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Big Ideas Simply Explained
The Poetry Book
An accessible guide to the most important poems ever written— from the Epic of Gilgamesh to The Waste Land —and the poets behind them
Discover the key themes and ideas behind the most important poems ever written, and the poetic geniuses who wrote them.
The perfect introduction to poetry, The Poetry Book takes you on a fascinating journey through time to explore more than 90 of the world’s greatest poetic works.
Discover poems in all their many guises and from all over the world, from the epics of the ancient world through Japanese haikus and Renaissance sonnets to modernist masterpieces such as The Waste Land , and the key works of the last 50 years—from And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou to Derek Walcott’s Omeros .
Using the Big Ideas series' trademark combination of clear explanation, witty infographics, and inspirational quotes, The Poetry Book unlocks the key ideas, themes, imagery, and structural techniques behind even the most complex of poems, in clear and simple terms, setting each work in its historical, social, cultural, and literary context.
Delve into the works of Dante, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Dickinson, Eliot, and Neruda with in-depth literary analysis and fascinating biographies. Find out what odes, ballads, and allegories are. Trace recurring motifs, explore imagery, and find out how rhyme and rhythm work.
From Beowulf to Seamus Heaney's Bogland , The Poetry Book is essential reading for readers of poetry and aspiring poets alike.
Discover the key themes and ideas behind the most important poems ever written, and the poetic geniuses who wrote them.
The perfect introduction to poetry, The Poetry Book takes you on a fascinating journey through time to explore more than 90 of the world’s greatest poetic works.
Discover poems in all their many guises and from all over the world, from the epics of the ancient world through Japanese haikus and Renaissance sonnets to modernist masterpieces such as The Waste Land , and the key works of the last 50 years—from And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou to Derek Walcott’s Omeros .
Using the Big Ideas series' trademark combination of clear explanation, witty infographics, and inspirational quotes, The Poetry Book unlocks the key ideas, themes, imagery, and structural techniques behind even the most complex of poems, in clear and simple terms, setting each work in its historical, social, cultural, and literary context.
Delve into the works of Dante, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Dickinson, Eliot, and Neruda with in-depth literary analysis and fascinating biographies. Find out what odes, ballads, and allegories are. Trace recurring motifs, explore imagery, and find out how rhyme and rhythm work.
From Beowulf to Seamus Heaney's Bogland , The Poetry Book is essential reading for readers of poetry and aspiring poets alike.
336 pages, Hardcover
Published November 7, 2023
13 people are currently reading
741 people want to read
About the author
D.K. Publishing
9,124 books2,072 followersDorling Kindersley (DK) is a British multinational publishing company specializing in illustrated reference books for adults and children in 62 languages. It is part of Penguin Random House, a consumer publishing company jointly owned by Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA and Pearson PLC. Bertelsmann owns 53% of the company and Pearson owns 47%.
Established in 1974, DK publishes a range of titles in genres including travel (including Eyewitness Travel Guides), arts and crafts, business, history, cooking, gaming, gardening, health and fitness, natural history, parenting, science and reference. They also publish books for children, toddlers and babies, covering such topics as history, the human body, animals and activities, as well as licensed properties such as LEGO, Disney and DeLiSo, licensor of the toy Sophie la Girafe. DK has offices in New York, London, Munich, New Delhi, Toronto and Melbourne.
Source: Wikipedia.
Established in 1974, DK publishes a range of titles in genres including travel (including Eyewitness Travel Guides), arts and crafts, business, history, cooking, gaming, gardening, health and fitness, natural history, parenting, science and reference. They also publish books for children, toddlers and babies, covering such topics as history, the human body, animals and activities, as well as licensed properties such as LEGO, Disney and DeLiSo, licensor of the toy Sophie la Girafe. DK has offices in New York, London, Munich, New Delhi, Toronto and Melbourne.
Source: Wikipedia.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
October 7, 2023
It has been a long time since I studied poetry at school and while I still love reading it, I felt that my knowledge of the mechanics and forms of poetry was getting a little fuzzy. This is absolutely the perfect book to refresh your memory of things learned at school and yet not feel like you are back in the classroom! Also it is extremely well set out and nicely illustrated and you get little biographies of the big hitters. I have a number of the books in this series and do recommend them for those who have an interest in a particular subject but do not want a deep scholarly tome to plough through.
January 9, 2025
I’ve been studying poetry more seriously the last two years and while this is a good refresher, there’s no substitute for reading poems
April 10, 2024
This is perfect for curious folks looking to learn about a topic that they have minimal experience with. Some ideas may be more concise than they actually are, but I’m not going to complain. Think of this as a Wikipedia article for poetry.
December 31, 2023
Absolutely Brilliant
Best Book I Read This Year
I Wish I Could Give It More Stars
Best Book I Read This Year
I Wish I Could Give It More Stars
May 19, 2024
Helpful and very accessible! A great starter volume for familiarizing yourself with poetic history.
December 12, 2025
Realistically, this is a 4 star book, but because I enjoyed it so much and people I've talked to about it seem to be intrigued by it, it's elevated to the max in my books.
First off, covers of books set the state of mind when reading, and something about the colors and pictures makes me feel in a low Zen creative mind-space when opening the pages.
The thing that makes this stand out among other Big Ideas Simply Explained (BISE) book is the use of large quotations. It still has the boxed quotations in between paragraphs, like all the rest, but there's usually one large quote directly from the poem at the bottom or top of page on every other page of text; though sometimes they can be 4 pages apart, which is unfortunately what happened in the last chapter, where the large quotes dried up - they missed an opportunity, in my opinion, to have one on the last section.
The other thing that this does differently from other BISE books is having an extra type of info box in the "Further Reading" chapter - the one that always includes a long list of other people, with a paragraph of explaining their notable contribution. In this chapter, the extra info box on every other page of it explains a poetry term. This helps break up the tedium of this otherwise lackluster part of nearly all BISE books.
If you are going to read this, I'd suggest also picking up The Literature Book: BISE, as it complements this. For starters, the first 1/3rd of them covers nearly all the same authors or works of fiction, from ancient to medieval times. The Literature Book starts Homer's Iliad, whereas The Poetry Book finishes the story by covering his Odyssey, which was clever division of labor by DK Publishing!
Even though I have never read the direct source of any of these poems - even though I've read a few books dedicated to poetry before - I've found a lot of appreciation for the power of poetry and what these authors accomplished. Though the book never stated or hinted at these findings of mine, I've realized that reading poetry, especially the classics given attention here, can: enhance critical thinking and literary analysis; boost creativity; finding solace or relatability in afflictions that feel unique to me, like how I was surprised how frequent poets contemplated Eternity, or what I've always called Infinite Time; and how much poetry is related to linguistics, mathematics, and code encryption and deciphering with it's ability to recognize patterns, and embed hidden meanings that can only be learned through knowing the rules or systems.
+
Another interesting conundrum this book highlights is the real issue of translating. How can an author do justice to the original poem, when it requires a set of numeric-letter rules? Or, it work so well because of the sounds of that original language, but loses the flare in English. Or, how meanings are inherently lost or misinterpreted when transformed from one language to the next.
What I found so enjoyable is the music of written speech; the funny names of poetry terms, and learning to pronounce them; the overall presentation of the pages and covers; how nearly every section was able to set up and explain so much about the poem, the author, the context around it, and the reception to it, in such limited spaces; lastly, I loved reading out-loud the snippets of quoted poetry.
This has inspired to me read more poetry, especially from Emily Dickens, W.B. Yeats (not just because of his funny internet last name), and Edgar Allen Poe.
First off, covers of books set the state of mind when reading, and something about the colors and pictures makes me feel in a low Zen creative mind-space when opening the pages.
The thing that makes this stand out among other Big Ideas Simply Explained (BISE) book is the use of large quotations. It still has the boxed quotations in between paragraphs, like all the rest, but there's usually one large quote directly from the poem at the bottom or top of page on every other page of text; though sometimes they can be 4 pages apart, which is unfortunately what happened in the last chapter, where the large quotes dried up - they missed an opportunity, in my opinion, to have one on the last section.
The other thing that this does differently from other BISE books is having an extra type of info box in the "Further Reading" chapter - the one that always includes a long list of other people, with a paragraph of explaining their notable contribution. In this chapter, the extra info box on every other page of it explains a poetry term. This helps break up the tedium of this otherwise lackluster part of nearly all BISE books.
If you are going to read this, I'd suggest also picking up The Literature Book: BISE, as it complements this. For starters, the first 1/3rd of them covers nearly all the same authors or works of fiction, from ancient to medieval times. The Literature Book starts Homer's Iliad, whereas The Poetry Book finishes the story by covering his Odyssey, which was clever division of labor by DK Publishing!
Even though I have never read the direct source of any of these poems - even though I've read a few books dedicated to poetry before - I've found a lot of appreciation for the power of poetry and what these authors accomplished. Though the book never stated or hinted at these findings of mine, I've realized that reading poetry, especially the classics given attention here, can: enhance critical thinking and literary analysis; boost creativity; finding solace or relatability in afflictions that feel unique to me, like how I was surprised how frequent poets contemplated Eternity, or what I've always called Infinite Time; and how much poetry is related to linguistics, mathematics, and code encryption and deciphering with it's ability to recognize patterns, and embed hidden meanings that can only be learned through knowing the rules or systems.
+
Another interesting conundrum this book highlights is the real issue of translating. How can an author do justice to the original poem, when it requires a set of numeric-letter rules? Or, it work so well because of the sounds of that original language, but loses the flare in English. Or, how meanings are inherently lost or misinterpreted when transformed from one language to the next.
What I found so enjoyable is the music of written speech; the funny names of poetry terms, and learning to pronounce them; the overall presentation of the pages and covers; how nearly every section was able to set up and explain so much about the poem, the author, the context around it, and the reception to it, in such limited spaces; lastly, I loved reading out-loud the snippets of quoted poetry.
This has inspired to me read more poetry, especially from Emily Dickens, W.B. Yeats (not just because of his funny internet last name), and Edgar Allen Poe.
March 3, 2025
This was the final book that I read from the huge stack that I checked out of my local library to prepare for Jeopardy! (Unfortunately, I didn't have time to get to it before my taping, but oh well. It helped me get one recent question in LearnedLeague, so it still paid off.) This book provides a nice overview of some of the key poems throughout history. I have read very few poems, so I learned quite a bit from this book. It's not the most exciting book I've read, but it is informative, which is all I was looking for. I would recommend this book for anyone who wants to brush up on their poetry knowledge without having to read any poems.
August 1, 2024
Good overview of all the greats. A place to start for initiates into the medium.
October 26, 2024
Really interesting explanation of certain poems through out history. Learned a few interesting things.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews