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A Little History of Poetry

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A Little History of Poetry

By: John Carey
Narrated by: Ralph Lister
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The Bookseller (UK) Editor's Choice

A vital, engaging, and hugely enjoyable guide to poetry, from ancient times to the present, by one of our greatest champions of literature

What 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. This little history is about some that have not.

John 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. This little history shines a light on the richness and variation of the world’s poems - and the elusive quality that makes them all the more enticing.

©2020 John Carey (P)2020 Blackstone Publishing Collections & Anthologies Literary History & Criticism Poetry English Poetry
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An absolutely wonderful book, well written and well read. Will listen again. And again, probably

Brilliant.

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I don't have any specific complain. This content is probably not best in audiobook format. I'll try it as a reading book some day. For now, I didn't finish it.

Not for audiobooks

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An enjoyable race through (mostly) English poetry. I'd have preferred more quotations though. Something of a menu to make you start reading the poets in depth...

recommended

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very well narrated book. Good balance of quotations and facts, coupled with a fair perspective and opinion.

Great read through

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Nothing too fancy, but short chapters give a clear account of the great poets of different periods and movements.

As that great poet Ron Seal famously put it "It does. What it says. On the tin."

A good little poetry primer

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