From Publishers Weekly
Entering the tradition begun with The 100 Best Poems of All Time and The 13 Best Horror Stories of All Time is Leslie Pockell's anthology The 100 Best Love Poems of All Time, offering measured doses of cupidity. Working with Adrienne Avila and Katharine Rapkin, Pockell takes readers from Dante's Vita Nuova to love works by Shakespeare, Marlowe and Milton and by Rabindranath Tagore, Wislawa Szymborska and Frank O'Hara through to Gregory Orr, Judith Viorst and Sandra Cisneros. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
Here, in one compact volume, is a greatest hits collection of the 100 bets love poems ever written by 100 of the world's greatest poets. This essential anthology is ideal for the romantic-and will inspire any cynic. The poets included range throughout the history of world literature: from the Classics (Sappho, Catullus) and Renaissance (Shakespeare, Donne, Dante) to the Romantics (Shelly, Keats, Wordsworth) and 20th century giants (Frost, Lorca, Graves), right down to the present day (Viorst, Patchen, Neruda). Each poem features a brief introduction, which details the poet's life history as well as the poem's significance.
The 100 Best Love Poems of All Time FROM THE PUBLISHER
...and seduction, heartbreak, adoration, and passion. Here in this portable treasury are the 100 most moving and memorable love poems of all time, each accompanied by an illuminating introduction. Carry this book wherever you go. It's a perfect companion to read alone or to share with that special person in your life.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Entering the tradition begun with The 100 Best Poems of All Time and The 13 Best Horror Stories of All Time is Leslie Pockell's anthology The 100 Best Love Poems of All Time, offering measured doses of cupidity. Working with Adrienne Avila and Katharine Rapkin, Pockell takes readers from Dante's Vita Nuova to love works by Shakespeare, Marlowe and Milton and by Rabindranath Tagore, Wislawa Szymborska and Frank O'Hara through to Gregory Orr, Judith Viorst and Sandra Cisneros.
KLIATT
As Pockell states in her introduction, these poems range from "idealistic romanticism to passionate sensuality." They include the ancient poets and the modern and most major language groups. The editor seems to favor the classic love poems over the more modern, perhaps because it's easier to discern what a love poem is with the older ones. There is only one poem per poet. Each poem is introduced with a one-paragraph background commentary. This collection is heavy on the classics, such as Shakespeare's "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day" (parodied on the facing page by Howard Moss's poem of the same name). Robert Burns' "A Red, Red Rose" is still fresh and melodic. For modern verse, e.e. cummings displays his unique parenthetical lines in "I Carry Your Heart With Me," a tender tribute to his love. The collection would not be complete without the Romantic poets. Byron's "She Walks In Beauty" is still as dramatic as on the first reading. Love includes all the real, often petty resentments that must be swept aside in its name, as Kenneth Fearing so aptly illustrates in "Love 20 Cents the First Quarter Mile." In some poems, the pure beauty of the line adds profundity to expressions of love, as in Neruda's "I Do Not Love You": "I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,/ in secret, between the shadow and the soul." The illicit nature of some love relationships is revealed in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's "Between Your Sheets," a yearning by an 18th-century woman ahead of her time. Tragedy, of course, is inherent in many love matches, so evident here in the facing poems of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, both describing the transformational quality of love. This concise volume can be agreat resource for study because of the variety of styles and forms from the colloquial to the arcane. At least one collection of love poetry should be in every library. Who, at some time in her life, doesn't need a love poem? KLIATT Codes: SAﾽRecommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2003, Warner, 128p. index., Budin
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