Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award
To
illustrate why these 101 poems, many of them well-loved classics, are
so remarkable, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet W. D. Snodgrass rewrites
them—wrong. De/Compositions presents these rewrites next to the
originals—by poets from William Shakespeare to William Stafford—and in
this way we can more fully appreciate the artistry of these astonishing
poems word by word, line by line, stanza by stanza.
Sometimes hilarious, and always illuminating, these versions make clear
that even the slightest change to a fine poem is, almost without
exception, harmful. In his foreword, Donald Hall beckons the reader:
“Welcome to a book of poems, half of which are terrible, a book which
again and again isolates the qualities of true poetry. Poetry is what
gets lost in de/composition.”
