Inspired and inspirational, worldly wise, deeply felt, and often delightfully funny, here in one compact volume are 100 of the greatest poems written in English over the last century, memorable masterpieces that everyone should know and enjoy.

The variety of contemporary American poetry leaves many readers overwhelmed. The critic, scholar, and poet Stephen Burt sets out to help. Beginning in the early 1980s, where critical consensus ends, he presents 60 poems, each with an original essay explaining how the poem works, why it matters, and how it speaks to other parts of art and culture.

Collects one hundred poems from the past century that reflect modern culture, including works by William Butler Yeats, Langston Hughes, Dorothy Parker, Wallace Stevens, and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

First Published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Guido Mazzoni tells the story of poetry's revolution in the modern age. The chief transformation was the rise of the lyric as it is now conceived: a genre in which a first-person speaker talks about itself. Mazzoni argues that modern poetry embodies the age of the individual and has wrought profound changes in the expectations of readers.

Poems of heartbreak and sex, self-care and self-critique, urban adventures and love on the road from the millennial queen and comedy sensation. In these short, captivating lyrics, Catherine Cohen, the one-woman stand-up chanteuse who electrified the downtown NYC comedy scene in her white go-go boots, and who has been posting poignant, unfiltered poems on social media since before Instagram was a thing, details her life on the prowl with her beaded bag; she ponders guys who call you "dude" after sex, true love during the pandemic, and English-major dreams. "I wish I were smart instead of on my phone," Cat Cohen confides; "heartbreak, / when it comes, and it will come / is always new." A Dorothy Parker for our time, a Starbucks philosophe with no primary-care doctor, she’s a welcome new breed of everywoman--a larger-than-life best friend, who will say all the outrageous things we think but never say out loud ourselves. in L.A. we got naked and swam in the ocean we ate cured meats and carrots & sat in the back of a red pickup truck like we were in a film where two old friends fight & wrestle their way into a hug heave-sobbing as the dust settles I want to be famous for being the first person who never feels bad again