Anyone got a suggestion for a book that has a good selection of famous poems and some commentary on them? I’d like to become conversant about the greatest hits of poetry, so to speak.
Not a book but worth looking at.
While I guess a “textbook” is a boring suggestion, the “Norton Anthologies” of British and American literature have pretty good selections of poems (at the expense of prose I might add), and fairly lively commentary and biographical information of the poets. You can probably get some barely opened used copies at a off campus college bookstore or off the net for a decent price.
http://www.wwnorton.com/naal/
Norton also has anthologies solely of poetry.
While an anthology is the obvious suggestion, I’m not sure the Norton anthologies are the best recommendation for the OP. They’re quite comprehensive, but it sounds as if the poster is looking for more commentary than they typically provide.
I’d suggest an textbook of the sort used in college-level “Intro to Poetry” classes. Any used book store will probably offer a variety of choices. My personal recommendation would be one of the newer editions of An Introduction to Poetry, edited by X.J. Kennedy with contributions by Dana Gioia (earlier editions were edited by Kennedy alone). Kennedy established this text as perhaps the most widely used introduction to poetry over the last thirty years or so, through many editions. Gioia’s one of my favorite poets and favorite critics of poetry – he’s the leading apologist for what’s been called the New Formalist school of poetry. While others may find fault with his emphasis on the formal structure of poetry, it’s hard to debate that someone with such a mindset is particularly well-suited to explaining the issues of form and structure to others who’re not well-acquainted with such matters.
Other popular titles in the same vein include:
[ul]
[li]Laurence Perrine’s Sound and Sense, the main rival to Kennedy’s book.[/li][li]Reuben Brower’s Beginning with Poems, which I also like a lot and used extensively in my younger days; apparently hasn’t been updated since its original publication in 1966. Strictly an anthology; the only critical commentary comes in the introductory matter.[/li][li]Edward Hirsch’s How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry gets rave reviews and is very widely available; no matter how sparse the poetry section of a given bookstore, they always seem to have it. Haven’t looked into it myself, but it might be worth a look if you’re really more interested in a primer on poetry rather than a more comprehensive selection of important poems.[/li][/ul]
Any of these should be readily available in used bookstores, particularly those close to college campuses; Amazon lists used copies of all of them for sale for $10 or so, and any decent-sized library should have one or more of them.
I have a book from a poetry class that might be what you’re looking for. PoemsPoetsPoetry by Helen Vendler. There’s quite a bit of “commentary” in it, not all of which I agree with, but so be it. It’s one of the most likeable anthologies I own.
I am stunned that I forgot about this one. Ashamed, too – I studied with Professor Vendler years ago and have every one of her books – except this one and her early book on Herbert. There’s no one from whom one can learn more about how to read poetry than Helen Vendler, but I studied with her ten years before Poems, Poets, Poetry was published, and at that time her books were all on specific poets (Herbert, Wallace Stevens, and Keats) – she hadn’t put her outstanding material on reading poetry in general into book form, nor had she done any anthologies. I suppose that’s why I forgot it – I think of her more in her role as a gifted explicator of particular poets than as an anthologist.
Much as it pains me to say so, she’s also notoriously unreliable regarding the merits of contemporary poets. She’s brilliant at teasing out all of the nuances of well established poets (especially those who’ve been dead a while), but when it comes to assessing the virtues of those who’re writing now, one of us is often spectacularly wrong (and if it’s me, I’ve got a lot of company). As examples: I’ve yet to fathom her high estimation of John Ashberry, but at least she has good company there; Michael Blumenthal, on the other hand, just isn’t very good (despite the early promise of Laps) yet Professor Vendler has raved on him in reviews.