Product Description

Taking its inspiration from Shakespeare's idea of the 'seven ages' of a human life, this new anthology brings together the best-loved poems in English to inspire, comfort and delight readers for a lifetime. Beginning with babies, the book is divided into sections on childhood, growing up, making a living and making love, family life, getting older, and approaching death, ending with poems of mourning and commemoration. Ranging from Chaucer to Carol Ann Duffy, via Shakespeare, Keats, and Lemn Sissay, this book offers something for each of those moments in life - whether falling in love, finding your first grey hair or saying your final goodbyes - when only a poem will do.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14618 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 416 pages

About the Author
Selected by former Penguin Classics editorial director Laura Barber, a lifetime lover of poetry. Laura spent the better part of a year reading dozens of anthologies and many more poetry collections to put together this fantastic collection. Laura also put together Penguin's Poems by Heart and the forthcoming Penguin's Poems for Love. Laura lives in London, where she now publishes contemporary literature.

Customer Reviews

A near perfect anthology - to give as a gift or for your own library
This wonderfully organized collection of poems takes you through life from birth through childhoold, first love, marriage, parenthood, growing old, dying and mourning. And what's particularly appealing about it is the selection of poems - yes, you'll find many old favourites but also appropriate contemporary poems. It's a wonderful gift for a friend, lover or relative - anyone who loves poetry. Perhaps most important of all it's beautifully bound in cloth, with a ribbon marker, generously typeset and a pleasure to hold.

Good Anthology In Every Sense
I was asked by a friend abroad to find some English poems suitable for children in the 8-12 age group. He was recalling the stuff in our old primary school readers,e.g. Tennyson, Scott, Rosetti, etc.
In this unassuming volume I think I have found many poems suitable for that age group. But yet so much more for those of us who are older.
This volume selects around 360 poems from over 100 poets who wrote in English. The poems are grouped to match the different phases (and related concerns) of life from birth to death.
There are poems in this from many well-known poets through the ages from Chaucer to Plath. There are also several less-well known poets included.

Clearly, this type of anthology was well thought out from both the literary and the marketing point of view. This collection will sell well because of its providing a diverse variety of touching verse for all ages. But it will also stimulate new demand for the work of many of the more forgotten (if not totally unknown to some of us!) poets selected in it.

Ms Barber guides a motley group of readers through the foggier ridges of thought towards the fertile valley of shared emotion.

Pneguins Poems for Life
Bought this book for a friend's big birthday as she is an avid poetry reader. Every time we talk she has to tell me about another poem in the book that is wonderful. I think I will now buy the book for myself as she seems to really enjoy it. A wide selection of modern and old poems.