The 100 Best Poems of All Time - Paperback

The 100 Best Poems of All Time gives a hundred poets one poem each, the one they are remembered for, in a volume small enough to carry.

Every poem arrives with a short head note. Who wrote it, what their life looked like, and why this particular piece was the one that lasted.

Who it suits

Readers coming to poetry cold get a map of the territory. Readers who already know it get a portable copy of the pieces they keep going back to.

Two honest cautions

The selection leans toward love poetry, and one reviewer felt it lifts poems away from the context that made them mean something.

Another simply missed a favorite that did not make the hundred, which is the risk any list this short takes on.

From the publisher

This poetry companion puts favourite poetry and poets from around the world at your fingertips, enabling you to revisit the classics, encounter unfamiliar masterworks and rediscover old favorites. Here, in this compact volume, is a greatest hits collection of the 100 best poems ever written by the world's greatest poets.

This essential collection is perfect for the poetry lover who wants to carry around their favorite poems, and ideal for the reader seeking an introduction to the greatest poems world literature has to offer.

The authors included are each represented by his or her best-known and best-loved work, from the Classics (Homer, Sappho, Virgil, Ovid) to the Renaissance (Dante, Petrarch, Villon, Shakespeare) to the Romantics (Schiller, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats) to the 20th Century giants (Pound, Eliot, Frost, Stevens) down to the present day (Ginsberg, Plath, Angelou).

Each poem is introduced by a brief head note which details the poet's life history as well as the poem's significance.