Most readers of contemporary poetry would agree with literary critic Helen Vendler that "e;there is no significant poet whose work does not mirror, both formally and in its preoccupations, the absence of the transcendent"e;--that no major modern poet writes religious poetry.
Elegies of Chu (in Chinese, Chuci), one of the two surviving collections of ancient Chinese poetry, is a key source for the whole tradition of Chinese poetry.
Elegies of Chu (in Chinese, Chuci), one of the two surviving collections of ancient Chinese poetry, is a key source for the whole tradition of Chinese poetry.
The First World War produced an extraordinary flowering of poetic talent, poets whose words commemorate the conflict more personally and as enduringly as monuments in stone.
The First World War produced an extraordinary flowering of poetic talent, poets whose words commemorate the conflict more personally and as enduringly as monuments in stone.
'The finest translation in and for our time' (Kevin Crossley-Holland) Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, with its intricate plot of enchantment and betrayal is probably the most skilfully told story in the whole of the English Arthurian cycle.
'The finest translation in and for our time' (Kevin Crossley-Holland) Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, with its intricate plot of enchantment and betrayal is probably the most skilfully told story in the whole of the English Arthurian cycle.
For centuries, poets have looked into the mirror of classical myth to show us the many ways our emotional lives are still reflected in the ancient stories of heroism, hubris, transformation, and loss that myths so eloquently tell.
Occasional Wild Parties brings together Sam Riviere, one of the most discussed of the new generation of British poets, whose 'post-internet' poetry sees him acting now as scribe, now as DJ, taking in everything from technologized romance to celebrity culture as filtered through Kim Kardashian's make-up routine; the 'elegant ghoul' Frederick Seidel, zooming through the dark underbelly of international high society on his Ducati racing bike; and the wonderfully observant Kathryn Maris, whose work ranges with a dark wit over incomprehensible deities, wayward mothers, the politics of children's sports contests, and psychoanalysis.
The latest volume in Penguin Modern Poets series - moving and unflinchingly honest poems from three different cultures about experiences of the female body, the family, sexual politics and conflictYour Family, Your Body features the work of Malika Booker, the Guyanese-British writer and performer behind London- and Chicago-based collective Malika's Kitchen; the Pulitzer Prize-winning Sharon Olds, one of America's most brilliant, beloved and candid voices; and Warsan Shire, the award-winning poet and first ever Young Poetry Laureate of London who also lent her words to Beyonc 's visual album Lemonade.
Short narrative poems, religious and secular lyrics, and moral, political, and comic verses are all included in this comprehensive collection of works from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
A physician with a particular interest in psychological disorders and satirist, Mandeville published versions of his notorious Fable of the Bees from 1714 to 1732.
Anglo-Saxon poetry was produced between 700 and 1000 AD for an audience that delighted in technical accomplishment, and the durable works of Old English verse spring from the source of the English language.
Introduced and selected by the poet-presenter Owen Sheers, A Poet's Guide to Britain is a major poetry anthology that ties in with the BBC series of the same name.
Compiled by an unknown scribe in Iceland around 1270, and based on sources dating back centuries earlier, these mythological and heroic poems tell of gods and mortals from an ancient era: the giant-slaying Thor, the doomed V lsung family, the Hel-ride of Brynhild and the cruelty of Atli the Hun.
This ambitious and revelatory collection turns the traditional chronology of anthologies on its head, listing poems according to their first individual appearance in the language rather than by poet.
Songs and Sonnets (1557), the first printed anthology of English poetry, was immensely influential in Tudor England, and inspired major Elizabethan writers including Shakespeare.
Published in 1798, Lyrical Ballads is a dazzling collaboration containing twenty-three poems by close friends, William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) - two major figures of English Romanticism.
This collection illuminates the uniquely fascinating era between 1820 and 1950 in French poetry - a time in which diverse aesthetic ideas conflicted and converged as poetic forms evolved at an astonishing pace.
Over the last few decades Caribbean writers - performance poets, newspaper poets, singer-songwriters - have created a genuinely popular art form, a poetry heard by audiences all over the world.
Here are poems to take you on a journey from the 'suddenly' of love at first sight to the 'truly, madly, deeply' of infatuation and on to the 'eternally' of love that lasts beyond the end of life, along the way taking in flirtation, passion, fury, betrayal and broken hearts.
Auden, Day, Lewis, Spender, MacNeice and the other key poets of the Thirties were children of the First World War, obsessed by war and by communalism, by the class-struggle and a passionate belief in poets as people whose actions are as publically important as their poems.
This anthology reflects the diversity of voices it contains: the poems are arranged thematically and the themes reflect the different experiences of war not just for the soldiers but for those left behind.
Published to commemorate the eightieth anniversary of Armistice, this collection is intended to be an introduction to the great wealth of First World War Poetry.
