Premier Book of Major Poets: An Anthology [Paperback]

Anita Dore (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 29, 1996

This brilliant collection spans the years from the Middle Ages to the modern day to bring you a unique selection of the greatest poetry of all time. Arranged around major themes such as love and hate, war and peace, liberty and oppression, alienation and city life, The Premier Book of Major Poets is an invaluable reference work as well as a source of great pleasure.

Among the poets included are
-- Matthew Arnold
-- W. H. Auden
-- William Blake
-- Gwendolyn Brooks
-- Robert Browning
-- Geoffrey Chaucer
-- Samuel Taylor Coleridgee
-- e. e. cumming
-- Emily Dickinson
-- John Donne
-- T. S. Eliot
-- Mari Evans
-- Lawrence Ferlinghetti
-- Robert Frost
-- Allen Ginsberg
-- Nikki Giovanni
-- Robert Graves
-- Thomas Hardy
-- Langston Hughes
-- David Ignatow
-- Randall Jarrell
-- Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones)
-- John Keats
-- Rudyard Kipling
-- Denise Levertov
-- Federico Garcia Lorca
-- Robert Lowell
-- Archibald MacLeish
-- Andrew Marvell
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay
-- John Milton
-- Marianne Moore
-- Howard Nemerov
-- Sylvia Plath
-- Ezra Pound
-- Theodore Roethke
-- William Shakespeare
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley
-- Stephen Spender
-- Wallace Stevens
-- Alfred Tennyson
-- Dylan Thomas
-- Margaret Walker
-- Walt Whitman
-- William Wordsworth
-- William Butler Yeats

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

This brilliant collection spans the years from the Middle Ages to the modern day to bring you a unique selection of the greatest poetry of all time. Arranged around major themes such as love and hate, war and peace, liberty and oppression, alienation and city life, The Premier Book of Major Poets is an invaluable reference work as well as a source of great pleasure.

Among the poets included are
-- Matthew Arnold
-- W. H. Auden
-- William Blake
-- Gwendolyn Brooks
-- Robert Browning
-- Geoffrey Chaucer
-- Samuel Taylor Coleridgee
-- e. e. cumming
-- Emily Dickinson
-- John Donne
-- T. S. Eliot
-- Mari Evans
-- Lawrence Ferlinghetti
-- Robert Frost
-- Allen Ginsberg
-- Nikki Giovanni
-- Robert Graves
-- Thomas Hardy
-- Langston Hughes
-- David Ignatow
-- Randall Jarrell
-- Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones)
-- John Keats
-- Rudyard Kipling
-- Denise Levertov
-- Federico Garcia Lorca
-- Robert Lowell
-- Archibald MacLeish
-- Andrew Marvell
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay
-- John Milton
-- Marianne Moore
-- Howard Nemerov
-- Sylvia Plath
-- Ezra Pound
-- Theodore Roethke
-- William Shakespeare
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley
-- Stephen Spender
-- Wallace Stevens
-- Alfred Tennyson
-- Dylan Thomas
-- Margaret Walker
-- Walt Whitman
-- William Wordsworth
-- William Butler Yeats

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1st Ballentine Books trade ed edition (September 29, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0449911861
• ISBN-13: 978-0449911860
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.7 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #312,559 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book of poetry, April 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Premier Book of Major Poets: An Anthology (Paperback)

This is a very fine book of poetry. It contains many poems (split into subjects) by authors such as William Shakesphere, William Blake, Ezra Pound, Robert Frost, and Emily Dickinson. If you enjoy reading poetry, you must by this book.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good Introduction to American and British Poetry, September 28, 2006

By 

mroxie "mroxie" - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Premier Book of Major Poets: An Anthology (Paperback)

If you have ever wanted to own a compact collection of well-known poetry, this is the book to get! Many of the poems contained in this anthology are "standards"; the kind you find in literature textbooks, as well as those that are popular for memorization. There were also many I hadn't previously seen before. The thematic arrangement of the poems (poems about nature, people, and so on) separates different types of subject matter. The authors range from different eras (traditional poems, 19th century, to more recent times) and are of different poetic styles (some rhyming, some non-rhyming). The accessible nature of this book could allow it to be easily enjoyed by those who like poetry as well as those who haven't read much poetry.
The most major problem that I noticed with this book is that there are no poems from Oscar Wilde! What is a poetry anthology without at least one of his poems? Perhaps he is better known for writing plays (such as "The Importance of Being Earnest") and his one novel ("The Picture of Dorian Gray"), but his first work published in 1881 was a collection of poems. Not even his well-known "Ballad of Reading Gaol" (a later work; 1898) is included here.
Aside from this, I think it is a decent collection of poetry. I would recommend this to any high school students needing to read poetry for English or for selecting poems suitable for memorization.

5.0 out of 5 stars A First-Rate Anthology, January 29, 2011

By 

Carol F. Peck (Burtonsville, Maryland) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Premier Book of Major Poets: An Anthology (Paperback)

During the many years I was a college professor of creative writing I used Anita Dore's anthology as a text. It is the one I still always turn to first when looking for a particular poem or for poems within a particular category (Nature, Creatures, Generation, etc.). When my copy literally fell apart, I was delighted to discover this new edition--basically unchanged, much to my relief!
--Carol F. Peck