'Inspired and enlightening ... here is a work of staggering ambition, exceptional accomplishment, and surprisingly pleasant reading ... an excellent gift for anyone interested in classical literature' A. E. Stallings, Telegraph 'An extraordinary feat ... Over and over, I was impressed both by Childers's technical abilities and his vivid way of evoking the multiple voices in this rich tradition' Emily Wilson, translator of the Odyssey and the Iliad 'Where does the lyric begin? One answer – a capacious and generous one – is given by Christopher Childers's anthology, in which translations of both Greek and Latin lyric poetry are offered in large servings, with extensive and ambitious commentary ... bold and worthwhile ... readable and learned' Peter McDonald, TLS 'An extraordinary achievement, in scope, scale and skill' Richard Jenkyns, author of Classical Literature The poems in this lively, wide-ranging and richly enjoyable anthology are the work of priestesses and warriors; of philosophers and statesmen; of teenage girls, concerned for their birthday celebrations; of drunkards and brawlers; of grumpy old men, and chic young things. Their authors write – or sing – about hopes, fears, loves, losses, triumphs and humiliations. Every one of them lived and died between 1,900 and 2,800 years ago. The Penguin Book of Greek and Latin Lyric Verse is a volume without precedent. It brings together the best of two traditions normally treated in isolation, and in doing so tells a captivating story about how literature and book-culture emerged from an oral society in which memory and learning were transmitted through song. The classical vision of lyric poetry as understood by the greatest ancient poets – Sappho and Horace, Bacchylides and Catullus – mingles and interacts with our expansive modern vision of the lyric as the brief, personal, emotional poetry of a human soul laid bare. Anyone looking for a picture of what ancient poets were up to when they were simply singing to the gods, or to their friends, or otherwise opening little verbal windows into their life and times can find it here. It is a volume full of fire and life: an undertaking of astonishing reach, and an accomplishment magisterial in its scope.

'A tremendous sentimental education of a book ... a literary adventure ... chosen with a scholarly discernment mixed with a wild-card flair ... fascinating and unignorable' Kate Kellaway, Observer (Poetry Book of the Month) 'If you have any weakness at all for poetry, this book will draw you in, then devastate you' Susie Goldsbrough. The Times Elegy is among the world's oldest forms of literature. Born in Ancient Greece, practised by the Romans, revitalized by the poets of the Renaissance and continuing down to the present day, it speaks eloquently and affectingly of the experience of loss and the yearning for consolation. It gives shape and meaning to memories too painful to contemplate, and answers our desire to fix in words what would otherwise slip our grasp. In The Penguin Book of Elegy, Andrew Motion and Stephen Regan trace the history of this tradition, from its Classical roots in the work of Theocritus, Virgil and Ovid down to modern compositions exploring personal tragedy and collective grief by such celebrated voices of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Denise Riley. The only comprehensive anthology of its kind in the English language, The Penguin Book of Elegy is a profound and moving compendium of the fundamentally human urges to remember and honour the dead, and to give comfort to those who survive them.

This is the first book of its kind. It contains some two hundred and fifty poems by the major English and American poets from Swinburne and Hopkins to Robert Lowell; each poem is a translation of imitation of a work in a foreign tongue. Twenty-two languages are represented in this glittering collection. They range from Hebrew and classical Greek to modern Chinese, from Polish to Korean. Yeats, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, W.H. Auden, Richard Wilbur, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald are included--each a master in his own right, but seen here as the re-creator of another poet's voice. George Steiner believes that ours is the most beautiful period of poetic translation since the Elizabethans. Here is his evidence.--Cover

Renowned poet Mary Jo Salter, whose command of verse forms and high intelligence is universally acknowledged, selects the poems for the 2024 edition of The Best American Poetry, “a ‘best’ anthology that really lives up to its title” (Chicago Tribune). The Best American Poetry series has been “one of the mainstays of the poetry publication world” (Academy of American Poets) since 1988. Each volume presents a curated selection of the year’s most brilliant, striking, and innovative poems, with comments from the poets themselves offering unique insight into their work. Here, guest editor Mary Jo Salter, whose own poems display a sublime wit “driven by a compulsion to confront the inexplicable” (James Longenbach), has picked seventy-five poems that capture the dynamism of American poetry today. The series and guest editors contribute valuable introductory essays that assess the current state of American poetry, and this year’s edition is certain to capture the attention of both Best American Poetry loyalists and newcomers to the most important poetry anthology of our time.

Lawrence first put together the collection of his poems in 1928. They are arranged chronologically "to make up a biography of an emotional and inner life".