20世紀のイギリス・アメリカの詩人を中心に、英詩を37篇を収録し、Notesに各詩の解説と語句注を付す。文学史的な流れに基づいた編纂ではなく、次の7つのテーマに分類した編集になっている。 1.Becoming a Poet/ 2. Language and Creativity/ 3. Gender and Writing/ 4. Poetry and History/ 5. Love, Desire and Death/ 6. Elegy, Commemoration and Grief/ 7. Form and Fragmentation. 巻末には取り上げた各詩人の紹介「人と作品」と英詩の読み方についての基礎知識「英詩を読む」が付いている。
目次
はしがき Introduction to Reading English Poetry
I Becoming a Poet 1 Seamus Heaney : Digging 2 Ted Hughes : The Thought - Fox 3 Tony Harrison : Self Justification 4 Wendy Cope : Engineers' Corner
II Language and Creativity 5 Dylan Thomas : The force that through the green fuse drives the flower 6 ‘L. E. L.’: The Power of Words 7 Sylvia Plath : Words 8 Paul Muldoon : Quoof 9 William Carlos Williams : The Poem 10 William Carlos Williams : A Sort of a Song 11 Lewis Carroll : Jabberwocky 12 Craig Raine : A Martian Sends a Postcard Home
III Gender and Writing 13 Emily Dickinson : A still――Volcano――Life―― 14 Emily Dickinson : They shut me up in Prose―― 15 Eavan Boland : The Woman Changes her Skin 16 ‘H. D. ’: Helen
IV Poetry and History 17 Nikki Giovanni : For Saundra 18 Pauline Stainer : Sighting the Slave Ship 19 W. H. Auden : On This Island 20 Matthew Arnold : Dover Beach 21 Derek Mahon : The Snow Party
V Love, Desire and Death 22 William Wordsworth : A slumber did my spirit seal 23 William Wordsworth : She dwelt among the untrodden ways 24 Thomas Lovell Beddoes : The Phantom-Wooer 25 W. B. Yeats : He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven 26 Robert Browning : Porphyria's Lover
VI Elegy, Commemoration and Grief 27 Alfred, Lord Tennyson : In Memoriam, 50 28 Cathy Song : Picture Bride 29 Elizabeth Jennings : Remembering Fireworks 30 Christina Rossetti : Remember 31 Carol Ann Duffy : Prayer 32 Robert Frost : Nothing Gold Can Stay 33 Stevie Smith : Not Waving but Drowning
VII Form and Fragmentation 34 Percy Bysshe Shelley : Ozymandias 35 Anthony Thwaite : Potter 36 Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Kubla Khan 37 John Keats : This living hand