Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #145232 in Books
• Published on: 1998-04-09
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 1376 pages

Synopsis
Contains more than 1600 poems drawn from dozens of languages and cultures, and spans a period of more than 4000 years.

From the Author
The editors' experience of World Poetry
World Poetry took five exhilarating and demanding years to compile. Diving into the accumulated riches of four thousand years of verse from around the globe yielded so much more quality, diversity and originality than one volume could ever contain that we hope, above all, that this book will open a thousand other doors for our readers--just as it did for us. Part of its excitement involved not only the continual discovery of uniqueness in every cultural tradition, but also the unfolding of endless threads of connection in the work of poets across frontiers of time and culture. Called forth from the centuries in a multitude of languages, renewed by the accomplishments of their poet/translators, these voices do not cease to move us through the music of their poetry and the universality of their concerns.

Customer Reviews

Wonderful, surprising, fresh, enormous (<2p per poem !)
This is a stunning book - there is more variety here than any other collection I have ever seen. The beauty of these poems is breathtaking - they are truly a revelation. Ok, they are mainly translations, but what is sometimes lost in translation is made up for in the freshness and readability of the verse. I do have some reservations - but then it is good to be challenged. This is certainly not yet another cosy anthology and unfortunately some poems are too explicit for children. For English readers the American spellings and idioms - the frequent use of "color" , "Mom and Dad" appearing in a 17th Century Swedish poem - are a bit grating. A translation of Juvenal mentions Jung in a particularly alarming updating. Mao Tse Tung appears - I almost expected some watercolours by Hitler or a few verses by Stalin. Some of the translations are not the best, I feel. Also, although it is fascinating to trace ideas and images through the millennia, I would quite gleefully chuck out the oft collected English poets for more from other cultures. But... I cannot find words to describe the sheer joy and wonder of this book - just read the magical description of snow by Dafydd Ap Gwilym, the haunting "Sestina" of Dante, enchanting, fabulous poems from Persia, the Middle East, China, Armenia - everywhere ! Poems of love, despair, happiness, desire, death, illness, tragedy, faith, nature, war, time, Spring - oh everything ! You will find yourself identifying with people from completely different cultures across the other side of the world and across one, maybe two, three or four thousand years...
It is mostly well printed and if you are quick you might be lucky and get a first edition like I did !