100 Poems by 100 Poets: An Anthology [Paperback]

Harold Pinter (Compiler), Geoffrey Godbert (Compiler), Anthony Astbury (Compiler)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 10, 1994

To pass the time on a long train ride from London to Cromwell, playwright Harold Pinter and his two companions, Geoffrey Godbert and Anthony Astbury, set up a challenge: Choose 100 poems by 100 poets — living poets excluded — to represent the finest poetry ever written in English. The three agreed to organize this collection unconventionally, alphabetically by author rather than chronologically. The resulting anthology is challenging, eclectic, very personal, and great fun. With its surprising juxtapositions and gargantuan range of voice and style, 100 Poems by 100 Poets brings old favorites into a new light and less well-known poems out of the shadows.

Editorial Reviews

Review

So It Begins. Adam Is In His Earth by James Agee
Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold
In Memory Of W.b. Yeats by Wystan Hugh Auden
Song by Aphra Behn
The Dream Songs: 4 by John Berryman
Parliament Hill Fields by John Betjeman
The Fish by Elizabeth Bishop
The Unpredictable by Thomas Blackburn
The Mental Traveller by William Blake
To My Dear And Loving Husband by Anne Bradstreet
R. Alcona To J. Brenzaida by Emily Jane Bronte
Meeting At Night by Robert Browning
For A' That And A' That; Song by Robert Burns
Darkness by George Gordon Byron
Cherry Ripe by Thomas Campion
The Second Rapture by Thomas Carew
A Vision by John Clare
The Latest Decalogue by Arthur Hugh Clough
Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
An Epitaph On M.h. by Charles Cotton
The Innocent Ill by Abraham Cowley
Lines Written During A Period Of Insanity by William Cowper
Two: 3 by Edward Estlin Cummings
Love by Samuel Daniel
Her Triumph by J. Kitchener Davies
On A Pair Of Garters by John (1569-1626) Davies
The Storm by Emily Dickinson
Jabberwocky by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson
Twicknam Garden by John Donne
Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae by Ernest Dowson
Idea: 61 by Michael Drayton
A Song For St. Cecilia's Day by John Dryden
A Modest Love by Edward Dyer
La Figlia Che Piange by Thomas Stearns Eliot
Let It Go by William Empson
Provide, Provide by Robert Frost
The Green Knight's Farewell To Fancy by George Gascoigne
Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind by Barnaby (barnabe) Googe
I Leave This At Your Ear For When You Wake by William Sydney Graham
The White Goddess by Robert Ranke Graves
On Lord Holland's Seat Near Margat, Kent by Thomas Gray
Caelica: 1 by Fulke Greville
On An Hour-glass by John (1627-1656) Hall
An Upbraiding by Thomas Hardy
Echoes: 9 by William Ernest Henley
A Description by Edward Herbert
Love (3) by George Herbert
Upon Julia's Clothes by Robert Herrick
Abyss by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Absence by John Hoskins
Her Strong Enchantments Failing by Alfred Edward Housman
A Celebration Of Charis: 4. Her Triumph by Ben Jonson
Ecce Puer by James Joyce
Ode To A Nightingale by John Keats
The Gods Of The Copybook Headings by Rudyard Kipling
Aubade by Philip Larkin
Cupid Far Gone by Richard Lovelace
Skunk Hour; For Elizabeth Bishop by Robert Lowell
Snow by Frederick Louis Macneice
To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell
Dirge In Woods by George Meredith
Sonnet: 41 by Edna St. Vincent Millay
The Earthly Paradise by William (1834-1896) Morris
One Foot In Eden by Edwin Muir
Summer's Last Will And Testament: A Litany In Time Of Plague by Thomas Nashe
The Parable Of The Old Men And The Young by Wilfred Owen
Daddy by Sylvia Plath
Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe
Epistle To Miss Blount, On Her Leaving The Town by Alexander Pope
Far As Creations Ample Range Extends by Alexander Pope
Commission by Ezra Pound
The Lie by Walter Raleigh
Piazza Piece by John Crowe Ransom
The Waking by Theodore Roethke
August 1914 by Isaac Rosenberg
What Would I Give by Christina Georgina Rossetti
Sudden Light by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
The Repetitive Heart: 4. For Rhoda by Delmore Schwartz
On A Cock At Rochester by Charles Sedley
All My Pretty Ones by Anne Sexton
Sonnet: 29 by William Shakespeare
To - (2) by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Astrophel And Stella: 1 by Philip Sidney
Facade: 18 by Edith Sitwell
To Mistress Margaret Hussey by John Skelton
To The Tune Of The Coventry Carol by Florence Margaret Smith
Iambicum Trimetrum, Fr. Letter To Harvey by Edmund Spenser
The Emperor Of Ice-cream by Wallace Stevens
Song [or, Orsames' Song] by John Suckling
A Beautiful Young Nymph Going To Bed by Jonathan Swift
A Leave-taking by Algernon Charles Swinburne
Vastness by Alfred Tennyson
Lament by Dylan Thomas
Tichborne's Elegy, Written In The Tower Before His Execution by Chidiock Tichborne
Song by Edmund Waller
Native Moments by Walt Whitman
A Song Of A Young Lady To Her Ancient Lover by John Wilmot
Ecclesiastical Sonnets: Part 3: 34. Mutability by William Wordsworth
Lying In A Hammock At William Duffy's Farm In Pine Island, Minnesota by James Wright
The Lover Showeth How He Is Forsaken by Thomas Wyatt
Full Moon by Elinor Wylie
Long-legged Fly by William Butler Yeats
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder® --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (January 10, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802132790
• ISBN-13: 978-0802132796
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #432,354 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Provocative poetry picks by England's pre-eminent playwright, March 27, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Henderson NV) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 100 Poems by 100 Poets: An Anthology (Paperback)

To kill time on a long trip, playwright Harold Pinter & 2 friends set themselves this task: pick the 100 most representative poems written in English. They excluded living poets in order to choose from a poet's whole corpus and they agreed to list the poems in alphabetical order by author.

The result: an anthology that ranges from the 13th-century to the present, from the formal love poems of John Skelton to the lacerating confessions of Sylvia Plath. One might not agree with some of Pinter's choices, but they comprise an interesting snapshot of several centuries of the art.

As idiosyncratic as this anthology is, it is also a testament to the broad tastes and deep appreciations of its editors. Could you have done better?

Start from the beginning and read through to the end, or dip into it randomly, this anthology is a small chest of treasures. Carry it in your pocket or assign it to your class, you won't regret the purchase of this book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Eclectic Anthology - Stimulating and Provocative, February 16, 2003

By 

Michael Wischmeyer (Houston, Texas) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: 100 Poems by 100 Poets: An Anthology (Paperback)

These are not necessarily the best-loved poems, nor the most famous poems, nor the most memorized poems. These are the best poems written in the English language, one each from the 100 best poets. So say the three editors - Harold Pinter, Geoffrey Godbert, and Anthony Astbury.

They apparently argued heatedly, but eventually arrived at a unanimous decision for each poet selected. They may not change your mind, but their choices will stimulate and challenge the reader. And this anthology makes very good reading.

I was disappointed that Pinter, Godbert, and Astbury did not share their discussions and arguments. How did they select the 100 best poets? Who was 101? Where are John Milton, William Cullen Bryant, Longfellow, and Whittier? For those poets that were chosen, I was curious whether some of my favorite poems had even been discussed as they made their final selection of the 'best' poem. Did they have bias toward works less frequently included in popular anthologies? Were they intentionally provocative?

For example, they did not select Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, nor any of William Blake's poems from Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, nor a poem from A. E. Housman's admired A Shropshire Lad, nor a familiar poem by Robert Frost, nor Dylan Thomas' well-known Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night. I was also surprised by their choices for Kipling, Shelley, Pope, Donne, and to a lesser extent, Wordsworth.

Their selections for Shakespeare (I see many 'best' choices), Coleridge, Marvell, Keats (again, many 'best' poems), Burns, Carroll, Arnold, Poe, Stevens, and a few other poets were more in agreement with my preferences. I found that a bit reassuring.

I recommend this collection to anyone that enjoys poetry. Pinter, Godbert, and Astbury give us a selection that is less predictable than that found in most anthologies, and is thereby more provocative and stimulating. Have fun!

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great poetry needs no gimmicks, May 3, 2005

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: 100 Poems by 100 Poets: An Anthology (Paperback)

The gimmick of this work is that the three friends choose the best poem of the one- hundred best poets in English. They discuss, they argue among themselves and then they present( unjustified) their selections to the reader.
This is I suppose one way of making yet another anthology of some of the greatest poems in the English Language. On that grounds the work is fine, and does contain many of the finest works in the language.
But if we take the work's premise seriously then the work is seriously flawed. First of all, in regard to many great poets( Shakespeare for example) it is sheer folly to think of selecting ' one poem' out of so many at the highest level. Secondly, the poems chosen here are often ( at least in my judgment) far indeed from the poet's greatest poetry. I know for instance Stevens' "The Emperor of Ice- Cream" is an often anthologized work but it is minor in comparison to many other Stevens' works. A third fault is that obscure poets are selected while some of the greatest, Milton, for instance are omitted. Milton's "On his Blindness" is one of the greatest short poems in the language.
I also would say that presenting the poetry in this way by author in alphabetic order with no sense of connection chronologically or thematically makes the whole business seem even more arbitrary.
I believe that any time a person has the opportunity to read or reread a great poem they should not miss the opportunity. This work is to be valued for presenting such opportunities in a new format. And this despite its shortcomings.