cover image The 100 Best Poems of All Time

The 100 Best Poems of All Time

. Warner Books, $12.99 (208pp) ISBN 978-0-446-67681-6

The cover of The Best 100 Poems of All Time promises ""[v]erses to move you, lines you'll love, from old favorites to modern classics...,"" and while they may not live up to the title's hyperbole, they do satisfy the teaser's terms. Though the collection, including poems by Homer, Sappho, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, Villon, Shakespeare, Schiller, Issa, Whitman, Baudelaire, Millay, Cullen, Neruda, Plath and Angelou, was edited by Leslie Pockell, the unsigned introduction was written by an editorial ""we,"" who proclaim that ""this present collection has as much credibility as many other lists of the best and the greatest that have circulated during the recent turn of the century."" One hopes that the actual poems contained herein have more credibility than any list.