The Broadview Anthology of Poetry

by Herbert Rosengarten (Editor), Amanda Goldrick-Jones (Editor)

"The purpose of The Broadview Anthology of Poetry is to present a wide range of poetry written in English. [Though the poems are arranged chronologically], we have compiled not a historical survey, but rather a collection of poems that represent a variety of times, places and English-speaking cultures. Our selection process was guided by a wish to combine works long accepted as part of the English-language 'canon' with material not always well represented in anthologies--such as, most notably, the poetry of women since the seventeenth century..."Another notion implicit in the framing of this anthology is that English-language poetry has dramatically expanded within the last century. Writers in Australia and New Zealand, Canada, India, Africa and the Caribbean all hold in common with writers in Britain and the United States an English-Language tradition that helped to shape their history and their institutions, and that laid the groundwork for new writings..."In trying to include as wide a selection as possible of representative work...we have had to leave out several well-known long poems. In almost all cases, however, we have chosen to represent a poet by several poems, inviting readers to take a broader view of a given writer's work and ways of thinking." - from the Preface

Genres: Poetry, Anthologies, Classics

964 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1993

Reviews

[Nathaniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was great. I didn’t read every poem, but I read A LOT of them and lipped through the entire book. My favourite was The Lady of Shallott. I’ve read it before, but I got really excited when I saw it was in here because it’s a top tier poem. I also loved Jeoffrey the Cat. That was a weird poem.

So yea…I essentially read a poetry textbook. It was fun. I would recommend.

[claudia v · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want to get into poetry, this is an awful good place to start.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now, I didn't read every poem in this anthology, but I find it is a book I shall return to over the years. I'm glad to own such a lovely anthology of poetry.

[Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the textbook for the poetry class I took in undergrad, so I decided to finally read it cover to cover. Like any broad anthology, it’s got some pieces you love and some you don’t get why they were included. I like that the editors intentionally included more than 1 work from almost every poet, and I like that it included bio notes for every poet in the back, as well as some useful explanations of poetic form.

I don’t love the footnotes; I think many of them are unnecessary, and I also just don’t like the idea of footnoting poetry on principle. Maybe later editions have excised, or at least streamlined them? we live in hope.

on the whole though, a comprehensive meander through English language poetry of the last half-millennium or so.

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's my first poetry anthology and is a great introduction, the collection covers centuries. The footnotes are a great help when reading for leisure and not taking a course.

[Joe Ramey · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book made the end of the world sound beautiful and I’m forever grateful for that.

[noemie drouin · Rating 5 out of 5]

i miss mine
surely, it's still fine

[Andrew Hammond · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm generally disappointed by poetry anthologies since they tend to be all about reifying the canon. The Broadview spends less time wandering around the dusty old halls of safe antiquity and more time on authors who aren't already dead and gone.

[Dna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Still one of my most loved collections.

[Sami Al-Khalili · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anthologies like these are always real good. It's like a maze of world of words and images. You come to and wonder what more is there. There's always more.