A groundbreaking anthology containing the work of poets who have witnessed war, imprisonment, torture, and slavery. A companion volume to Against Forgetting, Poetry of Witness is the first anthology to reveal a tradition that runs through English-language poetry. The 300 poems collected here were composed at an extreme of human endurance—while their authors awaited execution, endured imprisonment, fought on the battlefield, or labored on the brink of breakdown or death. All bear witness to historical events and the irresistibility of their impact. Alongside Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth, this volume includes such writers as Anne Askew, tortured and executed for her religious beliefs during the reign of Henry VIII; Phillis Wheatley, abducted by slave traders; Samuel Bamford, present at the Peterloo Massacre in 1819; William Blake, who witnessed the Gordon Riots of 1780; and Samuel Menashe, survivor of the Battle of the Bulge. Poetry of Witness argues that such poets are a perennial feature of human history, and it presents the best of that tradition, proving that their work ranks alongside the greatest in the language.

This volume provides essays by twenty-nine leading scholars and critics on the best English poets from Chaucer to Larkin.

Offers new interpretations of poems by Milton, Jonson, Herrick, and Lovelace, and looks at five themes in seventeenth century English poetry.

100 Great Poets provides a concise but comprehensive overview of the poetic tradition in English. Chronologically arranged, the book presents the major poets from Beowulf to the present with representative examples from each author. The headnotes and selections reflect the high notes of each poet s career the classic poems that have earned an enduring place in the canon of English language literature.