World Poetry: An Anthology of Verse from Antiquity to Our Time

by Katharine Washburn (Editor), Clifton Fadiman (Editor), John S. Major (Editor)

The one necessary book of poetry for every home and library. This long-awaited, indispensable volume contains more than 1600 poems drawn from dozens of languages and cultures, and spans a period of more than 4000 years from ancient Sumer and Egypt to the late twentieth century. World Poetry encompasses the many worlds of poetry, poetry of all styles, of all eras, of all from the ancient epic of Gilgamesh and the Pharaoh Akhnaten's "Hymn to the Sun" to the haiku of Basho and the dazzling imagery of Li Po; from Vedic hymns to Icelandic sagas to the "Carmina Burana"; from the magnificence of Homer and Dante to the lyricism of Goethe and Verlaine; from the piercing insights of Rilke and Yeats to the revelatory verse of Emily Dickinson, Garcia Lorca, Derek Walcott, Seamus Heaney, and many more.

While World Poetry includes a generous selection of the best English-language verse from Chaucer to the present, it is designed to lay before the reader the best that all the world's cultures have to offer―more than eighty percent of the book is poetry originally written in languages other than English and translated by some of the finest talents working today, many of them brilliant poets in their own right.

This is no mere In choosing only works of the highest intrinsic quality the editors have created a book that will surprise knowledgeable readers and lead newcomers to an understanding of the glories of world poetry that is our common heritage.

Genres: Poetry, Anthologies, Reference, Short Stories, Literature

1376 pages, Hardcover

First published March 17, 1998

Reviews

[Samuel Kordik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exceptional collection of poetry from all ages, all languages, and all regions. It is roughly organized by era and then by country and language; this makes the collection much easier to read through and understand place and context. Every section has an introduction discussing the setting, the key poets, and the development of poetry through that era and region. The poems themselves stood alone and represented a very solid selection from a huge variety of poets. Wonderful reading and many fantastic poems—some readily recognized classics, as well as some truly beautiful but less well known works.

[Edgar Trevizo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Le tengo un hondo cariño a Un libro de cosas luminosas, de Czeslaw Milosz, mi antología favorita de poesía internacional. Pero para ser objetivo, esta es un logro mucho más vasto. Más de 1,600 poemas que abarcan 4,000 años de poesía… el trabajo de selección de los editores es heroico además de exquisito. Es un libro rebosante de tesoros. Las piedras preciosas saltan por todas direcciones, a cada momento. Es un verdadero triunfo.

[Mercury's Widow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let's just say I severely underestimated the time commitment when I found this at the library. (So very naive...but I guess it also forced me to actually finish it.) Anyway, it was definitely worth it. I found a bunch of beautiful poems that I'm in love with, read Wikipedia's biographies of all kinds of poets and got a mini-world history course out of it. SO MUCH WISDOM.

Poetry limit: may have been hit. Wisdom limit: not even close.

One of the reasons why I was drawn to this collection was because of the range of cultures and societies it was able to represent. Of course it's Western/White/European heavy, but at least a lot of marginalized groups of people are there too.

A couple of examples before I got bored of putting them here:

Out in the Marsh Reeds - Ki no Tsurayuki
Out in the marsh reeds
A bird cries out in sorrow
As though it had recalled
Something better forgotten.

Twice Times Then is Now - Ibn Hazm Al-Andalusi

To Leuconoe - Horace

Words in Shadows - Victor Hugo

[Lulu]

🧿c. 880 Sequence of Saint Eulalia; earliest surviving French hagiography and one of the earliest extant texts in the vernacular langues d'oïl (Old French)
Trans [ The Lady as Saint collection ]https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... or https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seque....


🧿1159-63; stephen explicit evocation of lesbian sex
"They do their jousting act in couples
and go at it full tilt;
at the game of thigh-fencing
they lewdly share their expenses.

They're not all from the same mold:
one lies still and the other makes busy,
one plays the cock and the other the hen
and each one plays her role“

Stephen's 'Book of Manners' https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1... is the work for which he is now chiefly famous. It is a long poem in Middle French verse of 1,345 lines in stanzas of four octosyllabic mono-rhymed lines. It is an oddity in terms of genre. It is a series of moralistic sketches addressed to generic figures: from popes, archbishops and kings to merchants, peasants and women, detailing what was unacceptable conduct in each and what each should ideally aspire to. It is possible that the Livre was in origin a series of French summaries of Latin sermons Stephen had preached or prepared, composed in the vernacular for wider circulation, the sort of sermon called 'Ad Status', addressed to different conditions of people.[5] An older interpretation of it is as an early example of an 'estates satire', though it lacks the bitterness and negativity that goes with the genre.

🧿 Attar (late 12th) the woman who dressed as a man (+ Listening to the Reed Flute, Street-Sweeper, Looking for Your Own Face, the newborn). Included in https://archive.org/details/handofpoe...

🧿1535 “ they flee from me” https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...

🧿1773 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5... According to William Turner’s account in The Newcastle Magazine, Barbauld expressed concern to Priestley over dinner about his upcoming scientific experiment using a mouse. While staying the night at Priestley’s home, she penned the poem and stuck it in the wires of the mouse’s cage. Upon reading her poem the next morning, Priestley released the mouse.


🧿A Parable (poem 1898) Arthur Conan doyle

“The cheese-mites asked how the cheese got there,
And warmly debated the matter;
The Orthodox said that it came from the air,
And the Heretics said from the platter.
They argued it long and they argued it strong,
And I hear they are arguing now;
But of all the choice spirits who lived in the cheese,
Not one of them thought of a cow.”



https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...


🧿نحن شعب لا يستحي؛ كتابات - قابيل وهابيل
2pp, aug 2009, أحمد النعيمي
http://forum.fnkuwait.com/t7124

arthur conan doyle The Bigot 1919

The foolish Roman fondly thought
That gods must be the same to all,
Each alien idol might be brought
Within their broad Pantheon Hall.
The vision of a jealous Jove
Was far above their feeble ken;
They had no Lord who gave them love,
But scowled upon all other men.


But in our dispensation bright,
What noble progress have we made!
We know that we are in the light,
And outer races in the shade.
Our kindly creed ensures us this—
That Turk and infidel and Jew
Are safely banished from the bliss
That's guaranteed to me and you.


The Roman mother understood
That, if the babe upon her breast
Untimely died, the gods were good,
And the child's welfare manifest.
With tender guides the soul would go
And there, in some Elysian bower,
The tiny bud plucked here below
Would ripen to the perfect flower.


Poor simpleton! Our faith makes plain
That, if no blest baptismal word
Has cleared the babe, it bears the stain
Which faithless Adam had incurred.
How philosophical an aim!
How wise and well-conceived a plan
Which holds the new-born babe to blame
For all the sins of early man!


Nay, speak not of its tender grace,
But hearken to our dogma wise:
Guilt lies behind that dimpled face,
And sin looks out from gentle eyes.
Quick, quick, the water and the bowl!
Quick with the words that lift the load!
Oh, hasten, ere that tiny soul
Shall pay the debt old Adam owed!


The Roman thought the souls that erred
Would linger in some nether gloom,
But somewhere, sometime, would be spared
To find some peace beyond the tomb.
In those dark halls, enshadowed, vast,
They flitted ever, sad and thin,
Mourning the unforgotten past
Until they shed the taint of sin.


And Pluto brooded over all
Within that land of night and fear,
Enthroned in some dark Judgment Hall,
A god himself, reserved, austere.
How thin and colourless and tame!
Compare our nobler scheme with it,
The howling souls, the leaping flame,
And all the tortures of the pit!


Foolish half-hearted Roman hell!
To us is left the higher thought
Of that eternal torture cell
Whereto the sinner shall be brought.
Out with the thought that God could share
Our weak relenting pity sense,
Or ever condescend to spare
The wretch who gave Him just offence!


'Tis just ten thousand years ago
Since the vile sinner left his clay,
And yet no pity can he know,
For as he lies in hell to-day
So when ten thousand years have run
Still shall he lie in endless night.
O God of Love! O Holy One!
Have we not read Thy ways aright?


The godly man in heaven shall dwell,
And live in joy before the throne,
Though somewhere down in nether hell
His wife or children writhe and groan.
From his bright Empyrean height
He sees the reek from that abyss—
What Pagan ever dreamed a sight
So holy and sublime as this!


Poor foolish folk! Had they begun
To weigh the myths that they professed,
One hour of reason and each one
Would surely stand a fraud confessed.
Pretending to believe each deed
Of Theseus or of Hercules,
With fairy tales of Ganymede,
And gods of rocks and gods of trees!


No, no, had they our purer light
They would have learned some saner tale
Of Balaam's ass, or Samson's might,
Or prophet Jonah and his whale,
Of talking serpents and their ways,
Through which our foolish parents strayed,
And how there passed three nights and days
Before the sun or moon was made!


O Bigotry, you crowning sin!
All evil that a man can do
Has earthly bounds, nor can begin
To match the mischief done by you—
You, who would force the source of love
To play your small sectarian part,
And mould the mercy from above
To fit your own contracted heart.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the year winds to a close, I did it! I completed reading 1,238 pages (not including endnotes) of poems starting with one from around 2,000 BC (about some Akkadian dark force called ‘The Seven’) – that’s around 4,000 years of poetry. It didn’t take me that long to read them, but it took me ages. The first record of my concerted effort (interspersed between reading other books) appears in August 2018 (that’s five years and three houses ago, and I had already read 357 pages by then). But the story of me and this book is older than that...

I’ll allude to a past success if that’s ok. (What good are past successes if they are never alluded to?) In 1997 I won the John Tinline Prize in English at The University of Auckland. These kinds of things don’t come around every day. When I was notified, I initially thought it was a clerical error. (I was still labouring under an assumption fostered by a fifth form teacher who told me I wasn’t very good at writing or at English; and secondary school years in which I was left with the impression that I was struggling with the aid of only moderate intelligence, at best.)

I thought they might announce my prize at the university capping and awards ceremony, but they didn’t – thereby helping to keep any newfound sense of importance in check. I think I would have enjoyed a crowded Auckland Town Hall being told that I had won the John Tinline Prize in English. But at least the two or three people reading this are hearing about it now.

To let you know, the Tinline prize is awarded to the third-year student who achieves the highest marks across five English papers and (I discovered with a little research at the time) was the richest prize in the Arts Faculty (or perhaps just the English Dept – either way, a rich prize): $400 worth of vouchers awarded in the hope that the recipient would use them to purchase books for the furtherance of their study at Master’s level.

I diligently spent the bulk as per the intention of those who had bequeathed the prize (I have no idea who John Tinline was – though I salute him). But two books were purchased for my own pleasure – a book of paintings inspired by jazz, and this one. (I placed the prize bookplate, with my name handwritten in beautiful calligraphy, inside the cover; it kept slipping out as I read the book today.)

I had designs on being a poet. And I knew that if I was going to be the sort of poet I wanted to be, I would need to have a bit of knowledge about all the poetry, ever. I was browsing the shelves in 1998 and this book had just come out. A hefty portion of the prize total (nearly a quarter) was duly shelled out. I strode through campus with the tome under my arm. I could tell that people knew.

Have I ever mentioned that I don’t really like poetry? Well, I love it; but what I mean is that I read a lot of poems I don’t particularly enjoy. A phenomenon which extended to this book, and it made me think about the process of selection. I think perhaps it be might be possible to make a selection of this many poems that I would love – an anthology tailored to me. Though that’s unrealistic.

In general (and matters of my personal taste a little to the side), an anthology like this will always have problems. How do you do justice to a poet by just one or two poems? (Poor old Tom Eliot once again gets stuck with ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ as his signature poem – a great poem but not a candle to what he went on to write.) How do you do justice to a movement, an era or a geographical location? Which ones do you choose, and which ones are left out? Why so few female poets – even in the 20th century section – why on earth no Denise Levertov? (Parochially, I also note the apparent silence of poets from New Zealand and the Pacific in the 20th century... I’m sure other readers would notice equivalent silences.)

And there is one other thing. Where the subtitle reads ‘An anthology of verse from antiquity to our time’, it should actually read ‘An anthology of verse from antiquity to our time written in English or translated into English’. This is a collection for which English is the master tongue. A museum located in London and New York.

The processes of selection, translation and placement are transformative. Translation, in particular, changes a poem – it has to. You might even say that the processes of selection, translation and placement do violence to poetry and the voices within the words. (They debate this kind of stuff in universities, and sometimes it spills out.) But I’ll suck back the white flecks from the corners of my mouth, and return to calmer, less political thoughts.

Because, I don’t know how anyone would go about making an anthology like this. The work in evidence, undertaken by the anthologisers is astonishing. We can acknowledge the problems, but problems notwithstanding, this is a remarkable book.

Dive into it. Reading it cover to cover may not be advisable – but participate in some way with the rich history, here or in other books... this way in which poetry, millennia upon millennia, insists upon weaving itself through the human condition, spilling out of us when we speak of our gods, our loses, our pain, our place, our passions, our visions and our loves. Always struggling towards and seeking expression. Giving voice, and voices reverberating from the past. And thus our stories and years go by.

Age 41 to 46 I have spent time, reading with my 21-year-old self (the one who purchased the book with great intentions), and with others apart from myself of this age and that. I could hear them.

I spent time, by the way, looking up death dates, and inscribing them in the book in pencil (an erasable medium signifying a definitive point), for the poets who were still living when this book was published. A very few are still with us. (The most newly born was born in 1941.)

And so the world turns, and life goes on – memories and poems and past accomplishments – and so it passes. We shift, we wipe sand off tablets and decipher the cuneiform of things thought and said long ago, not so very long ago.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

A remarkable collection of poetry in translation as well as a decent and smattering of English-language poetry, mostly complimentary (not duplicating) works in The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Well worth owning. Someday I would like to have read it all.

[Kitty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anthologies of world poetry are tricky, especially when 80% of the original poems are not written in English.
It would be too much to ask to see the original of each poem, in such a large undertaking. However, some very fine translators are represented. Each section, divided into time periods and cultures, has a helpful, if minimal introduction.

[Paul H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, it took me ten years to finish this thing, but it was well worth the trouble. A truly comprehensive collection of world poetry (1338 pages ...!). The only traditions that I was already super-familiar with were Chinese and Japanese, and I approve of the choices there, so I can only assume that the poetry selections in the other sections were equally well-chosen.

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is this 1300 page tome worth reading? Yes. If you're a poetry lover (and I assume only poetry lovers would entertain the notion of reading this), it behooves you to have a feel for the art across times and cultures. There are many great translators contributing their work to this volume but translated poetry often doesn't have the same impact as reading it in the original language. I enjoyed many poems in this volume but there were more that didn't excite me, whether as a result of the dampening effect of translation or not jibing with the culture it comes from. Still, this volume does many things right. It organizes by time period first and region/country first. This actually prevents being overwhelmed. It's interesting to dip from one culture to another and to see how different countries' contributions to poetry are greater in different time periods. This volume also provides excerpts from longer works so that we get a feel for the more epic poetry of different cultures and times.

[agenbiteofinwit · Rating 3 out of 5]

it’s more of a collection of poetry based on the period, country, instead of one which embraces the best of the best. the problem with some of the poems would be translation, that it’d easily fall short because of being not the best translation it could have been, and it is very personally determined. good one to start as an introduction to poetry and one to fish some random good poems in, but the preference would be the individual collection which these poets have for themselves respectively.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

kept me company thru the hardest times

[Mark]

I have this giant anthology in my desk drawer at work. When I have a few spare moments I'll pull it out. I've been working my way through it for about a year, and half way through now. It starts from ancient poetry from all parts of the world then continues to the present day. I'm to the 1600's. It's interesting to see how early on, the subjects and imagry were agrarian and generally about love, god(s), and death. These themes continue, but with increasing sophistication in language and imagry. Most cultures had very similar poetries, until the western world lept ahead during the Enlightenment. Big as the book is, the poems are of the highest quality; never a dull read.

[Cami · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has over 1200 pages of poetry. Seriously.
It covers just about everthing from the Bronze age to the 20th Century.
Here's a sample from Kuan Tao-sheng (1262-1319)

Married Love

You and I
Have so much love,
That it
Burns like fire,
In which we bake a lump of clay
Molded into a figure of you
And a figure of me.
Then we take both the pieces,
And mix the pieces with water,
And mold again a figure of you,
And a figure of me.
I am in your clay.
You are in my clay.
In life we share a quilt.
In death we will share one coffin.

[bermudianabroad · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a marvellous book. Hefty and complex. Borrowed from Central Library but would love to buy it some day. An excellent selection of poems from antiquity to modern times, witty, hypnotic and beautiful. Something to savour.