Premier Book of Major Poets: An Anthology

by Anita Dore (Editor)

This brilliant collection spans the years from the Middle Ages to the modern day to bring you a unique selection of the greatest poetry of all time. Arranged around major themes such as love and hate, war and peace, liberty and oppression, alienation and city life, The Premier Book of Major Poets is an invaluable reference work as well as a source of great pleasure.

Among the poets included are
-- Matthew Arnold
-- W. H. Auden
-- William Blake
-- Gwendolyn Brooks
-- Robert Browning
-- Geoffrey Chaucer
-- Samuel Taylor Coleridgee
-- e. e. cumming
-- Emily Dickinson
-- John Donne
-- T. S. Eliot
-- Mari Evans
-- Lawrence Ferlinghetti
-- Robert Frost
-- Allen Ginsberg
-- Nikki Giovanni
-- Robert Graves
-- Thomas Hardy
-- Langston Hughes
-- David Ignatow
-- Randall Jarrell
-- Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones)
-- John Keats
-- Rudyard Kipling
-- Denise Levertov
-- Federico Garcia Lorca
-- Robert Lowell
-- Archibald MacLeish
-- Andrew Marvell
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay
-- John Milton
-- Marianne Moore
-- Howard Nemerov
-- Sylvia Plath
-- Ezra Pound
-- Theodore Roethke
-- William Shakespeare
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley
-- Stephen Spender
-- Wallace Stevens
-- Alfred Tennyson
-- Dylan Thomas
-- Margaret Walker
-- Walt Whitman
-- William Wordsworth
-- William Butler Yeats

Genres: Poetry, Classics

336 pages, Paperback

First published September 12, 1981

Reviews

[Lisa (Harmonybites) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have four poetry anthologies, and I'd rank this next to last. The fat tome Book of Women Poets for it's international and historical focus--it opens with Enheduanna, a Sumerian Priestess who may be the earliest known name in written literature. The Immortal Poems of the English Language offers 447 poems embracing a wide range of the best poets in the language from Chaucer to Dylan Thomas. This is a slimmer volume than either, having been published in 1970 would miss the best of the last half century and with only 270 poems of the English language. It's value added is the grouping into themes: Nature, Creatures, Portraits, Stories, Love, Generation, Humor, Places... Home and Away, Belief, Commitment, Protest, War, Death, Alienation, Human Condition, Meaning of Life. To take as an example the smallest section, humor, it includes:

Lewis Carroll, The Mad Gardener's Song
Guy Wetmore Carryl, The Sycophantic Fox and the Gullible Raven
W. S. Gilbert, Nightmare
Robert Burns, To an Artist
Lewis Carroll, Evidence Read at the Trial of the Knave of Hearts
Phyllis McGinley, Death at Suppertime

That illustrates one of the book's strongest virtues, that it doesn't just go to the usual subjects, and in fact my favorites in that section come from the more obscure poets--Carryl and McGinley. So, an anthology at least worth considering.

[Paul Gaya Ochieng Simeon Juma · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection of poems in various subjects including Nature, war, protest, death, human condition, alienation, meaning of life etc.

I have a number but I think this is the best.

[Andrea Abestano · Rating 3 out of 5]

some poems really mark you for a long time. However, an absurd amount added in this collection are removed of its historical/cultural context and some are fleetingly simple. Still, a good read to clear your head clutter.

[Abdullah Hussaini · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ada banyak puisi yang saya suka tapi nape takde Rimbaud? Atau Gibran?

[MaryAnn (EmilyD1037)]

I chose this book for one of my 2020 "poetry anthology" challenges.
I am excited to get started on it, it is smaller than most so I am hoping
to actually finish it this year.

[bella · Rating 4 out of 5]

“A meteor of the burning heart”

[Jessica Casados · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely love this book. Best poetry book I own.

[Bonnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good collection of mostly British and American poetry. While some of the poems were mediocre, none were terrible or felt like a waste of time or like they didn't belong there. I also enjoyed the themed sections. I want to list all the ones I really liked so I won't forget them.

Voyage To The Moon - Archibald Macleish
When I Heard the Learned Astronomer - Walt Whitman
Sea Lullaby - Elinor Wylie
I Taste A Liquor Never Brewed - Emily Dickinson
A Considerable Speck - Robert Frost
The Portrait - Robert Graves
She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways - William Wordsworth
The Leaden-Eyed - Vachel Lindsay
Green Grows the Ruses, O - Robert Burns
Love Under the Republicans - Ogden Nash
Love's Philosophy - Percy Bysshe Shelley
Let Me Not to the Marriage of the Minds - William Shakespeare
Report of Health - John Updike
If Though Must Love Me, Let It Be For Naught - Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Delight in Disorder - Robert Herrick
The Lost Children - Randall Jarrell
The Goodnight - Louis Simpson
Miracles - Walt Whitman
To Everything There Is A Season - Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
Nothing Will Die - Lord Alfred Tennyson
Flower in the Crannied Wall - Lord Alfred Tennyson
Magnets - Countee Cullen
Death Is Not Evil, Evil Is Mechanical - D.H. Lawrence
For My People - Margaret Walker
The White Troops Had Their Orders, But the Negroes Looked Like Men - Gwendolyn Brooks
Color-Caste-Denomination - Emily Dickinson
The Man He Killed - Thomas Hardy
The Charge of the Light Brigade - Lord Alfred Tennyson
Patterns - Amy Lowell
Stanzas - Lord Byron
In a Dark Time - Theodore Roethke
The World is Too Much With Us; Late and Soon - William Wordsworth
The Preponderance - William Meredith
Meditatio - Ezra Pound
I Saw a Man - Stephen Crane

[Emily]

This is a wonderful book! Perhaps the best overall collection of poetry that I've ever come across.
The book is arranged by topic. (ex. "humor," "death," "animals," etc.) I like to flip through and read the poems within the topic most appropriate for my mood. :)

[Ebookwormy1 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Though I used to write it when young, I'm not a big poetry lover. If I'm going to meditate on something, the Bible feels more 'productive' somehow. Nonetheless, I do better with anthologies of this sort, so we keep this around.

[kazure007 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another poetry anthology, how could I go wrong. It's a great mix of many types of poets. You get some fantastic things, and a few things that aren't 'my cup of tea' but, all worth reading.