Poetry
Top 15 in Poetry
Week of September 21, 2026
Top 15 in Poetry
Week of September 21, 2026
by Bacchylides
Until a century ago, the fifth-century Greek poet Bacchylides was known only by 107 nonsequential lines buried as quotations in the writings of other ancient authors. With the discovery in 1896 of a papyrus containing his work, 1,382 lines were reassembled and the poems of Bacchylides finally began to take shape for the modern reader. Slavitt argues in the Introduction to this collection that, although Bacchylides is often considered a "lesser Pindar," he is a poet who warrants consideration. "He deserves attention not because he is beetling, like Pindar, but because he is not. He relies on craftsmanship and reliably displays an attractive grace and elegance."
by Elizabeth Bishop
"Geography III," Bishop's final book of poems, first appaered in 1976. It contains such masterpieces as "In the Waiting Room," "The Moose," and "One Art."
by Charles Baudelaire
In this classic of decadent poetics, the dark, troubled vision of Charles Baudelaire lives, growing like a tangled rosebush of prickling thorns, bringing the Satanic majesty of a fallen world into the metrical regularity of his poisoned pen verse. A French master every bit the equal of the gothic tragedian Poe, Baudelaire's "Flowers" encompasses and exposes a world of titanic grief and ultimate grace, wasted love and bitter, dark remonstrance. What are the dark, ugly byways and hidden, corrupt nooks of the human experience? A sweeping masterpiece of literary song. Online bookstore: www.lulu.com/zem66
by John Milton
A revision of the Prentice Hall edition of 1962.David Scott Kastan preserves the quality and character of Hughes's richly annotated edition in this masterful revision, which includes a thorough updating of the text, notes, and bibliographies to reflect the scholarship of the last half-century. Kastan's new introductory essay engages the pressing questions the poem raises for contemporary readers, focusing on the literary, religious, and political dimensions of Paradise Lost that have made its reading a demanding yet always exhilarating experience.
by Lawrence Durrell
In this new selection from the poetry of Lawrence Durrell (the first for thirty years), Peter Porter has drawn on the full range of the published work, from A Private Country (1943) to Vega (1973), and has provided a long overdue revaluation of Durrell's poetic career. In his detailed and generous introduction, Porter makes the case for A Private Country as one of the most accomplished debut collections of the twentieth century, and traces Durrell's preoccupations and poetic personality within the wider scene. The selection of poems makes its own strong case for the continuing power and originality of this attractive, metropolitan and wholly individual body of work.
by Carolyne Larrington
This collection of Norse-Icelandic mythological and heroic poetry contains the greater narratives of the creation of the world and the coming of Ragnarok, the Doom of the Gods.
by J.R.R. Tolkien
Many years ago, J.R.R. Tolkien composed his own version of the great legend of Northern antiquity, recounted here in The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún. In the Lay of the Völsungs is told the ancestry of the great hero Sigurd, the slayer of Fáfnir, most celebrated of dragons; of his awakening of the Valkyrie Brynhild, who slept surrounded by a wall of fire, and of their betrothal; and of his coming to the court of the great princes who were named the Niflungs (or Nibelungs), with whom he entered into blood-brotherhood. In scenes of dramatic intensity, of confusion of identity, thwarted passion, jealousy, and bitter strife, the tragedy of Sigurd and Brynhild, of Gunnar the Niflung and Gudrún his sister, mounts to its end in the murder of Sigurd, the suicide of Brynhild, and the despair of Gudrún. The Lay of Gudrún recounts her fate after the death of Sigurd, her marriage against her will to the mighty Atli, ruler of the Huns (the Attila of history), his murder of her brothers, and her hideous revenge.
by César Vallejo
A definitive, bilingual collection of poetry by one Latin America's most important poets features more than eighty poems that span the full range of his literary career, accompanied by an introduction that looks at Vallejo's life, his complex literary style, his leftist politics, and more. Original.
by Nikolaĭ Ėrdman
A satirical comedy about an unemployed 'little man' who contemplates suicide and is besieged by spokespeople of discontented groups, from butchers to intellectuals, who want him to turn his suicide into a gesture on their behalf.
by Homer
The great war epic of Western literature, translated by acclaimed classicist Robert Fagles, and featured in the Netflix series The OA A Penguin Classic Dating to the ninth century B.C., Homer’s timeless poem still vividly conveys the horror and heroism of men and gods wrestling with towering emotions and battling amidst devastation and destruction, as it moves inexorably to the wrenching, tragic conclusion of the Trojan War. Renowned classicist Bernard Knox observes in his superb introduction that although the violence of the Iliad is grim and relentless, it coexists with both images of civilized life and a poignant yearning for peace. Combining the skills of a poet and scholar, Robert Fagles, winner of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and a 1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, brings the energy of contemporary language to this enduring heroic epic. He maintains the drive and metric music of Homer’s poetry, and evokes the impact and nuance of the Iliad’s mesmerizing repeated phrases in what Peter Levi calls “an astonishing performance.” This Penguin Classics Deluxe edition also features French flaps and deckle-edged paper. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide
by Jalal al-Din Rumi
'If something else can capture your attention Then it's not love, but just a trivial passion - Love is that flame which, once it blazes up, Burns everything but the Beloved up.' This is the first ever translation of the entirety of Book Five of Rumi's magnum opus, The Masnavi, into English. Prior to this verse translation in heroic couplets, translations were either of selected passages or in lineated prose with passages deemed too salacious rendered into Latin, as was the convention in Britain of the early twentieth century. This fifth book of Rumi's The Masnavi is well-known to contain much sexually explicit content within teaching stories about the path of annihilation of the self in a total and uncompromising way.
by C. S. Lewis
"Spirits in Bondage reveals the earliest published thoughts of C. S. Lewis. However, we find an unfamiliar Lewis--not the mature Christian but the young atheist cynic, who fought in the harrowing Great War. In these poems Lewis dreads the dangerous worls the keeps us from living meaningful lives" --
by Myung Mi Kim
"The poems in Commons are at once global and intensely personal and emotional. An immensely talented poet, Myung Mi Kim loves language - its internal rhymes, alliterations, and diverse rhythms. Caught off guard by the beauty and precision of Kim's language and the exquisite images she so deftly conjures, we are drawn unwittingly into a web of fragmentary memories that subvert what we think we know about the violent history that haunts her and never ceases to demand recognition."--Elaine Kim, author of Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the Writings and Their Social Context, and co-editor of Dangerous Women: Gender and Korean Nationalism
by A. C. Hamilton
The Faerie Queene is a scholarly masterpiece that has influenced, inspired, and challenged generations of writers, readers and scholars since its completion in 1596. Hamilton's edition is itself, a masterpiece of scholarship and close reading. It is now the standard edition for all readers of Spenser. The entire work is revised, and the text of The Faerie Queene itself has been freshly edited, the first such edition since the 1930s. This volume also contains additional original material, including a letter to Raleigh, commendatory verses and dedicatory sonnets, chronology of Spenser's life and works and provides a compilation of list of characters and their appearances in The Faerie Queene.
