Over 100 selections embrace a wide range of themes and motifs: meditations on the meaning of existence, celebrations of life's joys, appreciations of the natural world, and many more. Here are some of the most-loved poems in the English language, chosen not merely for their popularity, but for their literary quality as well. Dating from the Middle Ages to the 20th century, these splendid poems remain evergreen in their capacity to engage our minds...

How did a Catholic priest who died a failure become one of the world's greatest poets? Discover in his own words the struggle for faith that gave birth to some of the best spiritual poetry of all time. Gerard Manley Hopkins deserves his place among the greatest poets in the English language. He ranks seventh among the most frequently reprinted English-language poets, surpassed only by Shakespeare, Donne, Blake, Dickinson, Yeats, and Wordsworth. Yet...

African American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of African descent. It begins with the works of such late 18th-century writers as Phillis Wheatley. Before the high point of enslaved people narratives, African-American literature was dominated by autobiographical spiritual narratives. The genre known as slave narratives in the 19th century were accounts by people who had generally escaped from slavery,...

A beautifully organized collection of a poet's works in homage to nature One of the primary themes of May Sarton's work, especially in the first few decades of her career as a poet, memoirist, and novelist, is a veneration for and desire to understand nature. This yearning is collected in Cloud, Stone, Sun, Vine, which comprises more than two decades of Sarton's impressive output.   The anthology marks a turning point in Sarton's career as her meditations...

A baby that keeps losing its brain, a cow in a wedding gown, a woman whose chest is a radio-bizarre and whimsical figures populate this collection of dreamlike prose poems from Russell Edson (1935-2014), with a Foreword by Pulitzer Prize winner Charles Simic. A seminal voice in American prose poetry from the sixties onward, Edson's whole career is surveyed in a single volume edited for our times, presenting a new and contemporary view of a poet of...

1998 National Book Award Finalist for Poetry1999 Finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry PrizeIn this selection of poems from thirty years of a distinguished writing career, we see the growth of a poet's mind, heart, and spirit as Ostriker struggles to love "this wounded / World that we cannot heal, that is our bride."Whether she probes the meaning of childhood, family, marriage, and motherhood, or art, history, politics, and God; whether she is celebrating...

The evolution of the poet who is one of feminism's greatest living voices Robin Morgan has always been one of the most original, technically skilled, and impassioned writers in American poetry, and Upstairs in the Garden shows the development of her distinctive voice. This book of selections from her previous volumes of poetry, plus new additions, summarizes the verse of two decades of iconoclastic work, and is an ideal starting place for a reader...

Xue Tao (A.D. 768-831) was well known as a poet in an age when all men of learning were poets--and almost all women were illiterate. As an entertainer and official government hostess, she met, and impressed, many of the most talented and powerful figures of her day. As a maker of beautiful paper and a Taoist churchwoman, she maintained a life of independence and aesthetic sensibility. As a writer, she crrated a body of work that is by turns deeply...