The colorful legends of the sea–pirates and mermaids, phantom ships and the sunken city of Atlantis–have inspired as many imaginations as have the realities of lighthouses and shipwrecks, of icebergs and frothing foam and seaweed.This marvelous collection includes classics old and new, from Homer and Milton to Plath and Merwin. Here are Tennyson’s seductive sea-fairies next to Poe’s beloved Annabel Lee. Here is Coleridge’s darkly brooding “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” alongside the grandeur of Shakespeare’s “Full Fathom Five.” And here is Masefield’s “I must go down to the seas again” alongside Cavafy’s “Ithaka” and Stevens’s “The Idea of Order at Key West.” In the wide variety of lyrics collected here–sonnets and sea chanteys, ballads and hymns and prayers–we feel the encompassing power of our planet’s restless waters as metaphor, mystery, and muse.

    This garland of Christmas poems contains not only the ones you would insist on finding here ("A Visit from St. Nicholas," "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming," and "The Twelve Days of Christmas" among them) but such equally enchanting though lesser-known Yuletide treasures as Emily Dickinson's "The Savior must have been a docile Gentleman," Anthony Hecht's "Christmas Is Coming," Rudyard Kipling's "Christmas in India," Langston Hughes's "Shepherd's Song at Christmas," Robert Graves's "The Christmas Robin," and happy surprises like Phyllis McGinley's "Office Party," Dorothy Parker's "The Maid-Servant at the Inn," and Philip Larkin's "New Year Poem."

    Poets across the continents and centuries have described the feline family–from kittens to old toms, pussycats to panthers–doing what they do best: sleeping, prowling, prancing, purring, sleeping some more, and gazing disdainfully at lesser beings like ourselves. Here are Yeats’s Minnaloushe, Christopher Smart’s Jeoffry, Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire Cat, T. S. Eliot’s Rum Tum Tugger, William Blake’s tyger and Rilke’s panther. Here are tributes from Sufi mystics, medieval Chinese poets, and haiku masters of imperial Japan, from Chaucer, Shelley, Borges, Neruda, Dickinson, and Shakespeare. Here are the cats of Mother Goose, and the one who wore the hat for Dr. Seuss.The Great Cat will delight cat lovers everywhere, celebrating as it does the beauty, the mystery, the gravity, the grace, and, of course, the unassailable superiority of the cat.

    Poems: Hopkins contains a full selection of Hopkins's work, including selected verse, prose, and letters, and an index of first lines.

    For centuries confined to a small literary elite in Japan, the writing of haiku is now practiced all over the world by those who are fascinated by its combination of technical challenge, expressive means, and extreme concentration.This anthology brings together hundreds of haiku by the Japanese masters-Basho, Issa, Buson, Shiki-with superb examples from nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers. The pioneering translator R. H. Blyth believed that the spirit of haiku is present in all great poetry; inspired by him, the editor of this volume has included lines from such poets as Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson, Thoreau, and Hopkins, presented here in haiku form. Following them are haiku and haiku-influenced poems of the twentieth century-from Ezra Pound's "In a Station of the Metro" to William Carlos Williams's "Prelude to Winter," and from the irreverence of Jack Kerouac to the lyricism of Langston Hughes. The result is a collection as compact, dynamic, and scintillating as the form itself.

     The Arabic poetic legacy is as vast as it is deep, spanning a period of fifteen centuries in regions from Morocco to Iraq. Themes of love, nature, religion, and politics recur in works drawn from the pre-Islamic oral tradition through poems anticipating the recent Arab Spring. Editor Marlé Hammond has selected more than fifty poems reflecting desire and longing of various kinds: for the beloved, for the divine, for the homeland, and for change and renewal. Poets include the legendary pre-Islamic warrior ‘Antara, medieval Andalusian poet Ibn Zaydun, the mystical poet Rabi‘a al-‘Adawiyya, and the influential Egyptian Romantic Ahmad Zaki Abu Shadi. Here too are literary giants of the past century: Khalil Jibran, author of the best-selling The Prophet; popular Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani; Palestinian feminist Fadwa Tuqan; Mahmoud Darwish, bard of occupation and exile; acclaimed iconoclast Adonis; and more. In their evocations of heroism, nostalgia, mysticism, grief, and passion, the poems gathered here transcend the limitations of time and place.

    In this anthology–the first devoted exclusively to blues poems–a wide array of poets pay tribute to the form and offer testimony to its lasting power.The blues have left an indelible mark on the work of a diverse range of poets: from “The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes and “Funeral Blues” by W. H. Auden, to “Blues on Yellow” by Marilyn Chin and “Reservation Blues” by Sherman Alexie. Here are blues-influenced and blues-inflected poems from, among others, Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg, June Jordan, Richard Wright, Nikki Giovanni, Charles Wright, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Cornelius Eady. And here, too, are classic song lyrics–poems in their own right–from Bessie Smith, Robert Johnson, Ma Rainey, and Muddy Waters.The rich emotional palette of the blues is fully represented here in verse that pays tribute to the heart and humor of the music, and in poems that swing with its history and hard-bitten hope.

    Though he earned his central place in our culture as an essayist and philosopher, since his death his reputation as a poet has grown as well.Known for challenging traditional thought and for his faith in the individual, Emerson was the chief spokesman for the Transcendentalist movement. His poems speak to his most passionately held belief: that external authority should be disregarded in favor of one’s own experience. From the embattled farmers who “fired the shot heard round the world” in the stirring “Concord Hymn,” to the flower in “The Rhodora,” whose existence demonstrates “that if eyes were made for seeing, / Then Beauty is its own excuse for being,” Emerson celebrates the existence of the sublime in the human and in nature. Combining intensity of feeling with his famous idealism, Emerson’s poems reveal a moving, more intimate side of the man revered as the Sage of Concord.

    EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY POCKET POETS.This selection of poems from across the ages brings to life a staggering array of zombies, ghosts, vampires, and devils. Our culture's current obsession with zombies and vampires is only the latest form of a fascination with crossing the boundary between the living and the dead that has haunted humans since we first began writing. The poetic evidence gathered here ranges from ancient Egyptian inscriptions and the Mesopotamian epic Gilgamesh to the Greek bard Homer, and from Shakespeare and Milton and Keats to Emily Dickinson and Edgar Allan Poe. Here too are terrifying apparitions from a host of more recent poets, from T. S. Eliot and Sylvia Plath to Rita Dove and Billy Collins, from Allen Ginsberg and H. P. Lovecraft to Mick Jagger and Shel Silverstein. The result is a delightfully entertaining volume of spine-tingling poems for fans of horror and poetry both.

    Poems: Keats contains a full selection of Keats's work, including his lyric poems, narrative poems, letters, and an index of first lines.

    A classicist, a headlong visionary, a social radical, and a poet of serene artistry with a lyric touch second to none, Shelley gave voice to English romanticism's deepest aspirations.

    Still popular more than a century after their deaths, their poetry vividly reflects the unique nature of their relationship.This collection presents the Brownings’ work in the context of their lives: the early years and their initial friendship, their courtship and marriage, the fifteen happy years they spent living in Italy until Elizabeth’s death. Whether in short poems such as Elizabeth’s “Hector in the Garden” and Robert’s “Natural Magic,” or in extracts from longer works such as Aurora Leigh and Pauline, the great themes they shared are all represented: love, marriage, illicit passion, England and Italy, childhood, religion, poetry, and nature. Elizabeth’s famous Sonnets from the Portuguese, based on their love affair, is included in its entirety. The poems are augmented with a generous selection of the marvelous letters the Brownings wrote to each other.

    Includes his classics "Mending Wall, " "Birches, " and "The Road Not Taken, " as well as poems less famous but equally great.POEMS INCLUDED:ForewordThe PastureInto My OwnGhost HouseMy November GuestLove and a QuestionA Late WalkStarsStorm FearWind and Window FlowerFlower-GatheringRose PogoniasWaitingIn a ValeA Dream PangIn NeglectThe Vantage PointMowingGoing for WaterThe Trial by ExistenceThe Tuft of FlowersPan with UsA Line-Storm SongOctoberMy ButterflyReluctanceMending WallThe Death of the Hired ManThe MountainA Hundred CollarsHome BurialThe Black CottageBlueberriesA Servant to ServantsAfter Apple-PickingThe CodeThe Generations of MenThe HousekeeperThe FearThe Wood-PileGood HoursThe Road Not TakenChristmas TreesAn Old Man’s Winter NightA Patch of Old SnowIn the Home StretchThe TelephoneMeeting and PassingHyla BrookThe Oven BirdBond and FreeBirchesPea BrushPutting in the SeedA Time to TalkThe Cow in Apple TimeAn EncounterRange-FindingThe Hill WifeThe BonfireA Girl’s GardenThe Exposed Nest“Out, Out –”Brown’s DescentThe Gum-GathererThe Line-GangThe Vanishing RedSnowThe Sound of the TreesA Star in a Stone-BoatThe Census-TakerMapleThe Ax-HelveThe GrindstoneWild GrapesThe Pauper Witch of GraftonFire and IceMisgivingSnow DustFor Once, Then, SomethingThe OnsetGood-by and Keep ColdThe Need of Being Versed in Country ThingsFragmentary BlueThe Flower Boat

    Poems: Rossetti contains a full selection of Rossetti's work, including her lyric poems, dramatic and narrative poems, rhymes and riddles, sonnet sequences, prayers and meditations, and an index of first lines.

    Poems: Rilke contains poems from The Book of Images; New Poems; Requiem for a Friend; Poems, 1906-1926; French Poems; The Life of Mary; Sonnets to Orpheus; The Duino Elegies; Letters to a Young Poet; and an index of first lines.