Final copies of The Best Poems of the English Language are in. They won't be readily available for another week or so. The on sale date is August 7th. I may have a copy or two (or ten, or none) as it goes on sale. Since the purpose of this collection was wondered about in the comments, I thought I would include an excerpt from the "Introduction" and let Mr. Bloom speak for himself:
Though arranged chronologically, this vast book is intended for every kind of personal use, so that literary history is essentially irrelevant to its purposes, as are all considerations of political correctness and incorrectness. The best poems published by women before 1923 are here, chosen entirely on the basis of their aesthetic value. Poetry is in the first place poetry, a high and ancient art. It raises your consciousness of glory and of grief, of woe or wonder, as Shakespeare phrased it. Shakespeare spoke of "wonder-wounded hearers": they are the readers this volume seeks to serve.
My chronological limits are set by Geoffrey Chaucer, born around 1343, and Hart Crane, born in 1899. If poets born in the twentieth century were included here, many would be from Canada, the West Indies, Australia, New Zealand, and Africa, but because of the span covered, everyone here wrote in Great Britain or the United States.
I have included no poem or excerpt from a longer work that does not meet (in my judgment) the highest aesthetic and cognitive standards that poetry can exemplify. There are 108 poets represented in this book (aside from Anonymous), with about 24 given in something like their full abundance. Essentially, this is the anthology I've always wanted to possess. It reflects sixty years of deep and passionate reading, going back to my love of William Blake and Hart Crane, of William Shakespeare and John Milton, that vitalized my life from my twelfth year onward.
Those may seem like cut and dry guidelines, but Bloom writes in the "Author Note" that his "introduction explains the concept and purpose of this book, but the center, for me, of my commentaries here is to be found in the essay "The Art of Reading Poetry."
As the on sale date nears, I'll share some choice selections from his commentary.
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