The 20th Century in Poetry

by Michael Hulse (Editor), Simon Rae (Editor)

This ground-breaking anthology presents in chronological order over 400 poems written in the twentieth century. The authors, both published poets themselves, give an overview of each period of history, while notes to the poems place each one in its historical context and trace the century's poetic development. Concise biographies for each poet complete the anthology.

By organizing the poems in chronological order, readers will see poets in a new light. Here A.E. Houseman, for example, rubs shoulders with T.S. Eliot, showing that traditional forms can hold their own against the modernist orthodoxy. Here are poets rescued from oblivion, such as the suffragette who wrote a compelling poem about her mistreatment in Holloway Prison in 1912 or the medical offer who went into Belsen with the British troops producing an eye-witness poem of lasting power. All the major events of the twentieth century are reflected in the choice of poems within these pages.





This richly rewarding collection makes invaluable reading for poetry lovers all over the world.

Genres: Poetry, History, Collections, Literature, 20th Century, Anthologies, Nonfiction

860 pages, Hardcover

First published October 6, 2011

About the author

Hulse has translated over sixty books from the German, among them works by Goethe, Rilke, and Jakob Wassermann. He is nowadays most familiar as the translator of three of W. G. Sebald's books: The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn and Vertigo. In addition, he has translated two works by Nobel Laureate Elfriede Jelinek, Lust and Wonderful, Wonderful Times and has collaborated in translating one by Nobel Laureate Herta Müller, The Appointment.

Reviews

[Tracey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is going to be a year-long read, reading a section each month:

January: 1900-1914: Never Such Innocence Again.
Loved the poems by A.E. Housman and also John Masefield
......................................................................

February: 1915-1922: War to Waste Land.
Rupert Brooke: The Solider
Katherine Mansfield: To L.H.B 1894-1915 (her brother)
Rudyard Kipling: Epitaphs of the war.
W.B.Yeats: The Second Coming
................................................................

March:1923-1939: Danger and Hope.
Robert Frost: Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening, and, Acquainted with the Night.
Edna St, Vincent Millay: Dirge Without Music
W.H.Auden: Consider, and, Say This City Has 10 Million Souls.
David Gascoyne: Snow in Europe
...............................................................

I did not finish because it had to go back to the library. I may try to pick it up again when things are less crazy.

[Christina Gagliano · Rating 5 out of 5]

Multi-subject integration: THIS is how everything should be taught! I feel like I just took an engaging and informative semester-long course in poetry during the week I read this book. Many of these poems would have been completely inaccessible (to me anyway) without the historical context and notes, and it provides a nice panoramic refresher of 20th century history (depressing as a lot of it was).

Best new poem (new to me) finds were: Snake by D.H. Lawrence (actually, this one will give me nightmares--it made my skin literally crawl and feel like I did when I read that Faulkner novel with black snakes slithering all over the bottom of a canoe and also that scene in The Tin Drum where the eels were crawling in and out of the dead horse skull), Deep Sorriness Atonement Song by Glyn Maxwell (too funny!), and Pale Blue City by Jeffrey Harrison.

It was also interesting to read some poems I had liked when I was younger--Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and The Waste Land--and find that they had absolutely nothing to say to me now. Eliot's East Coker, on the other hand, was just astounding--time to break out the entire Four Quartets again. I connected much more with Wendy Cope's Waste Land Limericks than I did with the real Waste Land. And I was glad to be reminded to read more of Wendy Cope, who is such a wickedly gifted poet.

Finally, while this book includes its share of hideous poetry (pretty much the entire 1969-1988 section), there are many old favorites well worth re-reading: Hardy's The Darkling Thrush (yes, spring WILL come again!), Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening and Acquainted with the Night, and Thomas' Fern Hill, among others.

I can't recommend this book highly enough.

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book took me a full year to read cover to cover. My review, therefore, will not be written with all poems equally fresh in my mind. You have been warned.

Based on experience, I'm growing slightly wary of books of compiled poetry. It would seem a reasonable premise that if the editors had all the poetry in the world from which to choose, every poem selected for publication in a compilation would be exceptional. I suppose the problem is that there is no accounting for some people's taste, including mine. I found many great poems I really enjoyed early in the collection, and then went through a period where I liked almost none of the poems I read. I started finding a few more again as the book progressed, and then the final section of the book was packed with great poetry.

I found myself surprised at how many poems were included that didn't seem to speak to me. I'm not sure, though, whether that says more about this book or about me and my poetic preferences and influences. That said, there were enough gems I discovered in this book to make it well worth the time I spent on the poems that I enjoyed less. I would estimate I found about 50 poems that I absolutely loved. Some dark. Some joyful. Some filled with love. Some with loss. A wide range of human experience.

I suppose I'm done with my review, except perhaps to make a comment about the format of the book. It presented the poems in chronological order, and grouped sections together with a flowery introduction to each section that attempted to give the flavor of the poetry and the thinking behind some of it. In general, I appreciated that approach, and probably would have appreciated it more had I been a better student of poetry and could notice for myself some of the trends the editors discussed. I enjoyed that for many of the poems the editors included a brief explanation of some of the terms or allusions present in the poem. In the back of the book, there is also an extremely brief biography of each poet, which unfortunately I found to be too brief to be useful or to merit my interest. Since that wasn't the point of the book, however, it is to be forgiven.

Also useful in the back of the book is a list of the titles and first lines of the poems.

[Fran · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great, vastly varied, collection of poetry. Chronologically it followed the events worldwide, and chunked poetry into these sections. The authors were varied as was the subject matter. Many author's names were familiar, though most were not. This would be a great resource to be used to connect history and English/literature studies.

[Joseph Spuckler · Rating 5 out of 5]

The 20th Century in Poetry is an anthology of the poetry describing the 20th Century. With a degree in history and another in international relations I looked forward to reading this collection. I have always liked to see how other fields see history. Art history of the 20th Century is an amazing reflection of the culture. Art Deco completely captures the 1930s. The Pop Art of the 1960s captured that decade's spirit: from Andy Worhol to the style Janis Joplin's Cheap Thrills album cover. Many times you can look at the art and know the decade and the origin. I am sure poetry could do the same. I did have one condition in a poetry collection of the twentieth century. It had to have on poem that I felt was, historically, a very important part of the 20th century*.

Historians look at the 20th Century a bit differently than the calendar shows. Historians start the century at the start of World War I, the official end of the 19th century world view. The century not only starts late, but ends early too. The fall of the Soviet Union closes the book on the 20th Century for most historians; the beginning of “The New World Order” and “Peace Dividends.” 20th Century in Poetry takes the reader year by year from 1900 through 2000 with at least one poem from each year. It further divides the poems into sensible groupings.

1900-1914 Never Such an innocence again
1915-1922 War to Wasteland
1923-1939 Danger to hope
1940-1945 War
1946-1968 Peace and Cold War
1969-1988 From the Moon to Berlin
1988-2000 Endgames

From the innocence of Thomas Hardy “The Darkling Thrush” to the great sadness of Wilfred Owen's “Anthem for Doomed Youth.” From Robert Frost's “Acquainted with the Night” to Jeffrey Harrison's “Sketch”. From Alan Ginsberg’s “America” to Bob Dylan's “Blowing in the Wind”. From John Updike's “Seven New Ways of Looking at the Moon” to Jeffrey Harrison's “Pale Blue City”. The highs and the lows of the 20th century are all recorded by the eyes and words of the poets of the time.

This is a suburb collection of the the full range of the 20th century. Usually I will keep my poetry in paper, but the selections are so good and so vast, that it makes an excellent ebook. Not many people will sit and read this through cover to cover and it wasn't meant to be read that way. Pick a year or a couple of years and enjoy. Keep it on your reader or your phone and when you have a few minutes pick a poem or two, you won't be disappointed. Of course if you do read it cover to cover, you will get a detailed history of the 20th Century: The events, the people, the achievements, the failures. Perhaps the reader will see that we, as a whole, in this century we have not learned from our previous failings and not learned from advances. A collection like this makes an excellent barometer for where we are and where we are heading, as a people, in the twenty-fist century. Five Stars.

* The poem I was referring to earlier is in the collection: “The Wasteland” by TS Elliott

[Stefan Gašić · Rating 2 out of 5]

More like: Antologija najdosadnije poezije 20. veka (uz nekoliko izuzetaka odveć poznatih klasika).

[Annie Yotova · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let's start with a few clarifications on the scope of this anthology:
- All poems are originally published in English, in the year they are indexed under (with a few minor exceptions where they are filed under the period they cover or under the composition date); no translations are collected.
- The poems are not the best in the year or best from that specific author - they illustrate the year (its history, events, culture and so on)
- There is just so much you can collect in a book spanning 101 years.

As a result, what we get is an anthology of over 400 poems, with most authors getting one or two spots only and very few getting more than 2 (the maximum per poet is still in the single digits): Thomas Hardy opens the volume with a poem composed in the last day of 1900, Jeffrey Harrison closes it with one composed in the last day of 2000. Between them are spanning the 101 years - with at least 2 poems per year, more in most, moving slowly through the years, chronicling the history around them and the change in poetry itself.

The book is split into 7 sections:
1900-1914 Never Such Innocence Again
1915-1922 War to Waste Land
1923-1939 Danger and Hope
1940-1945 War
1946-1968 Peace and Cold War
1969-1988 From the Moon to Berlin
1989-2000 Endgames
And each section starts with a short introduction by the editors and then follows through its years. A lot of the poems have notes, a few of the longer ones are just excerpted (the book is long enough, there is no point reprinting a 100 pages poem).

Poem by poem, year by year, the century passes by. But the poems are not just about the history of the world - there are love poems and elegies, there are poems about little known facts and poems about people that are forgotten by time, poems of hope and poems of despair. And sometimes what is not included is louder than what is inside - the 1917 revolution in Russia is barely mentioned; the non-English/Irish/Australian/US voices are missing in the first part of the anthology. When those voices start appearing they add the pictures missing before that - Asian and African poems which can be written only by someone who calls a country there home.

If you look at the table of contents, you will find all the big names but maybe not all the big poems. And that is by design - it is supposed to be a history of a century of poetry, not a best of anthology. And yet, a lot of the poems you expect to see will be here and virtually all the poets will be there. But there are a lot more - poets who time forgot and some that had become unfashionable; poets who are better known about their non-poetic writings.

If I could have asked for one change, it would have been to put the author's nationality in the poems' headers - the information is there, in the biographies section at the end (which also contains the list of poems per poet) so one can find these but I found myself flipping back to these while reading the poems - it seemed important in some of them to know where the author was from. And in some it did not matter - maybe that is why they were banished at the end.

There was the random editorial mistake (a poem described in the introduction of one section ends up opening the next section for example) - it seems like there was some shifting of years somewhere in the editorial process. But that made me smile - if anything, it just showed that we are all human.

And the editors could not have found a better poem to close the volume. When Jeffrey Harrison wrote the poem about the skyline of New York and its two towers disappearing while flying away from the city at the last day of December 2000, he had no idea what is coming in the next year. But the editors did - and chose to close the century with that picture.

I cannot say that I liked all the poems - but there were enough that I did and the book works as a whole. It will work also as an anthology to dip into now and then but read in order, as assembled and ordered, it gives an overview of a turbulent century from a new perspective.

[William Schram · Rating 5 out of 5]

The 20th Century saw many massive changes in our society and the world as a whole. It is generally taken to be from 1901 to 2000 so that is what this book covers, and it does so quite well. Now you might be wondering how a book of poetry achieves this. Well, it has distinct eras that it covers from the end of the Victorian Era to the beginning of the Internet Age. It was an amazing span of time that took mankind from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the moon.

Queen Victoria died in 1901 after being on the throne for 63 years and seven months. That is an incredible span of time. So the poetry opens with the subject of her death. The book doubles as a history book. I mean, just think of all the things we as a species accomplished. While the automobile wasn’t invented in this century, the process of building them was perfected. An entire industry was built in terms of aviation, and the realization of powered flight. Movies are in the same category, they are an entertainment medium that built up in a few years. Certainly, there might have been movies before the 20th century, but they could not have been anything more than simple. If I understand the history of film correctly, it took a while for it to tell a story effectively.

Computers might have been mainly developed for the purposes of war, but eventually, they came to their own with peaceful applications. My wristwatch is more powerful than the computer that solved the ENIGMA code and the ENIAC combined thanks to miniaturization and the power of Moore’s Law. A series of brutal wars diminished the power and glamour of the old world known as Europe. The rise of Nazism in Germany and Fascist Italy, the Great Depression; so many things happened.

The book does something unusual in that it places the poem in reference to when an event happened, not necessarily when it was published. So there are poems written in the 1980s that could discuss World War II for instance. So the book has the poems and a section explaining the era for which they were written. They are all written in English. I can’t read any other language anyway, so this is fine for me.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

I greatly enjoyed this anthology of 20th century poetry for two primary reasons: 1) These poems, from Thomas Hardy to Denise Levertov, are accessible, and hardly any of them fall prey to the modern malaise of cryptic, poorly written poetry that comes across my inbox so often; 2) Although they veer into the personal at some points, these poems are strongly engaged with the world and what is going on around us.

The book is obviously top-heavy with UK and Commonwealth poets, with some Americans, Africans and Europeans thrown in, but it's a wide ranging collection. It reaffirmed my admiration for such powerhouses as Eliot, Auden, Thomas and Elizabeth Bishop. Some other notables -- Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore -- left me cold. And it also introduced me to some brand new (for me) poets, including the Australian Judith Wright, Randall Jarrell, Anthony Hecht, Les Murray and the wonderful Seamus Heaney.

The book is also not afraid to deal with religion and spirituality. I leave you with one short example, from Peter Goldsworthy

Deliver me, Lord, from the threat of heaven,
from becoming the angel who is not me,
who smiles faintly, fondly before shrugging me off like some stiff, quaint pupal case:
the battered leather jacket of the flesh, evidence of misspent youth.
Grant me, Lord, this last request: to wear bikie colours in heaven, a grub among the butterflies.
And this: to take all memories with me, all memories that are me,
intact, seized first like snapshot albums from a burning house.
Answer, Lord, these prayers, for I would rather be nothing than improved.

[Tom G · Rating 5 out of 5]

This probably shouldn't have taken me 3 years to read but I have to take my time with poetry, and I prefer to be in the right mindstate, and I wasn't exactly sprinting to finish it to say the least. It's great! There's so much good stuff in here, covering all the major movements in 20th century poetry and featuring poets writing in English from every corner of the world. Wild to consider the changes that took place in poetry in these 100 years, from Thomas Hardy to Jeffrey Harrison. There are classics like 'The Waste Land' and 'The Second Coming' and lots more obscure stuff. I probably loved about 50% of everything in here, which is actually a lot for an anthology of this size and scope. I also appreciated the representation of authors from places like Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, who I have otherwise not been exposed to at all.
If I have any criticism it would be the overrepresentation of poets from the British Isles, especially in the final third of the collection, but this book was edited by a couple of Englishmen so it only makes sense. Overall, very much worth checking out!

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very interesting endeavour - to pair history and poetry. Ultimately more interesting than enjoyable perhaps and I did wonder if it was trying to do both too much and too little in its coverage. I think I might have preferred a concentration on UK poetry, or on world poetry, including translations, less confined to the history and poets of particular nations. On this showing, I found that poetry seemed to take a bit of a dive in the 70s. The choice of how to divide 20th Century history worked quite well, not necessarily following the decades - of course it makes perfect sense to take 1900-14 and perhaps having started thus, the editors had the confidence to carry on making decisions rather than being slaves to chronology.
Too few of the works really resonated with me but it was a pleasure to encounter familiar poems and new.
The few lines of biography for each poet at the end made interesting if rather random reading. Sylvia Plath's suicide was tragic twice over but no other poet's was once.

[Kristin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read every poem in this anthology and have come to one conclusion: I don't think I'm a huge poetry fan.

That said, I've read a century's worth of poems, but my main thought on finishing this book, more than four months after I started it is: It's done!

I don't think the issues with this are the fault of the poets or the editors, for the most part: I think it's just that, with more than 750 pages worth of content, that's a lot of poetry. And it is difficult to read all of that in any manner that respects the poems it contains and the poets who wrote them. Or, at least, it was for me.

So, for now, I'm a bit burned out on poetry. But next time I try it, I think I'll choose a much shorter volume than this!

[Andrew Hodgson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mostly good poems and a cool concept, especially if you believe that history should always center on England. I was shocked that nothing from Neruda made it, or any others from Latin America! Nor is there any poem from an Asian writer! Read it as a poetry sampler and it’s good but it hardly captures history nor consistently follows through on its own theme.

[Gregg Brown · Rating 1 out of 5]

Poor selection

Great idea for a collection of poems. Sadly, it seems only the poorest poems, on average, seeped in. If the editors knew a broader range of early 20th century stuff, that half of the book would be that much worse, I'm convinced. :(

[Peter B Waddell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beefy volume offering variety and quality. Huge tomes usually put me off but I found dipping into this one addictive and rewarding.

[Ken Knudson · Rating 1 out of 5]

It turns out that I just can't stand poetry.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s a nice idea and a broad range of poets. I think I just don’t like a lot of 20th century poetry. A person more into poetry would undoubtedly get more from the book.

[Micah Obiang]

Loved the book - really great for people trying to get into poems

[Janessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice sequenced collection of poetry with diverse voices and various forms. Great for individual study.

[Bernie Gourley · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 20th Century in Poetry is an anthology of over 400 poems written in the 20th century that take (often tenuously or symbolically) historical events as their prevailing theme. The poets included in this collection range from household names to those who’ll be well known only to poetry lovers to a few obscure choices. Among the more famous poets included are: Rudyard Kipling, A.E. Housman, James Joyce, W.B. Yeats, D.H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, T.S. Eliot, Langston Hughes, William Carlos Williams, A.A. Milne, Countee Cullen, Edna St. Vincent Millay, W.H. Auden, e.e. cummings, Dylan Thomas, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Sylvia Plath, John Updike, Chinua Achele, Robert Penn Warren, and Seamus Heaney.

Read the title carefully, this isn’t a collection of the best or most popular poems of the 20th century. Many of the works included aren’t even among the best known works of poet authoring them—though there are a few exceptions (e.g. William Carlos Williams’ Red Wheel Borrow and Dylan Thomas’ Do not go gentle into that good night.) Having “clarified” this point, one should note that many of the poems aren’t written about 20th century events. In other words, they’re all written in the 20th century, and they’re mostly about (or around) historical happenings, but sometimes those happenings are from a much earlier time period. However, the editors could well argue that the decision to reflect back on ancient events at that particular time speaks to perceived corollaries in the contemporary era.

I remember reading the reviews on Amazon for this book when I was considering whether to purchase it. The few reviews were overwhelmingly positive, but there was one negative review. Now usually when there’s one negative review and several positive ones, one can dismiss the negative review as that of a curmudgeon—the same person who returns his or her steak three times because the cook can’t get it within one minute and half-a-degree of what that person has determined is the ideal state of cookedness. However, I gave this negative review the benefit of the doubt and read it. What I found was a well-reasoned and uncurmudgeonly explanation of why that person didn’t like the anthology. Still, I dismissed the review and bought it. While I’m glad I did, I can see that reviewer’s point.

What was said critique? It was that the entire anthology was bleak and depressing. At the time of purchase, I shrugged that off. It’s poetry. Of course, it leans to the dark and morose. Poets aren’t generally known for their cheery dispositions (Augden Nash, Dr. Seuss, and Shel Silverstein notwithstanding—and, of course, none of those individuals’ works is in this book.) There are times when the doom and gloom obviously strikes the right tone (e.g. poems about the Depression, the World Wars, and various genocidal atrocities.) However, the 20th century was not all war and holocaust; it was also a time of great advancements in science, technology, and quality of life. But even the best times of the 20th century are painted depressingly in this collection. To give an example, there are three poems about the moon landing and they all come across as works of petty douchebags. (I suppose the underlying sentiment was, “Why are we spending millions going to the moon when there are poets who can’t make a decent living moping about and painting word pictures of the world as seen through shit-colored glasses.)

As this book is proclaimed as an attempt to capture the history of an entire century through poetry, it’s worth pointing out that this is clearly an English language centric view of history. To be fair, the editors do go to lengths to include poems from both Indian (i.e. South Asian Indian) and African poets whose works were published in English.

The poems are arranged in 7 chronological parts: 1900-1914, 1915-1922, 1923-1939, 1940-1945, 1946-1968, 1969-1988, and 1989-2000. Anybody remotely familiar with the history of the 20th century should be able to tell what world events drove this particular delineation of timeframes. For readers who aren’t history buffs, one nice feature is that each part begins with a prose discussion of world events during said era.

I would recommend this book to individuals interested in poetry as long as they don’t currently suffer from depressive disorders.

[Neil · Rating 3 out of 5]

According to my account I've been gnawing away at this anthology for six months. But then it's got almost 800 pages of poems. Editors Hulse and Rae start at the beginning of the 20th Century and work their way forward to the turn of the millennium. The poems, for the most part, weren't just written in the year to which they are attributed, but also concern events or attitudes especially important to that year. When the editors stick to this organizing mechanism, the anthology works beautifully, but my caveat is that about a third of the poems don't have any connection to particular events, and sometimes, I couldn't even discern a connection to the mood of the times. I would have preferred an anthology that was either tighter or more consistently executed.

That said, there are oodles of lovely poems here, old friends like Hardy's "The Darkling Thrush," Wilfred Owen's "Anthem for Doomed Youth," Eliot's "Prufrock," Yeats's "The Second Coming," Auden's "Spain" and "Say this city has ten million souls," Henry Reed's "Lessons of War," Alan Ginsberg's America" (he ought to be more represented in an anthology like this), Robert Lowell's "Skunk Hour" and "For the Union Dead," and Elizabeth Bishop's "Questions of Travel," and great poems I've somehow missed up until now like Noel Coward's droll "1901," Allen Tate's horrifying "The Swimmers," an excerpt from E. J. Pratt's "The Titanic," A. A. Milne's funny mashup "Buckingham Palace," Charles Simic's "Prodigy," Weldon Kees' "The View of the Castle," Galway Kinnell's "The Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ into the New World," John Updike's "Seven New Ways of Looking at the Moon."

For me, this anthology worked up until the mid-1960s, and then lost the thread at the end of the century, with too few poems about the ends of the times and too many poems that simply didn't strike me. Unfortunately, that's about a third of the book, and perhaps gives a false impression that the quality of poetry has tapered off. I don't think so. I think it's a failure in selection. Your mileage may vary, and I'm sure every reader will come away with a different set of authors to seek out or re-read, but overall, this is a good anthology, not a great one.

[Oswego Public Library District]

This is a collection of over 400 poems by various authors. Chronologically arranged, there is at least one poem for every year from 1900 to 2000. Each era is its own chapter and includes a description of the time period. Reading this anthology of poetry is a great way to get a taste of history and the perspectives of people during the time. Includes an index of titles and poets. - JM

Click here to place The 20th Century in Poetry on hold!

[Geraldine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Comprehensive, clearly set, nicely commented (briefly commented, which can be good as well as disappointing)very well cross referenced, there is very little to say against that collection of superb poem. Of course, one can complain about the choice of poem, the presence or absence of a poet, but I found that book well balanced offering both the novice and the student a good overview of what has been written (where) in the 20th century but providing less well trodden path to let the mind wander. Clearly a must have.

[J. Alfred · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't imagine a better way to learn about recent history and loads of little known poets and poems than the theory worked out in this very strong title. The problem with all anthologies is that one wants to see more of one's favorites, but the best thing about anthologies is that they introduce one to people who can become favorites.
Side note: seen historically in this way, I have increased evidence that there is nothing in the English language like Eliot's Four Quartets.

[C · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some beautiful poems in here.
Poems are organized in chronological order of their writing, divided into chapters of decades and big events of that time.

There are some beautiful poems in there and I love the cover - but overall it's a pretty bulky volume to pick up and enjoy on a winter's night.

[Kjersti Egerdahl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of course I didn't read this whole giant book before it was due back at the library, but it's so interesting to read poems in the context of their era, alongside other poems from the same time period. The WWI poems are especially striking and sad.

[Nancy Effrig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book for reading poetry through the previous century, as commentary is provided explaining the history that took place through the decades, providing context for the poems.This book can be enjoyed slowly on quiet evenings while sipping tea, or shared with a like minded friend.....

[Richard Labombard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Readers who love poetry but who find history books too dry should give this anthology a good read cover to cover. And vice versa, for readers who are partial to history books. The best in poets and poetry, speaking to the visions and realizations of a momentous century.

[Toria · Rating 4 out of 5]

So far, a fabulous collection.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great selection of poets & poems. Arranged by date with an index of poets & titles and an index of first lines. Something for Book Club? 10 copies.