A Little History of Poetry (Little Histories)

Product Description
A vital, engaging, and hugely enjoyable guide to poetry, from ancient times to the present, by one of our greatest champions of literature--selected as the literature book of the year by the London Times\n“[A] fizzing, exhilarating book.”—Sebastian Faulks, Sunday Times, London\n“Delightful.’”—New York Times Book Review\nWhat is poetry? If music is sound organized in a particular way, poetry is a way of organizing language. It is language made special so that it will be remembered and valued. It does not always work—over the centuries countless thousands of poems have been forgotten. But this Little History is about some that have not.\nJohn Carey tells the stories behind the world’s greatest poems, from the oldest surviving one written nearly four thousand years ago to those being written today. Carey looks at poets whose works shape our views of the world, such as Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Whitman, and Yeats. He also looks at more recent poets, like Derek Walcott, Marianne Moore, and Maya Angelou, who have started to question what makes a poem “great” in the first place.\nFor readers both young and old, this little history shines a light for readers on the richness of the world’s poems—and the elusive quality that makes them all the more enticing.
Review
“[The] book reviewer and Oxford don has great fun, galloping through 4,000 years of verse. Reputations are flayed and poetic gems are uncovered.”—Robbie Millen and Andrew Holgate,
The Times and Sunday Times, “Best Books of 2020”\n“[A] fizzing, exhilarating book”—Sebastian Faulks,
Sunday Times\n“Carey’s delightful survey never takes itself or its subject too seriously. ‘Over the centuries countless thousands of poems have been forgotten,’ he writes. ‘This is a book about some that have not.’”—
New York Times Book Review\n“Don’t let the diminutive title fool you. This is an expansive, not to mention accessible, tour of poetry’s importance and evolution, from ‘Beowulf’ to Shakespeare to Maya Angelou and beyond.”—
Washington Post 2020 Holiday Gift Guide\n“Few modern literature professors are capable of writing a book as interesting and mischievous as this.”—James Marriott,
The Times ‘Best Literary Non-Fiction Books of 2020’\n“This supremely compact and erudite introduction doesn’t just pack in a bunch of facts and potted biographies, it somehow manages to convey the transcendent glory of the form through the ages, whether it’s sagas, hymns, ballads or verse...Carey is frighteningly well informed but always accessible, and this guide will offer riches whether you’re a total newbie or a poetry buff.”—Sybille Bedford,
The Sunday Times 'Best Literary Books of 2020' \n“As an introduction to poetry, and a reminder of its power to find beauty and consolation in almost every human experience, this anthology is a delight.”—Jane Shilling,
Daily Mail ‘Must Reads'\n“In this clever, wide-ranging history, British literary critic Carey provides a tour of Western poetry, from Homer to Maya Angelou. Each brief chapter tackles one or more poets representative of a particular era, with excerpts from their works, brief accounts of their lives, and Carey’s insightful critical commentaries. . . . Those looking for a shrewdly condensed and accessible history of poetry could not ask for a better guide.”—
Publishers Weekly\n“A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray. . . . Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.”—
Kirkus Reviews\n“An Oxford don, John Carey has a remarkably unpretentious and encyclopedic knowledge of names, places, poems, poets, and poetic moments and movements, which he evinces while offering a subtle critique of modernist obscurity.”—James P. Lenfestey,
Rain Taxi\n“Warm in tone, informative, generous in its sympathies, inviting in its choices, with a clear emphasis on human stories underpinning poetic achiev