Penguin Books Australia

'Hers will I be, and onely with this thought
Content my selfe, although my chaunce be nought' 

'And that moment when the bird sings very close To the music of what happens'

Li Po (AD 701-62) and Tu Fu (AD 712-70) were devoted friends who are traditionally considered to be among China's greatest poets. Li Po, a legendary carouser, was an itinerant poet whose writing, often dream poems or spirit-journeys, soars  to sublime heights in  its descriptions of natural scenes and powerful emotions. His sheer escapism and joy is balanced by Tu Fu, who expresses the Confucian...

Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, and his companion Enkidu are the only heroes to have survived from the ancient literature of Babylon, immortalized in this epic poem that dates back to the 3rd millennium BC. Together they journey to the Spring of Youth, defeat the Bull of Heaven and slay the monster Humbaba. When Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh's grief and fear of death are such that they lead him to undertake a quest...

Whitman, Dickinson, and Melville occupy the center of this anthology of nearly three hundred poems, spanning the course of the century, from Joel Barlow to Edwin Arlington Robinson, by way of Bryant, Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, Poe, Holmes, Jones Very, Thoreau, Lowell, and Lanier.

English Romantic poetry from its beginnings and its flowering to the first signs of its decadence.

What a rich, strange and diverse lot these poems turned out to be . . . I suspect that these baroque and potent imaginings can only have come into existence as fragments of dreams or nightmares.
- JOHN TRANTER

THREE BOOKS IN ONE BOX SET

THE BEST AUSTRALIAN ESSAYS 2011

'When Australian poetry soars to new heights, it's usually because poets open up to the whole place . . . they take risks and write from the core of our culture.' - ROBERT ADAMSON

Robert Burns was a farmer's boy from Ayrshire who went on to be the most acclaimed of all Scottish poets, celebrated around the world.

This selection by Ian Rankin of verses and lyrics by the 'Heaven-taught ploughman' reveals Burns as a writer of tremendous imaginative sympathy with an easy, astonishing command of both standard English and the evocative Scots tongue.
It also gives free rein to his...

In these times of global and personal uncertainty, why turn to poetry? In Saved by a Poem, Kim Rosen reveals how a poem can be a companion through difficulty-acting as a guide when we are lost; a salve when we are wounded; and a conduit to insight, freedom, and joy.

A NEW GENERATION, A LANDMARK ANTHOLOGY

Australian poetry has never looked so energetic and vital. Thirty Australian Poets celebrates a new generation and includes a wonderful diversity of voices and styles – from traditional forms re-imagined to the experimental and avant-garde, from exquisite lyricism to wild feats of intellect and imagination.

A tapestry of miniature verses from classical Sanskrit

The subhashita verse is a popular feature of Sanskrit literature. Composed in isolation or as part of a larger work, it is essentially a miniature poem which encapsulates a complete thought, mood or image in a single stanza. These verse epigrams have a wide range of themes.