Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful!
Review: ...........some very well known poets and their work! If you are learning about poetry, as I am, this is just the place to start. This anthology, compiled in 1958, contains work by Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Robert Frost, Longfellow, Milton, Wordsworth, Keats, Poe, Shelley, Tennyson among many, many more. The overview this anthology provides is excellent. Photographs of each author are also included with each poem.This collection, I might note, also includes documents that one would not ordinarily consider poetry such as The Ten Commandments, The Gettysburg Address, The Declaration of Independence and The Magna Carta. I suppose that such documents could be considered, rather loosely, to be poetry. Their presence does not detract from the ninety-five or so other poems that are very readily accepted and well known as poetry.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Good Intro to.......
Review: ...........some very well known poets and their work! If you are learning about poetry, as I am, this is just the place to start. This anthology, compiled in 1958, contains work by Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Robert Frost, Longfellow, Milton, Wordsworth, Keats, Poe, Shelley, Tennyson among many, many more. The overview this anthology provides is excellent. Photographs of each author are also included with each poem. This collection, I might note, also includes documents that one would not ordinarily consider poetry such as The Ten Commandments, The Gettysburg Address, The Declaration of Independence and The Magna Carta. I suppose that such documents could be considered, rather loosely, to be poetry. Their presence does not detract from the ninety-five or so other poems that are very readily accepted and well known as poetry.
Rating:
Summary: A great first step into the world of poetry...
Review: I just bought this book, in search of some classic poetry, and haven't been able to put it down. My favorite is "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes, but there are certainly many more that I found moving and clever, such as "The Spider and the Fly", and "Home." This is a great first step into the world of poetry, and I can now honestly say that I am hooked!
Rating:
Summary: Just a note on one poem
Review: John Masefield wrote Sea Fever. The first line is I must down to the seas again, the lonely sea and sky. Cook has it I must go down to the seas again, the lonely sea and sky. I was shocked. Not only does adding the "go" destroy the meter but it is not sea salt argot. It seems improbable to me that Roy Cook is at one with poetry. I wonder how many of the other poems have been delt blows like this.
Rating:
Summary: Just a note on one poem
Review: John Masefield wrote Sea Fever. The first line is I must down to the seas again, the lonely sea and sky. Cook has it I must go down to the seas again, the lonely sea and sky. I was shocked. Not only does adding the "go" destroy the meter but it is not sea salt argot. It seems improbable to me that Roy Cook is at one with poetry. I wonder how many of the other poems have been delt blows like this.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Anthology and Great History Lesson
Review: My 1929 edition has always looked old, the pages were yellowing, and the oval portraits of the poets seemed outdated. I have had this old favorite on my bookshelf since childhood. Over the last month I again read all 101 poems, rediscovering poets and poetry that I had nearly forgotten. Cook's compilation is a historical snapshot, one made before the Great Depression, WWII, the Cold War, Vietnam, Civil Rights, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the US, as the only super power, faced with global terrorism. America was still fairly youthful in 1929; the Civil War had ended only 64 years before. Possibly reflecting our confidence in our American spirit and our sense of manifest destiny, this anthology includes a remarkable number of American poets. Some are no longer familiar, but their poetry sheds light on an earlier America, one that inhabited a less complicated world. One-third of the 'famous poems' belong to just twelve American poets - William Cullen Bryant -2 poems, Ralph Waldo Emerson -4, Eugene Field -3, Oliver Wendell Holmes -3, Vachel Lindsay -2, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow -7, James Russell Lowell -2, Edwin Markham -2, Edgar Allan Poe -2, James Whitcomb Riley -2, Edward Sill -2, and John Greenleaf Whittier -3. I did not recall the names Field, Lindsay, Markham, or Sill. But I clearly remember as a young boy being fascinated by the paradox in Eugene Field's 'The Duel'. Surprisingly, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman rated only one poem each. The then contemporary poets Robert Frost, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Edgar Lee Masters, and Carl Sandburg each have one poem. Another one-third comes from 15 noted English poets (9 with multiple selections) - Elizabeth and Robert Browning, Burns, Byron, Gray, George Elliott, Leigh Hunt, Keats, Kipling, Milton, Sir Walter Scott, Shakespeare, Shelley, Tennyson, and Wordsworth. The poets that created the final one-third 'famous poems' are fascinating in their anonymity. I simply did not recognize Lieut. Col. John McCrae, Henry Holcomb Bennett, Edmund Vance Cook, George Washington Doane, Sam Walter Foss, William Ernest Henley, Mary Howitt, Sergeant Joyce Kilmer, Winifred M. Letts, Clement Clarke Moore, Thomas Buchanan Read, and Ella Wheeler Wilcox. Their poems, however, were not entirely strangers: But let me live by the side of the road and be a friend of man - We shall not sleep though poppies grow in Flanders Field - a poem as lovely as a tree - Laugh and the world laughs with you - I am the captain of my soul - Will you walk into my parlor?, said the spider to the fly - The Night before Christmas. Many poems reflect the virtues of honor, commitment, respect of God, patriotism, honesty, perseverance, courage, respect for others, and loyalty. William Bennett would approve. Others are playful and simply fun to read. Lay this old, outdated collection next to your favorite chair. It's great reading. You won't be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Solid old standard
Review: My father had an old copy of this book that he read as a child. He loved to read his favorites from this book, or simply recite them from memory. They are classic rhyming poems. Another favorite book of mine is "Poetry for a Lifetime", a beautiful volume which includes a number of these poems, including "Plant a Tree" and "Home". It has a much larger number of poems and is illustrated and has comments from the editor. I highly recommend both books.
Rating:
Summary: The best little book of poetry ever!
Review: My first introduction to this book was in junior high school and I have read and reread it many times since then. It is very special. I just recently recommended it.
Rating:
Summary: This should be a requirement for any personal library.
Review: My grandmother had a copy that she shared with all her grandchildren. She read to us from it and she QUOTED to us from it. As we got older, she bought us each a copy of it, because she refused to part with hers. It has classic poems and exerpts of prose that you must have read to be literate. It is an excellent overview of the poetry of the early 20th century...and it amuses me that the Magna Carta is included in its works worth recording.
Rating:
Summary: This should be a requirement for any personal library.
Review: My grandmother had a copy that she shared with all her grandchildren. She read to us from it and she QUOTED to us from it. As we got older, she bought us each a copy of it, because she refused to part with hers. It has classic poems and exerpts of prose that you must have read to be literate. It is an excellent overview of the poetry of the early 20th century...and it amuses me that the Magna Carta is included in its works worth recording.
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