Poetry anthologies (various poets)

Book SynopsisOld English poetry offers a large number of shorter compositions, many of them on explicitly Christian themes. This volume presents twenty-nine of these shorter religious poems composed in Old and early Middle English between the seventh and twelfth centuries. These texts demonstrate the remarkable versatility of early English verse.Trade ReviewThis handsome volume presents 29 Old English religious poems, each in the original language and facing modern English translation. Jones is wise in categorizing these non-narrative, anonymous poems under four loose headings (‘Poetic Allegories of Nature,’ ‘Poems of Worship and Prayer,’ ‘Poems on Christian Living,’ and ‘Poems on the Last Things’) but emphasizing that the poems nonetheless share inextricable themes of morality and future judgment. Texts are based on established editions, and newly prepared prose translations balance faithfulness to the original with the standards of clear, idiomatic, modern English. The introduction provides context that will heighten appreciation of the poems. Notes on the particular poems offer general textual and bibliographic information. The introduction, notes, and bibliography do not aim to be comprehensive, a laudable choice because it allows inexperienced readers to encounter these beautiful poems, many rarely read today, directly and independent of layers of textual and critical commentary. -- M. B. Busbee * Choice *

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Book SynopsisFew poetic forms have found more uses than the sonnet in English, and none is now more recognizable. This title collects one hundred exemplary sonnets of the English language (and a few sonnets in translation), representing highlights in the history of the sonnet, accompanied by short commentaries on each of the poems.Trade ReviewBurt and Mikics have a ravishing breadth of taste and understanding. Their capaciousness allows the sonnet greater variety than its enemies (who think it old-fashioned, retrograde, and reactionary) would allow. A literary tour de force. -- Willard Spiegelman, author of Seven Pleasures: Essays on Ordinary HappinessBurt and Mikics have gathered together and composed a marvelous book. Both of them give us profound commentaries on particular sonnets and on the genre. I know of no other recent book that so steadily illuminates the riches it invokes. -- Harold BloomBurt and Mikics have written an illuminating text that promises many hours of reading pleasure and greater understanding of this poetic form. -- Susan L. Peters * Library Journal *Learned as well as passionate, this book is a delight. * Publishers Weekly (starred review) *A carefully selected set of 100 sonnets, spanning 1557 to 2009, each with a compact companion essay. [The editors’] aim is to present ‘a partial history of the sonnet form.’ But that puts it too modestly. With their selection of poems and their (mostly) compelling essays, Burt and Mikics manage to give a vivid sense of the sonnet in English as a living, organic thing, interconnected and evolving through time… It’s the essays that really distinguish this volume… Many of these essays are models of how to write about a poem, especially one centuries old. If you like to get under the hood of a poem and poke around at its inner mechanics, to see what makes it go, then the more technical parts of these essays won’t disappoint. But they’re not just technical: They strike an appealing balance of historical, biographical, and textual analysis, while remaining, for the most part, accessible. -- Wen Stephenson * Boston Globe *Newcomers to poetry and longtime readers alike will find this a rich and rewarding volume. -- Lauren Winner * Books & Culture *[A] handsome collection of 100 sonnets...It is to the credit of the compilers of this fine anthology that they manage to mount persuasive (and mercifully jargon-free) arguments that even poems as idiosyncratic as [Les Murray's] "Strangler Fig" reflect the venerable and seemingly inexhaustible traditions of the sonnet. -- Andrew Riemer * Sydney Morning Herald *The editors...[have] collected one hundred enjoyable sonnets reaching back to Thomas Wyatt and George Gascoigne, and meanwhile, providing a thorough introduction and thoroughly astute commentary on each sonnet. I can't begin to tell you how much I appreciate this as a reader. -- Jeannie Vanasco * openlettersmonthly.com *Burt and Mikics write two or three pages about each of [the] poems, and mostly these are clear and patient guides to rhythm and form, allusions, their relations to the lives of their authors...They say just the right thing to make their readers turn back to the poems. -- Colin Burrow * London Review of Books *This is a volume of poetry and criticism that a nonspecialist could read front to back with real pleasure. -- G. W. Clift * Choice *Innovative and intelligent...All poetry can be seen as a conversation between poets over time. In The Art of the Sonnet, the little room of the sonnet serves as an echo chamber and amplifier, allowing us to hear those voices--great and small, living and dead--more clearly than ever. -- Adam Kirsch * Harvard Magazine *

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Book SynopsisLondon has long been understood through the poetry it has inspired. Mark Ford has assembled the most capacious and wide-ranging anthology of poems about London to date, from Chaucer to Wordsworth to the present day, providing a chronological tour of urban life and of English literature. The volume includes an introductory essay by the poet.Trade ReviewThe huge anthology [Ford] has edited is a considerable and welcome achievement. Any literate cloakroom should have a copy, but so should anyone interested in London or, indeed, life. -- Lachlan MacKinnon * Times Literary Supplement *[A] superb anthology… Ford’s collection shows the development of particular city-sensibilities: the hedonistic, jaded, nostalgic, urbane. Oppositions are played out as much between the classic dichotomies of country and town as by London’s own inbuilt contradictions (wealth and poverty, pleasure and pain, fear and wonder)… By so assiduously unpacking the metropolis, Ford’s anthology also stumps for poetry itself: as it leaps from historical events to the private dramas playing out in postal districts all over the ‘great mean city,’ the art asserts its primacy as a portal to the full range of the human. -- Nick Laird * New York Review of Books *No other city so inspires and infuriates poets like London… Spanning seven centuries, this fascinating new collection features Wordsworth and Pope alongside lesser-known and even anonymous poets, all of them moved by the city’s labyrinthine streets and smells, sounds and textures. The volume includes an outbreak of plague, the Great Fire, the deposition of Charles I, the crowning of Charles II, two world wars and the introduction of the London Underground, all of it conveyed through the prism of poetry. It makes for a thrilling read… A wonderfully eclectic collection, which sees ballads and poems from popular pamphlets jostling alongside more meditative, contemplative works. There are many unknown gems, such as a rare poem by George Eliot (’In a London Drawingroom’) and work from the under-appreciated Stevie Smith… Poems by Thom Gunn and W.S. Graham, and the contemporary work of Seamus Heaney and Lavinia Greenlaw, prove that London is still a rich source of material. Both a history of London and a clever guide to some overlooked works, this volume is as unexpected and as dazzling as the metropolis itself. * The Economist *Here is a rich, poetic evocation of [London] by one who is himself a learned poet; and dull would he be of soul who did not find something to enjoy in its voluminous bulk. -- A. N. Wilson * Evening Standard *[A] seething, clamorous megalopolis of a London anthology… I have never come across a London anthology (or any warehouse of urban poetry) as rich, as bold, as multifarious as this… Olympic visitors should lug this brick back home for a pungent souvenir of the original ‘maximum city’ in all its grot and grandeur. -- Boyd Tonkin * The Independent *The book is as full of mayhem and color as the city itself… Ford’s book packs in as much lore, as much fact and legend, as much gala occasion, as much glitter and cloud, gossip and prayer, sound and sight and smell as it’s possible to imagine… Ford offers a wonderful sampler of British poets—as well as some of the many American ones who have washed up here, and written what they found. The titles of poems tantalize with place-names, stacking up like gold medals… Everyone’s a winner, and London’s finest moments are all here, for anyone who wants to look. -- Katy Evans-Bush * Los Angeles Review of Books *[Ford’s] anthology, ranging from the mid-fourteenth-century poems of John Gower and William Langland to a poem of Ahren Warner (b. 1986), and across all genres (love poems, satires, anonymous ballads, street cries, limericks, personal memoirs) and all styles (free verse to sonnets and villanelles—Wendy Cope has a beauty), displays an openness of mind and a keen eye. -- Geoffrey Lehmann * Australian Book Review *[A] superb book dedicated to Londons both past and present… London: A History in Verse, edited by Mark Ford, will engage not only poetry lovers but anyone interested in a nearly seven-century poetic record of how London’s citizens and visitors have interpretively framed this city… This ample and handsomely produced book won’t leave any readers feeling cheated. Ford takes care to reflect a contemporary London that is a global city and a postcolonial capital as well. Instead of a monotone ‘London English,’ different demotic voices reflect today’s cosmopolis. -- Brett Foster * Books & Culture *[A] gold [medal] goes to London: A History in Verse, edited by Mark Ford. This beautifully produced, doorstop of an anthology runs from the 14th century to the present day. -- Michael Murray-Fennell * Country Life *[A] wonderful and ceaselessly evocative anthology of London verse. All the way from 14th-century William Langland and Chaucer to the present, we hear echoes, and see reflections… This vast volume is a guide to the city’s authentically enduring soul. -- Sinclair McKay * Daily Telegraph *Traces an enchanting journey round the canonical to the quirky, from love lyrics, the cries of old London, ballads and limericks to satirical verses and epics. -- Juliet Gardiner * History Today *If I were going to recommend one perfect present for a poetry lover, it would be London: A History in Verse. -- Suzi Feay * Independent on Sunday *This elegant selection of poets begins in the 14th century and ends in the present day. -- Nick Owchar * Los Angeles Times *Lavish and intensely enjoyable… Ford has searched the highways and back-alleys of the poetry world and brought together an anthology so great in scope and inviting in scale that it thunderously surpasses anything similar ever attempted… This is a volume to keep, to savor, and to re-savor. -- Steve Donoghue * Open Letters Monthly *What’s on offer is an exercise is historical–cultural geography. The experience of reading it is much like that of stepping out of King’s Cross station and strolling the city’s streets. Walk long enough, read deeply enough, and you’ll be immersed in impressions of beauty, grime, humor, violence—often simultaneously. If this book succeeds as a celebration, it is only insofar as it admits everything, like the city itself. -- Tobias Peterson * PopMatters *A magnificent collection revealing [London] in all its splendor and squalor. -- Mark Sanderson * Sunday Telegraph *This anthology is as much about how history is made by words, and how we remember, as it is about the poetry. If it is a history it is unapologetically composed of shards and fragments. But it is possible to glimpse something like a spirit of place; the splendid flashing temperament of a wild animal. For those unwilling to detach history from narrative, this great sprawling collection offers multifarious delights on their own terms. -- Felicity Plunkett * Weekend Australian *This delightfully thick book offers poems from the late 14th century to the early 21st that are connected in one fashion or another with London. Offerings range from nursery rhymes through watermen’s songs and pedlars’ chants, with stops at less-familiar subgenres, such as ‘Thames frozen over’ poems… Sure to afford instruction and delight to readers who love London, to readers curious about the city, and (for that matter) to readers who loathe the place. -- E. D. Hill * Choice *A rich anthology of poems and selections from poems that describe, evoke, and trace the history of London, beginning with the 14th-century Middle English poets Gower, Langland, and Chaucer, and continuing on to current ones such as Tom Chivers and Ahren Warners. In addition to the usual suspects such as Swift, Blake, and Eliot, there is a wide and deep diversity of poets, crossing national, class, and ethnic boundaries in order to express the full response to London. Following a chronological arrangement, Ford includes work commemorating the city’s various defining historical events from insurrections to the Great Plague and Fire, the Industrial Revolution, the Blitz, the Swinging Sixties, and terrorist bombings… A fine anthology aimed not just at poetry specialists but for the general reader who loves both London and verse anthologies. -- T. L. Cooksey * Library Journal *This marvelous anthology ranging over six centuries about one of the great cities of the world is not only a delight to read, but also a revelation: Who would have suspected that there were so many memorable poems written about London by poets one tends to identify with other interests? Starting with Mark Ford’s informative and thoroughly enjoyable introduction, we go from surprise to surprise turning the pages of this book, very much like someone taking in the sights of a city he was not familiar with, or has long known, and is now discovering to his astonishment, as if for the first time. -- Charles SimicA volume that holds a poetic mirror up to London—and how does she look? Sublime and squalid, high-born and street-smart, worthy of a sonnet and fit only for doggerel. This irresistible collection captures 600 years of the city’s vibrant many-voiced chorus. A gem. -- Zadie SmithThis vivid, vibrant and vital anthology takes us into the heart and history of Eliot’s ‘unreal city’, poem by poem. Mark Ford has gathered together poems born of London, in conversation with London, in combat with London, in awe of London, most of which were first published in London, centre of print and power. Covering six and a half centuries of wandering, whoring, watching, drinking, dancing, praying, building, courting, and cursing, here can be found Wordsworth’s ‘endless stream of men and moving things’, even when, as Fleur Adcock puts it, ‘the traffic’s as abominable as ever’. Packed as the Underground, this is as essential a guide to London as the A–Z. -- Frances Wilson

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Book SynopsisMir Taqi Mir (1723–1810), widely regarded as the most accomplished Urdu poet, composed his ghazals in a distinctive Indian style arising from the Persian tradition. Here, the lover and beloved live in a world of extremes: the outsider is the hero and death is preferred to the beloved’s indifference. Ghazals offers a collection of Mir’s finest work.

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Book SynopsisThe poems in The Voices of Babyn Yar convey the experiences of ordinary civilians going through unbearable events leading to the massacre at Kyiv’s Babyn Yar. Conceived as a tribute to the fallen, the book raises difficult questions about memory, responsibility, and commemoration of those who had witnessed an evil that verges on the unspeakable.Trade ReviewThere is no doubt that The Voices of Babyn Yar is destined to become a classic text in the Ukrainian canon. Will this poetry save nations or people? Of course not. But it will forever serve as a reminder of the human capacity for evil—a prompt we seem to require on a regular basis. -- Askold Melnyczuk * Times Literary Supplement *Kiyanovska has collected the imaginary testimony of individuals entwined in these unspeakable atrocities. Now they speak…Paradoxically, because the poems are presented as poetic communications, permeated with interjections from the poet herself, they do not further rend the fabric of reality, but have an utter authenticity that can only be explained by vision. -- Matthew Zapruder * Orion *In a translation that nudges close to the linguistic breaking points of the original, while retaining the fullness of its poetic registers and plethora of references to Ukrainian, Jewish, Soviet, and Western contexts, the seasoned translators-cum-poets Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky draw attention to an extraordinary work within the literary canon of the Holocaust. -- MLA Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Literary WorkIn 2017, the poet Marianna Kiyanovska published her collection Babyn Yar: Holosamy. It has now been translated by Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rozochinsky in a virtuosic English version…[The] poems include a discussion of the Nazi genocide, Soviet revisionist history, and recent conversations about identity and citizenship. -- Amelia Glaser * Jewish Renaissance *

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Book SynopsisThe poems in The Voices of Babyn Yar convey the experiences of ordinary civilians going through unbearable events leading to the massacre at Kyiv’s Babyn Yar. Conceived as a tribute to the fallen, the book raises difficult questions about memory, responsibility, and commemoration of those who had witnessed an evil that verges on the unspeakable.Trade ReviewThere is no doubt that The Voices of Babyn Yar is destined to become a classic text in the Ukrainian canon. Will this poetry save nations or people? Of course not. But it will forever serve as a reminder of the human capacity for evil—a prompt we seem to require on a regular basis. -- Askold Melnyczuk * Times Literary Supplement *Kiyanovska has collected the imaginary testimony of individuals entwined in these unspeakable atrocities. Now they speak…Paradoxically, because the poems are presented as poetic communications, permeated with interjections from the poet herself, they do not further rend the fabric of reality, but have an utter authenticity that can only be explained by vision. -- Matthew Zapruder * Orion *In a translation that nudges close to the linguistic breaking points of the original, while retaining the fullness of its poetic registers and plethora of references to Ukrainian, Jewish, Soviet, and Western contexts, the seasoned translators-cum-poets Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky draw attention to an extraordinary work within the literary canon of the Holocaust. -- MLA Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Literary WorkIn 2017, the poet Marianna Kiyanovska published her collection Babyn Yar: Holosamy. It has now been translated by Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rozochinsky in a virtuosic English version…[The] poems include a discussion of the Nazi genocide, Soviet revisionist history, and recent conversations about identity and citizenship. -- Amelia Glaser * Jewish Renaissance *

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Book SynopsisBabyn Yar brings together the responses to the tragic events of September 1941. Presented here in the original and in English translation, the poems create a language capable of portraying the suffering and destruction of the Ukrainian Jewish population during the Holocaust as well as other peoples murdered at the site.Trade ReviewRemind[s] the reading public of not only the necessity of remembering history and taking a stand against evil, but also about the necessity of poetry as witness during a time of great atrocity. -- Nicole Yurcaba * New Eastern Europe *Temporally and stylistically expansive, Babyn Yar keeps company with other recent poetry that confronts the costs of war and genocide: Solmaz Sharif’s Look, Monica Sok’s A Nail the Evening Hangs On, and Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic. Each poetic work catalogs grief intimately in the aftermath of political violence. That the Russia–Ukraine War is ongoing at the time of this writing infuses the anthology with a terrible urgency. -- Kathryn Savage * World Literature Today *

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Book SynopsisIn this bold defense of so-called confessional poetry, Alan Williamson shows us that much of the best writing of the past twenty-five years is about the sense of being or having a self, a knowable personal identity. The difficulties posed by this subject help explain the fertility of contemporary poetic experimentfrom the jaggedness of the later work of Robert Lowell to the montagelike methods of John Ashbery, from the visual surrealism of James Wright and W. S. Merwin to the radical plainness of Frank Bidart. Williamson examines these and other poets from a psychological perspective, giving an especially striking reading of Sylvia Plath.Table of Contents* Introduction *"I Am That I Am": The Ethics and Aesthetics of Personal Poetry * Real and Numinous Selves: A Reading of Plath * Language Against Itself: The Middle Generation of Contemporary Poets *"Surrealism" and the Absent Self * The Diffracting Diamond: Ashbery, Romanticism, and Anti-Art * The Future of Personal Poetry * Notes * Credits * Index

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Book SynopsisRobert Stilling shows how aestheticism’s decadence became a key idea in postcolonial thought, describing the failures of revolutionary nationalism and asserting cosmopolitanism in poetry and art. Breaking down the boundaries around decadent literature, he takes it outside Europe and emphasizes the global reach of its imaginative transgressions.Trade ReviewGives new and global life to decadence…This is a deeply learned and original work that shows the necessity of bringing modernist and postcolonial studies together. -- Citation for First Book Prize, Modernist Studies AssociationIn a series of brilliant readings, Robert Stilling offers a new understanding of anticolonial anglophone cultural production, one in which liberatory aims are best served, counterintuitively, not by the nationalist arts of social realism but rather by a cosmopolitan modernist poetics of decadence: arts and literatures that celebrate the aesthetic for its own sake. -- Citation for Honorable Mention, First Book Prize, Modern Language AssociationA dazzling confluence of fin-de-siècle aesthetics and postcolonial thought. -- Robert Volpicelli * Modernism/modernity *One of the joys of Beginning at the End is its provision of fresh and surprising perspectives on canonical figures of literary decadence by embedding their writing in the material contexts of colonialism and postcolonial criticism. -- Conor Linnie * Irish Studies Review *This book presents a highly timely contribution to our understanding of modernism, decadence, and postcolonial literary history. Ranging impressively over a global frame of reference, and joining the wrongly divorced sensibilities of modernism and decadence, Stilling shows how a modernist poetics of decadence may serve equally to record a process of decline in history and a register of critique of those developments. This is a major work of literary history. -- Vincent Sherry, Washington University in St. LouisStilling argues that late-nineteenth-century ‘decadent’ writing—its styles, governing tropes, and ways of imagining the past—have proven crucial to poets, playwrights, and visual artists whom we now call postcolonial. These are artists whose subjects include new nations, immigrants, people of color, the new global economy, and new international relations, and decadence has helped them to address these topics without illusions and after the failure of simplist or ill-fated realist or revolutionary programs. This is a book that scholars across the discipline are going to have to read. -- Stephanie Burt, Harvard UniversityRobert Stilling is at the forefront of a group of scholars exploring the powerful legacy of fin-de-siècle culture in twentieth-century art and literature. Beginning at the End convincingly demonstrates that decadent texts and imagery were central to the project of postcolonial writing, and carried a political charge that few others have noticed. It will figure in discussions of both decadence and global modernism for many years to come. -- Matthew Potolsky, University of Utah

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Book SynopsisFragments of ancient literature from the seventh to the third century BC found on papyri in Egypt include examples of tragedy; satyr plays; Old, Middle, and New Comedy; mime; lyric, elegiac, iambic, and hexameter poetry.

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Book SynopsisDithyrambic poets of the new school were active from the mid-fifth to mid-fourth century BC. Anonymous poems include drinking songs, children’s ditties, and cult hymns.Trade ReviewCampbell…is now giving the Classics world a definitive edition of Greek Lyric. -- Gregory Nagy * Classical Views *

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Book SynopsisContains various essays and reviews that W H Auden wrote during the years when he was living in England, and also includes the full versions of his two illustrated travel books, "Letters from Iceland" and "Journey to a War". This book is intended not only for Auden's admirers, but those concerned with twentieth-century literature and culture.Trade Review"A rich mine of reading here for scholars and informed lay readers alike."--Library Journal "Before famously (and more or less permanently) emigrating to New York in 1939, W.H. Auden was not only the foremost English poet of his generation but also a prolific reviewer and essayist whose tastes and political sensibilities dominated the anti-fascist England of the 1930s... this essential volume in a projected complete edition restores the voracious reader and never pedantic critic to the master poet."--Publisher's Weekly "We need Auden again, sacred and profane. As the New Age lunges into the volcano, we could do worse than read the Auden of the '30s, if only to prepare us to understand, and value, the later Audens ... The Complete Works, edited with elegant scruple by Auden's literary executor Edward Mendelson is ... the only way to get at Auden as he happened, year by year, bit by bit, and not as he, or his later biographers, want us to think of him."--Tom D'Evelyn, The Boston Book Review "For anyone interested in 'early Auden' this book is indispensable."--Bernard Knox, The New York Review of BooksTable of ContentsPreface Acknowledgements Introduction The Text of This Edition Preface to Oxford Poetry 1926 By W. H. Auden, Charles Plumb Preface to Oxford Poetry 1927 By W. H. Auden, C. Day-Lewis A Review of Instinct and Intuition, by George Binney Dibblee A Review of The Grasshoppers Come, by David Garnett A Review of The Complete Poems of John Skelton A Review of Edda and Saga, by Bertha S. Phillpotts A Review of The Prisoner's Soul - and Our Own, by Eivind Berggrav Writing Private Pleasure Problems of Education A Review of The Evolution of Sex, by Dr Gregorio Maranon, and The Biological Tragedy of Women, by Anton Nemilov Gentleman versus Player A Review of the Dark Places of Education, by Dr Willi Schohaus A Poet Tells Us How to Be Masters of the Machine A Review of Culture and Environment, by F. R. Leavis and Denys Thompson, and Other Books A Review of The Poems of William Dunbar What Is Wrong with Architecture? A Review of The Book of Talbot, by Violet Clifton The First Lord Melchett The Group Movement and the Middle Classes The Liberal Fascist "Honour" "T. E. Lawrence" Life's Old Boy A Review of The Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, by Elsie Elizabeth Phare A Review of Modern Poetic Drama, by Priscilla Thouless A Review of English Poetry for Children, by R. L. Megroz In Search of Dracula To Unravel Unhappiness Lowes Dickinson John Skelton Psychology and Art To-day Introduction to The Poet's Tongue By W. H. Auden, John Garrett The Good Life Everyman's Freedom The Bond and the Free "From the Series "I Want the Theatre to Be..." A Review of Documentary Film, by Paul Rotha Psychology and Criticism A Review of Questions of Our Day, by Havelock Ellis Selling the Group Theatre Honest Doubt "Robert Frost" Pope A Review of The Book of Margery Kempe A Modern Use of Masks: An Apologia Are You Dissatisfied with This Performance? The Average Man Four Stories of Crime Poetry, Poets, and Taste Adventures in the Air A Novelist's Poems Crime Tales and Puzzles Letters from Iceland By W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice Impressions of Valencia Royal Poets A Review of Illusion and Reality, by Christopher Caudwell "From Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War" Preface to the Catalogue of Oil Paintings by Past and Present Members of the Downs School, Colwall Education By W. H. Auden, T. C. Worsley A Good Scout In Defence of Gossip Introduction to The Oxford Book of Light Verse Jehovah Housman and Satan Housman Chinese Diary By W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood Meeting the Japanese By W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood Escales By W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood The Sportsmen: A Parable "Message to the Chinese People" By W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood Men of Thought and Action Ironworks and University Democracy's Reply to the Challenge of Dictators Nonsense Poetry Introduction to Poems of Freedom, edited by John Mulgan Foreword to Poet Venturers: A Collection of Poems Written by Bristol School Boys and Girls "The Noble Savage" A New Short Story Writer The Teaching of English Morality in an Age of Change George Gordon Byron China Journey to a War By W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood App. I. Auden as Anthologist and Editor App. II. Reported Lectures App. III. Auden on the Air App. IV. Public Letters Signed by Auden and Others App. V. Lost and Unwritten Work Textual Notes Index of Titles, First Lines, and Books Reviewed

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Book SynopsisThe poems of ancient Tamil are one of India's most important contributions to world literature. Presented here in English translation is a selection of roughly three hundred poems from five of the earliest poetic anthologies of classical Tamil literature. These lyrical poems are intimately related to the agricultural society that produced them, andTable of Contents*Frontmatter, pg. i*Preface, pg. vii*Contents, pg. ix*Introduction, pg. 1*Ainkurunuru, pg. 17*Kuruntokai, pg. 45*Narrinai, pg. 89*Ainkurunuru, pg. 107*Purananuru, pg. 137

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Book SynopsisBen Belitt writes, "This volume--my fifth--extends and deepens a preoccupation I have had with the visible and invisible manifestations of people, places, and things. It offers a variety of poems of formal and textural density and, in addition, a system of 'doublings' and 'solitudes' whose oppositions express the drama of reality and appearance."Table of Contents*Frontmatter, pg. i*Table of Contents, pg. ix*I. The Invisible Edge, pg. 1*II. From the Firehouse, pg. 19*III. Solitudes, pg. 31*IV. This Scribe, My Hand, pg. 43*V. Block Island: After the Tempest, pg. 53

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Book SynopsisPoem for the Day Two is a repeat of the formula which made Poem for the Day such a well-loved favourite. There are 366 poems (one for each day of the year, and one for leap years), to delight, inspire and excite. Chosen for their magic and memorability, the poems in this anthology are an exultant mix of old and new from across the world, poems to learn by heart and take to heart.Trade ReviewA treasure-trove, an adventure trail and a cabinet of wonders -- Andrew MotionIt's a brilliant concept and should give a lot of pleasure to all ages * Daily Mail *Poem for the Day Two is the poetry book I read every day. It is a total joy -- Carol Ann DuffyPraise for Poem of the Day: 'This book is a dream, a revivalist campaign, a challenge, a fundraising vehicle, a book of days and an anthology, all in one' * Guardian *

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Book SynopsisThe Reader Organisation (TRO), founded by the charismatic Jane Davis, is a national charity dedicated to bringing about a reading revolution by making it possible for people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities to enjoy and engage with literature on a deep and personal level. Their 'Get Into Reading' read-aloud groups reach people who may not otherwise read, including people living in deprived areas, the mentally or chronically ill, older people living in Care Homes, prisoners, recovering addicts and excluded children. The organisation started on Merseyside but has since expanded across the UK and beyond. Angela Macmillan has worked at The Reader Organisation since its inception and runs several 'Get Into Reading' groups.Trade ReviewI've always known that reading aloud was one of the paths to greater happiness in life. It's rather pleasing to hear of research backing this up convincingly. But reading aloud isn't medicine to be swallowed to make one feel better. It's pleasure. Pure pleasure -- Stephen FryReading aloud is an activity that everyone can take part in. It sharpens the intellect, invigorates the imagination and enlarges the scope of human sympathy. If we all read aloud every day, the world would be a better place -- Philip PullmanBeing read to is the beguiling beginning of learning to love reading - it opens the door to absolutely everything and anything we might want to do in life -- Joanna TrollopeReading aloud brings health and happiness: guaranteed! I urge you to buy this book, read the wonderful (and funny, surprising, thought-provoking) pieces collected here to someone you care for and see the results for yourself -- Fiona PhillipsI read to stroke victims so know first-hand the power of good that reading aloud can do. This first-rate collection is a real treasure trove and I can't recommend it highly enough -- Richard Briers

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Book SynopsisA Literary Christmas is a seasonal anthology collecting poems, short stories and prose extracts by some of the greatest poets and writers in the English language. With a new cover by Sinem Erkas.Trade Review"It's as if the selection has come from the St Pancras behemoth itself and is all the better for it . . . a timeless and authoritative collection of festive writing." --New European

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Book SynopsisDiverse themes including love, inequality, and the natural world bring together some of the most culturally significant and emotionally affecting poems in the British Library’s collections and beyond. Practicing poets also reveal their own drafts, with new reflections on writing.

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Book SynopsisFirst published in 1944, during the darkest days of the war, Lord Wavell''s great anthology of English poetry - enhanced by his own introduction and annotations - encouraged and delighted many thousands of readers.It has remained in print every since, proving beyond doubt that, whatever the fashion of the day, poetry can fulfil its ancient function, finding its way to the hearts of the many, not only to the minds of the few.Trade ReviewThe worth of Other Men's Flowers is that it is not a manufactured article, made for the market, but the harvest of a life's devotion - of things long held precious in the memory * Daily Telegraph *It is a vindication of the role poetry can fulfil as a source of inspiration and encouragement * Glasgow Herald *Generals tend to win their reputations at the cost of other men's lives. By an anomaly unique in military history Wavell's own reputation has reached its widest range - certainly in the English-speaking world - not because of his prowess as a soldier or a proconsul, but because of his identification with a small miscellany containing a selection of other men's verses * Ronald Lewin *

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Book SynopsisSelected by former Penguin Classics editorial director Laura Barber, a lifetime lover of poetry. Laura spent the better part of a year reading dozens of anthologies and many more poetry collections to put together this fantastic collection. Laura also put together Penguin's Poems by Heart and the forthcoming Penguin's Poems for Love. Laura lives in London, where she now publishes contemporary literature.

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Book SynopsisOffers short poems and extracts from the Classical tradition, by authors including Virgil, Homer, Catullus, Horace, Sappho and Ovid, and illustrates them with the finest Classical and classically inspired pieces from the British Museums extensive collection. This title explores of the treasures of Classical literature and art.

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Book SynopsisPoems by both men and women from the 1600s to the present day are beautifully illustrated with images from the unrivalled collection of Japanese paintings and prints in the British Museum.

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Book SynopsisSelection of classical and modern Chinese love poems, illustrated with brushwork calligraphy and scenes from rarely exhibited paintings and prints in the collection of the British Museum.

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Book SynopsisSoundings was first published in 1969. It was intended as an interim' anthology of poetry for the Leaving Certificate until such time as a more permanent volume could be devised. Twenty six years later it was replaced. In the meantime it had passed through the hands of hundreds of thousands of students in Ireland.Soundings might have been replaced but it was never fully forgotten. Old copies ended up with an individual personality honed out of manual annotations and thoughts, not all of them provided by the teacher. Scrawls in biro or pencil testified to the thoughts and daydreams many users. A surprising number of copies ended up in attics only to be rediscovered with delight many years later and to be given treasured status in new homes.One former student recalled how Soundings was the first school book to treat her as an adult. It made no concessions to the teenager'. It didn't patronise. Its imagery was entirely in the poetry. The typogr

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Book SynopsisKathleen Watkins returns to charm us all once again with a wonderful selection of poetry. These are the verses that have comforted and consoled her over the past year, that she has reached for again and again. The poems offer solace in a difficult time, bringing the reader away from our own world and into a place filled with beautiful words and images.Featuring poems by Eavan Boland, Derek Walcott, Carole Ann Duffy and W.B. Yeats, this is the perfect collection for anyone with an appreciation of the written word.

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Book SynopsisCelebrate the festive season with this beautiful, illustration collection of Christmas poems

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Book SynopsisA flowing and immensely readable narrative that eloquently challenges the deeply-ingrained class and gender prejudices of Hogg's society.Trade Review...comprehensive glossarie... -- Lallans 70 2007 ...comprehensive glossarie...

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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