Here, in this compact volume, is a greatest hits collection of the 100 best poems ever written by the world's greatest poets. This essential collection is perfect for the poetry lover who wants to carry around their favourite poems, and ideal for the reader seeking an introduction to the greatest poems world literature has to offer. The authors included are each represented by his or her best-known and best-loved work, from the Classics (Homer, Sappho, Virgil, Ovid) to the Renaissance (Dante, Petrarch, Villon, Shakespeare) to the Romantics (Schiller, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats) to the 20th Century giants (Pound, Eliot, Frost, Stevens) down to the present day (Ginsberg, Plath, Angelou). Each poem is introduced by a brief head note which details the poet's life history as well as the poem's significance.

Reviews

These two productions seem the literary equivalent of elevator music. On the first tape, very short poems by Tu Fu, Basho, or Li Po, with no mention of their nationality or that these are even translations, appear beside the single, most familiar quatrain from Omar Khayyam's "The Rubaiyat." Of what use are these (often overly dramatic) fragments? Yet room is made for the 23rd Psalm, "Amazing Grace," and "`T'was the Night Before Christmas." Stefan Rudnicki, reading from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, does a good job of conveying the sound of the original, while poems by Fran?ois Villon, Friedrich Von Schiller, or Gerard de Nerval would seem to have been written in modern English. The second tape is even more frustrating, if only because the poets, if not the poems, will be more familiar. It's good to have grade-school favorites such as "Casey at the Bat" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee" in easy listening range, but "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land"? And then only an eight-line poem by William Carlos Williams. The balance seems terribly wrong here. Since nothing on these tapes enhances a listener's appreciation of poetry, it's impossible to recommend them. Rochelle Ratner, formerly with "Soho Weekly News," New York Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.