Poets' Corner by John Lithgow

Poetry Compilation Introduces Modern Audience to Ageless Poetry

Dec 9, 2008

John Lithgow's Poets' Corner is the one-and-only poetry book for the whole family.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow -- linguist, traveler, scholar -- became the most popular American poet of the nineteenth century. Shortly after his death, a marble bust of his likeness was placed in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey in London.

Geoffrey Chaucer was the first of the literary luminaries to be laid to rest in Poets’ Corner. As a father of English literature, he legitimized the use of ordinary spoken English in writing, borrowing from myth, history and folklore to create spellbinding poetry.

Longfellow and Chaucer are just two of many authors featured in Poets’ Corner. “The fifty poets I have chosen for the book are vastly different from one another,” says author John Lithgow. “Indeed, they have only two things in common: they wrote in English and their work survives them.” His essential criterion is that “each poem’s light shines more brightly when read aloud.”

Each entry includes a short biographical sketch of the artist, one or two poems, and reflections from Lithgow. Sidebars accentuate every chapter, never intruding on the text. They include quotes, web-sites to visit, definitions of terms, and names of Lithgow’s favorite poems by the given author.

Take a Poetic Journey Through the Centuries

Lithgow, whose love of poetry comes from memories of his grandmother reciting epic poems and his father reading funny verses at bedtime, compiles a list of masters from Mathew Arnold to William Butler Yeats, Ezra Pound to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, John Donne to Percy Bysshe Shelley.

The poems are presented alphabetically by their authors’ last names. “If you read them in sequence,” Lithgow says, “you’ll travel a crazy, unpredictable journey, lurching back and forth through the centuries.”

John Lithgow works extensively on Broadway and in film and television. He is perhaps best known for his roles in Harry and the Hendersons and 3rd Rock from the Sun. He is also the bestselling children’s author of I’m a Manatee and Mahalia Mouse Goes to College.

Lithgow was Moved to Write by Poets’ Connection with Audience

Lithgow was moved to write Poet’s Corner after reciting poetry at a benefit for a non-profit organization that fosters creative approaches to educating autistic children. Every person at the event was the parent of least one autistic child. Each poem chosen said something about the plight of the parents in the audience or the struggles of their children.

“Until this occasion, very few of them had had any experience of poetry,” says Lithgow. “And yet, as I read aloud to them, I could sense a kind of electricity in the air. Every word of these poems was intensely meaningful to them, speaking to their deepest feelings.”

All of the authors in Poets’ Corner make this kind of connection with readers. Every poet included writes to us from the heart. Their themes ring just as true today as when written and connect with everyone -- men, women, young, and old. This book really is, as it claims, the one-and-only poetry book for the whole family.

The copyright of the article Poets' Corner by John Lithgow in Recommended Poetry is owned by James A Woods. Permission to republish Poets' Corner by John Lithgow in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.