuminating juxtapositions. In an era of tweets and sound bites, the short poem may be the perfect literary form to capture our attention, for what great poets - like the ones collected here - 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. Yet however counterintuitively, the short poem is also an antidote to acceleration. It often requires - indeed, demands - that we slow down to let each word speak to us. The short poem intrigues and invites us read and re-read, giving up its meaning gradually. The poems collected here come from across centuries and from many languages and cultures, but all share the power to stop us in our tracks, at least for a moment, and to "tell us everything." Whether philosophical or poignant, aggrieved or whimsical, bucolic or boisterous, each creates a little space containing a great wide world.