Imagine if Billboard compiled a list of the top 100 poems, chosen not by critics or professors but by the people themselves. That's the concept behind The Classic Hundred, and it works brilliantly. William Harmon found the 100 most anthologized poems in English, based on the ninth edition of The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry--the most objective measurement of greatness available, representing consensus among the editors of some 400 anthologies. Then he put them in order and prefaced each one with concise, erudite, often humorous commentary. The range of poets, subjects, and forms--from Shakespeare to Frost, from love and death to crime and punishment, from sonnets to odes--makes this an entertaining, enlightening, and indispensable aural guide to the finest verse in the English language.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 2.0 / 5.0
Share this audio version with your beloved:
"A safe sweet and secure present for Valentine's day or any special occasion. If you cannot read poetry aloud with conviction then share this audio version with your beloved."
A great resource:
I love listening to this cassette while I drive! I think the commentary is first rate, insightful and learned. I find the readers, who are generally great poets in their own right, sensitive and the readings clear and nuanced.
Readers are AWful not AWEful:
Every review here is correct. The readers are amazingly inept. It's hard to believe that the publisher thought this was working. Any average, passionate, good reader would have done so much better. It's very sad. I really wanted to like this work.
Embarrassingly bad readings:
In this age of sight and sound, one might hope for a renewed interest in poetry read aloud. After all, your average Ipod can store all the world's great poetry. Any such prospect will quickly be extinguished if there are many productions as bad as this one. At first I thought the readers had been chosen in accordance with some manic diversity template, without the slightest concern for whether they could actually read poetry with even minimal competence. In fact, this project was not ruined by political... more info
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