Succinct: The Broadstone Anthology of Short Poems - Edited by Jonathan Greene & Robert West

Publication Date: October 22, 2013
Paperback, 192 pages
ISBN: 978-1-937968-08-3

Over a century ago a young art student in New York City (the future poet Vachel Lindsay) lamented in a letter that the pace of "American Hurry" was too great to "read a poem twice." Fast forward (of course!) to our era of tweets and sound bites and his assessment seems even more the case. But what great poets – like the ones collected in this volume – 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. The short poem may well be the
perfect literary form to capture the attention and the imagination of readers in the midst of our own "American Hurry."

Moreover, and however counterintuitively, the short poem serves as an antidote to acceleration. It often requires – indeed, demands – that we slow down to let each word speak to us. Like something glimpsed peripherally along the highway that causes us to pause, reverse, turn back, the short poem intrigues and invites us to read and re-read, giving up its meaning gradually.

The poems collected here – over 150 of them – come to us across centuries and from many languages and cultures, but all share the power to stop us in our tracks, at least for a moment. The arrangement – alphabetically by author – makes for startling and illuminating juxtapositions. Whether philosophical or poignant, aggrieved or amused, bucolic or boisterous, each creates a little space containing a great wide world.

From the Foreword:

This anthology has been cobbled together slowly over many years to show the 'space' that can be created by the short poem and how that poem can resonate in that space given the required attention and slow reading it deserves. Reading without alacrity, turning the pages with hesitation, is the best way to read Succinct. Short poems might require a reader to enter an unexpected conversation: surprises, serendipity, references from the dream world, abrupt transitions, the peripheral
visions of experience.

We have endeavored to cross all the boundaries of poetic schools, nationalities, and chronologies to show the possibilities of what can be done in a short poem. Famous poets are placed side-by-side with the less known, translations from foreign lands with the homegrown, ancient with the contemporary. We hope to claim a new and well-deserved place for the short poem.

Jonathan Greene

In Robert Browning’s poem 'Andrea del Sarto,' that painter famously declares, 'Less is more.' While this is not necessarily true of poetry (any more than it is of painting), the little poem does have its distinctive virtues. It invites maximum economy of language. It can present a single image or idea with punching force, or with a delicate flourish. It can be understood quickly, yet may also lend itself to sophisticated explication. It can be a diamond in the rough, or an exquisitely cut verbal gem.

We agreed that every poem here would be shorter than a conventional sonnet, and that no two would be by the same poet, though a poet could appear again as a translator. As for the translations themselves, they range from close renderings to freer adaptations.

John Frederick Nims wrote that the main thing an anthology should do is surprise. We trust that Succinct will do that—we hope in good ways—and we wish you the joy of discovery.

Robert West

PRAISE FOR SUCCINCT

These small poems, disguised as ephemera, as lacy flimsies, are as solid and permanent and gritty and seductive as all great art must be.

J. W. Bonner, Asheville Poetry Review

Succinct is a pretty good job overall, showing a lot of care and thought. The selections are weighted toward the minimal with a strong East Asian influence, but there is enough diversity that almost any reader should be able to find a goodly handful of surprising treasures.

Michael Ferguson, Oyster Boy Review

Jonathan Greene is the author of over thirty books, his most recent being Seeking Light, New & Selected Later Poems. He runs Gnomon Press and also works as a book designer. He lives with his wife, weaver and photographer Dobree Adams, on a farm on the banks of the Kentucky River outside of Frankfort.

Robert West’s latest collection of poems is the chapbook Convalescent (Finishing Line Press, 2011). A former editor of The Carolina Quarterly and Blink: A Little Little Magazine of Little Poems, he is now associate editor of Mississippi Quarterly: The Journal of Southern Cultures at Mississippi State University, where he also teaches in the Department of English. His edition of a collected poems of A.R. Ammons was published by W.W. Norton.