Secondhand Poetry Bargain Book Box SP2859

Secondhand Poetry Bargain Book Box SP2859

Twenty poetry books spanning the First World War to Robert Frost, Edgar Lee Masters, Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney, Clive James, Erica Jong, and John Betjeman — alongside the Metaphysical Poets, Browning, and two volumes from John Reid's beloved ABC Poet's Corner. A warm and wide-ranging collection from the serious to the celebratory.

1. Men Who March Away: Poems of the First World War — ed. I.M. Parsons — Parsons's authoritative Great War anthology, gathering the full range of voices from Rupert Brooke's early idealism through to the bitter disillusionment of Owen, Sassoon, and Rosenberg.
2. The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins — ed. W.H. Gardner and N.H. MacKenzie (Fourth Edition, Oxford) — The standard scholarly edition of Hopkins's complete poems — the text from which every serious reader of Hopkins works.
3. Prize Winning Poetry: Battle of Britain Anniversary — compiled by C. John Taylor — An anthology assembled from the Battle of Britain Annual Poetry Collections, with the distinction of including Margaret Thatcher's stated favourite poem — a curio of its political moment.
4. The Lure of the Limerick — W.S. Baring-Gould — Baring-Gould's entertaining history and anthology of the limerick, tracing the form from its origins through to its twentieth-century flowering in barrooms and drawing rooms alike.
5. Restoration and Augustan Poets: Milton to Goldsmith — ed. W.H. Auden and Norman Holmes Pearson — Auden and Pearson's selection from the period between the Metaphysicals and the Romantics — Pope, Dryden, Swift, Gray, and their contemporaries in one authoritative portable volume.
6. Spoon River Anthology — Edgar Lee Masters — Masters's extraordinary 1915 collection of dramatic monologues spoken by the dead inhabitants of a Midwestern town, each revealing the secret truths of their lives — one of the most original American poetry collections of the twentieth century.
7. The Rattle Bag — ed. Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes — The landmark personal anthology compiled by two of the greatest poets of the century, arranged alphabetically and deliberately subverting every expectation of what an anthology should contain — one of the best poetry anthologies ever made.
8. The Poetry of Robert Frost — ed. Edward Connery Lathem — The standard collected edition, from the early New Hampshire landscapes through to his late work — gathering one of the twentieth century's most deceptively complex voices.
9. Selected Poetry of Browning — ed. Kenneth L. Knickerbocker (Modern Library College Editions) — A scholarly selection from the Victorian poet whose dramatic monologues — My Last Duchess, Fra Lippo Lippi, Andrea del Sarto — remain among the most psychologically vivid poems in the language.
10. The Metaphysical Poets — ed. Helen Gardner — Gardner's landmark Oxford anthology presenting Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, Marvell, and Vaughan alongside her critical framework for understanding what makes them distinctive — essential.
11. Robert Lowell: Selected Poems — Faber paper covered editions — A selection from one of the dominant voices in twentieth-century American poetry — the confessional intensity of Life Studies, the political engagement of For the Union Dead, the formal range of everything in between.
12. Love — A themed anthology gathering love poems across centuries and cultures, its vivid 1960s cover art matching the expansive emotional ambition of its contents.
13. Corgi Modern Poets in Focus 2 — A volume presenting work by Wilfred Owen, Thomas Blackburn, Seamus Heaney, William Meredith, and Douglas Dunn — an eclectic and stimulating mix of twentieth-century voices.
14. The Book of My Enemy: Collected Verse 1958-2003 — Clive James — Forty-five years of poems from a writer better known as a critic and broadcaster, revealing an entirely different dimension — witty, formally accomplished, and often unexpectedly moving.
15. The Best of John Reid's Poet's Corner: Volume Two — A second collection of poems, stories, and anecdotes from John Reid's beloved ABC radio program — the kind of book that reminds you what poetry meant to ordinary Australian listeners.
16. The Best of John Reid's Poet's Corner — The first collection from Reid's 3LO radio show, illustrated by Peter Putzamer — an affectionate gathering of verse that carries the warmth of its original broadcast audience.
17. Favourite Poems We Learned in School — compiled by Thomas F. Walsh — The poems that stayed with people long after they left the classroom — a nostalgic and warmly useful anthology of the verses that formed generations of readers.
18. The Penguin Book of Australian Verse — ed. Harry Heseltine — Heseltine's comprehensive Penguin anthology — the essential introduction to a national poetic tradition that continues to surprise and reward.
19. Selected Poems II — Erica Jong — The second volume of selected poems from the author of Fear of Flying, revealing a serious and formally accomplished poet whose verse has often been overshadowed by her fame as a novelist.
20. John Betjeman's Collected Poems — The complete poems of Britain's much-loved Poet Laureate, whose topographical elegies and wry social observation made him the most popular British poet of the mid-twentieth century — a book to keep within reach.