The Best Poems of the English Language: From Chaucer Through Robert Frost was published by HarperCollins in 2004 and is Bloom’s definitive anthology — over nine hundred pages of poetry selected according to his personal critical judgment, with substantial introductions to each poet and extended commentaries on individual poems. The anthology covers the entire span of English-language poetry from Chaucer (born c. 1343) through Robert Frost (died 1963), organized chronologically.
The selections are idiosyncratic in ways that reveal Bloom’s critical commitments: more Shelley than Keats, more Tennyson than Browning, more Whitman than Dickinson (though all are well represented), and a pronounced emphasis on the visionary tradition (Spenser, Milton, Blake, Shelley, Yeats) over the wit tradition (Donne, Pope, Auden). The introductions to each poet are miniature critical essays — compressed versions of positions Bloom has argued at length elsewhere — and the individual poem commentaries demonstrate his close-reading method at its most accessible.
The anthology serves multiple functions: as a reading guide for general readers (Bloom’s enthusiasm is infectious), as a critical statement (the selections themselves constitute an argument about value), and as a teaching text (the commentaries model what it means to read a poem carefully). It is also, inevitably, a provocation — every anthology is an argument, and Bloom’s exclusions are as revealing as his inclusions.
Collecting The Best Poems of the English Language
First edition (HarperCollins, New York, 2004): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $15–$35
- Signed copies: $50–$125