Poem a Day, Vol. 1

Poem a Day #1

by Karen McCosker (Editor), Nicholas Albery (Editor)

Once upon a time men and women of sense and sensibility knew by heart dozens of poems - Shakespeare's sonnets, stirring patriotic verse, odes to churchyards and elegies for the departed, the music of Swinburne or Poe or Yeats. Poems are meant to be voiced and A Poem a Day includes 366 poems old and new - one for each day of the year - worth learning by heart. Only two criteria were demanded of each poem for inclusion in this collection - it had to be short enough to learn in a day, and good enough to stand among the great poetry of the English language, from Chaucer to Sylvia Plath.

A Poem a Day is a book for the bedside. It contains many of the most familiar poems in the language and others that will come as a surprise. Most are complete and most are short, easily contained in a single page. But a few are substantial works, like Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" and Rudyard Kipling's "Gunga Din." Some have been read by every high school student (Andrew Marvel, "To His Coy Mistress") while others will be new to most readers (Thomas Hardy, "The Voice"). But all share the compression and charged meaning which are the soul of poetry.

In its British version the book went through seven printings in a year and was a bestseller. Now Karen McCosker has added a new foreword and fifty new poems for an American audience willing to make poetry a part of life.

Genres: Poetry, Anthologies, Nonfiction

496 pages, Paperback

First published December 12, 1994

Reviews

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderfully comprehensive compilation. It contains some fragments of long works but they're great for introducing younger people or those new to poetry to poems and poets, and for motivating a certain older person to at times revisit that complete work.

There are 366 works in whole or in part representing every important poet and including a piece or the whole of most iconic works. And there's always the joy on first reading of encountering something previously unknown. It's last copyright 1999 so you won't find anything truly modern but there are many other places to find those and few where classics and beauties are gathered together in one spine as they are here. There are two more volumes, each containing 366 poems, classic and newer, the third copyright 2004.

As far as anthologies go, this is the best I've had since my school-days Nortons. The index is perfect because it has the names of the poets and the poems and all first lines. I'm very glad it was recommended to me as poetry has always been important to me for the beauty and the wonder, as a balm, catharsis and/or contemplation. Poem a Day, Vol. 1 is a worthwhile addition to every home library, and I'll be looking into the other two.

[rinabeana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I saw this book in a shop in London when I was visiting and I really liked the idea of it (as I post a poem a day on my blog). I held off buying it and got it from the library when I got back to Austin. What I really liked about the book (in addition to the poems, of course) was that there was a little blurb for each poem, sometimes tying it to the day, sometimes offering background info on the poet, etc. I love having some context and this provided a little of that, where most poetry compilations do not.

[Laura Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best New Year's Resolution: to read a poem a day. In 2015, I took a little time each day to myself to slowly savor a poem. I was inspired daily by the use of language, new and interesting vocabulary, and thought-provoking content and perspective.

[Ricki · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am not much of a poetry reader, so this book was a great way to start. I definitely discovered some poets whom I never thought I would like.

[Juliet · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my year-long read for 2019, and while there were some treasures in here I didn't connect with a lot of the selections. Still, it was fun to have a year of poetry and find some new poets to explore.

[Numidica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this collection. I read it during a hard time in my life, and it helped me.

[Joel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve never really been into poetry, but I wanted to learn how to enjoy it, and this collection seemed like a good starting point. And a good starting point it was! By only forcing myself to read one poem per day, and really spending the time at the end of my day to sit and soak it in, I did learn how to appreciate poetry. Perhaps too much, because as the year went on I found myself developing a taste for poetry I like and poetry I didn’t like and I started getting too judgey about the poems the editors chose! (I learned to really hate Kipling. I learned to really love cummings).

The only real quibble I have with this collection is how Anglo-centric it is. Not that they don’t make space for poets of color, but it still feels like we’re hearing from the same English poets over and over again. Not that I mind seeing Billy Shakes, hell I always got excited to see him pop up, I just got really tired of Kipling over and over.

That said I have really enjoyed the ritual of ending each day with a poetry reading, and I intend to continue with Volume 2, which has a different editor and from a quick skim seems to be a much more diverse collection, both in origin and in form. I would greatly recommend this collection to anyone who like me feels ambivalent to poetry but wants to learn to like it.

[Margie · Rating 5 out of 5]

So many great poems in this volume; my copy is dog-eared and underlined throughout. I’ll revisit it in part next year and probably in full again the following year. I much prefer Volume One to Two, but would love to stumble across Volume Three to add to my library.
This is a great place to start for anyone interested in poetry, but is unsure where to begin.

[Leaflet · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've had this book for nigh on 18 years. It's time I added it to my GR library.

[Stephen Page · Rating 5 out of 5]

I try to read it each day—for the last few years. The poems never get old.

[lisa kw · Rating 4 out of 5]

RTC of favorites of the bunch.

Can't wait to get Vol. 2 for 2023!

[Jay French · Rating 3 out of 5]

It only took me about two and a half years to read this poem-a-day book. I'm not good at doing what people tell me, I guess. Instead of a daily read, I tended to read this in short chunks of a few days at a time. I appreciated the variety, although I enjoyed the more modern poets much more than the ones from centuries ago -- there were way too many of those classics in there. I enjoyed reading these, slowly. I was impressed to read in the foreword that many people would memorize a poem a day. That would be quite an accomplishment with this collection, with so many rare and/or dated words. But the poems are mostly one pagers, so memorizing might be more readily accomplished than longer poems. Overall, I enjoyed this but would have liked more modern and fewer classic poems...and maybe even more American poets -- this is the American version of a British poetry book, and some British poems were traded out for American poems, but not nearly enough for my liking...

[Steven Belanger · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very worthwhile book that I tried to read once a day, but fell behind on. That’s okay to do, as most are a page or shorter and you can easily catch up.

You’ll know some of the poems here, if you remember your high school or college classes even a little bit. I’m an English major and an English teacher, so I know some of these very well indeed. It ends with Burns’s “Auld Lang Syne,” of course, and there are a lot of poems, excerpts, songs and sonnets you’ll recognize, by Shakespeare, Kipling, Donne, Yeats, Wordsworth, and others. But there are also a lot by poets you won’t know, but should, and you may want to read more by them, and about them, as I did. The first poem, “New Every Morning,” by Susan Coolidge, is one of these.

The very short biographical tidbits beneath most poems are also very interesting. They’re very specific and they really give you a

[Tracy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this collection, one poem a day, throughout 2023. This was published a while ago, maybe 20 years, so there aren't any current poets included, but it seemed to have a decent selection. Most days were fairly short, so it wasn't a huge time commitment every day. Almost every poem has a little blurb at the bottom, either explaining something about the poet or putting the poem into context. It's not a beautiful book physically, which is a shame.

[Dan Goss · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful and diverse collection. A read and loved some of these in late 2018 when I first went through this book, but it really saved my sanity in 2020, when a group of us decided to memorize and recite poetry to get through the covid lockdown. I still recite a number of these to my dog when I walk her in the morning to keep them fresh.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked up this book with the intention of wanting to learn to speak more beautifully. There were indeed gems that spoke to me. Some had no relevance to my life. I've noticed quite a few religiously themed poems in there, which shouldn't have been surprising to me since poems often speak of the divine of life.

[Meghan L · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a really great variety of poetry. It is heavy on Wordsworth, etc, but also has a nice mixture of others. I discovered a number of poems that I really loved, and, of course, there were a number that I was less than crazy for.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've enjoyed having this book at hand to encourage me to read a poem each day. Many are familiar. I discovered poems with famous phrases that I hadn't previously known the source. I reread with pleasure the ones I knew and loved. I made friends with new favorites.

[Monical · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spent the year going through these poems-- includes the familiar and the obscure, but altogether an enjoyable survey of English poetry, with a few in translation. Great way to finish 2017!

[Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

xmas prez to e--i read before we fall asleep--some of my fave poems--romantic

[Nathalie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the kind of book you want to purchase and I am not a great poetry lover!

[Elizabeth Castro · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed learning about each poet after reading their poem. I gained an understanding about poets from the UK, and their backgrounds.

[Madisyn Manzella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actual Rating: 3.75

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

My all-time favorite collection of poetry.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did it!!! I read 365 poems this year (although not entirely every day, but almost every day so I still think that’s rather good). It’s hard to review a book like this because like… How do you? The poems come from a semi - wide range and it’s not like I can sit here going over every single one of them. All in all though, I would say this book is pretty good. There were several poems I liked every month except for in October (and maybe March or April [definitely had an issue or two in a spring month, I just can’t remember which one]??). Those seemed to be the roughest bits for me in poem content. I will say that I was hoping for a bit of a wider range of decades in poetry, personally. It did feel like at times that we were constantly exploring the 1600 - 1800s and with maybe one poem each month being around the 1950s, lol. Sometimes I really had to get out my decoder ring when looking at William Blake’s, John Milton’s, or Sir Lord Alfred Tennyson’s poetry and trying to understand what they were getting at. I am hoping for some more modern poets in volume two of this series (as I have decided to continue on with it). However, with that being said, there was still a lot of new poets I’ve read and loved. I am now a Bard Baddie (WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS SO GOOD WHEN SCHOOL STOPS RUINING HIM FOR YOU) and a William Wordsworth Whore (TELL ME MORE ABOUT HOW THE LEAVES LOVINGLY LOOK). Some other ones I’ve discovered are W.B. Yeats, Sasha Moorsom, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and more. There are definitely poems and poets in here I would have never read or liked or even been introduced to had it not been for this book and, for that, I could not be more appreciative to the people who compiled this together. I enjoyed reading the trivia and doing my own research into the poems along with the people behind them, which makes me really excited for volume two! I am just hoping to see maybe more Sylvia Plath or Dorothy Parker (not a single Parker poem!!) in the next one.

Also, I rewarded myself with the nice Barnes & Noble edition of Complete Works Of William Shakespeare for finishing this because the major takeaway from this year was how GOOD WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE ACTUALLY IS. I AM STILL STUNNED.

[Annabelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Leaned too heavily on English Romantics and Shakespeare; I would have liked to see more variety than several poets included several times. Some poems were longer than memorizable-in-a-day as promised, but otherwise a great collection that introduced me to some lovely work.

[Hayley Shaver · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked A Poem a Day. This book of 365 poems is great. It explains hard words and has a mini biography for many of the poets.

[Dani · Rating 2 out of 5]

The main thing I learned from this collection is that I prefer poetry written within my lifetime or slightly before. The main exception is the work of 17th-century poet Anne Bradstreet, who is included in this anthology and has long been one of my favorites. Even though I only gave the book two stars, I am glad I read it because it helped to confirm my taste in verse.

[David Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another Top 10 daily reader. Outstanding poems every day of the year. David Whyte once said, "You know, you could do a lot worse than to read just one poem a day," and I took him up on that six years ago and have been doing it ever since. All three of these volumes are outstanding, but, alas, not available on Kindle.

[Gene Ripka · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this collection for the most part. Particularily helpful are the biographical/ historical sketches on the poets. To my tastes, pieces from Donne, T. s. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and some others are in short supply. The book did serve well in refreshing memory of some read-long-ago poems, and introducing some poems and poets from fresh perspective.