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...

Here in one volume are the top one hundred poems, as determined by a survey of more than 1,000 anthologies--the poems in English most frequently anthologized, the poems with the broadest, most enduring appeal. From Shakespeare to Dickinson to Frost, from sonnets to odes to villanelles, William Harmon's Classic Hundred Poems offers a feast for poetry lovers.

This book updates the first edition by presenting the new top one hundred poems, nineteen of which were not in the first edition. The revised edition is arranged chronologically, and features new commentary and notes on verse...

The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. He is a sovereign, and stands on the centre.--Ralph Waldo Emerson, from "The Poet"

" The poet] is a seer.... he is individual... he is complete in himself.... the others are as good as he, only he sees it and they do not. He is not one of the chorus. "--Walt Whitman, from the preface to Leaves of Grass

Poetry has always given rise to interpretation, judgment, and controversy. Indeed, the history of poetry criticism is as rich and varied a journey as the history of poetry itself. But classic writings such as Emerson's...

The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. He is a sovereign, and stands on the centre.--Ralph Waldo Emerson, from "The Poet"

" The poet] is a seer.... he is individual... he is complete in himself.... the others are as good as he, only he sees it and they do not. He is not one of the chorus. "--Walt Whitman, from the preface to Leaves of Grass

Poetry has always given rise to interpretation, judgment, and controversy. Indeed, the history of poetry criticism is as rich and varied a journey as the history of poetry itself. But classic writings such as Emerson's...

Begun as a dictionary in the 1930's, this project developed into a re-evaluation of language itself. The author concentrated on the discovery of the principles that embed truth and meaning in words, and thus this study touches on literature, philosophy, linguistics and lexicography.

The Poetry Toolkit: For Readers and Writers provides students with the essential intellectual and practical tools necessary to read, understand, and write poetry.

• Explains the most important elements of poetry in clear language and an easily accessible manner
• Offers readers both the expertise of an established scholar and the insights of a practicing poet
• Draws on examples from more than 1,500 years of English literature

Throughout nearly sixty-five of writing, Pound specialized on the suffocating effects of time on poetry, aesthetic form, and history. Harmon examines Pound's strategies for dealing with time and arrives at a persuasive reading of Pound's works in general and of the The Cantos in particular. By concentrating on a single theme and technique, the author demonstrates a coherence in the writing that elucidates the corpus for both the specialist and the casual reader.

Originally published in 1977.

A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in...