Poetry: A Pocket Anthology

by R.S. Gwynn (Editor), Wanda Campbell (Editor), John Dryden (Contributor)

This brief, inexpensive, and portable anthology features more than 250 poems, presenting a diverse body of work ranging from William Shakespeare and John Donne to Cathy Song and Sherman Alexie. Chronologically organized within each genre, the diverse selection of poems covers the full scope of the poetic tradition from popular ballads to works by poets born in the 60s and 70s. An “Introduction to Poetry” offers instruction for reading and analyzing poetry, defining key terms in the context of the discussion. Biographical headnotes highlight common themes and ideas in the author’s body of work. Individuals who want a brief overview of the study of poetry.

Genres: Poetry, Anthologies, Textbooks, Writing

512 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

R.S. Gwynn, known as a "new formalist" poet, received a BA from Davidson College, where he twice won the Vereen Bell Award for Creative Writing, and he earned both an MA and an MFA from the University of Arkansas, where he won the John Gould Fletcher Award for Poetry. Gwynn has also won the Michael Braude Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

He is the author of several collections of poetry, including No Word of Farewell: Selected Poems 1970–2000; The Narcissiad (1982), a book-length satirical poem; and The Drive-In (1986), winner of the Breakthrough Award from the University of Missouri Press. Gwynn has taught at Lamar University since 1976. He lives in Beaumont, Texas.

Reviews

[Kitty | MyCuriousReads · Rating 4 out of 5]

This illustrious collection of poetic genius gave me a unique lens by which to view;

international ingenuity ~
philosophical phraseology ~
time-honored triumphs ~
poignancy without pretense ~

A must read for all poetry lovers or for those wanting to explore this artistic expression.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think it's a pretty good survey of English poetry. All the big names are in here, including Shelley, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Whitman, Poe, Keats, Dickinson, Frost, Bishop, Plath, etc. This collection spans several centuries, from around 1450 (first poem listed) to 2000 (the last poem listed; I have the third edition).

I highlighted lines that stuck out to me as I read, and then titles of poems that I particularly enjoyed. It doesn't surprise me that I liked the free-verse, confessional and sometimes rambling poems of the latter centuries as opposed to the strict and formalized ones of the former. I've discovered some poets that I'd like to get into.

Poems I liked:
Edmund Waller - "Song"
Alexander Pope - "Ode on Solitude"
Christopher Smart - from "Jubilate Agno"
William Wordsworth - "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud"; "Lines (Tintern Abbey)"
Samuel Taylor Coleridge - "Work Without Hope"
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - "The Cross of Snow"
Matthew Arnold - "Dover Beach"
Thomas Hardy - "Neutral Tones"
A. E. Hausman - "Stars, I Have Seen Them Fall" & " 'Terence, This is Stupid Stuff . . .' "
Edwin Arlington Robinson - "The Mill"
Stephen Crane - "The Black Riders"
Robert Frost - "In Need of Being Versed in Country Things" & "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening"
Wallace Stevens - "Snow Man"
William Carlos Williams - "The Last Words of My English Grandmother"
Robinson Jeffers - "The Purse-Seine"
Stanley Kunitz - "Halley's Comet"
W. H. Auden - "Musee de Beaux Arts"
Elizabeth Bishop - "The Fish"
May Sarton - "A Guest"
Richard Wilbur - "The Writer" & "Year's End"
W. S. Merwin - "For the Anniversary of My Death"
James Wright - "A Blessing" & "Saint Judas"
Anne Sexton - "The Truth the Dead Know"
Adrienne Rich - "Diving into the Wreck" & "Rape"
Sylvia Plath - "Edge"
Robert Phillips - "Compartments"
Leon Stokesbury - "Evening's End 1943-1970"
Dana Goia - "Planting a Sequoia"
Rita Dove - "Adolescence - III"

[Robert]

This was actually my first introduction to poetry -- I pulled it off my dad's shelf in middle school and read it cover to cover. It allowed me to pinpoint exactly which poets and eras of poetry I connected with and investigate them in more detail.

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not a huge fan of poetry to be honest, but this is a great book to start with if you are a poetry enthusiast.

[Amanda Moore · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great poetry anthology to use at the beginning of my Poetry: Form and Meaning class. We used the prose (though supplemented it for some other perspectives on reading and writing poetry) a great deal, and it was nice to have a wide selection of poems to choose from for each class meeting. The variety is good, and we were able to also be spontaneous and choose poems for quick reading circles and projects. When we approached or sought out more contemporary poets, newer poets students might feel a stronger connection to, and poets of more diverse backgrounds, we needed to move outside the book.

[Sammy Malave · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've picked this Anthology up so many times, it goes through over a hundred years of poetry and gives you a real visual on how poetry speaks about the history of that time. There's a poem in here about the Titanic written the year the ship sank. There are poems about women that remind you how hard the fortune is for all womankind. There's even poems from the 2000's. It's fun to have this to see all the different styles of poetry there is, how each poet used the page to interpret the world around them. I have a lot of favorites in this one.

[Isabelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ve owned this anthology for years and have always been of the opinion that the poems selected here are not the best. I bought this in the hopes that it would turn me to more poets and instead it’s turned me off completely.

[Mid Shexany · Rating 5 out of 5]

amazing book

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this whole thing in college and I wanna say I liked it? I still have it in my poetry section of my books and I feel like it's a good book. It was a required book for my poetry class.