The Giant Book of Poetry

Dilemma"I want to be famous so I can behumble aboutbeing famousWhat good is my humilitywhen I am stuckin this obscurity?"~ David BudbillIn my search for good poems I've often had to wade through the mediocre and mundane to get to the memorable. By reading an anthology I hope to find that someone else has done this job for me and has collected the best of the best. This is sometimes true but tastes vary. So it is with some trepidation that I enter the world of an editor who has selected what he or she feels are essential poems to be read at your leisure.This book contains more contemporary poems than many anthologies which seem to focus more on classic poems. This book has plenty of classic poems and quite a few finds that I haven't seen in other poetry books over the years.I enjoyed finding Elizabeth Bishop's funny poem about losing things and David Budbill's poem about wanting to be humble and famous. I was delighted to find poems by Billy Collins as I've reviewed quite a few of his books in the past. Reading this anthology also taught me something interesting about bats. You just never know what you are going to find in an anthology. Some of the great poems include:"Trees" by Joyce Kilmer"My Madonna" by Robert Service (pretty funny)"The Owl and the Pussy-Cat" by Edward Lear"All the World's a Stage" by William Shakespeare"To the Virgins" by Robert Herrick"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" by William Wortdsworth"An Argument" by Thomas Moore"Anabel Lee" by Edgar Allan PoeEven though this book is very long and takes quite a while to read when I got to 50% and found Billy Collins poems I did say "YAY!" Because mostly I was looking for contemporary poems. But alas there were very few and by 60% the poems were over.Well I am still happy I read this anthology because I found some funny poems. With so many poems to sort through this really does become quite an adventure. About 80% of the poems in this book were unknown to me. So this introduced me to quite a few new poets I may not have come across that easily.~The Rebecca Review

so, i just got this in the mail, and i was really psyched. ive looked over the poems, and i think that the two main things about the book is that the selection is arbitrary, and it is definitely more of an introsuctory book. the arbitrariness of it is both good and bad--the book is a wonderful hodge-podge of poems, and it's big. but--and this is a big but--you'll probably find that some of your favorites aren't in it. for instance, ginsberg. like, wtf. and james wright has three poems, but not his autumn one, which, to me, is freaking sacrosant. and not a single sylvia plath poem, which made me rather bummed out. and only shakespeare's staple, easier sonnets. but there is rudyard kipling's "if" and the love song of prufrock, and there is some larkin (arundel tomb, talking in bed, and this be the verse--no aubade, though, hmm). has keats's grecian urn. has a lot of dickinson. in short, i consider it a pretty good deal considering how it's not all from one poet or one time period. it's many, many poets, with a couple to a few usually short poems per each poet.

I bought the Kindle version of this book and I was pleasantly surprised by what I found. The poetry does not lose any format in the e-book version and the various poems and authors are easily accessible. Also, the footnotes are easy to get to, which I had found in some e-books to be next to impossible to find.As for the anthology itself, I can only give the highest acclaim. The range and variety of poetry and poetic schools in this book is astounding. Rarely outside of a university textbook, can one go through so many different time periods and schools of poetry. Even then, this anthology exceeds many textbooks in that it is not limited to one school, time period, or nationality of poetry.If you are expecting academic influence in this book in the way of editors and long introductions to authors and schools of poetry, you will find little. What this anthology amounts to is one man putting together his favorite poems by his favorite poets. That being said Roetzheim still gives wonderful insight into each poem with footnotes including rhyme scheme, meter, themes of the poem, and definitions for the more obscure words.I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in poetry. It is a great collection for everyone from those new to poetry to college professors and everyone in between.

I felt the need to get some poetry books since is not currently accessible. I got a smaller tome and this one. I really am happy with this one. All the big names and lesser known ones as well. I appreciate the explanation of the rhyme schemes and vocabulary for certain obscure words. Then there's the index by subject matter. Been using that a lot. Lastly, the print is just big enough for my aging eyes to be able to grab it without having to also grab my reading glasses.. Great collection and well edited and printed.

The Giant Book Of Poetry edited by William H. Roetzheim is a great purchase which has revealed to me so many beautiful poems I hadn't known about and from such a wide variety of poets. I am a musician and composer who likes to compose music to classic poetry. The Giant Book Of Poetry inspired me to compose the music and to record my second album - Hidden Flame (giladsmusic).Thanks to The Giant Book Of Poetry, my album holds new music compositions to poems by some of the world's greatest poets, ranging from the biblical David’s Lament to the twentieth century works of Edgar Allen Poe, Kipling, Tennyson, Hemmingway, and others.My compliments to Mr. Roetzheim on his choice of poets and their work. The poetry makes pleasurable reading and I continue to find poems that appeal to me each and every time I read the book.Gilad Hesseg The Giant Book of Poetry eBook

This review may contain so much praise that you may think I'm in the pay of Kindle, I am decidedly not! This book was a serendipitous find and a SUPERB buy for me, a beginner (though equally good for non beginners I'm also sure), for several major reasons. It contained a large number of beautiful poems by many well known poets over the ages, which were well laid out for electronic reading and easily navigable via an interactive index of poets (using the "Go to" button). Of huge help were the tutorial on appreciating poetry (to 4 levels), a great Appendix on meter and explanations of all the new terms involved (e.g. Iambs, Amphibrachs etc.). These combined to make made understanding so much easier, releasing the true beauty of some otherwise initially mystifying poems. It has led me to go completely overboard, as a new convert, and buy the full collections of many of the poets therein, and more. Note that many of these are under £1, even free. A tip, "highlight" the titles of your favourite poems, also adding numbered "Notes" on why you appreciated the poem (or it's meaning to you, whatever you want); just these highlights and notes then also most helpfully and interactively show in page order when you press "View Notes and Marks". Next I chose "Six Centuries of English Poetry, Tennyson to Chaucer" which sent me onto another planet of pure joy. I wish I'd discovered all this 50 years ago, I would never have become an accountant! Thank you Kindle.

This is a great collection for the mature student. Just don't let it loose on a class of 11-year-olds as there are some four-letter words and rather adult poems! I nevertheless consider it my best poetry book.

A real disappointment!I'm not into reading poetry that turns into a chore, no enjoyment, just a sheer effort trying to get through a VERY American choice! Personally, I only liked about ten poems in this GIANT book!Not for me.