The Penguin Book of English Song

The Penguin Book of... (Penguin Classics)

by Richard Stokes

Poetry and music have been associated with each other from the very beginning. The Penguin Book of English Song draws together a great variety of English poetry (including Irish, Scots and Welsh writers) that has reached a wider audience through the magic of music. Richard Stokes's rich anthology of verse stretches from the fourteenth century to the twentieth, collecting poems that have inspired musical settings by one hundred English poets, along with a treasure trove of illuminating notes and marginalia about their lives, work and, often, their approach to music.

Stokes gathers together in a single volume a huge amount of information about English song that will assist musicians in performing these works, and enlighten all those enthusiasts who delight in the fusion of words and music that has produced countless moments of incandescent magic.

Genres: Poetry, Music

976 pages, Paperback

Published May 29, 2018

Reviews

[Peter Green · Rating 3 out of 5]

needed like, twenty more women poets

[Davidg · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is no alternative but to give this the full five stars. I have been reading a few poems a day for the best part of a year and it has been very enjoyable. I feel that I haven’t done the book justice, as to do that would mean listening to all the music that the poems have been set to. I think that would take years, but I will seek some of them out.

Of course, there are quibbles. One or two of the notes frustrated me; they seemed to take a literal view of some of the images which were clearly allegorical. A number of hymn writers are also included: Isaac Watts and even Mrs Alexander, but no Charles Wesley. I would suggest that a number of his writings are better poetry and better hymns than All Things Bright and Beautiful.

Quibbles aside, this is a wonderful anthology of poetry.