Could you recommend a poetry book?

[Miss_Tolstoy]

I want to get into reading more poetry however I am strugling for a new anthology. I have a few good ones in my collection, a poem a day, Englands favourite love poems ect. But what I am looking for is something like the aforementioned which will give me a good volume of poems. Im thinking, If you ever did english GCSE or ALEVEL in England, something like the anthologies used there. They were good as they had some excellent famous and traditional poems but also as it was split into studying sections followed poem patterns in time, for example the one I used at that age had an Elizabethan sonnet section but also an WWII section.

I have a few of individual authors anthologies but am looking more for something that will give me a broad range of authors and styles so I can discover poets new to me and then subsequently order more of their work If I enjoy it.

Any offers?

 

[Shade]

Staying Alive

Here to Eternity

click the titles for more info.

 

[John Allen]

Here's an idea...

To be honest, I don't know of any anthologies...But I would highly recomment Whitman's Leaves of Grass (unless you've already read it.)

Also: The Complete Works of Robert Frost

Another great, underrated American Poet: Oliver Wendel Holmes (Sr.) He was both an iconoclastic physician and a great writer. And the father of the famous Supreme Court justice...

 

[KristoCat]

One poet I would really like to recommend is Billy Collins. Try The Apple that Astonished Paris. Amazon says,

"Imagine Smokey the Bear walking through the forest carrying a red gasoline can and a box of kitchen matches, or Frankenstein absent-mindedly tapping the bolts on his neck as he composes an elegy. You have just imagined the world of Billy Collins. Collins' irreverent images, such as Death stopping the car to get his scythe out of the trunk, strike at the deepest concerns of the human heart and mind in ways as delightful as they are provocative."

A collection my aunt thought was really good was Cries of the Spirit, edited by Marilyn Sewell. Amazon says,

"Brimming over with the inspirational words and thoughts of some of our finest writers, Cries of the Spirit is a beautiful sourcebook of poetry and prose in praise of life and all that it entails. Here women's voices fill the age-old silence about matters central to their experience-from menstruation, sexual intimacy, and childbirth to caretaking, household rituals, and death. These writings represent a healing vision of the sacred that emerges from the particular consciousness of women-a vision that partakes of the world of earth and flesh."

Of course, there's always something like the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry

 

[Roger53]

Good Poems, edited by Garrison Keelor.

Poems from all eras, and as the name suggests, all good. It is split into different themes.

A marvellous book.

 

[Wells83]

100 Best Loved Poems, by Philip Smith

I bought it for a class on poetry and I now carry it with me to work every weekend. I used to have a distaste for poetry but as an English major in school, I was forced to read a lot of it and eventually I came around.

This anthology has a lot of the more wll-known poems, including some Marlowe, Shakespeare, Donne, Marvell, and Wordsworth.

 

[savvyambrose]

I've checked these out from the library a couple of times - The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry.

I think its excellent - it covers such a wide variety of poets.

 

[Sybarite]

The Man with Night Sweats by Thom Gunn.

 

[dollymixture]

I realise that the original post of this thread is quite old now, but I found Daisy Goodwin's anthologies to be an excellent way in to poetry.

I have 101 Poems to Get You Through the Day (and Night) which was a gift from my parents before my second year at university. Goodwin splits the poems up into themes and uses poets old and new. Definitely a good gateway imo