New York Times
"When Miss Brooks...writes out of her heart, out of her rich and living background, out of her very real talent, then she induces almost unbearable excitement."

Harvey Curtis Webster

"She is a very good poet, the only superlative I dare use in our time of misusage; compared...to the best of modern poets, she ranks high."

An off-the-beaten-path poet, March 27, 2000
Reviewer: Shmoo Stone from Whidbey Island, Washington
Along with being a poet, cummings was a visual artist-chiefly a painter and sometimes an engraver. With his poetry, he made the attempt to arrange the words of his poems in something of an image. He also achieved this end with the words themselves: if he was to say a leaf falls, he might say: a l e (fa l l s) a f His poetry is not straight forward-if you want something easy to read, look elsewhere. But if you want to be exposed to a new and innovative style, and some exquisite writing and subject matter cummings is for you.

The primer in poetry, Robert Frost, is all yours in ONE BOOK, May 29, 2001
Reviewer: Zachary D. Langer from Middlefield, Ohio United States
After reading the first few poems, I am very glad that I took the time to order this book. It is a collection of many beautiful and intriguing poems that were written by one of the most famous poets of all time. Frost paints a picture of a certain nature scene in each poem that he writes. He displays nature and the earth as beautiful places that are filled with purity and gifts of creation. If you have a great respect and an obsession with nature's great beauty, this anthology of the writings of Robert Frost will give you a deeper meaning and understanding of the world around us. This book will explain what nature really is and how nature should be perceived by all. I highly suggest this book!!

From Booklist
In an early poem titled "Formula," Hughes (1902-67) mocks the belief that poetry should be about "lofty things." For this revolutionary African American poet, poetry had to be about "earthly pain." This poem also prefigures the central controversy of Hughes' literary career: he was celebrated as the poet laureate of Americans of African descent just as often as he was castigated for being trite and simplistic. In their succinct and informative introduction to this definitive and invaluable collection, Hughes biographer Rampersad and modern American poetry expert Roessel don't deny the fact that Hughes' newspaper work has been described as doggerel, but the 860 poems gathered here soar far above such nitpicking. All are published works, and all are exceptional. Hughes was a "democratic" poet who wanted his work to be accessible in both subject matter and style, so he wrote poems charged with the immediacy of life and the rhythm of speech and song. Influenced by the Bible, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Walt Whitman, Hughes' aesthetics were based on African American music, especially the plaintive pulse of the blues and the swoops and growls of jazz. Always a man of his times, Hughes wrote about southern violence, Harlem street life, poverty, prejudice, hunger, hopelessness, and love. Many of his poems are portraits of people whose lives are impacted by racism and sexual conflicts. During the 1930s, Hughes' poems took on a more international and politically radical tone; it was during this decade that Hughes acquired a damaging and inaccurate reputation for being a Communist. In spite of being condemned by critics on both the Left and the Right, Hughes stayed true to his muse, chronicling the black American experience and contrasting the beauty of the soul with the loathsomeness of circumstance. Donna Seaman --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

An Exhilarating Read, But Not For Everyone. . ., October 13, 2000
Reviewer: Shilo R. Blackburn (see more about me) from Pompano Beach, FL
Sharon Olds delves deeply into the heart of what it means to be human in her collection of poems, "The Gold Cell." I am continually amazed as to how she deals with taboo subjects, such as sex, religion, and morality, with direct and shockingly vivid language. In this particular collection of poems, Olds uses the image of blood to represent various motifs; the blood between family ties, its relation to sex and the body, and even the patriotic sense and the "Americaness" of blood. Using this single word, Olds is able to create an infinite number of images and meanings that go far beyond the common notion that blood is what supplies the body with life. This is by far one of the most influential books of poetry that I have encountered in my career. I do not recommend it to those who are squeamish or who are prone to heart-failure at the mention of the word "sex" or "penis." While most of her poems are alluring and evocative, many will shock you with their unabashed treatment of sensitive subjects. For those of you who wish to divulge into the mind of what it means to be human, I whole-heartedly recommend this collection of poetry. Olds' poems not only examine what it means to be human but what it means to be moral beings. Prepare for a journey that will reveal the emotional and raw psychology of the human mind.

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Sylvia Plath churned out her final poems at the remarkable rate of two or three a day, and Robert Lowell describes them as written by "hardly a person at all ... but one of those super-real, hypnotic, great classical heroines." Even more remarkable, she wrote them during one of the coldest, snowiest winters (1962-63) Londoners have ever known. Snowbound, without central heating, she and her two children spent much of their time sniffling, coughing, or running temperatures (In "Fever 103°" she writes, "I have been flickering, off, on, off on. / The sheets grow heavy as a lecher's kiss."). Pipes froze, lights failed, and candles were unobtainable.

As if these physical privations weren't enough, Plath was out in the cold in another sense--her husband, Ted Hughes, had left her for another woman earlier that year. Despite all this (or perhaps because of it), the Ariel poems dazzle with their lyricism, their surprising and vivid imagery, and their wit. Rather than confining herself to her bleak surroundings, Plath draws from a wide array of experience. In "Berck-Plage," for instance, clouds are "electrifyingly-coloured sherbets, scooped from the freeze." In "The Night Dances," the poet stands crib-side, reveling in her son's own brand of do-si-do: "Such pure leaps and spirals--Surely they travel / The world forever, I shall not entirely / Sit emptied of beauties, the gift / Of your small breath..."

Read this if you don't like poetry., October 14, 1997
Reviewer: rgralow@aol.com from Christine Gralow; San Francisco, California
Adrienne Rich is a poet for everyone - especially those who say they don't like poetry - and the Dream of a Common Language is her most fascinating and accessible collection to date. Think poetry is boring, pretentious or hackneyed? Open up to "Love Poems" and find 32 sultry and pain-stakingly honest celebrations of lesbian love and urban survival. Rich has recently been receiving the wide recognition she deserves, and she will perhaps be the one to convince Americans to open their poetry books again.

A beautiful introduction to Whitman, December 18, 2001
Reviewer: liz from New Hampton School, NH
This collection of Whitman's poetry has the ultimate selection for any reader, whether one is experienced in the composition and analyzation of Whitman or simply reading for pleasure. The book contains every known work by the author, as well as numerous editions of poems such as "Song of Myself" which was revised and reprinted by the author several times. If one is a fan of Walt Whitman, this is an excellent source of all his poetry compact into one book. If a person is just beginning to experience the poet, everything someone would want to read is at his or her fingertips.

U 2 can write a decent poem., September 30, 2000
Reviewer: A reader from Rahway, NJ USA
Whew, check out that list. & I bet you haven't read half of them even if you are a Williams fan via his selected & Pictures from Brughel.

This is the development of Williams' daily art, punctuated by an occasional masterpiece or near-surrealistic gemstone. Someone once asked John Cage, "With your methods, couldn't anyone compose music?" Cage replied, "Yes, but they don't." With Williams, it almost seems that everyone did. Williams, like every really fine poet/teacher I've ever met, was better at setting examples than at methods. He learned as he wrote, & I suspect his talk & his letters had a great deal more influence than his occasional stabs at poetics.

Williams stripped down American poesy & reconstructed it as a form of talk, which it had been all along beneath Whitman's yawping & Dickinson's obsessive editing & Frost plodding heavily though New England snow five steps at a time. Uncle Bill just didn't know any better. He didn't know he was supposed to be a somebody else; maybe a Stephen Benet, a William Vaughn Moody, an Edwin Arlington Robinson. Poor Bill.

William Butler Yeats, whom many consider this century's greatest poet, began as a bard of the Celtic Twilight, reviving legends and Rosicrucian symbols. By the early 1900s, however, he was moving away from plush romanticism, his verse morphing from the incantatory rhythms of "I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree" into lyrics "as cold and passionate as the dawn." At every stage, however, Yeats plays a multiplicity of poetic roles. There is the romantic lover of "When You Are Old" and "A Poet to His Beloved" ("I bring you with reverent Hands / The books of my numberless dreams..."). And there are the far more bitter celebrations of Maud Gonne, who never accepted his love and engaged in too much politicking for his taste: "Why should I blame her that she filled my days / With misery, or that she would of late / Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways, / Or hurled the little streets upon the great, / Had they but courage equal to desire?" There is also the poet of conscience--and confrontation. His 1931 "Remorse for Intemperate Speech" ends: "Out of Ireland have we come. / Great hatred, little room, / Maimed us at the start. / I carried from my mother's womb / A fanatic heart."

Yeats was to explore several more sides of himself, and of Ireland, before his Last Poems of 1938-39. Many are difficult, some snobbish, others occult and spiritualist. As Brendan Kennelly writes, Yeats "produces both poppycock and sublimity in verse, sometimes closely together." On the other hand, many prophetic masterworks are poppycock-free--for example, "The Second Coming" ("Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...") and such inquiries into inspiration as "Among School Children" ("O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance?"). And at his best, Yeats extends the meaning of love poetry beyond the obviously romantic: love becomes a revolutionary emotion, attaching the poet to friends, history, and the passionate life of the mind. --Kerry Fried