The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 4th Edition

by Margaret Ferguson, Jon Stallworthy, Mary Jo Salter

Over three editions, The Norton Anthology of Poetry has become the classroom standard for the study of poetry in English. A wide and deep quarry of poems from the medieval period to the present, it is a book instructors rely on as a uniquely flexible teaching anthology, and one that students delve into well beyond college. Now, responding to new scholarship, classroom suggestions, and the vitality and diversity of poetry itself, the Fourth Edition introduces a wealth of new poets and poems as well as thoroughly revised editorial apparatus.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Anthologies, Reference, Literature, Fiction, School

1998 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

Reviews

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am more familiar with earlier editions, and while Margy Ferguson* is an excellent and perceptive scholar-editor, she cannot repell the publisher's usual bowing to sell books. My riveting memory of such an event was in a freshman literature anthology, ground-breaking in its day. It included Tom Thumb, had an entire section of songs and the prosody of songs, and many other things, which because they were unique, I tended to teach.
Next edition, they were all cut. And I dumped the anthology. Evidently, all the freshman lit-comp teachers in the country were pretty used to doing what they did, could not use the wonderful innovations. You'd think frosh comp would be generally staffed by the younger and more flexible teachers, but perhaps when you include all the adjunct and experienced teachers who missed tenure, you have a group of fairly careful people unwilling to take risks.
Well, if that was the way it was fifteen years ago, think how that will be reinforced by the scrutiny of the classroom by those who think of it as a factory. Or by those who know nothing of teaching, like the US Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, who only taught for two years--gym. Your production line's doing WHAT? Song prosody? Where will the standardized test examine that?
*M Ferguson joined my SAA seminar on Shakepseare and Oral Culture in Seattle, and is a supporter of my latest, Parodies Lost, on Tom Weiskel, Harold Bloom's favorite young colleague at Yale in the early 70's. MF also knew Tom at Yale; and H Bloom wrote me, "I think of Tom every day. I still grieve him."

[Daniel Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

More than four months in the reading. Worth every day.

[HeavyReader · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is huge, so I had no intention of reading it cover to cover. I just flipped through, reading a poem here, another one there. I didn't even buy this book for a class. I had some extra scholarship book money, so I bought myself a copy.

Unfortunately, my copy of this book disappeared many years ago. I think a no good roommate stole it. The funny thing is that he considered himself a Christian. I hope he still has this book and feels guilty whenever he sees it on his bookshelf. I hope he's worried about what God thinks about him stealing the book. (He tried to steal my cat to, but didn't get away with it.)

Anyway, this book is chock full of poems. It could keep a poetry lover happy for many years.

[Joe Sacksteder]

In college my Great Books professor put this whole anthology on our 100 Greatest Books list. The idea of this class is that you read as many of the 100 during the semester as you can; then you're supposed to read the remnant over the course of your life. This anthology was a real cop out on the professors' part - along with the complete works of William Shakespeare. It was setting us up for failure. I started the anthology in 2005 when I was in music composition grad school in Baton Rouge Louisiana, August 18, 2012. I read one poet a day, or up to three poems, both silently and out loud. I missed days/weeks/months, but I persevered. It is now February 23, 2012, and I read the last poet today.

And I still know nothing about what's going on in contemporary poetry.

Overall, a little light on formal innovation.

[Walter · Rating 5 out of 5]

At the end of the end of the 1960 film, The Time Machine, the hero, George Wells, returns to the future taking three books from his library with him. Viewers are left to ponder which three books he takes - it's never revealed. If it had been me, this would be one of the books.

The Norton Anthology is a part of who I am. It opened - and continues to open - doors into some of the great literary minds of our culture. A starting point from which you can go on and learn more (i.e., don't stop with this book!).

If there is any doubt about its greatness, let me show you that it contains as much of both the sacred and the profane as the Bible:

Alexander Pope:

"Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,

The proper study of mankind is Man.

Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,

A being darkly wise and rudely great:

With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,

With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride,

He hangs between, in doubt to act or rest;

In doubt to deem himself a God or Beast;

In doubt his mind or body to prefer;

Born but to die, and reas’ning but to err;

Alike in ignorance, his reason such,

Whether he thinks too little or too much;

Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;

Still by himself abused or disabused;

Created half to rise, and half to fall:

Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;

Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl’d;

The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!"


Ogden Nash:

"The cow is of the bovine ilk;
One end is moo, the other, milk."

Genius, sheer genius.

[Adrian Alvarez · Rating 5 out of 5]

I began reading this book as a detour to fill in some missing breadth between volumes of Jerome Rothenberg's Poems for the Millennium. I was waiting tables and apartment living with my girlfriend and two cats in Seattle. That was seven years ago. Today I finished the final page in my house while my wife, the same girlfriend from before, held our baby daughter and watched Beetlejuice with our son and two dogs. The cats are around but less interested in television than the aquarium. I'm not saying seven years of Milton and Auden and Hart Crane caused a life compounded with living beings but I'm not saying it didn't. This procreant era of my life happened with these poems and without them. Long stretches of not reading were as significant as the moments I would dive back in, remembering myself when I had forgotten crucial goals.

My copy is worn - reinforced with packing tape along the spine and cloudy white on the front and back pages where my hands held while I soaked in a bath; I do my best reading in water. So I lived through all these poems and I hardly remember them now but I didn't read them to have read them. My only takeaway is that I chose to live with poetry and I still like the choice. What I loved about this volume was how it generated a great to-read list of poets.

[Cassandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review is for the 2018 edition.

I quite liked Norton's Anthology of Poetic Forms but I was left craving something more comprehensive. Enter, this gem.

Every poetry aficionado needs a copy of this in their library. It's a weighty tome (trust me, you'll want to set it down when you read from it) but it's something you'll go back to time and time again.

The "usual suspects" are all accounted for here and there are also some more esoteric choices, making it a greatly varied volume. It's also arranged chronologically so if you're looking to see how poetry has evolved over the centuries, it's fantastic. There are also mini biographies for each author and an exceptionally comprehensive glossary of poetic forms.

I saw reviews on other sites where people weren't happy with the thinness of the pages, so I thought it was something worth mentioning here. Those reviews didn't exaggerate, the paper is exactly like Bible paper; waxy and very thin. Personally, I love that sort of paper but it can be a point of contention for some people.

[Harper Curtis · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Norton Anthology is a rich resource, a great starting point for young readers and poets, and a great place to go to find new poets to read. That being said, it really is just a starting point. Moreover, it is limited to poetry written originally in English. You will want to supplement with international anthologies, consider The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry, for example.

[Zoap]

This book is great. I only read like 10 poems from it, but it's the perfect height to use as a stand for my small lamp to stand on. I lean whatever book I'm currently reading against it and put my lamp on top of it, so that the bulb can shine right onto the pages, which are tilted at the perfect reading angle of 55°. I then put my phone down in front of the book I'm reading, to stop it from sliding down from the Norton Anthology of Poetry's glossy cover.

[Seizure Romero · Rating 4 out of 5]

Should be more accurately called The Norton Anthology of Poetry in English.

The fifth printing (my copy) of the 1970 first edition begins with a section called Anonymous Lyrics of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries and ends with Ishmael Reed's beware : do not read this poem (1970). Missing a few decades by the time I was in college, but still useful. Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, W.H. Auden, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Lowell, Denise Levertov, Adrienne Rich, etc., were still living poets when this was published. By no means exhaustive, it was nonetheless a great place to survey the history of English-language poetry.

[Daphne Stanford · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm reading through this -- what is probably my 4th or so copy -- different/updated edition, though. Seems like it gets bigger and bigger each year!

Thing is, this is a damn good anthology far as anthologies go. Thing is, though, I prefer the original collections. Kinda like the difference between a "Best of" album and the original deal. Yada yada yada.

[Velma]

Eighty bucks? Really? I need a Biblio-Fairy Godparent.

[Quintin Zimmermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

An anthology of endless delights and a celebration of the beauty of the English language.

[Tumblyhome (Caroline) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This isn’t really a finished book because I think it is for lifetime reading.. but I have read it everyday for some time now and thought I would just review it as I have a good feeling for what a fantastic resource it is. It is the best anthology I have.

Firstly the selection of poems is brilliant. Obviously not comprehensive for each poet, but a good selection of well known, excellent and maybe lesser known poems. There are excellent notes, short single word translations for less common words and slightly longer explanations for meanings and context at the bottom of the page. But not so much that you spend more time reading that than the poems themselves.

At the back there is a very useful section about poetical terms and a blurb about each Poet.

From a purely aesthetic point of view…. The paper is delightfully smooth and thin.. an ASMR sensation with each page turn

I really treasure this book

[Manaswita R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Wonderful book. I got a second-hand copy for a few hundred bucks, since the original copies were ridiculously expensive for a student (8k for one book?!) I am also a little disappointed that there are only 3 poems of Dorothy Parker when she should have had at least 5 pages dedicated to her. (Like c'mon, even E. E Cummings has got 9 poems!)

Other than that, I am pretty much satisfied with the book. There are a total of 1823 poems, which I am fairly certain will keep me satisfied for the next few months.

[Kate O'Hanlon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm marking as read although I didn't make it through even half of the poems while it formed the backbone of my reading list through college. Outrageously expensive (for an 18 year old student anyway) I borrowed a copy from a guy who had just graduated and gave it to his little brother who was starting college the year I finished up. My flatmate has a copy though, and I'm glad to have it around again for reference.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Covers the history and evolution of poetry in English, however I'd suggest the Norton Anthology of Post-Modern American Poetry as a supplement since this book really doesn't cover many of the influential poets writing today. However, English majors or anyone interested in poetry should have a copy of this book in their library.

[Will · Rating 5 out of 5]

A couple of years ago I bought a book by a new poet. It was nice, but I didn't really understand it. So I bought this book. I worked the online lessons, and I read every single poem in this tome out loud. And I think I'm better for it. Though I'm now a bit over critical of the children's book in verse that I read to my 4 year old.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

What can I say - I love poetry

[Ela · Rating 4 out of 5]

I may not have read it cover to cover but this is a pretty awesome and comprehensive anthology of poetry.

[E. Merrill Brouder · Rating 3 out of 5]

Robert Pinsky once told an interviewer that the present is always overrated. This fact seems to be the greatest dilemma facing the editors of anthologies. Anthologists have the probably impossible task of selecting poems that are simultaneously of high quality, diverse, representative of a culture/language /subject, and important for the reader. The problem is that these criteria do not always overlap—in fact, they often contradict each other. I suspect that, in the midst of this confusing conflict, relevance is easily confused for importance. As a result, Shakespeare or Katherine Philips end up buried beneath an avalanche of contemporary writers.

In a sense, this slant towards today is all well and good; I like plenty of contemporary or recent poets. (Truth be told, most of my favorite poets are 20th century.) But, as I read the Norton, I still constantly found myself thinking of Orwell’s Confessions of a Book Reviewer, in which he writes “if one says [...] that King Lear is a good play and The Four Just Men is a good thriller, what meaning is there in the word ‘good’.” In this spirit, what is a reader supposed to take away from this selection?

All of this is to say that I was generally disappointed with the selection in The Norton. This was, perhaps, my own fault. I might have used the book incorrectly. I had hoped that I would, in reading the English poetry anthology, I would discover a large number of amazing poets. I did. However, I was especially hoping to fill in the gaps in my knowledge of poetry from earlier periods. For this, The Norton is not especially helpful. Using the anthology's own timeline and doing a quick page count, I find hat 25% of the anthology is devoted to just 4% (i.e.: the last 60 years) of English’s literary history, while the first 50% of English’s history (“Cædmon's Hymn” through the year 1400) is represented in just 4% of The Norton's pages.*

Also, on a pettier note, the copy editing in this anthology did not impress me. The footnote numbers, in many cases, don’t line up correctly with the poems and pages. The criteria for what gets explanatory notes is baffling. In many cases, the same word or reference will be explained in two or three poems, but not in others. I noticed that some of the French translations are sloppy, which gives me little confidence for the translations from other languages which I can't read or verify. In other cases, explanatory notes give definitions that are objectively incorrect. (My favorite example of this was a margin note explaining “the diet of Worms” as “'food for' worms”!) The upside to these bizarre errors is that they make me feel a lot better about the MLA formatting mistakes that I made in high school and college.

At the end of the day, there is still a lot of good material in this book. I definitely understand why it is useful as a teaching tool; a good professor (such as the one for whom's class I bought this book) nullifies the most—if not all—of the text's problems. In the right context, The Norton is a useful one-stop-shop for many of English's great poems.


*I invite anyone to check my math. These numbers are derived from a cursory review.

[Robert Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review will necessarily be brief because it’s hard to properly review something that’s intentionally so broad and encyclopedic as this. It’s meant to be a cross-section of all of English-language poetry, going all the way back even to Old English (though with a greater emphasis on more modern works). With that in mind, there are going to be a lot of things any reader will love and a lot of things any reader will dislike. The purpose isn’t for every poem to be everyone’s cup of tea but simply to provide the reader with one of the largest collections of English verse in the world. And it succeeds in that admirably.

Where I think I can offer some words by way of review and criticism has to do with the curation of the poems and the layout of the book. I was disappointed to find a lot of my personal favorites had indeed been omitted including some which had been included in prior editions of the same anthology, so while this most recent version is absolutely the one to get if you want to read the latest poems, readers might want to check the table of contents of each edition if there are specific poems you’re hoping to have in your copy. Beyond that, I do question the inclusion of some of what I consider to be inferior poems at the expense of what I consider to be true classics, but that’s just a matter of personal preference.

Where I have a more objective criticism has to do with the layout. The poems are arranged by author, and the poets are arranged by date of birth. On some level, that’s as good a way of laying the book out as any. Arranging by publication date, for instance, would have necessitated flipping back and for the between poets rather than grouping all of a given poet’s works together. Fair enough. However, this layout does make it difficult to find poems the reader might be looking for. It would have benefitted greatly from indices cross-referencing the poems by poetic style or structure, by subject matter, or indeed by date of publication.

Nevertheless, despite a couple minor complaints, this has already become a new favorite resource which I will keep readily at hand. Though I did read it cover to cover, that’s not really what it’s meant for. It’s meant to be a long-term companion, something to which you can turn for mental enrichment whenever you feel in a poetic sort of mood.

[Tyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, this is certainly the longest book I've ever read in my entire life-time. It took me maybe a month or so to read, but boy was that a busy month, and one in which I had the luxury to devote nearly all my time to this book. That's right, roughly eight hours a day for 30 or so days.

Going at a pace like this, I had the odd feeling of standing on the back of a colossal giant as we walked over the lands of Earth. I felt like a god watching from outer space as time sped up and the world changed. What I mean to say is, I gained a very good sense how poetry functioned over time as a living, breathing organism. I noticed with more specificity how the minutest changes in one century might ripple out in the next. What I mean to say is I gained enough understanding with English poetry to feel as though I could comfortably enter its world.

So this anthology was a wonderful experience, introducing me to enough poets to last a lifetime. But some poets, if the 6th Edition of the Norton Anthology of (english) Poetry had its way, would not be included in that life time. The back cover boasts "35 new contemporary poets from across the globe" and "10 new poets from the middle ages to the twentieth century," quietly sidestepping over the mountain of poets included in the 5th edition but excluded in the 6th (I have the complete list of these lost poets below.)

What does one notice about this list? In other words, could one deduce why the poets that were left out were left out and why others were let in? Well, time confirms a contemporary poet's status. An up-and-comer today may fizzle into nothing tomorrow. So today, his name is included in a poetry anthology, and tomorrow, his name isn't. But there are plenty of contemporary poets included in this newer volume who amount to very little--whose work is nauseatingly dull. And there are several exclusions from before 1900, so another explanation is wanted. By glancing at the names below, any half-wit can figure who was excluded and why--90% of the "lost poets" are white men.

I understand there has been a recent effort to diversify and decolonize the canon, and in principle, I do not disagree. However, it is important to understand that for the majority of English poetry's lifespan, black people did not write poetry. During the middle-ages, there were hardly any African immigrants in England and her colonies. And for a long time after slavery, blacks were kept from attaining an education. Therefore the pool of "possible poets," that is, those with a decent education--has been severely limited. Sometimes a special sort of genius who happens to have lucked into an education will sneak through (eg. Phyllis Wheatley) but this is insurmountably rare. And women, like anybody else who was visibly different from the current King of England, were also discouraged from attaining the kind of education and knowledge needed to become a great poet. Ergo, we have less very good women-poets from before the 1700s. There are a few, but these few are very limited, and are rarely good enough to compete with the greatest male poet publishing at the time.

This is obviously tragic and has not been the case for 200 or so years. Education nowadays is accessible enough for blacks to allow for wonderful verses from Derek Walcott or Countee Cullen. And women have no problem attaining a very good education in English. In fact, today they make up the majority of English majors.

But trading white men from 1600 with white women accomplishes very little. Those women, because of their circumstances, were almost always less accomplished. To include a less accomplished poet for the sake of diversity (something everybody should want) unfortunately does very little. If anything, it gives sexists and bigots the right to point to a female poet from 1500 and laugh at her poorly constructed verse, especially compared with Marlowe and Spenser. It would be most wise to offer readers only the best poetry, regardless of sex or gender. We can lament the lack of inclusion yesterday with inclusion today, but we cannot pretend that those excluded yesterday had the same opportunities as their progeny who are (more) included today.

To move on from that loooong digression, readers of the 5th edition will also notice that 2 lengthy and tremendously informative sections on Versification and Poetic Syntax have been replaced by a glossary and some new online materials. The loss is sad--nobody will read a glossary the same way they will read an engaging and informative piece of text, and because this book is aimed for novices in college courses, the information there was surely valuable.

There is also a new section called "American Song" which is pretty boring and has no place in a Poetry anthology. Lin Manuel Miranda is NOT a poet. Sorry. A poem is not a picture, a poem is not a short story in prose, and a poem certainly is not the lyrics to a song. There were so many important poets who were sacrificed in this newer edition and their sacrifice is in vain. No self-respecting reader can claim that a "poem" which is more than 50% improvised scatting has any place in this anthology. And yet, it "diversifies the canon" at the expense of the reader's enjoyment.

As far as diversifying the canon goes, there are some contemporary poets who I think SHOULD have been included and who DO fulfill the requisite of sparking some diversity like Maya Angelou, Mary Oliver, Jewel, and Rupi Kaur. (I may get some pushback on the last two, but sales numbers speak for themselves. It should not be the compilers job to spit in the face of the reading populace when their interest lies in something he or she dislikes.)

"Lost Poets":
Matthew Green
Oliver Wendell Homes
Jones Very
Sidney Lanier
Trumbull Stickney
Witter Bynner
Edwin Muir
Conrad Aiken
Edmund Blunden
Laura (Riding) Jackson
Roy Campbell
Earle Birney
Richard Eberhart
Malcolm Lowry
Robert Fitzgerald
Norman Nicholson
David Gascoyne
Charles Causley
George MacKay Brown
Sidney Keyes
John Ormond
Elizabeth Jennings
Peter Davison
Gregory Corso
Alan Brownjohn
Wole Soyinka
Daryl Hine
Michael Palmer
Kit Wright
Robyn Sarah
Charles Bernstein
Sean O'Brien
Vikram Seth
Brad Leithauser
Dioniso D. Martinez

Some others I think should have been included:
Thomas Moore
Dr. Seuss
Shel Silverstein
Oscar Wilde
Edward Young
Jack Gilbert
James MacPhereson
Campbell McGrath
Laurence Binyon
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Duncan
Frank Bidart
George Chapman
Sharon Olds

[Emily Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

My novel count is abysmally low this year, which is why I feel compelled to record that I read almost TWO HUNDRED POEMS from this anthology over the last few months!! That should contribute more to my Reading Challenge 😭

Faves: Gerard Manley Hopkins, T. S. Eliot (always), Mina Loy, H. D.
Poets that made me feel stupid: Yeats, Ezra Pound
Mid: Most of the WW1 writers. There were trenches and it was Very Wet. Got it 😃👍

[Adam Neve · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've owned this book for a long time and I've never read it cover to cover. But I do love to open it to random pages and scan poems for a little while. I've been doing that a lot lately, at the expense of my reading challenge, so I'm including it here.

[Gigi Tate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely copy with very a useful annotations. This books is legitimately the spice of life, you get everything. I’d recommend this book to anyone starting out with poetry to figure who and what you like, or do not like, and who t buy more of.
Also this book is a behemoth.
And i hate Margaret Atwood.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential

[connie · Rating 5 out of 5]

5/5 stars

I mean, I'm not finished finished, but I'm done with it for my module at university and will continue to use it. Very helpful (albeit expensive).

[Nessya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant amalgamation of so many different poets!

[Madison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read it from back to front in reverse chronological order and the segue from familiar English to Old English is really cool.