This is a very thoughtful and very original book that provides excellent readings of some familiar figures, such as Yeats and Walcott, and fine introductory reflections on writers less well-known in America. The approach is generous but tough-minded, the prose is strong; this is exemplary work in the area of post-colonial studies.

The Norton anthology of Modern Poetry has now been updated and re-edited by Jahan Ramazani, and to excellent effect. The anthology now is split into two volumes, Modern and Contemporary, which here means poets who came of age before or after WWII. Not only has the anthology been expanded, but importantly a poetics section has been added (the last 100+ pages of each volume), which includes Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent" and Mina Loy's "Feminist Manifesto", parts of Pound's "Blast", and other important works. This is a smart move, and adds much to the anthology's usefulness.

The Modern section begins with "precursors": Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Thomas Hardy, G. M. Hopkins. It then moves into AE Housman, Yeats, etc. up to Theodore Roethke, Spender and Keith Douglas. The Contemporary volume (slightly thicker, though both are over 1000 pages) takes off from there and includes experimental poets and those of more diversified backgrounds, such as Michael Palmer, Li-Young Lee, and Agha Shahid Ali.

I'm sure many will find disappointments here and questionable decisions - but that holds true for almost any anthology. More people will find something to celebrate here - a remarkable selection of two centuries of great poetry in the English language.

This is a brilliant and insightful discussion of the elegy from Hardy on down to the present, written on the boundary between psychology and literary criticism. Marred only occasionally by some academic ostentation, it is a wonderful look at what our wisest poets have to say about grief and mourning, and it also shows how real people in the world read -- and use -- poetry.