Thom Gunn has been described as 'one of the most singular & compelling poets in English during the past half-century' (TLS) This Selected Poems compiled by his friend Clive Wilmer & accompanied by insightful notes is the first edition to represent the full arc of Gunn's inimitable career ' The poetry of Thom Gunn was much admired in his lifetime & at the same time often misunderstood & underestimated The scale of his achievement & its uniqueness
- a masterful Elizabethan lyric poet writing in the second half of the twentieth century
- is just now becoming properly appreciated Anonymous in voice even in the service of the most intimate subject matter acute in observation particularly the urban experience with San Francisco the principal site Gunn is not merely the poet of the druggy '60s in California or the plague of the AIDS epidemic but of the deeper-running themes shared by Shakespeare Baudelaire William Carlos Williams & all his greatest exemplars of the artist's moral & imaginative engagement with the world as it actually is in the broadest possible sense not as contemporary fashion might have it be Which strikes me who knew & loved the man & poet as a kind of heroism' August Kleinzahler' Thom Gunn smuggled the lyric tradition out of post-war Britain & gave it cool gracious renaissance in California His poetry evokes the wild life of the body with madrigal-like elegance' Fiona Sampson' Gunn's work illustrates with unusual clarity some of the debates poetry in English has pursued in the twentieth century
- form versus improvisation diction versus talk the American way versus the English tradition even at times authenticity versus art To contain these contradictory impulses & to have generated a body of work which anybody wanting to understand the period & identify some of its best poems will find essential reading
- this is quite an achievement' Sean O' Brien



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Showcasing the creative power of one of the most outstanding English Metaphysical Poets the Penguin Classics edition of John Donne's Selected Poems

Includes:: an introduction & notes by Ilona Bell Regarded by many as the greatest of the Metaphysical poets John Donne was also among the most intriguing figures of the Renaissance A sensualist who composed erotic & playful love poetry in his youth he was raised a Catholic but later became one of the most admired Protestant preachers of his time The Selected Poems reflects this wide diversity &

Includes:: his youthful Songs & Sonnets epigrams elegies letters satires & the profoundly moving Divine Poems composed towards the end of his life From joyful poems such as ' The Flea' which transforms the image of a louse into something marvellous to the intimate & intense Holy Sonnets Donne breathed new vigour into poetry by drawing lucid & often startling metaphors from the world in which he lived His poems remain among the most passionate profound & spiritual in the English language Ilona Bell's introduction considers Donne's life faith & influence This edition also

Includes:: detailed notes & a further reading list John Donne (1572-1631) was born into a family of devout Catholics He studied at Oxford University travelled on the continent & then studied law at Lincoln's Inn In the early 1600s Donne became a Member of Parliament & Justice of the Peace obtaining temporary positions & patronage from a number of aristocrats who are the subjects of his poems He was ordained as an Anglican minister in 1615 & in 1621 was made Dean of St Paul's Cathedral a position he held until his death If you enjoyed Donne's Selected Poems you might enjoy John Milton's Paradise Lost also available in Penguin Classics





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Selected Poems draws on all the books Elizabeth Jennings published before Growing-Points It represents the poet's own distillation of the first two decades of her writing
- the poems which established her as one of the most passionate & precise of our writers a woman of human values religious vision & natural sympathy ' The outstanding thing about Jennings' poetry' wrote Douglas Dunn 'is its wisdom hard earned from grief & religious faith' & Peter Levi says ' She is one of the few living poets we could not do without'
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Over the course of his short life John Keats (1795-1821) honed a raw talent into a brilliant poetic maturity By the end of his brief career he had written poems of such beauty imagination & generosity of spirit that he had
- unwittingly
- fulfilled his wish that he should be among the English poets after my death' This wide-ranging selection of Keats's poetry contains youthful verse such as his earliest known poem Imitation of Spenser'; poems from his celebrated collection of 1820
- including Lamia' Isabella' The Eve of St Agnes' Ode to a Nightingale' & Hyperion'
- & later celebrated works such as La Belle Dame sans Merci' Also included are many poems considered by Keats to be lesser work but which illustrate his more earthy playful side & superb ear for everyday language



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This new selection of Rossetti's poems brings together works by one of the most significant nineteenth-century English poets It



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Alexander Pope (1688-1744) is regarded as the most important poet of the early eighteenth century An invalid from infancy Pope devoted his energies towards literature & achieved remarkable success with his first published work at the age of 21 A succession of brilliant poems followed including An Essay on Criticism (1711) Windsor Forest (1713) & his masterpiece The Rape of the Lock (1712) A second period of great poetry was begun in 1728 with the appearance of the first Dunciad All these works which exhibit Pope's astonishing human insight his wide sympathies & powers of social observation (displayed to greatest effect in his talent for satire) feature in this selection In his introduction
- an eloquent defence of Pope's poetic practice
- Pat Rogers argues that we must abandon our Romantic conception of poetry as a record of fleeting & subjective states if we are to understand Pope fully Instead we must see him as an accomplished practitioner of the poetry of ideas & of satirical reflection on human society This collection is chosen from the Oxford Authors critical edition of Pope's major works ABOUT THE SERIES For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features including expert introductions by leading authorities helpful notes to clarify the text up-to-date bibliographies for further study & much more

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) was one of the most versatile minds in European intellectual history & a shaping influence in the development of English poetry As a radical young poet in the years following the French Revolution Coleridge collaborated with Wordsworth in Lyrical Ballads (1798) & was by turns dramatist political journalist lecturer & religious thinker This edition

Includes:: his two most famous poems Kubla Khan & The Rime of the Ancient Mariner as well as such blank-verse 'conversation' poems as The Eolian Harp This Lime Tree Bower My Prison & Frost at Midnight Not least of the attractions of Heather Jackson's selection is the earlier version of the Rime which she presents in full along with the later better-known version Demonstrating the diversity characteristic of Coleridge's work from early politically-inspired sonnets to an epitaph he composed for himself shortly before his death this substantial collection is supplemented by an introduction & notes ABOUT THE SERIES For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features including expert introductions by leading authorities helpful notes to clarify the text up-to-date bibliographies for further study & much more

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There is no short-story writer who has quite the same gift of infectious vitality whose scenes & characters seem to come so spontaneously alive Times Literary Supplement Rhys Davies achieved an international reputation as a writer of skill & originality He wrote for the best magazines of 1930s through to the New Yorker in the 1950s maintaining a prolific output of both stories & novels In this Library of Wales edition with a foreword by Tomos Owen the essence of his work is revealed with a new selection of dark witty & finely crafted stories ...

This is the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature This first-ever selection of Alice Munro's stories sums up her genius Her territory is the secrets that cackle beneath the facade of everyday lives the pain & promises loves & fears of apparently ordinary men & women whom she renders extraordinary & unforgettable ...

With an Introduction & Notes by Joe Andrew Professor of Russian Literature Keele University Anton Chekhov is widely regarded as one of the greatest writers of short stories He constructs stories where action & drama are implied rather than described openly & which leave much to the reader's imagination This collection contains some of the most important of his earliest & shortest comic sketches as well as examples of his great mature works Throughout the doctor-turned-writer displays compassion for human suffering & misfortune but is always able to see the comical even farcical aspects of the human condition Chekhov sees & depicts life with unwavering honesty & truthfulness although a clear moral sense can be detected beneath his apparent objectivity ...