The Great Poets

Seer, prophet, visionary, preacher, Walt Whitman stands out as one of poetry’s towering anomalies: in celebrating the trees, water, sky and air, the bear, the eagle, the buffalo and the lion, Whitman expressed a uniquely democratic vision that engulfs not only the American continent but the entire universe. His passionate vehemence, his faith in... Read more »

Born in Massachusetts in 1830, Emily Dickinson composed over 1770 poems; but apart from her closest friends, no-one knew she was writing at all. Only after her death was her astonishing output discovered and published. A reclusive figure for much of her life, few could have imagined the range of her subjects, the intensity of her imagination or... Read more »

Naxos AudioBooks begins its new series of Great Poets – represented by their most popular poems on one CD – with William Blake, whose 250th anniversary of birth falls this year. This CD contains all of his most popular works – Tyger, the Auguries of Innocence, Jerusalem, as well as some lesser-known poetry that demonstrates the range and power... Read more »

Naxos AudioBooks continues its new series of Great Poets – represented by a collection of their most popular poems on one CD – with John Keats. Although this man had a short life, he produced a series of outstanding poems – many of which appeared first in letters to his sister. He was largely unappreciated during his lifetime, and died in Rome... Read more »

Sophisticated wit and intense emotion, religious fervour and erotic sensuality, delight in life’s pleasures and fascination with death, are all to be found in the paradoxical poetry of John Donne. One of the foremost metaphysical poets, Donne’s ingenious metaphors and inspired use of language has earned him affection and reverence in near equal... Read more »

Milton stands alongside Shakespeare and the Bible in the power of his verse and its continuing impact. He is one of the great voices of English poetry. Born in 1608, he is best known for his epic Paradise Lost, but most of his writing life was spent composing shorter works. This collection brings together his brilliant early poems, including Il... Read more »

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) was born in Cockermouth, in the Lake District. His Lyrical Ballads, written in collaboration with Coleridge, was published in 1798, and shortly afterwards he settled in Dove Cottage, Grasmere, with his sister Dorothy. Inspired in his early manhood by the French Revolution, he grew disillusioned with revolutionary... Read more »

The 200th anniversary of the birth of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892), one of the most popular of poets, is celebrated in 2009. Works such as The Charge of the Light Brigade, Crossing the Bar and Tears, idle tears have made him an internationally famous figure, and the second most quoted writer of all time (after Shakespeare). Tennyson’s... Read more »

The idiosyncratic Scottish poet William Topaz McGonagall has the unusual reputation as one of the worst poets in the English language with rhymes and rhythms that produce mirth rather than wonder. His masterpiece is The Tay Bridge Disaster. Scottish-born Gregor Fisher, who starred in Love Actually and other film and TV programmes, reads the key... Read more »

No poet is more closely identified with the First World War than Wilfred Owen. His striking body of work, grim to the point of brutality yet, at the same time, majestic and awe-inspiring, defines the war for us. It is in each of these famous poems that Owen reflects on the four terrible months that he lived through; he conveys the experience of... Read more »

Naxos AudioBooks continues its new series of Great Poets – represented by a collection of their most popular poems on one CD – with W.B. Yeats, one of the most loved poets of the twentieth century. He left a large legacy of outstanding poems, and the finest are collected here: Down by the Salley Gardens, The Lake Isle of Inisfree, The Secret... Read more »

John Clare was the forgotten Romantic poet, until the late twentieth century. Known by his contemporaries as the ‘Peasant Poet’ he recorded in his poems the natural landscape of rural England before the Industrial Revolution. His poems rival Wordsworth’s for their sensitivity to nature and pantheism: ‘I feel a beautiful providence ever about... Read more »

The 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns (1759–1796), one of the most popular of poets, is celebrated in 2009. A pioneer of the Romantic movement, works such as A Red, Red Rose, A Man’s a Man for a’ That and the ubiquitous Auld Lang Syne, have made him an international figure. Naxos AudioBooks’ popular Great Poets series marks the... Read more »

Robert Browning’s popular poems The Pied Piper of Hamelin and How They Brought the Good News are often anthologised, but it is in his dramatic lyrics such as My Last Duchess and the chilling Porphyria’s Lover that his poetic genius shines. Browning, with his unusual use of language, can be a challenging poet, but one who is always rewarding.... Read more »

Considered the bridge between romanticism and modernism, Matthew Arnold wrote verse that is simple, unadorned and straightforward. From the hypnotic and beautiful lines of Dover Beach to the pastoral narrative of The Scholar Gipsy, Arnold cast a gaze at the main intellectual issues of the nineteenth century while giving a timeless insight into... Read more »

John Masefield (1878–1967) was one of the most prolific, popular and successful poets of the twentieth century. Masefield broke upon Edwardian literature with the startling work entitled The Everlasting Mercy, which described the spiritual enlightenment of a drunken poacher. Over the span of his lifetime, he was appointed Poet Laureate and... Read more »

This anthology contains many of Kipling’s most famous poems, If, Mandalay, Gunga Din. Though sometimes still regarded as a product of the colonial era, Kipling touches a very popular nerve in Britain’s literary tradition, and is regarded more generously now as a master of popular verse. It is often forgotten that he won the Nobel Prize for... Read more »

This 14th-century Italian poet was a model for many who followed him. His passionate sonnets to Laura became the epitome for love poetry. Over some 40 years he wrote 366 sonnets to Laura, whom he probably never even spoke to, and they remain immediate and affecting even now. Called Rime Sparse (Scattered Rhymes), they influenced Chaucer and many... Read more »

Idealist, atheist, outcast, political radical and, of course, poet – Percy Bysshe Shelley was, in many ways, the epitome of the Romantic artist. His poetry was an outlet for his passionately-held and highly unpopular beliefs; beliefs which resulted in social exclusion, exile, and possibly even his premature death at the age of twenty-nine. His... Read more »

A collection of the best-known poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889). One of the Victorian era’s greatest writers, Hopkins’ reputation has continued to grow since his death. Our Great Poets series, launched in 2007, has proven very popular, offering many of the best-loved poems by popular poets in an inexpensive 1 CD collection – and well... Read more »