A Little History of Poetry by John Carey

It all started with A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson. Then, when I was eleven, discovering the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe. By fourteen I was borrowing every poetry book on the school library shelves, spending my scanty allowance to buy the poets I really liked.

I was drawn to some poets and ignored others. I knew little about the lives of the poets I was reading or the social and historical context of the poems.

My education included survey Lit courses, a Modern Poetry class, and an honors class on Milton. I was so ignorant that when my Modern Poetry professor asked me about Ezra Pound's antisemitism and alliance with Fascism it was the first I had heard of it. (My school history classes never seemed to make it past the Civil War.)

My high school World Lit class covered the entire Western Canon. We received mimeographed handouts (yes, I am THAT OLD). We learned about philosophers and economic and scientific thinkers and writers and poets. I went to the library to read from the original works. The brief excerpts piqued my curiosity and I needed to know more.

I tell this story for a reason. John Carey's A Little HIstory of Poetry reminded me of that World Lit Survey class. Carey ploughs through the entire history of poetry in the Western world, starting with Gilgamesh and ending with Mary Oliver and Les Murray.

I was quite familiar with my favorites, but I had given little attention a great many others. It was interesting to fill that gap in my knowledge.

Some poets are mentioned by name or with a few lines, but those Carey deems more important (or perhaps, with more interesting or scandalous lives) get pages.

This treatment has its limitations but also its uses as an introduction. Like my survey course did, readers may be inspired to read further.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

A Little History of Poetry
by John Carey
Publication Date: April 21, 2020
Yale University Press
Hardcover Price: $25.00
ISBN: 9780300232226

from the publisher:

John Carey tells the stories behind the world’s greatest poems, from the oldest surviving one written nearly four thousand years ago to those being written today. Carey looks at poets whose works shape our views of the world, such as Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Whitman, and Yeats. He also looks at more recent poets, like Derek Walcott, Marianne Moore, and Maya Angelou, who have started to question what makes a poem "great" in the first place. This little history shines a light on the richness and variation of the world’s poems—and the elusive quality that makes them all the more enticing.