The poetry book
Book - 2023
An accessible guide to the most important poems ever written-- from the Epic of Gilgamesh to The Waste Land--and the poets behind them. Discover the key themes and ideas behind the most important poems ever written, and the poetic geniuses who wrote them. The perfect introduction to poetry, The Poetry Book takes you on a fascinating journey through time to explore more than 90 of the world's greatest poetic works. Discover poems in all their many guises and from all over the world, from the epics of the ancient world through Japanese haikus and Renaissance sonnets to modernist masterpieces such as The Waste Land, and the key works of the last 50 years--from And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou to Derek Walcott's Omeros. Using the Big ...Ideas series' trademark combination of clear explanation, witty infographics, and inspirational quotes, The Poetry Book unlocks the key ideas, themes, imagery, and structural techniques behind even the most complex of poems, in clear and simple terms, setting each work in its historical, social, cultural, and literary context. Delve into the works of Dante, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Dickinson, Eliot, and Neruda with in-depth literary analysis and fascinating biographies. Find out what odes, ballads, and allegories are. Trace recurring motifs, explore imagery, and find out how rhyme and rhythm work. From Beowulf to Seamus Heaney's Bogland, The Poetry Book is essential reading for readers of poetry and aspiring poets alike.
- Subjects
- Genres
- Informational works
- Published
-
New York, NY :
DK Publishing
2023.
- Language
- English
- Other Authors
- Edition
- First American edition
- Item Description
- Includes index.
- Physical Description
- 336 pages : color illustrations ; 24 cm
- ISBN
- 9780744080834
- Introduction
- Myths and Heroes c. 2100 bce-c. 700 ce
- The gods bowed themselves, and sat down, and wept
- The Epic of Gilgamesh
- (Now sing we) how this origin occurred
- Classic of Poetry
- Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth
- The Song of Solomon
- No writer of this work is to be found on earth
- Mahabharata
- How prone are humankind to blame / The Pow'rs of Heav'n!
- The Odyssey
- A thin flame runs under / my skin
- Fragment 31
- He won / The Latian realm, and built the destin'd town
- The Aeneid
- Immortal Gods / Inspire my heart
- Metamorphoses
- The Medieval World c. 700 ce-1450
- Songs of old, / bound word to word in well-knit rime
- Beowulf
- The beacons are always alight
- "Fighting"
- Light / burst from your untouched / womb like a flower
- "Alleluia-verse for the Virgin"
- A fool upon love's bridge am I
- "The Skylark"
- Good and ill fortune become guests in thy heart
- "The Guest House"
- What may a man do but prove his fate?
- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
- All hope abandon, ye who enter in!
- The Divine Comedy
- Worldly joy is still a short, short dream
- Sonnet 1
- Lat every felawe telle his tale
- The Canterbury Tales
- Of damage done, of blame and blemished name
- "Letter of the God of Love'"
- Revival and Rebirth 1450-1700
- In a net I seek to hold the wind
- "Whoso List to Hunt, I Know Where Is an Hind"
- Let mine eyes see thee, / And then see death
- "Let Mine Eyes See"
- To spread thy praise / With tuned lays
- "Psalm 57"
- Mirrour of Grace and Majesty Divine
- The Faerie Queene
- Such force and virtue hath an amorous look
- Hero and Leander
- A far more pleasing sound
- Sonnet 130
- Death, thou shalt die
- "Death, Be Not Proud"
- The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage
- "Prayer"
- If ever two were one, then surely we
- "To My Dear and Loving Husband"
- Had we but world enough and time
- "To His Coy Mistress"
- Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime
- Paradise Lost
- Plop!-water
- "The Old Pond"
- Reason and the Sublime 1700-1900
- Be Homer's works your study and delight
- An Essay on Criticism
- Once I redemption neither sought nor knew
- "On Being Brought from Africa to America"
- Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim'rous beastie
- "To a Mouse"
- And mark in every face I meet / Marks of weakness, marks of woe
- "London"
- They flash upon that inward eye / Which is the bliss of solitude
- "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud"
- In a vision once I saw
- "Kubla Khan"
- Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
- "Ozymandias"
- 'tis but / The truth in masquerade
- Don Juan
- Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness
- "To Autumn"
- Enjoy, friends, till it's ended, / This light existence, every dram!
- Eugene Onegin
- I gave commands; / Then all smiles stopped together
- "My Last Duchess"
- Dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before
- "The Raven"
- 'tis better to have loved and lost
- In Memoriam A.H.H.
- How do I love thee? Let me count the ways
- "How Do I Love Thee?"
- I celebrate myself, and sing myself
- "Song of Myself"
- The fate of a nation was riding that night
- "Paul Revere's Ride"
- Fruits like honey to the throat / But poison in the blood
- "Goblin Market"
- We snatch in passing at clandestine joys
- "To the Reader"
- I caught this morning morning's minion
- "The Windhover"
- Because I could not stop for Death-/ He kindly stopped for me
- "Because I Could Not Stop for Death"
- We wear the mask that grins and lies
- "We Wear the Mask"
- For each man kills the thing he loves
- The Ballad of Reading Gaol
- The Modern Age 1900-1940
- I am here to sing thee songs
- Gitanjah 15
- Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it
- "If-"
- What do you sell, O ye merchants? / Richly your wares are displayed
- "In the Bazaars of Hyderabad"
- Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- / I took the one less traveled by
- "The Road Not Taken"
- So accurately written, and with such disciplined pleasure
- "Poetry"
- The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori
- "Dulce et Decorum Est"
- Things fall apart; the center cannot hold
- "The Second Coming"
- These fragments I have shored against my ruins
- The Waste Land
- One's gently weaned from terrestrial things
- "The First Elegy"
- Remembering past enchantments / and past ills
- "Helen"
- I, too, am America
- "I, Too"
- Lubricious and pure
- "Ballad of the Moon, Moon"
- This sparrow / who comes to sit at my window / is a poetic truth
- "The Sparrow"
- What we said of it became // A part of what it is
- "A Postcard From the Volcano"
- All I have is a voice / To undo the folded lie
- "September 1, 1939"
- Post-War and Contemporary 1940-Present
- Such waltzing was not easy
- "My Papa's Waltz"
- Deep in the festering hold thy father lies
- "Middle Passage"
- What thou lovest well remains, / the rest is dross
- Canto LXXXI
- Whom the higher gods forgot, / Whom the lower gods berate
- Annie Allen
- Rage, rage against the dying of the light
- "Do Hot Go Gentle Into That Good Night"
- I hear / my ill-spirit sob
- "Skunk Hour"
- I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness
- "Howl"
- A rigid house / and a winding pathway
- "Sestina"
- How soon succeeding eyes begin / To look, not read
- "An Arundel Tomb"
- I was much too far out all my life / And not waving but drowning
- "Hot Waving but Drowning"
- The dream / Darkness beneath night's darkness had freed
- "Pike"
- We belong here, we are of the old ways
- "We Are Going"
- I have lit the sacred candles, / So that this evening might shine
- Poem Without a Hero
- Daddy, I have had to kill you
- "Daddy"
- We want a black poem. And a / Black World
- "Black Art"
- All your / Endless female hungers
- "The Looking Glass"
- U blew away our passsst / and showed us our futureeeeee
- "A/coltrane/poem"
- Our histories cling to us
- "Refugee Mother and Child"
- A book of myths / in which / our names do not appear
- "Diving Into the Wreck"
- Somebody/ anybody / sing a black girl's song
- For colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf
- To make power out of hatred
- "Power"
- But still, like dust, I'll rise
- "Still I Rise"
- Dawn-sniffing revenant, / Plodder through midnight rain
- "Casualty"
- He possesses me on canvas
- "Standing Female Nude"
- So much is chance, / so much agility, desire, and feverish care
- "Machines"
- A journey toward a renewal of life
- "Don't Bother the Earth Spirit"
- Art is History's nostalgia
- Omeros
- That body / they tried so hard to fix
- "What You Mourn"
- How does a shadow shine?
- Sonata Mulattica
- Who we are and can be as a society
- "Hair"
- Write the thing. The world needs it
- "A survival plan of sorts"
- Lift up other people
- "The Hill We Climb"
- Further Reading
- Glossary
- Index
- Acknowledgments