"This book is a dream, a revivalist campaign, a challenge, a book of days, and an anthology, all in one." -- The Guardian
This perfect bedside book offers the easiest way to fill your life with more poetry, every day of the year Poems are meant to be voiced, and
Poem a Day includes 366 poems old and new -- one for each day of the year -- worth learning by heart. It contains many of the most beloved poems and others that will come as a surprise.
Only two criteria were demanded of each poem for inclusion in this collection -- it had to be short enough to learn in a day, and good enough to stand among the great poetry of the English language, from Chaucer to Sylvia Plath.
By prominently noting each poem’s corresponding month and day at the top of each page, the book functions like a calendar, providing a handy feature for keeping "on schedule" in your reading and for getting "caught up" when you fall behind.
Even more delightful, this handy dating makes it the perfect book to share and discuss with friends near and far.
Poem a Day is truly a beautiful poetry collection from the past poets to the present. The book provides:
-- a great introduction to poetry and poets
-- a diverse range of poets and styles
-- a short bio of each author at the bottom of the page, which makes reading the poem more meaningful
Once upon a time men and women of sense and sensibility knew by heart dozens of poems - Shakespeare's sonnets, stirring patriotic verse, odes to churchyards and elegies for the departed, the music of Swinburne or Poe or Yeats. Poems are meant to be voiced and A Poem a Day includes 366 poems old and new - one for each day of the year - worth learning by heart. Only two criteria were demanded of each poem for inclusion in this collection - it had to be short enough to learn in a day, and good enough to stand among the great poetry of the English language, from Chaucer to Sylvia Plath.
A Poem a Day is a book for the bedside. It contains many of the most familiar poems in the language and others that will come as a surprise. Most are complete and most are short, easily contained in a single page. But a few are substantial works, like Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" and Rudyard Kipling's "Gunga Din." Some have been read by every high school student (Andrew Marvel, "To His Coy Mistress") while others will be new to most readers (Thomas Hardy, "The Voice"). But all share the compression and charged meaning which are the soul of poetry.
In its British version the book went through seven printings in a year and was a bestseller. Now Karen McCosker has added a new foreword and fifty new poems for an American audience willing to make poetry a part of life.
"This book is a dream, a revivalist campaign, a challenge, a book of days, and an anthology, all in one." --
The Guardian"A very good and varied collection, with delightful oddities." --
The Times (London) 
