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Title: The Norton Anthology of Poetry by Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, Jon Stallworthy ISBN: 0-393-96820-0 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: August, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $68.20 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.83 (12 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Not an especially good anthology
Comment: It's hard to assign an appropriate number of stars to a book like this, since of course many of the poems are great ones. However, as an anthology of poetry this book fails in many respects.
First of all, nearly half of the book consists of relatively mediocre 20th century poetry. The book could be cut in two at the middle, and the first half sold as a meagre anthology of poetry up to the 20th century, and the second as a comprehensive collection of 20 century poems. The 20th century is one of the worst in terms of the poetry it gave to the world. Many of the poets in the second half are practically unknown now, and will have been entirely forgotten fifty years from now. Although the book dutifully includes many of the great poems of English literature and is therefore not entirely useless, the selection is otherwise a very curious one for a book intended as a general survey of English poetry. A large percentage of the poems in this book could be cut out and it would be as good as it is now, only a great deal lighter and hopefully cheaper.
Another irritating thing is the footnotes. The editors seem to have assumed that they need to define and explain the simplest terms and concepts. For example, on page 215, they give a gloss for the word "clod," defining it as "Lumps of earth or clay." That's all very well, but "clod," a common English word, does not require explanation. It's distracting to the reader that knows it to have his attention called to the footnote. One's reading of the poem is thereby interrupted. Anyone who does not know the meaning of "clod" could perfectly well turn to a dictionary.
Rating: 4
Summary: still a good anthology, but slipping
Comment: The third edition, with a black cover, made the best of its slightly shorter space available by honing the reprinted poets and poetry down to the essentials. The fourth edition still includes most of that material, but the fourth edition is beginning to include too much chaff with the wheat, digging up obscure seventeenth and eighteenth century poets and placing them side by side with Donne, Milton, and Pope. The obscure figures are only going to suffer by comparison; there is not going to be any sudden Eliot-like revaluation of these obscure poets' reputations. It's even worse in the contemporary period -- dozens of second-rate poets, sampled with one or two poems apiece, which only takes away from the space that could have been granted to Wilbur, Ashbery, Geoffrey Hill, Derek Walcott, etc. -- not to mention Auden, who is still given too few poems to grasp his entire achievement. It's too bad the third edition isn't available any longer.
Rating: 5
Summary: The best poetry anthology I have ever encountered
Comment: When I saw some of the bad reviews this incredible volume received, I decided to add my opinion!
I've carried this book across 3 continents and loved it above all others. I've also bought it as gifts for all my closest friends in the hope of enriching their lives as this volume has enriched mine. In its 3rd edition, in 1985, it was prescribed as a set work in the 1st year of my English Degree at University. I've discovered many of the most beautiful poems in English literature and almost all of the famous poets within these pages. I keep discovering new poems, new favourites. I meet people who tell me their own favourite poets and poems and 99% of the time they are in this volume (and if the poem isn't, the poet is).
Here you'll find so many treasures; the Romantics (Yeats, Tennyson, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge), more feminist poetry (Adrienne Riche, A.D. Hope, Atwood), the modern poets (Cummings, Larkin, Meredith, Plath), other American poets (Longfellow, Whitman) ... even some of the ancients (Chaucer, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson).
If you love the art of poetry and appreciate the different styles and techniques over the centuries, buy this book. If you love poetry and want to find it all in one complete volume, this is the book for you! It's been MY close and constant companion for 18 years.
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Title: Poetic Meter and Poetic Form by Paul Fussell ISBN: 0075536064 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages Pub. Date: 01 January, 1979 List Price(USD): $31.25 |
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Title: Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry by Richard Ellmann, Robert O'Clair ISBN: 0393956369 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: May, 1988 List Price(USD): $63.90 |
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Title: The Sounds of Poetry : A Brief Guide by Robert Pinsky ISBN: 0374526176 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: 01 September, 1999 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology by Paul Hoover ISBN: 0393310906 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: May, 1994 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry by John Frederick Nims, David Mason ISBN: 0073031801 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages Pub. Date: 11 June, 1999 List Price(USD): $62.25 |
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