The Top 500 Poems - (Columbia Anthologies) by William Harmon (Hardcover)

About the Book

For the first time, here is our generation's definitive view of the greatest poetry in the English language. This collection of 500 poems is based on the collective choice of 550 critics, editors, and poets whose anthologies are indexed in The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. If you've wondered which collection of poetry to buy for yourself or as a special gift--this is it!

Book Synopsis

The Top 500 Poems offers a vivid portrait of poetry in English, assembling a host of popular and enduring poems as chosen by critics, editors, poets, and general readers. These works speak across centuries, beginning with Chaucer's resourceful inventions and moving through Shakespeare's masterpieces, John Donne's complex originality, and Alexander Pope's mordant satires. The anthology also features perennial favorites such as William Blake, William Wordsworth, and John Keats; Emily Dickinson's prisms of profundity; the ironies of Wallace Stevens and T.S. Eliot; and the passion of Sylvia Plath and Allen Ginsberg. These 500 poems are verses that readers either know already or will want to know, encapsulating the visceral power of truly great literature. William Harmon provides illuminating commentary to each work and a rich introduction that ties the entire collection together.

Review Quotes

A revealing snapshot of one aspect of Western civilization, even including a list of the poems in order of popularity.-- "Globe and Mail"

If your library can buy only one volume of poetry, let this be it.-- "Booklist"

The merriest poetry anthology of the past decade.... It's everything from 'Sumer is icumen in' to Sylvia Plath's 'Daddy' with terse, plain, and rather wonderful commentary by Harmon.-- "Buffalo News"

It is rare indeed to come across a book in which wisdom and love come together as powerfully as they do for William Harmon.--John Frederick Nims, coauthor of Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry

The Top 500 Poems is intriguing in concept and management, and most of us will want to own it. And for this we are grateful.--Gwendolyn Brooks, poet

About the Author

William Harmon is the James Gordon Hanes Professor Emeritus in the Humanities at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the editor of A Handbook to Literature, The Classic Hundred Poems, and The Oxford Book of American Light Verse, and he is the author of several volumes of poetry, including winners of the Lamont Award and the William Carlos Williams Award.