Great Poetry

"101 Great American Poems" is a thoughtfully curated anthology that brings together a diverse collection of classic American poetry. Spanning over two centuries, the book features works from some of the nation's most celebrated poets, including Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, and Langston Hughes.

What is poetry? If music is sound organized in a particular way, poetry is a way of organizing language. It is language made special so that it will be remembered and valued. It does not always work - over the centuries countless thousands of poems have been forgotten. This little history is about some that have not. John Carey tells the stories behind the world’s greatest poems, from the oldest surviving one written nearly four thousand years ago to those being written today. Carey looks at poets whose works shape our views of the world.

The 200th anniversary of the birth of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809 - 1892), one of the most popular of poets, is celebrated in 2009. Works such as The Charge of the Light Brigade, Crossing the Bar and Tears, Idle Tears have made him an internationally famous figure, and the second most quoted writer of all time (after Shakespeare).

An anthology of over 50 classic poems, read by some of our finest actors. This collection contains a selection of the very best poems, from verses inspired by love to war poetry, nature poems and children's rhymes.

With a dynamic spirit, these great English poets made a conscious return to nostalgia and spiritual depth. Each chose a different path, but they are united in a love of moods, impressions, scenes, stories, sights and sounds. In this collection of more than forty poems are some of the finest and most memorable works in the English language.

Great Love Poems, edited by poet Patrick MacSean, gathers enduring voices in literature to explore love in all its forms: the first electric glance, the slow burn of companionship, the ache of absence, the quiet endurance of vows kept and broken. These poems do not offer easy romance or sentimental comfort. Instead, they confront love as it truly is—beautiful, dangerous, fleeting, and transformative. Across centuries and cultures, poets have returned to the same essential question: What does it mean to give oneself fully to another, knowing nothing lasts? In these pages, love is at once ...

Ryokan (1758–1831) is, along with Dogen and Hakuin, one of the three giants of Zen in Japan. But unlike his two renowned colleagues, Ryokan was a societal dropout, living mostly as a hermit and a beggar. He was never head of a monastery or temple. He liked playing with children. He had no dharma heir. Even so, people recognized the depth of his realization, and he was sought out by people of all walks of life for the teaching to be experienced in just being around him.

This book compiles both the first (1855) and final (1892) versions of Walt Whitman's masterpiece Song of Myself in one volume, making it unique and valuable for students of American literature.

Timeless poetry for moments of reflection and contemplation. The masters of literature are brought together in this unique program.

"In the middle of the road of my life I awoke in a dark wood, where the true way was wholly lost." When you find yourself suddenly without bearings, as Dante Alighieri voiced so well centuries ago, where will you look for guidance? Throughout the ages, teaches David Whyte, the language of poetry has held a special power to hazard ourselves boldly at the "fierce edges" of our lives. On Midlife and the Great Unknown, you will engage with poetic imagination as it was meant to be experienced.

An anthology of over 40 classic nature poems, read by some of our finest actors. The majesty of nature has always inspired poets, and this collection contains a selection of the very best verses praising the natural world.

From the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Strange Trip and the publicist of the Grateful Dead, a riveting social history of everything that led up to the 1960s counterculture movement. Few cities represent the countercultural movement of the 1960s more than San Francisco. By that...

Here are 35 of the greatest poems in the French language, carefully selected and read in French by Bill Homewood, the bilingual English classical actor who has spent half his life in France. To help those English speakers with just a little French to appreciate the glories of these poems, he provides his own clear English translations.

An anthology of over 50 classic children's poems, read by some of our finest actors. Full of fun, excitement, and magic, the poems in this collection are guaranteed to spark the imagination and open up a world of wonder. Favourites from authors such as Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, and Robert Louis Stevenson are all here, as well as less familiar but nonetheless hugely entertaining poems such as" The Camel's Complaint"and "The Elephant, or The Force of Habit".

Great Short Poems brings together a remarkable gathering of short poems by some of the most influential poets in the English literary tradition. Spanning more than three centuries—from the Renaissance through the late Victorian era—this collection showcases the power of poetry at its most distilled, where a handful of lines can capture profound emotion, insight, and beauty.

Journey once more into the captivating essence of New Orleans with "67 Days of NOLA Poetic Exploration Between Here And There: Week 4 - The Experimental Certainty of Exploration Through Social Distance." Each page of this week is a new revelation, revealing layers of the city’s soul and the depths of our spirits in these unique times. Week 4 amplifies the poetic exploration, delving into the heart of New Orleans' supernatural allure, from its haunted histories to the mysterious allure of creatures like the Rougarou. As the world around us maintains its distance, this collection weaves a ...

An eclectic blend from an unknown poet. Writings of the soul, the heart, the mind and body. Created in the moment, molded by the ebb and flow of that unpredictable thing called Life. This short collection covers a variety of emotions, feelings, themes, and topics Includes: the mystery of living, the sublimity of nature, the instability of self, self-purpose, the fragility of the psyche, animal attitudes and behaviors, anthropomorphism, materialism, assonance, consonance, slant rhyme, formal rhyme sequences, metaphorical conceit, self-destruction, earthly wonder, depression, dehumanization, ...

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. "'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door - Only this, and nothing more." Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had tried to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore - For the rare and ...

WINNER OF THE 2025 JAMES LAUGHLIN AWARD FROM THE ACADEMY OF AMERICAN POETS A stunning new collection exploring lineage and the legacy of survival as seen through the life of the poet’s grandmother Alice—a Black woman born in the Jim Crow South—using the King James Bible as a narrative...

Elliott Gould, Burt Reynolds, Meryl Streep, and a host of other celebrities read over 100 poems by four of America's greatest poets. Walt Whitman celebrates the brash and rugged individualism of his country in exuberant language. The spare, precise language of Emily Dickinson conveys her penetrating vision of the natural world and an acute understanding of the most profound human truths.