Customer Reviews

The Best Poems of the English Language: From Chaucer Through Robert Frost

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Forty years ago, I found my first important anthology of English Poetry, Ezra Pound's "Confucious to Cummings", in which I discovered the poetry I still consider my first choices in the English language, particularly Arthur Golding's translation of Ovid's "Metamorphoses", and many other poets, including, of course, Cummings. That great critic, Harold Bloom's Anthology has the same feel, a superior range of poets, whose work is of the very best in English verse in his judgement .Most of the poets have extensive, very helpful introductory paragraphs, placing them in their particular age - written by the best teacher - I emphasise that last word - of English Literature to-day. If English Poetry interests you at all, you will hugely enjoy this book - it will give you hour upon hour of intense pleasure, heavy though it is.

Three things caused me to buy this book. The first was the inclusion of two Emily Bronte poems by Professor Bloom: `Stanzas' and `Last Lines'. The second was the inclusion of T S Eliot's `The Wasteland' and the third was that 108 poets are represented in this book.

Professor Bloom selected as his chronological limits Geoffrey Chaucer, born around 1343 and Hart Crane born in 1899. Within these parameters is a wealth of British and American poetry to cover a wide range of moods and tastes.

There is something intrinsically personal about anthologies of poetry. Those who enjoy poetry will select favourites based on all manner of criteria. My personal criteria owe little to critical objectivity and much more to subjective assessments of evocative language and the metrics of rhythm. So, I've come to love the fierce assertion of the `Last Lines'. Here is the first verse:
`No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere;
I see Heaven's glories shine,
And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.'

And also to love, for different reasons the self-doubt echoing through `The Waste Land', which starts with The Burial of the Dead:
`April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.'

It would be remiss of me not to mention some of the other poets included:
Edmund Spenser
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
George Gordon, Lord Byron
Henry David Thoreau
Thomas Hardy
Wilfred Owen
and 100 others.

Professor Bloom has included an essay on `The Art of Reading Poetry' together with a range of headnotes on poets and poems. If you enjoy poetry anthologies, this may well be a book for your collection as well.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

For one reason or another, I have been recently reading (and reviewing) poetry collections--from Romantics on. And a review by one of my Amazon friends led me to purchase and enjoy this collection. The author, Harold Bloom, is an eminent scholar, the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. He is a MacArthur Prize Fellow and author of numerous volumes. In his Introduction, he observes that (Page xxvii) "My chronological limits are set by Geoffrey Chaucer, born around 1343, and Hart Crane, born in 1899." There is a useful introductory essay, "The Art of Reading Poetry," that would be of interest to those who take poetry seriously. As Bloom says (Page 29): "The art of reading poetry is an authentic training in the augmentation of consciousness, perhaps the most authentic of healthy modes."

But it is the poetry that is at the center of this fat volume (the last poem, by Hart Crane, ends on page 959; I don't know about the reader, but I like big collections of poetry!

In high school, we read Chaucer, and I still remember the first few lines (repeated in this work) of "The Canterbury Tales."

"Whan that Aprill with his shoures sote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour."

Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love":

"Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods or steepy mountain yields."

There is a healthy collection of Shakespeare, but since I recently reviewed a volume of his sonnets, no need for overkill here. But the selections do represent Shakespeare's art nicely.

Then there is Richard Lovelace's "To Althea, from Prison," with the well known final stanza:

"Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage. . . ."

And so many more. . . . Thomas Gray's "Elegy written in a country churchyard" or William Blake's "The Tyger" (I still recall and thrill at the following lines:
"Tyger, tyger, burning bright.
In the forest of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?") to the Romantics' poetry (represented by poets such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lord Byron, Shelley, and Keats). Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Lord Tenneyson, the Rossettis, William Butler Yeats, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, and so on.

In short, a cornucopia of poetry in the English language tradition. If that is a genre that you enjoy, running from Chaucer to crane, then this volume should suit you nicely.

I find myself picking up this anthology again and again, which I guess means that it is high time to give my 2-cents about it. I have found this anthology an absolute joy to use for a number of different reasons.

From a book-lovers perspective: the pages are thick, and made with nice paper. I am reviewing the paperback edition, and even after toting it all across the United States for a year or two (I travel a fair bit) the integrity of the pages is still intact. The binding is not half bad, either. I did not make a point to break it in and I have not run into any problems as of yet. Also, (and this is a huge perk) the formatting of the pages is also very nice, making it possible to encounter these poets without having to battle with small font or bulky annotations. One will be surprised at the level to which certain poets speak to you once they have been liberated from the confines of onion-thin anthology pages and tiny, cramped fonts.

From a poetry-lovers perspective: the book attempts to be the perfect collection, and in many ways succeeds. The old favorites are all here: Chaucer (well-glossed for those unfamiliar with Middle English), Milton (with an indispensable introduction and treatment of Lycidas by Bloom), Shakespeare (surprisingly well represented) as well as some more modern favorites like Dickinson (whom I finally feel I understand after reading Bloom's introduction to her poetry) and Hart Crane (for whose poetry Bloom make a passionate appreciation) are all here. Bloom makes a valiant attempt in the modern poetry section to sort out the poetry that he thinks will ultimately last over time. Unfortunately, one wishes that he would have gone beyond the death of Robert Frost. I would really have loved to hear his more detailed appraisals of W.H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, and perhaps John Ashberry.

For it is in the introductions and commentary (spanning sometimes nearly 10 pages) that this book's value is truly found. Mr. Bloom's criticism is eclectic, seasoned, funny (his comments on Poe are priceless), and often frustratingly opinionated. His section on Dickinson made me love a poet for whom I never thought I had any taste, and his section on Spenser makes a valiant effort at reinstating a now much-neglected poetic master. And yet, his section on T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound are disappointing, seemingly limited by his (and their) polemics. Also, his choices of Yeats' poetry make absolutely no sense to me. On a more personal note (for me, a Christian), he seems to slightly depreciate the Christianity that so clearly influences many of these poets, which I found disappointing in a critic so fine as Bloom. Lastly, he spends a great deal of time discussing the psychological influence of poets on one another. However, whereas sometimes I find this a tiny bit tedious in his other works (being of a different critical persuasion), it is here done in a way that always makes one go back to the poems themselves. In the end, I always found myself wishing for more commentary on some poets, but am more than satisfied with what is already there.

For all its shortcomings, this book is (in my opinion) Mr. Bloom at his best: allowing canonical poetry to speak with the depth and meaning that it has spoken to him. No anthology will include everything that we want (seeing Eliot's Four Quartets here would have been wonderful), but Bloom makes his favorite selections with no apologies, and in the end one is left with a breathtaking view of poetic history. His essay at the beginning underscores this effect admirably, and he comments on poetic theory in a way not found in many writings of contemporary critics. This was very refreshing.

I am soon traveling overseas, and will be away from my library for several years. Not having the money or desire to invest in a kindle library, I am happy knowing that this will certainly be accompanying me in my travels. It is not to be missed, and has provided me with hours of enjoyment. Many thanks, Professor Bloom, for such a fine and respectable anthology.

Harold Bloom has done an outstanding job of compiling a group of the greatest poets through centuries of work. His written passages that precede the author's works are great insight, even if you do not fully agree with them.

I also enjoy the fact that he put in Chaucer and others' original works, not whatever he felt would read easiest. Bloom allows you to witness the creativity and brilliance of the author's work, without too much of his own personal influence.

Length:: 4:00 Mins

This is the book Bloom tells us he has wanted to compile his entire life, and, as every thing Bloom edits, compiles and comments upon, it displays both his wide-ranging erudition as well as his wide-ranging idiosyncrasy. But, as the other reviews evince, this 1,000 page collection contains something that will fulfill and enchant every poetry lover's taste, unless they are interested only in poets born after 1899, that is.

A word about the commentary here: I've read well-nigh every book which Bloom has written or upon which he has commented, starting with The Visionary Company to this present opus. But I'm no, to coin a term, Bloomolater. He says herein that, since his heart operation, he no longer engages in polemics. This is, for better or for worse, patently untrue. What's interesting here to me is what has changed about the polemics. He is still the High Romantic, Gnostic champion of the Sublime he has always been. But the clarion call for Shelley and Crane has receded more than a bit with the years, and Bloom himself says here that growing old has given him more time and renewed appreciation for poets such as Milton, whose poetry commands many pages in this anthology, and Bloom's commentary on it yet more. If I were asked to point out a common thread here, it would be a, frankly, morbid obsession with the loss of the poetic gift which Bloom finds in almost every poet considered accompanied by a fear, not so much of mortality, as a sort of death in life, which comes not only to the poet who loses this gift, the best and saddest example being Wordsworth, but also to the poetic reader such as Bloom! Hence we find elegies and the like stressed time and again here. If The Visionary Company was Bloom's clarion call, this book is Bloom's swan song, and his commentary assumes an almost dirge-like quality at times.

The reason I've chosen Eliot's poem is that I've always agreed with Bloom that "Eliot...was a belated Romantic poet, strongest as an incantatory master of Phantasmagoria." The "Preludes" exhibit this quality profoundly along with that signature Eliotic pessimism, which, as synecdoche, echoes Bloom's undercurrent of disillusionment in his commentary throughout this mammoth anthology.

The book is filled with excellent poetry, however I soon learned to skip the editor's intros and criticisms. Firstly, his opening essay is poorly organized and difficult to read. He frequently refers to other academics that the lay reader has no knowledge of, and his writing itself has an arrogant and snooty academic tone to it. My image of him is sitting in an easy chair with a brandy in one hand and rambling as a secretary writes down everything he says. Even his introductions to each poet can be a chore to read (taking cheap shots at George Bush...really?). Nevertheless, his selections are very good and enjoyable to read, and give a good sampling of all the major english poets.

Bloom's collection here is an excellent start for new poet scholars. He offers more than just an edited collection of poetry. Here he meticulously and intelligently shares his opinion on each and every poem he's handpicked for his collection. The title suggests it is the ultimate collection of poetry for a shelf with no other poetry. However, if you are looking for such a singular text, this is not the right book for you. Bloom at times allows his personal opinions to get in the way of including traditional poems associated with the greatest poetry of all time. If you are interested in the study of poetry, Bloom's collection is an excellent one. However, if you are in search of a compilation of poetry to complete your library, you would be better off with Norton's.

I think most will agree, whether they hold Bloom in high esteem or not, that this particular anthology of poetry is truly something spectacular. The criteria which he based his selection on is wholly unbiased, (though some may disagree) as it is based on pure aesthetic merit and nothing else. Therefore overly sentimental, political, moral, or idealogical works are nowhere to be found in this anthology. Here you will only find the best of the best: the most idiosyncratic yet, paradoxically, the most universal sentiments or thoughts expressed in the most profound and unique ways (thus transcending their time and culture). And they are here in spades! That is the difference between this anthology and most others of the sort.

Not only are the selections grand, but the notes on the poems and on the authors themselves are wonderfully useful and interesting. Generally, on lesser poets Bloom will give a concise biography and notes that allow one to better comprehend the poem. On more eminent poets he will expound at a much greater length on the poet's life and his or her poetry. This could include (but is certainly not limited to) events that help place specific poems into a useful context, notes about the poet's notions regarding his or her conception of poetry itself, etc. In short, these notes are very varied and always illuminating.

I cannot tell you how often I've picked up this book, and casually perused its pages hunting for a poem that adequately suited my mood of the moment. Nor can I count how many poets I had not heard of before that are now among my absolute favorites. Even poets I had long heard of but neglected to read are now open to me because of this book (Shakespeare being the greatest poet I had formerly neglected; thank you Prof. Bloom for opening my eyes to the mighty power of the Bard!).

Bloom's introduction ("The Art of Reading Poetry") can be obscure in some places, but, as time goes on and I read more poems, I comprehend it more and more thoroughly. His notion regarding inevitable phrasing is very intriguing as are his writings regarding allusions. It is a great addition to an already wonderful anthology.

I highly recommend all who even moderately enjoy poetry in the English tongue to buy this book. It offers so much more than a purely scholarly anthology one may purchase for a collegiate level course. To conclude, you really can't go wrong with this book because it offers a vast array of poems and poets thanks to Prof. Bloom's great taste regarding sublime poetry.

My wife wanted a compilation of Poems. She hadn't been a serious poem reader but wanted to get exposure to some of the best authors/poems in history. She really likes this book, and it seems to have met her criteria