Complete poems are bulky and too heavy to carry around. Collected poems pretend to be complete, but usually are not. Selected poems are altogether unpretentious and reader-friendly. But they can be problematic. Who decides what poems are important for inclusion in a volume of selected poems? When the selection occurs during the author's lifetime, may one assume that the author was involved? What motivates the choice of one poem over another? How do readers' preferences influence this choice? How do new readers and familiar readers of a poet negotiate the poems that are left out of the...
Complete poems are bulky and too heavy to carry around. Collected poems pretend to be complete, but usually are not. Selected poems are altogether unp...