Literature to Go

Drawn from our best-selling anthology, The Bedford Introduction to Literature, Literature to Go is a new brief and inexpensive collection of stories, poems, and plays supported by Michael Meyer's incomparable, class tested instruction. With literature from many periods, cultures, and diverse voices, including today's funniest writers, the book is also a complete guide to close reading, critical thinking, and thoughtful writing about literature. Students discover literature as a diverse, lively, and often humorous reflection of their own lives.

Literature to Go: The first literature anthology available as an e-Book! Available in CourseSmart and Bedford/St. Martin's editions. Access the e-Book here.

MICHAEL MEYER (Ph.D., University of Connecticut) has taught writing and literature courses for more than 30 years -- since 1981 at the University of Connecticut and before that at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the College of William and Mary. His scholarly articles have appeared in distinguished journals such as American Literature, Studies in the American Renaissance, and Virginia Quarterly Review. An internationally recognized authority on Henry David Thoreau, Meyer is a former president of the Thoreau Society and coauthor (with Walter Harding) of The New Thoreau Handbook, a standard reference source. His other books for Bedford/St. Martin's include The Bedford Introduction to Literature (2011); Poetry: An Introduction (2010), The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature (2009); and Thinking and Writing about Literature (2001).

Resources for Reading and Writing about Literature Preface for Instructors INTRODUCTION: READING IMAGINATIVE LITERATUREThe Nature of Literature
     EMILY DICKINSON, A narrow Fellow in the Grass
The Value of Literature
The Changing Literary Canon  FICTION  The Elements of Fiction  1. Reading Fiction
Reading Fiction Responsively
     KATE CHOPIN, The Story of an Hour
A SAMPLE CLOSE READING: An Annotated Section of “The Story of an Hour”
A SAMPLE PAPER: Differences in Responses to Kate Chopin's “The Story of an Hour”
Explorations and Formulas
A COMPARISON OF TWO STORIES
     KAREN VAN DER ZEE, From A Secret Sorrow
     GAIL GODWIN, A Sorrowful Woman 2. Plot
2. Plot
     EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS, From Tarzan of the Apes
     ALICE WALKER, The Flowers
     WILLIAM FAULKNER, A Rose for Emily  3. Character
     CHARLES DICKENS, From Hard Times
     MAY-LEE CHAI, Saving Sourdi
     HERMAN MELVILLE, Bartleby, the Scrivener   4. Setting
     ERNEST HEMINGWAY, Soldier's Home
     FAY WELDON, IND AFF, or Out of Love in Sarajevo
     A. S. BYATT, Baglady
 
5. Point of View
Third-Person Narrator
First-Person Narrator
     ANTON CHEKHOV, The Lady with the Pet Dog
     JOYCE CAROL OATES, The Lady with the Pet Dog
     ALICE MUNRO, An Ounce of Cure 6. Symbolism
     COLETTE, The Hand
     RALPH ELLISON, Battle Royal
     PETER MEINKE, The Cranes  7. Theme
     GUY DE MAUPASSANT, The Necklace
     STEPHEN CRANE, The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky
     DAGOBERTO GILB, Love in L.A.  8. Style, Tone, and Irony
Style
Tone
Irony
     RAYMOND CARVER, Popular Mechanics
     SUSAN MINOT, Lust
     T. CORAGHESSAN BOYLE, Carnal Knowlege Approaches to Fiction  9. A Study of Flannery O'Connor
A Brief Biography and Introduction  
     FLANNERY O'CONNOR, A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Perspectives on O'Connor
     FLANNERY O'CONNOR, On the Use of Exaggeration and Distortion
     JOSEPHINE HENDIN, On O'Connor's Refusal to “Do Pretty”
     CLAIRE KAHANE, The Function of Violence in O'Connor's Fiction
     TIME MAGAZINE, On “A Good Man is Hard to Find”
 
A Collection of Stories 10. Stories for Further Reading
     CHITRA BANERJEE DIVAKARUNI, Clothes
     NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, The Birthmark
     JAMES JOYCE, Eveline
     JAMAICA KINCAID, Girl
     IAN MCEWAN, The Use of Poetry
     TIM O'BRIEN, How to Tell a True War Story
     E. ANNIE PROULX, 55 Miles to the Gas Pump
     MARK TWAIN, The Story of the Good Little Boy
     JOHN UPDIKE, A & P  POETRY The Elements of Poetry
 
11. Reading Poetry
Reading Poetry Responsively
     Lisa Parker, Snapping Beans
     Robert Hayden, Those Winter Sundays
     John Updike, Dog's Death
The Pleasure of Words
     William Hathaway, Oh, Oh  
SAMPLE CLOSE READING: An Annotated Version of Oh, Oh
     Robert Francis, Catch
A SAMPLE STUDENT ANALYSIS: Tossing Metaphors Together in “Catch”
     Elizabeth Bishop, The Fish   
     Philip Larkin, A Study of Reading Habits
     Robert Morgan, Mountain Graveyard
     E. E. Cummings, l(a  
     Anonymous, Western Wind
     Regina Barreca, Nighttime Fires
SUGGESTIONS FOR APPROACHING POETRY
     Billy Collins, Introduction to Poetry  
Poetry in Popular Forms
     (photo) Tim Taylor, I shake the delicate apparatus
     Helen Farries, Magic of Love
     John Frederick Nims, Love Poem
     Bruce Springsteen, You're Missing
Poems for Further Study
     Alberto Ríos, Seniors
     Li Ho, A Beautiful Girl Combs Her Hair
     Peter Pereira, Anagrammer
     Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Crossing the Bar 
     Mary Oliver, The Poet with His Face in His Hands  12. Word Choice, Word Order, and Tone
Word Choice
Diction
 Denotations and Connotations
      Randall Jarrell, The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
Word Order
Tone
     Kathryn Howd Machan, Hazel Tells LaVerne
     Martín Espada, Latin Night at the Pawnshop
     Paul Lawrence Dunbar, To a Captious Critic
Diction and Tone in Four Love Poems
     Robert Herrick, To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time  
     Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress  
     Ann Lauinger, Marvell Noir
     Sharon Olds, Last Night
Poems for Further Study
     Thomas Hardy, The Convergence of the Twain
     David R. Slavitt, Titanic
     Gwendolyn Brooks, We Real Cool
     Joan Murray, We Old Dudes
     Louis Simpson, In the Suburbs
     Mary Oliver, Oxygen
     Emily Dickinson, Some keep the Sabbath going to Church-
     John Keats, Ode on A Grecian Urn
Poets at Play
     Billy Collins, Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes
     Joan Murray, Taking Off Billy Collins's Clothes
     (postcard) Billy Collins, To Joan Murray
   
13. Images
Poetry's Appeal to the Senses
     William Carlos Williams, Poem
     Walt Whitman, Cavalry Crossing a Ford
     Theodore Roethke, Root Cellar
     Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach
     Jimmy Santiago Baca, Green Chile
     Poems for Further Study
     Amy Lowell, The Pond
     William Blake, London
     Emily Dickinson, Wild Nights-Wild Nights!
     Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum Est
     Sally Croft, Home-Baked Bread
     John Keats, To Autumn
     Ezra Pound, In a Station of the Metro  14. Figures of Speech
     William Shakespeare, From Macbeth (Act V, Scene 5)
Simile and Metaphor
     Margaret Atwood, you fit into me   
     Emily Dickinson, Presentiment-is that long Shadow-on the lawn-
     Anne Bradstreet, The Author to Her Book
Other Figures
     Edmund Conti, Pragmatist
     Dylan Thomas, The Hand That Signed the Paper
     Janice Townley Moore, To a Wasp
     J. Patrick Lewis, The Unkindest Cut
Poems for Further Study
     Gary Snyder, How Poetry Comes to Me
     Ernest Slyman, Lightning Bugs
     Judy Page Heitzman, The Schoolroom on the Second Floor of the Knitting Mill
     William Wordsworth, London, 1802
     Jim Stevens, Schizophrenia
     John Donne, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
     Linda Pastan, Marks
     Kay Ryan, Hailstorm
     Elaine Magarrell, The Joy of Cooking  15. Symbol, Allegory, and Irony
Symbol
     Robert Frost, Acquainted with the Night
Allegory
     Edgar Allan Poe, The Haunted Palace
Irony
     Edwin Arlington Robinson, Richard Cory
     Kenneth Fearing, AD
     E. E. Cummings, next to of course god america i
     Stephen Crane, A Man Said to the Universe
Poems for Further Study
     Bob Hicok, Making it in Poetry
     Martín Espada, Bully
     Kevin Pierce, Proof of Origin
     Carl Sandburg, Buttons
     Wallace Stevens, Anecdote of the Jar
     William Stafford, Traveling through the Dark
     Alan Nowlan, The Bull Moose
     Julio Marzán, Ethnic Poetry
     James Merrill, Casual Wear
     Robert Browning, My Last Duchess
     William Blake, The Chimney Sweeper  16. Sounds
Listening to Poetry
     John Updike, Player Piano
     May Swenson, A Nosty Fright
     Emily Dickinson, A Bird came down the Walk-
     Galway Kinnell, Blackberry Eating
Rhyme
     Richard Armour, Going to Extremes
     Robert Southey, From The Cataract of Lodore
Sound and Meaning
     Gerard Manley Hopkins, God's Grandeur
Poems for Further Study
     Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), Jabberwocky
     Emily Dickinson, I heard a Fly Buzz-when I died
     William Heyen, The Trains
     John Donne, Song
     Alexander Pope, From An Essay on Criticism
     Paul Humphrey, Blow
     Robert Francis, The Pitcher
     Helen Chasin, The Word Plum  17. Patterns of Rhythm
Some Principles of Meter
     Walt Whitman, From Song of the Open Road
     William Wordsworth, My Heart Leaps Up
SUGGESTIONS FOR SCANNING A POEM
     Timothy Steele, Waiting for the Storm
     William Butler Yeats, That the Night Come
Poems for Further Study
     John Donne, Death Be Not Proud
     Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Break, Break, Break
     Alice Jones, The Foot
     Rita Dove, Fox Trot Fridays
     Robert Herrick, Delight in Disorder
     Ben Johnson, Still to Be Neat
     William Blake, The Lamb
     William Blake, The Tyger
     Carl Sandburg, Chicago
     Mark Doty, Tunnel Music
     Theodore Roethke, My Papa's Waltz
  
18. Poetic Forms
Some Common Poetic Forms
     A. E. Housman, Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
     Robert Herrick, Upon Julia's Clothes
Sonnet
     John Keats, On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
     William Wordsworth, The World Is Too Much with Us
     William Shakespeare, Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
     William Shakespeare, My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun
     Edna St. Vincent Millay, I will put Chaos into fourteen lines
     Molly Peacock, Desire
     Mark Jarman, Unholy Sonnet
     X.J. Kennedy, The Purpose of Time is to Prevent Everything from Happening at Once
Villanelle
     Dylan Thomas, Do not go gentle into that good night  
Sestina
     Florence Cassen Mayers, All-American Sestina
Epigram
     Samuel Taylor Coleridge, What Is an Epigram?
     A. R. Ammons, Coward
     David McCord, Epitaph on a Waiter
     Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Theology
Limerick
     Anonymous, There was a young lady named Bright
     Laurence Perrine, The limerick's never averse
Haiku
     Matsuo Bash_, Under cherry trees
     Carolyn Kizer, After Bash_
     Sonia Sanchez, c'mon man hold me
Elegy
     Theodore Roethke, Elegy for Jane
     Brendan Galvin, An Evel Knievel Elegy
Ode
     Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind
     Baron Wormser, Labor
Parody
     Blanche Farley, The Lover Not Taken
Picture Poem
     Michael McFee, In Medias Res
Perspective
     Elaine Mitchell, Form 19. Open Form
     E. E. Cummings, in Just-
     Walt Whitman, From I Sing the Body Electric  
     Louis Jenkins, The Prose Poem
     Galway Kinnell, After Making Love We Hear Footsteps
     Kelly Cherry, Alzheimer's
     William Carlos Williams, The Red Wheelbarrow
     Marilyn Nelson Waniek, Emily Dickinson's Defunct
     Jeffrey Harrison, The Names of Things
     Julio Marzán, The Translator at the Reception for Latin American Writers
     Anonymous, The Frog
     Julia Alvarez, Queens, 1963
     Tato Laviera, AmeRícan
     Peter Meinke, The ABC of Aerobics
     (found poem) Donald Justice, Order in the Streets  Approaches to Poetry
 
20. A Study of Robert Frost
A Brief Biography
An Introduction to His Work
     Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
     Robert Frost, The Pasture
     Robert Frost, Mowing  
     Robert Frost, Mending Wall
     Robert Frost, Home Burial
     Robert Frost, Birches
     Robert Frost, “Out, Out-”
     Robert Frost, Fire and Ice
     Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening   
     Robert Frost, Nothing Gold Can Stay    
     Robert Frost, Neither Out Far nor In Deep
     Facsimile: Manuscript page of “Neither Out Far nor In Deep”
     Robert Frost, Design
Perspectives on Robert Frost
     Robert Frost, “In White,” An Early Version of the Poem “Design”
     Robert Frost, On the Living Part of a Poem
     Amy Lowell, On Frost's Realistic Technique
     Robert Frost, On the Figure a Poem Makes
     Robert Frost, On the Way to Read a Poem
     Herbert R. Coursen Jr. , A Parodic Interpretation of “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
QUESTIONS FOR WRITING ABOUT AN AUTHOR IN DEPTH   21. A Thematic Case Study: Humor and Satire
     Fleur Adcock, The Video
     John Ciardi, Suburban
     Howard Nemerov, Walking the Dog
     Linda Pastan, Jump Cabling
     Peter Schmitt, Friends with Numbers
     Martín Espada, The Community College Revises its Curriculum in Response to
Changing Demographics 
     Thomas Lux, Commercial Leech Farming Today
     X.J. Kennedy, On a Young Man's Remaining an Undergraduate for Twelve Years
   
An Anthology of Poems  22. A Collection of Poems
     William Blake, Infant Sorrow
     Robert Burns, A Red, Red Rose
     George Gordon, Lord Byron, She Walks in Beauty
     Lucille Clifton, this morning (for the girls of eastern high school)
     Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan: or, a Vision in a Dream
     Emily Dickinson, Because I could not stop for Death-
     Emily Dickinson, He fumbles at your Soul
     Emily Dickinson, I felt a Funeral in my Brain
     Emily Dickinson, I started Early-Took my Dog
     Emily Dickinson, My Life had stood-a Loaded Gun
     John Donne, The Apparition
     John Donne, The Flea
     George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), In a London Drawingroom
     T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
     Thomas Hardy, Hap
     Gerard Manley Hopkins, Pied Beauty
     Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Windhover
     A. E. Houseman, To an Athlete Dying Young
     Langston Hughes, Harlem
     Ben Jonson, To Celia
     John Keats, La Belle Dame sans Merci
     John Keats, Written in Disgust of Vulgar Superstition
     Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus
     John Milton, When I consider how my light is spent
     Christina Georgina Rossetti, Some Ladies Dress in Muslin Full and White
     Sigfried Sassoon, They
     William Shakespeare, That time of year thou mayst in me behold
     William Shakespeare, When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes
     Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias
     Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses
     Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Tears, Idle Tears
     Walt Whitman, When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer
     William Carlos Williams, This Is Just to Say
     William Wordsworth, A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal
     William Wordsworth, The Solitary Reaper
     William Wordsworth, Mutability
     William Butler Yeats, Leda and the Swan DRAMA
The Study of Drama  23. Reading Drama
Reading Drama Responsively
     SUSAN GLASPELL, Tri?es
A SAMPLE CLOSE READING: An Annotated Section of Tri?es
PERSPECTIVE: SUSAN GLASPELL, From the Short Story Version of Tri?es
Elements of Drama
     JOAN ACKERMANN, Quiet, Torrential Sound
Drama in Popular Forms
     LARRY DAVID, “The Pitch,” a Seinfeld Episode  24. Sophocles and Greek Drama
Theatrical Conventions of Greek Drama
Tragedy
     SOPHOCLES, Oedipus the King  25. William Shakespeare and Elizabethan Drama 
Shakespeare's Theater
The Range of Shakespeare's Drama: History, Comedy, and Tragedy
A Note on Reading Shakespeare
     WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Othello The Moor of Venice  26. Henrik Ibsen and Modern Drama
Realism
Naturalism
Theatrical Conventions of Modern Drama
     HENRIK IBSEN, A Doll House
PERSPECTIVE: HENRIK IBSEN, Notes for A Doll House A Collection of Plays  27. Plays for Further Reading
     SHARON COOPER, Mistaken Identity
     DAVID HENRY HWANG, Trying to Find Chinatown
     JANE MARTIN, Rodeo
     ARTHUR MILLER, Death of a Salesman
PERSPECTIVES
      ARTHUR MILLER, Tragedy and the Common Man
      ARTHUR MILLER, On Biff and Willy Loman
      NILAJA SUN, No Child CRITICAL THINKING AND WRITING  28. Writing about Fiction
From Reading to Writing
Questions for Responsive Reading and Writing
A SAMPLE PAPER IN PROGRESS
A First Response to A Secret Sorrow and “A Sorrowful Woman”
Brainstorming
A Sample Brainstorming List
Revising: First and Second Drafts
A Sample First Draft: Separate Sorrows
A Sample Second Draft: Separate Sorrows
Final Paper
Final Paper: Ful?llment or Failure? Marriage in A Secret Sorrow and “A Sorrowful Woman”  29. Writing about Poetry
From Reading to Writing
QUESTIONS FOR RESPONSIVE READING AND WRITING
     Elizabeth Bishop, Manners
A SAMPLE CLOSE READING: An Annotated Version of Manners 
A SAMPLE STUDENT ANALYSIS: Memory in Elizabeth Bishop's “Manners” 30. Writing about Drama
From Reading to Writing
Questions for Responsive Reading and Writing
A SAMPLE STUDENT PAPER: The Feminist Evidence in Tri?es  31. The Literary Research Paper
Choosing a Topic
Finding Sources
Annotated List of References
Electronic Sources
Evaluating Sources and Taking Notes
Developing a Thesis and Organizing the Paper
Revising
Documenting Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism
The List of Works Cited
Parenthetical References
A SAMPLE STUDENT RESEARCH PAPER: How the Narrator Cultivates a Rose for Emily  Index of First Lines
Index of Authors and Titles
Index of Terms