Leslie PockellResenhas

I sought out this collection after reading a discussion thread not long ago about the most memorable/traumatizing short stories assigned by high school English teachers. Only 21 stories are included here, and they are limited to those of only American origin, but I thought it was a reasonably well-rounded collection. They range from the humorous and the delightfully disturbing to the incomprehensible ("The Call of Cthulhu") and the weirdly twisted, and I limited my reading to no more than a single story each day to allow more time to ruminate.

One of probably many books claiming to have the "best" love poems. This collection (100 poems on 128 pages) covers centuries of romantic poetry. The collection had many, many poems I was already familiar with, but also some I was not as familiar with. The editor/s add a comment under a poem's title, perhaps to help those who may be less comfortable with poetry understand what the it's trying to convey.

I picked this up because of the lightweight paperback size - easy to slip into one’s beach bag or briefcase. I’ve had it around since 2007 and never thought to review it. It would be a great gift book for a friend or another loved one who might not read a lot of poetry. Here are two of the poems from the anthology…

The Avenue by Frances Cornford (granddaughter of Charles Darwin)

Who has not seen their lover
Walking at ease,
Walking like any other
A pavement under trees,
Not singular; apart,
But footed, featured, dressed,
Approaching like the rest
In the same dapple of the summer caught;
Who has not suddenly thought
With swift surprise:
There walks in cool disguise,
There comes, my heart.

Habitation

Marriage is not
a house or even a tent

it is before that, and colder:

the edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat
outside, eating popcorn

the edge of the receding glacier

where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even
this far

we are learning to make fire

Many beautiful POEMS rate Five Star reading and inspiration!

It would be good to edit out the depressing ones that bring it down a star.

Here are some of my favorites:

A good selection of poems.

This book was very sensual. It could very well be both in Teen and Adult Collections. Reading some of these poems, I had to take a second to put them down and breathe. There's a lot to unpack in each poem like there is in all poetry, but somehow these seem more straightforward. I enjoyed that the editor had compiled the poem and had placed some notes in front of nearly all of them. It helped with understanding and in some way provided a direction. The only issue I had with that is sometimes when the poem is sensual, it doesn't mean that the subject of the poem is meant to be that way even if it might be listed as such. Regardless, I enjoyed several of the poems. I don't think I would recommend this to a teenager but for an adult, I might.

A great selection of must-read poems. Some humorous and some spiritual and many thought provoking.

Disappointed that most of the poems are "old" (only 1 that is post 1950 -- Billy Collins "Taking off Emily Dickinson's Clothes") and also already frequently anthologized, but appreciate Pockell's commentary about each poem and its reflection of American identity. Nice tapestry of influences. (Star-Spangled Banner, Paul Revere's Ride, I Hear America Singing, Hope is the thing with Feathers, Chicago, Dream Deferred, One Art, We Real Cool and 92 other favorites.) Classic and reliable.

While I really enjoyed being exposed to some new poems, some of the poems in this collection, like Poe's "The Bells" for instance, are most certainly not poems to lift your spirits. I think the author needs to look again for tone and edit the collection accordingly.½

I honestly don't have much to say about this book. I did enjoy it, but what can you really say about a collection of stories? There were the classic tales like "The Tell Tale Heart" and "The Monkey's Paw". There were also some new stories I had never read before. I especially enjoyed "Green Tea". I wouldn't call these tales especially "horrifying", but it was a decent collection nonetheless.

The best poems? Not necessarily. Still, 100 great poems nonetheless. A veritable who's who of poetry.

I read this book in honor of Halloween. Not a big fiction reader I thought it was time to delve into the realm of terror for a little aversion from my typical non-fiction fare. This collection of 13 kind of scary stories came from an earlier era mostly in the 1800's. You will find some well known authors among them such as Poe, Well, and Stevenson. I was disappointed in the majority of them as they could get somewhat boring with the heavy style associated with the classic era of writers. However there are some gems here, my favorites being Stevenson's "The Bottle Imp", Well's "The Country of the Blind," excellent, and the closer Shirley Jackson's. "The Lottery."

In spite of the sappy-sounding title, this is a good poetry collection. Many are classic poems. However, there are several more recent poets also represented. Poems are divided in the following sections: Nature (poets include Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, e.e. cummings); Nonsense (humorous poems -- of course "Jabberwocky" is included); Spirituality ("All Things Bright and Beautiful" by Cecil Francis Alexander and "Desiderata" by Max Ehrmann are my favorites from this section); The Human Connection (including "If" by Kipling).

A nice collection to have by your bedside, or wherever you would be inclined to pick it up to read through.

I don't usually like "best of" poetry collections because they're not normally my "best of" choices - but this one was not altogether bad.

excellent source for the poetry anthology project in our middle school.

A great introduction to REAL horror, the plodding atmospheric stories -- creeping psychological/supernatural fears like the Yellow Wallpaper, the Great God Pan and Call of Cthulu as opposed to the vampires, zombies and serial killers that drown the current genre output.