The Poetry Reader

A compact, eclectic, and teachable collection of poems based not on aesthetic, geographic, or historical parameters, but on specific aspects of poetry and poetic practices, ranging from identity and metaphor to sublimation and spirituality.

You have picked up this book because you are a poetry reader. Or you are about to be one. Because as soon as you read a poem, that’s what you are.

Filled with the profound, the lyrical, the consoling, and the curious, The Poetry Reader: An Anthology is the book you would hope to find if you washed up alone on a deserted island: this companionable collection shows how poetry itself is a discussion, alive and flowing, and how poems speak to, with, and sometimes over one another.

If you are a teacher, this is the anthology you wish you had as a student – a text that doesn’t try to survey entire time periods or aesthetic areas, but one that places side-by-side carefully selected poems that speak to each other over time as well as to today’s readers.

- Section header notes provide critical commentary, framing the poems within their given topic
- Discussion and writing suggestions give interesting and actionable prompts
- Works as a standalone book, or can easily be used alongside Poetry: A Survivor's Guide, 2nd ed.

Drawing on traditional poems and contemporary works, this anthology offers globe-spanning, stylistically diverse poetry, ranging from canonical poems by the likes of Sappho and Shakespeare to those of new voices such as Layli Long Soldier and Mukoma wa Ngugi. As a compact, eclectic, and approachable collection based on specific aspects of poetry and poetic practices – from identity and metaphor to sublimation and spirituality – The Poetry Reader acts as a guide to understanding the essentials of both reading and writing poetry.