Conversation pieces : poems that talk to other poems / selected by Kurt Brown and Harold Schechter.

REPLIES OT THE SHEPHERD: The passionate shepherd to his love / Christopher Marlowe
The nymph's reply to the shepherd / Sir Walter Raleigh
The bait
John Donne
Song / C. Day Lewis
Raleigh was right / William Carlos Williams
Love under the Republicans (or Democrats) / Ogden Nash
Invitation/ W.D. Snodgrass
Covenant / Douglas Crase
Williams was wrong / Greg Delanty
VARIATIONS ON A THEME: Springtime sleep / Men Hao-Jan
Summer sleep / Marilyn Chin
Sonnet 31 / Sir Philip Sidney
Sad steps / Philip Larkin
Sad steps / Susan Wheeler
"Go, lovely Rose!" / Edmund Waller
Envoi / Ezra Pound
Dream song 171 / John Berryman
My cat Jeoffry / Christopher Smart
Jeoffry the cat / Nicholas Christopher
Arrival / Jeffrey Harrison
"The world is too much with us" / William Wordsworth
Variation on a theme by Wordsworth / Marvin Bell
O taste and see / Denise Levertov
Casabianca / Felicia Dorothea Hemans
Casabianca / Elizabeth Bishop
Casabianca III / Bruce Burger
"I hear a river thro' the valley wander" / Trumbull Stickney
Variations on a fragmentby Trumbull Stickney / John Hollander
In a station of the metro / Ezra Pound
In a station of the metro / Daniel Hall
El hombre / William Carlos Williams
Nuances of a theme by Williams / Wallace Stevens
Musee des beaux arts / W. H. Auden
The old and the new masters / Randall Jarrell
Musee des beaux arts revisited / Billy Collins
Lament / Dylan Thomas
Love poem 1990 / Peter Meinke
Black stone lying on a white stone / Cesar Vallejo
Variations on a text by Vallejo / Donald Justice
Things my grandfather must have said / Mark Cox
The illiterate / William Meredith
The inarticulate / Michael Waters
Roots and branches / Robert Duncan
The monarchs, 58 / Alison Hawthorne Deming
High windows / Philip Larkin
In the Musee d'Orsay / Paula Goldman
Milkweed / James Wright
Milkweed / Philip Levine

True love / Sharon Olds
What lay beyond it / Sharon Olds
HE SAID, SHE SAID: Two fragments / Catullus
Skipping the state / Marilyn Krysl
Amores III, 14 / Ovid
Counter-Amores, III, 14 / Jennifer Clarvoe
To his coy mistress / Andrew Marvell
Coy Mistress / Annie Finch
La belle dame sans merci / John Keats
La belle dame sans merci / Meg Kearney
Lady Clara Vere de Vere / Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The answer of Lady Clara Vere de Vere / Henry S. Leigh
The vampire / Rudyard Kipling
A woman's answer to The vampire / Felicia Blake
Leda and the swan / William Butler Yeats
Leda / Mona Van Duyn
Pantoum, with swan / Maxine Kumin
Leda / Elise Paschen
Zeus: Leda & swan / Richard Frost
The river-merchant's wife: a letter / Ezra Pound
The river merchant's wife: a fifth letter / Diana der Hovanessian
The river merchant: a letter home / Edward Hirsch
"What lips my lips have kissed" / Edna St. Vincent Millay
After Edna St. Vincent Millay / Bruce Smith
The young housewife / William Carlos Williams
The young doctor (1916) / Clarence Major
Fable of the mermaid and the drunks / Pablo Neruda
The mermaid takes issue with the fable / Suzanne Frischkorn
Women / Yannis Ritsos
Men / Sue Standing
Missing / Stephen Dunn
An explanation / Andrea Hollander
A poem by Mary Ruefle
Dean Young / A poem by Dean Young / Mary Ruefle
REBUKES AND REBUTTALS: Unmarked boxes / Rumi
Ruminations on my very minor running injury / Barry Mazur
The common lot / James Montgomery
Answer to a beautiful poem, written by Montgomery / George Gordon, Lord Byron
Epitaph on an army of mercinaries / A. E. Housman
Another epitaph on an army of mercenaries / Hugh MacDiarmid
A third epitaph on an army of mercenaries / Edwin Morgan
A pact / Ezra Pound
Another pact / Charles Harper Webb
A knocker / Zbigniew Herbert
We all knock / Christine Casson
Oatmeal / Galway Kinnell
Eating oatmeal / Margaret Gilbert

Rondeau redouble / Wendy Cope
Rebuttal / Allison Joseph
HOMAGES; "They flee from me that sometime did me seek" / Sir Thomas Wyatt
Before time /James Longenbach
Holy sonnet XIV / John Donne
Unholy sonnet / Mark Jarman
A valediction: forbidding mourning / John Donne
After valedictions / Kimiko Hahn
Prayer (1) / George Herbert
September 11 / Teresa Cader
On a drop of dew / Andrew Marvell
On a drop of rain / Robert Cording
"Why
do they shut me out of heaven?" / Emily Dickinson
Say a little "minor" / Muriel Nelson
"Loveliest of trees, the cherry now" / A. E. Housman
Putting on the Ritz / Emily Grosholz
The cucumber / Nazim Hikmet
Connecticut thanks you, Nazim / Jonathan Wells
The black swan / Randall Jarrell
The blue-eyed wife / Patricia Corbus
Young sycamore / William Carlos Williams
Old sycamore / Chuch Wachtel
Theme for English B / Langston Hughes
Theme for intermediate Chinese / Afaa Michael Weaver
A blessing / James Wright
Source / Mark Doty
those winter Sundays / Robert Hayden
Those Georgia Sundays / Patrick Phillips
Play / A. R. Ammons
Becoming / Miles A. Coon
A boy goes into the world / Jane Kenyon
A girl goes into the world / Karen Swenson
IN GOOD FUN: The destruction of Sennacherib / George Gordon, Lord Byron
Very like a whale / Ogden Nash
Sonnet XLIII / Elizabeth Barret Browning
Oh, nothing / Star Black
Dover Beach / Matthew Arnold
The Dover bitch: a criticism of life / Anthony Hecht
It will but shake and totter / Spencer Short
Canto XLV / Ezra Pound
With tenure / David Lehman
This is just to say / William Carlos Williams
Variations on a theme by William Carlos Williams / Kenneth Koch.