Customer Reviews

Three Centuries of American Poetry

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

While skimping out on a few of the more famous (or so I believe) poems by these authors, this book is a very good introduction to the american realm of poetry. I was disappointed to not find some of my more favorite poems by people such as R.Frost and J.D.Hatter, but was happy to find many more that I did like by authors previously unbeknownst to me.

This is a great anthology of American poetry, containing a very good selection of poems from both major poets and less well known ones. It's a pleasure reading both poets I know and those I'm unfamiliar with.

So, why four stars instead of five? It's based on a design choice in the book. The book does not have running page heads. This might not matter in a novel (though I can't think of any novels that I own that don't have running heads), but is very annoying in an anthology -- especially a poetry anthology. Like most people, I don't read poetry anthologies from start to finish. Instead, I pick it up and flip through it. But with this book, you open to an unfamiliar poem and want to know who the poet is. Look to the running head -- but there is no running head. So you have to start paging back, until you come to the name of the poet. Annoying.

But otherwise, I'd heartily recommend this book.

This is a fine anthology of famous and not-so-famous poems from the 17th century to the present. It could have been improved by a few lines of commentary on each poem. The short biorgraphies at the end are helpful.