A Little History of Poetry, by John Carey (2020)

I started reading through this book quite quickly, then I took a break, and then I finished a couple of months later. This book is my second of John Carey’s after his 100 Poets, both are useful histories of poetry. 100 Poets offers I think a deeper look at the poet’s lives and a deeper artistic analysis of their work, this book however covered far more poets, far fewer poems and was presented chronologically in thematic groups, largely revealing historical context of poetry and speaking more to the craft’s development.

Unsurprisingly this largely focused on English Language poetry from Britain and America, and often the more global poetry is reserved to the more historical parts of the book, or as afterthoughts. The chapters are quite short and offer a great sample across each theme, however the writing is so dense that reading this in one go drowns you in fact after fact leaving little space to appreciate or absorb key themes.