Rating: 
Summary: Not The Selection, But The Process
Review: I was a bit surprised when I first skimmed through the book, mainly from the stopping point selection at Hart Crane, born in 1899. I was looking foward to Bloom consolidating some of the 20th century for me, but it wasn't to be. After I sulked a while and started reading, I have found it to be one of, if not, his most approachable and rewarding book (and I have about thirteen of his latter books). What I found especially rereadable and delightful is his essay--"The Art of Reading Poetry," which is in the beginning 30 pages, divided in 8 sections. Bloom takes a very practical approach towards READING poetry and gives some advice that reminds me of his assumed heir: Helen Vendler. For instance HB says we should ask ourselves 4 questions when reading a poem. The first, (roughly from memory) is what does the poem mean, and is that meaning clearly attained. Next, can we deem the poem as simply good, or is it intrinsically well-crafted. And finally does this poem transcend its time or is it a period piece? There are other nuggets that I strongly believe will make their way into anthologies across America in due time, probably once the obtuse personality of Bloom fades and we are left with just his passion and wisdom for literature.
There are also introductory essays before the authors that offer us bio information, but of special interest and relevance. Just this morning I read that Willaim Blake and his wife, after a struggling marriage in the beginning, lived the rest of their life in contentment, by all accounts.
As a potential buyer, don't be scared of another technical, verbose, theoretical book. And don't think BLoom is trying to make his favorite poems your favorite poems; but see that he is using these poems to illustrate how to interpret and engulf your own favorite poems. This book is Bloom at his most genial and wise, and at times his most personal.
Rating:
Summary: A Preview
Review: I've been excited about this book since Dr. Bloom first mentioned it in an interview (with National Public Radio I believe). His taste in poetry is famously excellent and ridiculously well-informed: if you're upset that Poem X by Poet Y isn't present don't think for an instant Bloom hasn't read it forty times and given it the consideration he feels it warrants. But his favorites are long since on the record in lists sprinkled among his many books, and to the extent they depart from consensus they run toward the cerebral, the visionary/spiritual, the head-breakingly complex. Here's what to expect:Chaucer: selections from The Canterbury Tales, including The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Pardoner's Tale. Spenser: selections from The Faerie Queene such as the Garden of Adonis and Mutability episodes, Epithalamion, Prothalamion. Shakespeare: various sonnets and songs; if dramatic extracts are included, expect the heath scene from Lear, the country fair act from A Winter's Tale, the play-within-a-play and final scenes of Hamlet. Milton: Lycidas, l'Allegro, Il Penseroso, sonnets, perhaps Samson Agonistes, the early Satan episodes from Paradise Lost, some of the Eden business. Pope: The Rape of the Lock, selections from The Dunciad. Blake: Auguries of Innocence, The Mental Traveler, To the Accuser Who Is the God of This World, extracts from Jerusalem and from Milton. Wordsworth: the Immortality Ode, Tintern Abbey, Resolution and Independence, The Old Cumberland Beggar, The Ruined Cottage, Michael, extracts from the Prelude (possibly the whole two-book version of 1799). Coleridge: the Rime of course, Kubla Khan, Dejection: an Ode, Frost at Midnight. Byron: Stanzas to the Po, selections from Don Juan, The Vision of Judgement. Shelley: some or all of Prometheus Unbound, surely all of Adonais and the Triumph of Life, possibly The Witch of Atlas; many lyrics headed by Ode to the West Wind, The Two Spirits, Mont Blanc, To a Skylark, Ozymandias, the Jane poems. Keats: both Hyperion fragments, the Odes on an Urn, to a Nightingale, Psyche and Autumn; La Belle Dame sans Merci, The Eve of St. Agnes, various sonnets. Tennyson: poems from Maud and In Memoriam (definitely sections 95 and 103), Ulysses, The Lotos-Eaters etc. Browning: Childe Roland, Andrea del Sarto, Abt Vogler, Caliban Upon Setebos; maybe some of The Pope from The Ring and the Book. Whitman: Song of Myself (earliest version), As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life, When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom'd. Dickinson: The Tint I Cannot Take Is Best among many others. Yeats: Dialogue of Self and Soul, Vacillation, Adam's Curse, The Tower, Meru, Man and the Echo, Cuchulain Comforted. Eliot: The Waste Land, Prufrock, La figlia che piange. Crane: maybe all of The Bridge and Voyages; The Broken Tower, Repose of Rivers. Stevens: he may be audacious and include all of Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction, An Ordinary Evening in New Haven, and Auroras of Autumn; The Idea of Order at Key West, Le Monocle de Mon Oncle, Puella Parvula, The River of Rivers in Connecticut and many others will certainly be present. Frost: Directive, Design, The Oven Bird, The Wood-Pile, The Most of It, A Cabin in the Clearing. These are Bloom's favorites and the poets most of the volume will be devoted to, but expect sprinklings from John Donne, Andrew Marvell, William Collins, John Clare, Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Bishop if she isn't considered post-Frost, and many others. The price of the volume suggests Dr. Bloom has about a thousand pages to fill.
Rating: 
Summary: Worth Having
Review: The Best Poems is a great collection to have. It is something you can read on a rainy day, when you are in love, when you are angry, or when you simply want to explore a whole other world. This is the kind of book that will just fit in anywhere. Keep it in your den and bring it down whenever you need a great quote or some insight on life. With so many modern poets writing about no-so-lovely things (with the drugs, the negativity, etc.) it is refreshing to go back into these times of past when the roses smelled just a little sweeter. As long as you are celebrating poetry month, I might suggest a book of poems by an author named Geraldi called Lowilo. The book is reminiscent of the great poets like Frost and Longfellow. It is (mostly) rhyming, which is also refreshing because it is safe and innocent in it's way.
Rating:
Summary: a classic poetry volume
Review: The Best Poems of the English Language is an anthology that consists of many major classic poetic works and covers approximately six centuries of significant British and American poetry. It is a worthy addition to any poetry lover's library.
Rating:
Summary: From a happy fan...
Review: The book was just released today, so, no I haven't read all 1000 pages yet. Bloom does not shy away from strong opinions, so many readers either love or hate him. Looking past the bluster, he is erudite and his prefaces to the poets and poems are usually interesting and often enlightening. He asserts that this book was a labor-of-love; his stated goal was to produce the anthology he has "always wanted to possess." Given this goal, it is hard to quibble with much of his selection, though much of it will already exist in your library if you are a serious reader of Poetry. If you are not, this book will serve as an excellent introduction to pre-Modern Poetry written in English. Why Pre-Modern? Because Bloom limits himself to poets born before 1900. This seems like a silly restriction on a book that purports to be the "Best Poems of the English Language". The list of poets this excludes is extensive, but excludes Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, Seamus Heaney, Elizabeth Bishop, Theodore Roethke, Philip Larkin, Derek Walcott. Unfortunately, Dr. Bloom does not explain his choice to end with Hart Crane, but does add that if he didn't the book would include poets from Canada, the West Indies, Australia, New Zealand and Africa. As it is, all poets are English or American - or Americans who wished they were English. This restriction also results in the book containing no black poets and only 11 women (with mainly short selections). Bloom is steadfast in his rejection of "extrapoetic" reasons for including a poem: "Literary history is irrelevant... as are all considerations of political correctness or incorrectness. The best poems published by women before 1923 are here, chosen entirely on the basis of their aesthetic value." This may partially explain his choice of 1900, it helps avoid these considerations. It also avoids the editorial choices necessary to keep the book from becoming 2000 pages.
He also maintains that, "The best poetry in English, until this very day, is by Chaucer and Shakespeare..." Arguable, but illustrative of what to expect from this book: a selection of great, but traditional, English language Poetry. So, the poems are [mostly] great and I enjoy Dr. Bloom's commentary, but do find fault with the arbitrary exclusion of many great poems produced in the 20th century, including works by minorities and poets from other English-speaking countries.
Rating:
Summary: (minus the 20th Century)
Review: The book was just released today, so, no I haven't read all 1000 pages yet. Bloom does not shy away from strong opinions, so many readers either love or hate him. Looking past the bluster, he is erudite and his prefaces to the poets and poems are usually interesting and often enlightening. He asserts that this book was a labor-of-love; his stated goal was to produce the anthology he has "always wanted to possess." Given this goal, it is hard to quibble with much of his selection, though much of it will already exist in your library if you are a serious reader of Poetry. If you are not, this book will serve as an excellent introduction to pre-Modern Poetry written in English. Why Pre-Modern? Because Bloom limits himself to poets born before 1900. This seems like a silly restriction on a book that purports to be the "Best Poems of the English Language". The list of poets this excludes is extensive, but excludes Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, Seamus Heaney, Elizabeth Bishop, Theodore Roethke, Philip Larkin, Derek Walcott. Unfortunately, Dr. Bloom does not explain his choice to end with Hart Crane, but does add that if he didn't the book would include poets from Canada, the West Indies, Australia, New Zealand and Africa. As it is, all poets are English or American - or Americans who wished they were English. This restriction also results in the book containing no black poets and only 11 women (with mainly short selections). Bloom is steadfast in his rejection of "extrapoetic" reasons for including a poem: "Literary history is irrelevant... as are all considerations of political correctness or incorrectness. The best poems published by women before 1923 are here, chosen entirely on the basis of their aesthetic value." This may partially explain his choice of 1900, it helps avoid these considerations. It also avoids the editorial choices necessary to keep the book from becoming 2000 pages.
He also maintains that, "The best poetry in English, until this very day, is by Chaucer and Shakespeare..." Arguable, but illustrative of what to expect from this book: a selection of great, but traditional, English language Poetry. So, the poems are [mostly] great and I enjoy Dr. Bloom's commentary, but do find fault with the arbitrary exclusion of many great poems produced in the 20th century, including works by minorities and poets from other English-speaking countries.
Rating: 
Summary: Too much Bloom
Review: The cover of this anthology, with Harold Bloom's name looming larger than that of the title, should prove a clue as to its content. On a positive note, the selection of poems is exquisite but in choosing to represent some of the finest poets of the language with no more than a scattering of their works, that should come as no surprise; exclusion of most of the poems would be criminal, especially from a canonizer such as Bloom. Outside of the 17th century selections, there are few surprises.
Overall, however, Bloom is a bully of a critic: he provides long-winded commentary yet neglects annotation to the poetry, revealing his priorities to lie with his judgement of the poems rather than with the poems themselves. If you are in agreement with his evaluations (or revaluations), you have found a bombastic and articulate ally to you opinions. Howevever, should Bloom prove (can such things ever be proven?) off the mark on some of his majesterial assertions, then his voice sounds all the more ridiculous for its timbre and volume.
Particularly annoying in Bloom's commentaries (on which this review has focused since, in all honesty, they are the determining factor in whether to buy this otherwise predictable anthology): his perpetual egotism, most poignant when he compares himself to his blind students reading Milton; insistent self-parallels with Samuel Johnson (for Bloom, the greatest of all critics); disparagement of modern critical trends which, even when warranted, seems unnecessarily belligerent ; quasi-spiritual epiphanies, which shake Bloom (admitted into a gnostic sect?) with each great poet he hears echo in another.
It is a shame that Bloom does not provide more disciplined, attentively textual readings in his commentaries; perhaps grounding himself to the poetry, Bloom would feel less inclined to try to outdo it.
Rating:
Summary: Some of the best...
Review: This is a very good collection of poetry. It is not the collection I would choose were I to compile such a tome, but this is no surprise. The sense of poetry, what makes a good poem technically, emotionally, artistically is a very personal matter. What is presented here is a particular collection from one of the 'experts' of the day in the field of poetry, and an interesting survey it is. Bloom freely admits to not being 'equal' with all the poets here in terms of their introductory material -- sometimes this is because of the breadth or unique character of their poetry, or sometimes (as in the case of Shakespeare, which is rather short given his overall relationship to the English language) because there is more general accessibility, either of the texts or of outside information readily available. Bloom has used modernised texts for the poetry for the most part, save where the original text is crucial for understanding and appreciating the poetry (as is the case with Chaucer) -- in which case there are helpful notes to aid in 'translation'. Despite the title's proclamation of the poetry cycle being from Chaucer to Frost, in fact there are more than a dozen poets after Robert Frost included in the text --the poets are arranged chronologically, beginning with Chaucer and leading up to Hart Crane, who was born in 1899. Bloom did not include 'twentieth-century' poets -- in other words, any poet born in 1900 or later. Thus there are some notable figures missing at the end of the volume; there are no selections from Odgen Nash, W.H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, Dylan Thomas, or other notable contemporaries. There are also a few omissions from earlier times -- e.e. cummings, born in 1894, is not represented here (and yet John Brooks Wheelwright (who? you might ask) is), nor is Robert Graves. One might quibble here, and say that this book is a collection of 'some' of the Best Poems of the English Language, but hardly all. However, that criticism could likely be levelled against any volume daring the title 'Best Poems'. Bloom has decided tastes, developed over a decades-long career in literary pursuits that have included poetry, prose, sacred literature, modern culture and more. His introductory essay (about 30 pages of the text) gives the reader little doubt where Bloom's tastes lie, and that is ultimately the reason for the selections in the remaining 950-odd pages. Bloom also pulls no punches in the commentary-biographies introducing the poets -- for example he states 'I confess a lifelong hostility to T.S. Eliot,' as the first sentence (in capital letters, no less) to the biographical introduction to Eliot; one wonders if the inclusion of the relatively unknown Wheelwright mentioned above has as much to do with his political affinities as to do with his literary merit. Ultimately there are three strengths to this text -- first, it is a selection of some of the greatest poems in English, despite the absence of a few notables, including the absence of anything Old English or Anonymously written; second, Bloom's commentaries from lifelong experience and study make worthwhile reading whether or not one agrees with his tastes and interpretations; finally, it does trace in chronological order an interesting glimpse through well-known and sometimes overlooked poets and poems the overall development of English as a language of art, lyric expression and passion.
Rating:
Summary: Some of the best...
Review: This is a very good collection of poetry. It is not the collection I would choose were I to compile such a tome, but this is no surprise. The sense of poetry, what makes a good poem technically, emotionally, artistically is a very personal matter. What is presented here is a particular collection from one of the 'experts' of the day in the field of poetry, and an interesting survey it is. Bloom freely admits to not being 'equal' with all the poets here in terms of their introductory material -- sometimes this is because of the breadth or unique character of their poetry, or sometimes (as in the case of Shakespeare, which is rather short given his overall relationship to the English language) because there is more general accessibility, either of the texts or of outside information readily available. Bloom has used modernised texts for the poetry for the most part, save where the original text is crucial for understanding and appreciating the poetry (as is the case with Chaucer) -- in which case there are helpful notes to aid in 'translation'. Despite the title's proclamation of the poetry cycle being from Chaucer to Frost, in fact there are more than a dozen poets after Robert Frost included in the text --the poets are arranged chronologically, beginning with Chaucer and leading up to Hart Crane, who was born in 1899. Bloom did not include 'twentieth-century' poets -- in other words, any poet born in 1900 or later. Thus there are some notable figures missing at the end of the volume; there are no selections from Odgen Nash, W.H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, Dylan Thomas, or other notable contemporaries. There are also a few omissions from earlier times -- e.e. cummings, born in 1894, is not represented here (and yet John Brooks Wheelwright (who? you might ask) is), nor is Robert Graves. One might quibble here, and say that this book is a collection of 'some' of the Best Poems of the English Language, but hardly all. However, that criticism could likely be levelled against any volume daring the title 'Best Poems'. Bloom has decided tastes, developed over a decades-long career in literary pursuits that have included poetry, prose, sacred literature, modern culture and more. His introductory essay (about 30 pages of the text) gives the reader little doubt where Bloom's tastes lie, and that is ultimately the reason for the selections in the remaining 950-odd pages. Bloom also pulls no punches in the commentary-biographies introducing the poets -- for example he states 'I confess a lifelong hostility to T.S. Eliot,' as the first sentence (in capital letters, no less) to the biographical introduction to Eliot; one wonders if the inclusion of the relatively unknown Wheelwright mentioned above has as much to do with his political affinities as to do with his literary merit. Ultimately there are three strengths to this text -- first, it is a selection of some of the greatest poems in English, despite the absence of a few notables, including the absence of anything Old English or Anonymously written; second, Bloom's commentaries from lifelong experience and study make worthwhile reading whether or not one agrees with his tastes and interpretations; finally, it does trace in chronological order an interesting glimpse through well-known and sometimes overlooked poets and poems the overall development of English as a language of art, lyric expression and passion.
Rating:
Summary: From a happy fan...
Review: When I 'previewed' this before it came out I overestimated how much would be included. Luckily these sacrifices were made to make room for Bloom's several hundred pages of commentary on the individual poets, into which he incorporates full essays on Edmund Spenser, Andrew Marvell, Hilda Doolittle, William Carlos Williams and others. Several of these, like many essays in his previous book "Genius", are reprinted largely intact from the introductions to his vast series of critical anthologies put out by Chelsea House. The Spenser essay, written over forty years ago, is particularly brilliant and stirring. Also rewarding is the volume's Introduction, where he tackles such topics as the types of metaphor and allusion and the nature of poetic value itself.
Though this isn't quite all of "the best" even in Dr. Bloom's view it has many of the English-language poetic touchstones down to about 1930. Longer works like The Canterbury Tales, The Faerie Queene, Hamlet, King Lear, Paradise Lost, The Prelude etc. are represented with brief but powerful excerpts. Bloom caves and gives a few pieces by esteemed poets he detests (Edgar Allen Poe and Matthew Arnold and Ezra Pound) as well as some popular poems he's declared a bit overrated in the past (My Last Duchess, Crossing the Bar, [Emerson's] Days, Sunday Morning). A more substantive criticism: the selections from Donne, Swinburne and Yeats seem a little random. Were their very best works deemed too difficult for inclusion? What's important, and priceless, is what *is* included: countless powerful songs, sonnets, elegies, satires and odes; selections you couldn't improve upon from Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Hart Crane and many others; and most of the great mini-epics: Epithalamion, Adonais, The Fall of Hyperion, Goblin Market, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, The Hunting of the Snark, The Auroras of Autumn.
As expected, the most pages are given to perennial Bloom favorites like Milton, Shelley, Whitman, Tennyson and Wallace Stevens... though surely nowhere near as many as he'd wanted to give. Signs of last-minute manuscript chopping appear throughout, actually: there's about a dozen mentions by name of "included" poems nowhere to be found! But while he arranges to have his proofreader shot we should all thank Bloom for his thoughtful distillation of one of the most important artistic traditions the world has known, poetry in English.
If only someone would offer him a whole Norton Anthology volume to fill with more of the same!
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