Best Remembered Poems
Edited and Annotated by Martin Gardner

Chestnuts -- For kicks, Robert Charles, Eugene Burger and I have been making the rounds at many of the old Chicago joints: The Cape Cod Room, The Pump Room, Trader Vic’s, Mirabel, The Walnut Room, Lawry’s, Miller’s Pub and so on. The cocktails are generally well-poured and while the quality of the meal and service rises and falls from place to place, the tables are often crowded with customers -- and memories. People still visit these dark dining rooms not for what they are, but for what they were. The same could be said of the nearly 120 poems (and, indeed, of many of the 66 poets) in this collection. “The poems I have selected,” Martin Gardner warns in his introduction, “are not necessarily those I think are ‘best loved’ either by critics or the general public. They certainly are not the poems best loved by me.”