"Got out of bed on two strong legs ... might have been otherwise ... took the dog uphill to the birch wood ... did the work I love ... might have been otherwise ... we ate dinner together at a table with silver candlesticks ... might have been otherwise ... slept in a bed ... planned another day just like this day ... one day, I know, it will be otherwise."

An anthology of poems celebrating poetry's ability to connect us like family.

"A new edition - the first in nearly twenty years - of the work of Wallace Stevens, a founding father of contemporary American poetry, with a dazzling range of work that is at once emotional and intellectual. As John N. Serio reminds us in his elegant introduction, Stevens has written more persuasively than any other poet about the significance of poetry itself in everyday life: "The imaginationfrequently synonymous with the act of the mind, or poetry,...

Collects more than sixty original and selected poems that frequently deal with such difficult subjects as rape, abortion, suicide, and domestic violence, with Spanish translations on facing pages.