The World's Best Poetry, Volume 10: Poetical Quotations

What does poetry mean? This volume dares to ask the question that poets have wrestled with for centuries. Opening with John R. Howard's searching essay "After All, What is Poetry?" which gathers wisdom from Shelley, Wordsworth, Poe, and others, this anthology then collects their words themselves - the quotable heart of verse that has moved generations. Here are the lines readers return to: passages about love and loss, nature's grandeur, the soul's reaching toward something higher. Carman and Howard were collectors of beauty, assembling verses that distill human experience into its most crystalline forms. Whether you're seeking the perfect line for a letter, illumination for a difficult moment, or simply wish to wander through language at its most precise, this volume offers its treasures freely. Published in the early 20th century but sounding across the centuries, it reminds us that poetry's purpose has never changed: to name what words otherwise cannot.