Karl Shapiro: Selected Poems

edited by john updike

Introduction

from Person, Place and Thing (1942)

Necropolis

Auto Wreck

The Dome of Sunday

Epitaph for John and Richard

Drug Store

Haircut

Mongolian Idiot

Scyros

Elegy for Two Banjos

Buick

The Fly

The Snob

University

Washington Cathedral

Emporium

My Grandmother

October 1

The Confirmation

Honkytonk

Hollywood

The Birds

A Cut Flower

Terminal

Conscription Camp

Giantess

from The Place of Love (1942)

My Hair

The Tongue

from V-Letter and Other Poems (1944)

Aside

Sydney Bridge

Troop Train

Christmas Eve: Australia

Full Moon: New Guinea

Sunday: New Guinea

Nigger

Franklin

The Interlude

The Bed

The Synagogue

Birthday Poem

The Leg

Movie

Elegy for a Dead Soldier

Crusoe

The Intellectual

Spider

Satire: Anxiety

V-Letter

from Essay on Rime (1945)

from Trial of a Poet (1947)

Homecoming

Demobilization

The Conscientious Objector

The Convert

An Urn of Ashes

from Recapitulations

The Dirty Word

Words for a Child's Birthday

Air Liner

The Progress of Faust

from Trial of a Poet

from Poems 1940-1953 (1953)

Israel

Ego

The Figurehead

Glass Poem

The Minute

Love for a Hand

The Phenomenon

French Postcard

Going to School

from Poems of a Jew (1958)

The Alphabet

The Olive Tree

The First Time

The Crucifix in the Filing Cabinet

The Murder of Moses

from The Bourgeois Poet (1964)

Sub-Division

Garrison State

Office Love

High School

The Dermatologist

Absences

Third Class, Queen Mary

Tahiti 1936

Burlesk

Bouquet

War Movies

Fox Hole

The Missal

I Am an Atheist Who Says His Prayers

Lower the Standard

Prosody

The Funeral of Poetry

from Selected Poems (1968)

Manhole Covers

Western Town

New Museum

The Poetry Reading

Tornado Warning

Human Nature

California Winter

from White-Haired Lover (1968)

You Played Chopin

How Do I Love You?

You Lay Above Me

O My Beloved

Aubade

from Adult Bookstore (1976)

Adult Bookstore

Girls Working in Banks

California Petrarchan

Garage Sale

My Father's Funeral

My Fame's Not Feeling Well

To Lesbia

from Collected Poems 1940-1978 (1978)

W.H.A.

The Accountant

Mozart's Jew

from New & Selected Poems 1940-1986 (1987)

At Auden's Grave

Vietnam Memorial

And Now, the Weather . . .

Grant's Tomb Revisited

Homewreck

The Back

Retirement

from The Old Horsefly (1992)

The Old Horsefly

Whitman

Kleenex

Creative Writing

Ovid

July 7, 1978

Future-Present

"There's One"

Biographical Note

Note on the Texts

Notes

Index of Titles and First Lines