The Dance

In this addition to Knopf's Everyman's Library Pocket Poets series, poet Fragos collects poems on the art of dance, from Biblical verses to poems by classical heavyweights (Homer, Milton), modernist icons (Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost), contemporary masters (Frank Bidart, Billy Collins) and a sampling of work from those in between. Fragos organizes the poems by types of dance-ancient dance rituals, ballet, famous dance figures, modern dance-and captures the pervasiveness and variety of dance throughout history, addressing, as Fragos says, ""the human urge to move through space and time."" Many usual suspects appear here, but the juxtaposition of old and new is this book's strength. Compare Longfellow's ""wheels of the dizzying dances / Under the orchard-trees and down the path to the meadows"" to Jori Graham's computer-age version of break dancing: ""the robot-like succession of joint isolations / that simulate a body's reaction to / electric shock.""