One hundred fifty poems by seventy-five poets offer an inclusive collage of voices--protest poems of the Chicano farmworkers' movement, campfire cowboy songs, sacred Native American songs, and works by Willa Cather, Langston Hughes, Adrienne Rich, and other canonical figures--from a land where cultural collision is part of the rugged landscape.

'Tread softly because you tread on my dreams' is one of the most well-known and repeated lines of poetry ever written. Less haunting, but still so relevant: 'Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.' W B Yeats was one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. Winner of a Nobel prize, he was also a political figure, and, as is evident from his earlier work, fascinated by Irish folklore and the occult. He was also deeply affected by the First World War and the Anglo-Irish and Irish civil wars. It is a testament to the greatness of Yeats' poetry that he attempts to bear witness to these emotional and historical forces. This perfectly pitched collection includes some of the greatest poetry of the 20th century.

Selected Poetry of William Wordsworth represents Wordsworth’s prolific output, from the poems first published in Lyrical Ballads in 1798 that changed the face of English poetry to the late “Yarrow Revisited.” Wordsworth’s poetry is celebrated for its deep feeling, its use of ordinary speech, the love of nature it expresses, and its representation of commonplace things and events. As Matthew Arnold notes, “[Wordsworth’s poetry] is great because of the extraordinary power with which [he] feels the joy offered to us in nature, the joy offered to us in the simple elementary affections and duties.”

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