Reviews

The 100 Best Poems of All Time by Leslie Pockell

hinoki's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective relaxing sad fast-paced

5.0

Of course I didn't like every poem, but I loved the variety. I now know what types of poetry I prefer, so I would say that this collection got me into poetry.

aphunt_reads's review against another edition

reflective relaxing medium-paced

4.0

ewindtberg's review against another edition

4.0

Obviously these types of collections are subjective to the one compiling the poems, but I really enjoyed the variation is authors and styles.

annebennett1957's review against another edition

3.0

I couldn't help it. I kept thinking of poems I liked better than these 100 and disagreed that these are the "best."Ha!

https://headfullofbooks.blogspot.com/2021/06/poetry-book-reviews-two-very-different.html

ewwa18's review against another edition

inspiring reflective relaxing slow-paced

3.0

tamtasticbooks's review against another edition

reflective slow-paced

3.0

megadallion's review against another edition

2.0

If these are the best 100 poems of all time, then I'm even less a fan of poetry than I thought. I've always wanted to like poetry - it's a beautiful concept and seems so romantic and complicated...but it can be really boring and tedious. And a lot of it goes right over my head. I made myself read every single one of these though in hopes that I would gain a better understanding and appreciation for poetry, but unfortunately my experiment failed. I wasn't at all familiar with over half of the poems and poets included in this collection, which was really disappointing. In an "all time" list you expect to have at least heard of most of the works, right? The handful of poems that I remembered studying in either high school or college were highly enjoyable to read again, maybe because I actually learned about them back in the day. The rest, I could take or leave em. I guess I should just pick a better anthology next time.

bellatora's review against another edition

5.0

It’s hard for me to find poems I really love, so I like to get short collections of a bunch of famous/popular poems, because I feel like that’s the best chance of getting a good mix of poems I’m already familiar with and enjoy, and getting new poems that others have liked. I think this collection did a really great job overall fulfilling that expectation, and I liked the brief introductions at the beginning of each poem so that there could be some context to the poem.

mads1706's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional inspiring mysterious reflective relaxing sad tense fast-paced

4.0

laurabb's review against another edition

3.0

Like any collection, it's a fairly even mix of hits and misses.