Poetry

Wilson has returned with an equally revelatory translation of Homer’s other great epic―the most revered war poem of all time....

The poems of the Poetic Edda have waited a long time for a modern English translation that would do them justice. Here it is at last (Odin be praised!). These amazing texts from a 13th-century Icelandic manuscript are of huge historical, mythological, and literary importance....

The epic grandeur of Dante's masterpiece has inspired readers and listeners for 700 years and has entered the human imagination....

Little is known about the Ancient Greek oral poet Homer, the supposed 8th century BC author of the world-read Iliad and his later masterpiece, The Odyssey....

The Divine Comedy describes Dante's descent into Hell with Virgil as a guide, his ascent of Mount Purgatory and his encounter with his dead love Beatrice, and finally, his arrival in Heaven....

One of the foremost achievements in Western literature, Homer's Iliad tells the story of the darkest episode in the Trojan War....

Enjoy this amazing narration of Robert Frost's poetry, including his most famous poems....

The famous Middle English poem by an anonymous Northern England poet is beautifully translated by fellow poet Simon Armitage in this edition....

You learn how drama makes visible the conflicts and wars of culture in ways other forms cannot manage....

One of the finest German medieval epic poems, The Lay of the Nibelungs is perhaps best known now as one of the principal sources for Wagner’s four-part music drama The Ring of the Nibelung....

The tale of the fifth king of the first dynasty of Uruk (in what is modern-day Iraq), who reigned for 126 years, according to the ancient Sumerian list of kings....

Ovid's sensuous and witty poetry brings together a dazzling array of mythological tales, ingeniously linked by the idea of transformation - often as a result of love or lust - where men and women find themselves magically changed into new and sometimes extraordinary beings....

In The Canterbury Tales Chaucer created one of the great touchstones of English literature, a masterly collection of chivalric romances, moral allegories and low farce....

Odysseus has been away from Ithaca, the Greek city-state under his rule, for ten years while fighting in the Trojan War. After the fall of...

The Poetic Edda is the most important collection of Norse-Icelandic mythological and heroic poetry, covering the creation of the world and the coming of Ragnarok, The Doom of the Gods....

Before entering the monastery, Thomas Merton studied English at Columbia University and taught literature at St. Bonaventure University. Delivered to the community at the Abbey of Gethsemani in 1965 and 1966, Merton’s talks examine one of his favorite poets: Rainer Maria Rilke....

Homer is one of the most important figures in ancient Greek literature, believed to have lived in the 8th century BC. He is most famous for his epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, which are considered to be the founding works of Western literature....

"Midway on our life's journey, I found myself in dark woods, the right road lost. To tell about those woods..."

John Lithgow has compiled an outstanding collection of memorable poems and has gathered his famous friends to read them....

The Greek poet, Hesiod, stands out as the first personality in European literature....

The Argonautica, also known as Jason and the Golden Fleece or Jason and the Argonauts, is the only surviving epic poem from Hellenistic Greece. Virgil and other later poets were greatly influenced by it....

In a 20-year journey, fabulous fantasy mixes with extraordinary reality as Odysseus encounters enchantresses, nymphs, monsters, prophets, and ghosts....

Often compared with Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Jason and the Argonauts is the only surviving poem from the Hellenistic period and was hugely influential on later literature, especially the Roman poetry of Virgil and Ovid....

The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India. It is of immense importance to the culture of the Indian subcontinent and is a major text of Hinduism....

This beautiful collection of 196 of his poems, previously unavailable in English and now translated by native Persian speakers Maryam Mafi and Azima Melita Kolin, will appeal to Rumi lovers everywhere who want a guidebook for their inner journey....