POETIC CALLINGS
Writer and broadcaster Ana Sampson has an extraordinary talent for selecting beautiful, affecting poetry and this anthology is a credit to her unique gift. Best-Loved Poems A Treasury of Verse, is a delightful collection of works by some of literature’s biggest names including Lord Alfred Tennyson and the Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe. Contemporary writers include the Rastafarian British dub poet Benjamin Zephaniah and Philip Larkin, who journalist Bryan Appleyard famously called “an advocate of misanthropy and pessimism.”
Sampson has arranged the collection thematically so that readers can find a poem to match their mood. Fantasies & Infatuations has offerings from Lord Byron (She Walks in Beauty), Ben Johnson (Song to Celia) and punk writer John Cooper Clarke (I Wanna Be Yours). In Ways to Live, Sampson has included Jenny Jones’ delightfully mischievous Warning and Maya Angelou’s magnificent Still I Rise, which drew on her background and experience as an African American woman in the United States.
Sampson’s poetry anthologies have sold over 80,000 copies and it isn’t hard to see why. A great deal of thought goes into the content and structure of each book which explains why the collection I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud….and Other Poems you Half-Remember from School was the number 3 poetry bestseller of 2009.
Poetry must never be elitist and Best- Loved Poems A Treasury of Verse is an example of how it can be accessible and enjoyable.
Reviewed by Juliette Foster
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