The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats Review

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(More customer reviews)There isn't much question whether Yeats was a great poet, just where on the all time great list he falls. Whether you call him the greatest poet of the 20th century, or the greatest since Wordsworth, Milton or Shakespeare, his accomplishments are clear.
Beyond that, why should anyone buy this edition as opposed to any of the other available? First, the collected poems gives you a sense of his development and interests, not just the highlights of his greates poems. Second, and more importantly, this edition is well-annotated. The notes are thorough without being unduly interpretive--they tell you what an allusion refers to, not how it affects the meaning of the poem. The notes aim to be useful to any reader, regardless of background. As a result, western readers will come across odd sounding notes such as "Jesus Christ is the founder of Christianity" or "Hamlet is the hero of William Shakespeare's tragedy of the same name." Still, you'll be thankful for such prosaic entries as they explain Irish myth and locate historical allusions. All in all, it's an edition that belongs on any poetry lover's shelf.

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100 Best-Loved Poems (Dover Thrift Editions) Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a great collection of classic rhyming poems. I found many of my favorite poems, including "If" and "The Raven". And the price is right. If you want a more durable collection, you might try another favorite of mine, "Poetry for a Lifetime". This beautiful volume includes many of these poems and is illustrated and has comments from the editor. I highly recommend both books.

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Popular, well-known poetry: "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" "Death, be not proud," "The Raven," "The Road Not Taken," plus works by Blake, Wordsworth, Byron, Coleridge, Shelley, Emerson, Browning, Keats, Kipling, Sandburg, Pound, Auden, Thomas, and many others.

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Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair: Dual-Language Edition (Penguin Classics) (Spanish and English Edition) Review

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(More customer reviews)I am a newcomer to the poetry of Pablo Neruda. "Twenty Poems and a Song of Despair" is simply one of the best volumes of poetry I have ever read. What a vast horizon opened up to me when I picked up this book! Rarely have I encountered a poet that so palpably evokes longing. Few other poets have Neruda's ability to weave images. These poems burrow into the heart.
My Spanish is not what it should be, but I was able to read most of the poetry here in the original. For those who know no Spanish, do not be deterred. This volume is the work of not just one but two masterful poets. Merwin's translations are amazing and wholly recommendable. Striking images and a yearning spirit fill the English translations as well as Neruda's originals.
I was also caught off guard by poem XVI. I was reading along, thinking how I had not read poetry this full of longing and desire since I last read Tagore's "Gitanjali" ..., when lo and behold, Poem XVI is a Spanish paraphrase of a Tagore poem...small world.
Neruda's poems are of filled with a powerful Eros. Yet, to me, they fall a little short in comparison to those of Tagore (whose love is a spiritual longing). However, the comparison is clearly between two giants of the art.
I give "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair" a strong recommendation.

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American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Where Lyric Meets Language (Wesleyan Poetry) Review

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(More customer reviews)This book presents the work of 10 important contemporary poets: Rae Armantrout, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Lucie Brock-Broido, Jorie Graham, Barbara Guest, Lyn Hejinian, Brenda Hillman, Susan Howe, Ann Lauterbach, and Harryette Mullen.
Each is represented by a sample of work, a brief poetics statement, and a critic's essay which provides context to readers new to the work.
In her introductory essay co-editor Juliana Spahr says this collection aims to begin a dialogue between the two often falsely separated poetries of Language poetry and lyric. "The unevenness of these two terms, one a social grouping and the other a genre, remains a sign of some dissonance even as critics often pit Language and lyricism against each other with straw-man models," she writes.
Rae Armantrout writes that her own poetry involves an equal counterweight of assertion and doubt. "It's a Cheshire poetics, one that points two ways then vanishes in the blur of what is seen and what is seeing, what can be known and what it is to know." Hank Lazer writes that Armantrout "gives us a typically lyrical moment, but that moment inevitably is tied to some counterbalancing skepticism, so that the moment becomes ironized or self-conflicted."
Susan Howe says, "I think a lot of my work is about breaking free. Starting free and being captured and breaking free again and being captured again." Ming Qian Ma writes that Howe's poetry demonstrates a bent to contrive a method, or countermethod, to break free from the language trap through a `productive violence' highly informed rather than random."
Spahr says, "Reading these essays all together has shown me that, while there is a clear difference in intent between a poem written for investigating the self and one written for investigating language or community, it is more and more the case that the techniques used might be similar. In other words, form is no longer the clear marker of intention or meaning that it was 30 years ago."


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100 Great Poets of the English Language (Penguin Academics Series) Review

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(More customer reviews)Of course, I am speaking in my title of the pure anthology, a collection without explanatory or exploratory texts. And that is all this is: a collection of poems by 100 poets. But do not misread "all this is": "a collection" is all this book _needs_ be, and it is that quite exemplarily.
Now, no poetry anthology that is not 5000+ pages in length is going to leave you without any sense of "Oh, they really should have included such-and-such," and this anthology is not exempt. Of course, there are poems and poets that I think would work better than others included toward expanding representation and variation without thinning out the collection. And there are some contemporary poets that Gioia includes that I see little reason behind beside their being popular to someone. And there are contemporary (or late 20th century) poets not included that I believe would have done the anthology well as examples of the art. But as a broad anthology, this exceeds my expectations. Most of the major names are included, and there is enough offered to give a decent sampling of their artistic identities. As well, there is enough breadth to offer examples that would contribute to most any discussion about poetry and poetics. It would be an easy thing to teach poetry simply by opening this book, and exploring what you find.
As someone who has become rather despondant about the abundance of poorly conceived and executed anthologies out there, this one has pleased me (and is pleasing me) to no end. A well put together collection, and worthy of any classroom -- not to mention an excellent sampling of poetry for any curious reader.


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100 Great Poets provides a concise but comprehensive overview of the poetic tradition in English. Chronologically arranged, the book presents the major poets from Beowulf to the present with representative examples from each author. The headnotes and selections reflect the high notes of each poets career—the classic poems that have earned an enduring place in the canon of English language literature.

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