Great Poetry

In this collection, you’ll find stories conveyed through poetry and song. Some of them will no doubt be familiar to you - like Francis Scott Key’s Star Spangled Banner and Julia Ward Howe’s Battle Hymn of the Republic (although many people are only familiar with the first verse). Other poems will be entirely new to you. My hope is that you’ll embrace both the familiar and the unfamiliar as pieces of the American story that deserve to be remembered.

Considered the bridge between romanticism and modernism, Matthew Arnold wrote verse that is simple, unadorned, and straightforward. From the hypnotic and beautiful lines of "Dover Beach" to the pastoral narrative of "The Scholar Gipsy", Arnold cast a gaze at the main intellectual issues of the 19th century while giving a timeless insight into man and nature. This collection covers his major poetic works, including the narrative poems, sonnets and elegiac poems, illuminating the lyricism and serenity of Arnold's best poetry.

This anthology of Kipling's most famous poems - including "If", "Mandalay", "Gunga Din" - is taken from Naxos AudioBooks' Great Poets series. Though sometimes still regarded as a product of the colonial era, Kipling touches a very popular nerve in Britain's literary tradition and is regarded more generously now as a master of popular verse. It is often forgotten that he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1907.

No poet is more closely identified with the First World War than Wilfred Owen. His striking body of work, grim to the point of brutality yet, at the same time, majestic and awe-inspiring, defines the war for us. It is in each of these famous poems that Owen reflects on the four terrible months that he lived through; he conveys the experience of war, the death, the destruction and the filth, through a unique poetic language and a bold artistic vision.

Today, Christians in the United States of America are asleep, and it's time for them to wake up! While Jesus Christ taught his followers to love their enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that persecute you, various presidents, politicians, and even religious talking heads command their constituents and listeners to kill their enemies, do evil to them that hate you, and bomb them that persecute you. The question is, who will you follow: the religious right or the right religion, the constitution or the word of God, the POTUS or Jesus Christ?

WINNER OF THE 2025 JAMES LAUGHLIN AWARD FROM THE ACADEMY OF AMERICAN POETS A stunning new collection exploring lineage and the legacy of survival as seen through the life of the poet’s grandmother Alice—a Black woman born in the Jim Crow South—using the King James Bible as a narrative...

There have been many translators of Chinese literature and poetry over time, but Arthur Waley stands out as one of the best known and most loved. This is perhaps because he had an attribute that most others lacked, which is his poetic abilities. Waley was as much a poet himself as a translator, and while his scholarly erudition was matched by a few others at his time, none ever managed to bring out the true character of Chinese poetry quite so well.

Written over the course of five years, these poems grapple with purpose and reality from a myriad of existentialist perspectives and themes. Through these poems, we travel through the cosmos, to various mythological settings, and even to our own neurons. If you’re seeking to rearrange your grey matter, this is the collection for you.

Discover the heartbeat of American poetry through 101 Great American Poems — a carefully curated collection that spans centuries of voices. From the reflective verses of Anne Bradstreet to the bold rhythms of Langston Hughes, this anthology captures the soul of a nation through themes of love, loss, freedom, and hope. Tracing a journey from Puritan resolve to the artistic fervor of the Harlem Renaissance, these poems invite readers to explore America's evolving identity across generations and genres.

Here are the extraordinary writings of a generation who fought through a war of unprecedented destructive power, and who had to find new voices to express the horror of what they discovered. The great names - Owen, Sassoon - are fully represented, but there are also many poems by lesser-known or unexpected figures, ranging from serving soldiers like Isaac Rosenberg and Richard Aldington to women such as Edith Nesbit and Vera Brittain.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was born in Cockermouth, in the Lake District. His Lyrical Ballads, written in collaboration with Coleridge, was published in 1798, and shortly afterwards he settled in Dove Cottage, Grasmere, with his sister Dorothy. Inspired in his early manhood by the French Revolution, he grew disillusioned with revolutionary politics and in later life became decidedly conservative. He left a vast body of work, ranging from delicately simple lyrics to deeply meditative odes.

The ceremony itself is just two words: "I do". But lots more has been written about the anticipation, the event, and the aftermath, and The Voices of Marriage gathers the best poems ever written on this most extraordinary moment, at once the most private and the most public, in a person's life. From Shakespeare to our own day, here are poets whose lines sparkle with wit, or hush with mystery.

Discover a collection of Rudyard Kipling’s poems written during the Great War. Depicting the war from the perspective of a patriotic citizen who struggles between his duty to his country and the outrage of the horrors that were coming out of the Western Front.

The Winnowing-Fan by Laurence Binyon was the original book of poetry within which ‘For the Fallen’ first appeared. Now used in Remembrance Day services, it is today his most famous poem. This new edition of the book includes newspaper articles and reviews, which historically re-contextualise the poems. A brief introduction and annotations to individual poems clarify both period detail and Binyon’s biographical perspectives.

This is a selection of works by three famous Irishmen: Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats and Bram Stoker. It includes: the short story by Bram Stoker, "Dracula's Guest"; Oscar Wilde's poem "Humanitad" and three versions of his "The Ballad of Reading Gaol"; and finally, an early collection of poetry called The Rose by W. B. Yeats. There is a general introduction by the writer and actor Tim Dalgleish and other additional material.

Acclaimed writer Henry Van Dyke presents a staller collection of poems that also served as hymns in churches in the early 1900s. One is still sung today. Encouragement found in each stanza.

Tres grandes poetas de América, Neruda, León de Greiff y Silva (leídos por ellos mismos) se reúnen en esta antología única, que permite apreciar matices incluso desconocidos de la obra de ellos. Este audiolibro se agrega a la serie de poemas leídos, con nombres atractivos e indispensables para los amantes de la poesía.

Beloved and trailblazing author Judy Blume comes to life in this poetic picture book about her childhood. Judy Blume is known for fearlessly discussing topics that were once considered taboo. As a young girl, Judy was not encouraged to share her feelings, so instead she invented stories as a way...

Willa Cather's early poem, "April Twilights," serves as a precursor to themes of love and nature that appear in her later novels. This collection also includes poems by poetesses Christina Rossetti, Sarah Teasdale, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Amy Lowell, as well as a sampling of works by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Over the years while writing, directing, and acting at radio theater workshops and in the Mark Time Radio Show performances at Minneapolis' CONvergence science fiction conventions, Brian Price and Jerry Stearns found that they shared a love for classic Beat poetry, Lord Buckley, and prose poems, so they started doing some of their own. This is a collection of their unique hybrid of humor, music, character, and performance.