A Little History of Poetry (2020)

I teach English for a living, but that doesn’t mean I am an expert on every aspect of literature. Ask me about Shakespeare or many of the great novels of history, and I am in decent shape. Ask me about poetry, and I’m a bit less sure of myself. Quite frankly, anything I can do to increase my knowledge in that area would probably do me a world of good.

So, why not read John Carey’s A Little History of Poetry? I’ve read books with less justification than that!

You know something? This book is exactly what it says on the cover. In about three hundred pages and 40 chapters, it covers various major poets and poetry movements, with each chapter going about six to eight pages each. Some poets are covered in a page or two, and a handful (most notably Yeats), gets a sole chapter of their own. Carey covers their lives and gives some brief snippets of their work.

And…that’s about it, really. If you want something in-depth or a deep analysis of whatever poetry Carey is discussing, you probably won’t find it here. Furthermore, if you want some sort look at, say, non-Western literature or even works that aren’t written in English, this isn’t the book for you. Carey mostly covers the English-speaking world. Yes, he does cover poetry in other languages, but nowhere near as much as he does English-speaking world. Seriously, there’s one chapter for Japanese and Chinese poetry though that may be due to the idea that those cultures have their own literary tradition and are not necessarily “poetry” as Westerners like myself understand it.

There is some real charm to Carey’s work here, brief as it may be. Of course, “brief” is more or less how it was advertised, so that’s basically what anyone reading the book should ideally be looking for. Want a quick survey of thousands of years of poetry? Here’s your book. Want something a bit more in-deoth, then you probably want something more specific and longer. Given what this book is supposed to be, this work was just fine, but probably not for casual reading or anyone looking to learn more than the basics of the lives of poets but not necessarily poetry.

Grade: C+