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Rating: 
Summary: An easy read for those new to poetry.....
Review: One Hundred and One Famous Poems is a really good poetry book. I don't usually like poems that much, let alone reading, but I found at least 27 poems I liked. Some of the poems I really enjoyed were Whitman's "O" Captain my Captain, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Builders, Eugene Field's The Duel and Edmund Vance Cooke's How did you die? This book is an easy read and you may discover that you really enjoy poetry if you haven't read much poetry before. I read the book in five days, and that's not easy when you have ADD as bad as I do. The book is only one hundred and ninety-two pages and has large print making it easier to read. I thought the book was similar in some ways to Stephen King's book Night Shift; it's like a bunch of short stories except these are poems although I can't say I have ever read a poem that was six pages long until now.
Rating:
Summary: An easy read for those new to poetry.....
Review: One Hundred and One Famous Poems is a really good poetry book. I don't usually like poems that much, let alone reading, but I found at least 27 poems I liked. Some of the poems I really enjoyed were Whitman's "O" Captain my Captain, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Builders, Eugene Field's The Duel and Edmund Vance Cooke's How did you die? This book is an easy read and you may discover that you really enjoy poetry if you haven't read much poetry before. I read the book in five days, and that's not easy when you have ADD as bad as I do. The book is only one hundred and ninety-two pages and has large print making it easier to read. I thought the book was similar in some ways to Stephen King's book Night Shift; it's like a bunch of short stories except these are poems although I can't say I have ever read a poem that was six pages long until now.
Rating: 
Summary: Laugh and the world laughs with you
Review: One of my favorite poem books. One of my favorite poems: Laugh and the world laughs with you Weep, and you weep alone, For the sad old earth must borrow it's mirth But has enough trobles of its own Sing and the hills will answer Sigh, it is lost in the air Echos bound to a joyful sound But shrink from voicing care you should read it... hey reynold!
Rating:
Summary: Nearing 100 Years and Going Strong - for Good Reasons
Review: Roy J. Cook compiled his popular anthology in 1916, long before the Great Depression, WWII, the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Eighty Years of Bestsellers (1895-1975) by Hackett and Burke ranks Roy J. Cook's anthology among the fifty most popular books sold in the U.S. in the past century. One Hundred and One Famous Poems (or alternatively, 101 Famous Poems) has remained continuously in print.
Why is 101 Famous Poems still popular today? Cook's compilation is simply fun to read. Cook did include selections from great poets like Byron, Dickinson, Keats, Milton, Shakespeare, Shelley, Tennyson, Whitman, and Wordsworth. There are also popular poems by Frost, Kipling, Longfellow, Poe, Riley, and Whittier. However, what makes Cook's anthology special is that we find those lesser poems that we often memorized as a child and still find enjoyable years later.
I did not immediately recognize Lieut. Col. John McCrae, Henry Holcomb Bennett, Edmund Vance Cook, George Washington Doane, Eugene Field, Sam Walter Foss, William Ernest Henley, Mary Howitt, Sergeant Joyce Kilmer, Winifred M. Letts, Clement Clarke Moore, Thomas Buchanan Read, and Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
And yet, many of their poems proved not to be strangers: But let me live by the side of the road and be a friend of man - We shall not sleep though poppies grow in Flanders Field - A poem as lovely as a tree - Laugh and the world laughs with you - I am the captain of my soul - Will you walk into my parlor?, said the spider to the fly - and, of course, The Night Before Christmas. I was happy to find one of my old favorites, The Duel, a fascinating paradox by Eugene Field.
I don't really keep my old edition with its yellowing pages and old fashioned oval portraits next to my bed for nightly reading. Our family does not actually read the poems aloud before the fireplace after the evening meal. But through the years I do occasionally find myself reading once again all 101 poems, rediscovering poets and poetry that I have nearly forgotten. You won't be disappointed with Roy J. Cook's compilation.
Rating:
Summary: Found the poems one wants to remember
Review: The poems, the famous words spoken, the documents we once knew from school, from stories, from one another reciting on stage in plays are presented here in this little treasure. I forgot, and wanted to remember and here they are.......all together. But, not only the poets. There is the perfectly written letter to a mother who lost 5 sons in the Civil War from Abraham Lincoln, our American President then. And many other writings in history's place. A must have in everyone's library.
Rating:
Summary: Found the poems one wants to remember
Review: The poems, the famous words spoken, the documents we once knew from school, from stories, from one another reciting on stage in plays are presented here in this little treasure. I forgot, and wanted to remember and here they are.......all together. But, not only the poets. There is the perfectly written letter to a mother who lost 5 sons in the Civil War from Abraham Lincoln, our American President then. And many other writings in history's place. A must have in everyone's library.
Rating:
Summary: LIKE MEETING AN OLD FRIEND AGAIN
Review: Years ago I read weekly from an elderly woman's poetry book to her and other residents at a nursing home. She and the other residents greatly enjoyed my poetry reading. I particularly relished THIS particular collection of poems because they were ones that I'd long ago heard/read/known. I absolutely "loved" the book.... but ALAS! I never took to memory the book's title, the book's owner died, and the book was packed off with her other things to a distant daughter. Searching through other poetry anthologies would reward me with SOME of those poems, seldom enough of them, and NEVER all of them. I looked through Amazon's poetry listing, hoping against hope. I ordered this book because its table of contents urged me to think MAYBE it would suffice. What a wonderful surprise to receive it and find out that it IS THE SAME WONDERFUL BOOK! (My only disappointment was that the original borrowed and shared copy was hardcover.) Anyway, I've enjoyed re-acquainting myself to what seems an "old and dear friend" in reading and re-reading this book.
Rating:
Summary: LIKE MEETING AN OLD FRIEND AGAIN
Review: Years ago I read weekly from an elderly woman's poetry book to her and other residents at a nursing home. She and the other residents greatly enjoyed my poetry reading. I particularly relished THIS particular collection of poems because they were ones that I'd long ago heard/read/known. I absolutely "loved" the book.... but ALAS! I never took to memory the book's title, the book's owner died, and the book was packed off with her other things to a distant daughter. Searching through other poetry anthologies would reward me with SOME of those poems, seldom enough of them, and NEVER all of them. I looked through Amazon's poetry listing, hoping against hope. I ordered this book because its table of contents urged me to think MAYBE it would suffice. What a wonderful surprise to receive it and find out that it IS THE SAME WONDERFUL BOOK! (My only disappointment was that the original borrowed and shared copy was hardcover.) Anyway, I've enjoyed re-acquainting myself to what seems an "old and dear friend" in reading and re-reading this book.
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