A Little History of Poetry (Little Histories) (UK)

A Little History of Poetry (Little Histories) Hardcover – 10 Mar. 2020 by John Carey (Author), UK.

A vital, engaging, and hugely enjoyable guide to poetry, from ancient times to the present, by one of our greatest champions of literature

What is poetry? If music is sound organised in a particular way, poetry is a way of organising language. It is language made special so that it will be remembered and valued. It does not always work - over the centuries countless thousands of poems have been forgotten. This little history is about some that have not.

John Carey tells the stories behind the world's greatest poems, from the oldest surviving one written nearly four thousand years ago to those being written today. Carey looks at poets whose works shape our views of the world, such as Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Whitman, and Yeats. He also looks at more recent poets, like Derek Walcott, Marianne Moore, and Maya Angelou, who have started to question what makes a poem 'great' in the first place. This little history shines a light on the richness and variation of the world's poems-and the elusive quality that makes them all the more enticing.

Product details

• Format Paperback | 320 pages
• Dimensions 14 x 22 x 2mm | 680g
• Publication date 09 Mar 2021
• Publisher Yale University Press
• Publication City/Country United States
• Language English
• Edition Statement Reprint
• Illustrations note 40 b-w illus.
• ISBN10 0300255039
• ISBN13 9780300255034