In his work as a physician Williams had learnt the skill of objective observation which he applied to his poetry examining as he said 'the particular to discover the universal'. Marked by a vernacular American speech & direct observation of the landscape & people of his native New Jersey his poetry explores the 'raw merging of American pastoral & urban squalor. Emotionally restrained but rich in sensory experience the poems were written according to the guiding concept: 'no ideas but in things' & those 'things' a red wheelbarrow a group of trees a river convey the local & the particular with a vivid intensity. ...

The Poetic Genius of my Country...bade me sing the loves the joys the rural scenes & rural pleasures of my natal Soil in my native tongue. Many of the poems & songs of Robert Burns (1759-96) are familiar to readers the world over: lyrical acerbic comic bawdy democratic. They include To a Mouse John Anderson my Jo A red red Rose Auld lang syne Tam o Shanter & many more whose vernacular energy & simple beauty have ensured lasting popularity. This generous new selection offers Burnss work as it was first encountered by contemporary readers presenting the texts in the contexts in which they were originally published. It reproduces the whole of Poems chiefly in the Scottish Dialect published at Kilmarnock in 1786 the volume which made Burns famous; & it reunites a generous selection of songs from The Scots Musical Museum & A Select Collection of Scottish Airs with their full scores. Comprehensive notes describe the circumstances in which other poems & songs found their way into print both before & after the poets death. The edition also

Includes:: some important letters & a full glossary to explain Scots words.

...

Christina Rossetti is widely regarded as the most considerable woman poet in England before the twentieth century. No reading of nineteenth century poetry can be complete without attention to this prolific & popular poet. Rosettis inner life dominates her poetry exploring loss & unattainable hope. Her divine poems have a freshness & toughness of thought while many of her love poems are erotic & as often express love for women as for men. The varied threads of Rossettis concerns are drawn together in what is perhaps her greatest poem the strange & ambiguous Goblin Market. ...

Key

Features: * Study methods * Introduction to the text * Summaries with critical notes * Themes & techniques

...

Selected Poems" contains Neruda's resonant exploratory intensely individualistic verse rooted in the physical landscape & people of Chile. Here we find sensuous songs of love tender odes to the sea melancholy lyrics of heartache fiery political statements & a frank celebration of sex. This is an enticing distinctive & celebrated collection of poetry from the greatest twentieth century Latin American poet." ...

Key

Features: * Study methods * Introduction to the text * Summaries with critical notes * Themes & techniques

...

William Blake was an engraver painter & visionary mystic as well as one of the most revolutionary of the Romantic poets. His writing attracted the astonished admiration of authors as diverse as Wordsworth Ruskin W.B. Yeats & more recently beat poet Allen Ginsberg & the flower power generation. He is one of Englands most original artists whose works aim to liberate imaginative energies & subvert the mind-forged manacles of restriction. This volume contains many of his writings including: Songs of Innocence Songs of Experience The Marriage of Heaven & Hell & a generous selection from the Prophetic Books including Milton & Jerusalem. ...

Living in a revolutionary age Coleridges poetry was written in a spirit of moral & emotional inquiry into the absolutes of the human condition. He is best known for his visionary poetry (Kubla Khan) & his ballads (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner) but he used & transformed a variety of verse forms from the sonnet to the conversation poem on subjects as diverse as nature love & politics. This selection calls attention to the range of Coleridges work its strong autobiographical content & its artistic development throughout his career. The old chronological form has been abandoned & the poems are organised according to genre with each section displaying its own individual development in craft & theme. ...

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 Popes 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 Popes 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 Popes major works. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford Worlds Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxfords 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.

...

The First World War was one of seemingly endless & unremitting waste & sacrifice. Who will remember passing through this Gate The unheroic Dead who fed the guns? was Siegfried Sassoons anguished cry for those whose sacrifice seemed futile. Yet eighty years later it is because of Sassoon & his fellow poets
- Owen Rosenberg Sorley & many others
- that we do remember. This new anthology will serve as an introduction to the poetry of that great conflict & the inclusion of a number of rarely anthologised poets many from the ranks as well as anonymous poems & songs serves to bring a quality of freshness to the selection.

...