The Wadsworth Anthology Of Poetry: Shorter Edition

by Jay Parini (Editor)

Unlike most other poetry anthologies, arranged only chronologically or limited to the exploration of one type of poem, Jay Parini's WADSWORTH ANTHOLOGY OF POETRY collects 24 smaller, more accessible anthologies in one volume. With the guidance of an editorial board of pre-eminent literary scholars and world-renown poets, Parini has managed to offer a meaningful structure to an ambitious collection, spanning from Beowulf to Jorie Graham. Perhaps more a teaching and learning text than a definitive body of work, Parini's arrangement of poetry by form, content, and context offers a new way of learning poetry.

Genres: Poetry

1094 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2005

About the author

Jay Parini (born 1948) is an American writer and academic. He is known for novels and poetry, biography and criticism.

Reviews

[Rebecca Cantor · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great anthology of poetry. The poems are chosen for their enjoyability as much as for their importance. I also like that the poems are separated into mini-anthologies (as opposed to being arranged chronologically) within such as The Ode, The Sonnet, Couplets, Poems about Family, Poems on the nature of Nature. And there's also a section of poets in dialogue with each other, responding to each other's work. My students really enjoyed this book. It's big, but we got through a lot of it. The poems they liked the best? "Daddy" by Plath and "Mid-Term Break" by Heaney.