I must say that the title had intrigued me. I really appreciate Hirsch’s effort in gathering amazing work of brilliant poets from different time periods in one place. It is not easy to talk or write about melancholy and grief in either constructive or analytical way. Hirsch has done a great job here. 100 poems emphasizing on truest human emotions from some of the greatest poets of all time and Hirsch’s way of approaching and dissecting each of them, well, I couldn’t enjoy more. This book can be a ‘friend in need’ for people who want to explore literature of 18th and 19th century. I think this one could be listed as ‘books you should read once in your lifetime’.

Thank you NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

After looking at the other reviews, it appears I wasn't the only one not impressed and quite bored with with the "author" contributed to the poems.
Just wasn't for me. ;/

It could be that I didn't read the description closely enough before choosing to pick up this book, but I wasn't aware that this would not only be a book of poems, but a book about the writing of the poem, the poet, and the background on the poem. Personally, I enjoy reading poetry, but I'm not interested in poetic history. I highly recommend this book for any poetry nerds who thoroughly enjoy reading poetry and dissecting it, but I found myself bored and I just didn't enjoy reading this.

Overall, I give the book 1 star, but that rating is mostly reflective of my personal distaste for this type of book. If you choose to read it, be aware that it is pretty dense!

I liked Hirschs explanations and annotations of some of these poems however I felt myself get bored rather quickly, some peoms are best left up to the reader and with some of these I would have liked to just read the poems. I actually ended up not finishing this as I lost the motivation and appeal.
However! That is completely personal and also down to my situation right now I may pick this up again in the future and I do believe a lot of people will enjoy this and find it very helpful to have insight into the poems.

I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC. This is my honest review.

This poetry collection would be valuable on its own for the choices of poets and poems, but Hirsch adds another layer with his commentary that draws out key elements for the non-poet to more richly appreciate the facets of a given poet's work. Another strength of this collection is it diverse range of poets and time periods included. This is no dead white male collection. Everyone from Mary Oliver to Naomi Shihab Nye to Gwendolyn Brooks to Joy Harjo to Adrienne Rich. To be sure, the usual suspects are here, too, including Gerard Manley Hopkins, Tennyson, Keats, and Wordsworth. If we are enlarged by grief, as Hirsch writes, so, too, by poetry, and this collection is an excellent place to begin.

TW: abuse, domestic violence, sexual assault, molestation, racism/hate crimes

This is a book for both poetry people and non-poetry people. If you ever wanted a poem explained to you because you didn’t understand the meaning/what it was talking about this book is great. Each poem comes with a brief history of the poet and the time period it was written which provides AMAZING context I would have never understood without it.

Hirsch also did an excellent job of including many women and POC poets. Some of the poems truly broke my heart while reading them. They included many poems about loss-

Loss of a child
Loss of a loved one
Loss of innocence

While the poems are amazing and heart wrenching— the book doesn’t give a trigger warning. Some of these poems are very graphic in the themes they explore. Therefore, if you are sensitive to any of the above mentioned TW maybe avoid reading this book.

However, if you want to read more poetry but are too nervous to dive in without a helping hand—this book is for you!

I was provided an arc from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was a very informative and extremely well-written book but it wasn’t really what I had expected. The commentary felt a bit too analytical at times, leaving no place to emotions and feeling- which are the most important parts of poems- as well as being too long. I still enjoyed it because I learnt a lot but it was not exactly a pleasant reading.

3 stars

TItle is very apt. I did cry many many times reading this.

What I loved most (and this was 500 pages so there's a lot to love) is the explanations that accompanied every poem. It gave me very much Dead Poets Society vibes. My only wish is that there was more diversity in the poems. A lot of them featured death or lost love - which makes sense - but there is so much more sadness in the world. I did find them getting a bit repetitive by the end.

As a Harold Bloom fan, I can appreciate the work that went into compiling and contextualizing this anthology. It is heavy on the criticism, I found myself skipping the author's words and going straight through the poems. That said, there are some great poems in here.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for making this available..

I couldn't finish this book, I tried but I just couldn't get into it. Having the author tell me the emotions, feeling and context of someone else's poems just put me off. I like to unpack and discover the feelings of poems for myself.

I ended up DNFing this book, because I didn't expect it to be so heavy on literary analysis. Am giving 5 stars because the analysis is very well done and this would be a great read for someone who likes to study poetry intensely.

@Thanks NetGalley for giving me the access to read this wonderful story. It was such an emotional journey. I loved every line of this book. I give 5 stars to this wonderful book

So much nostalgia and some of my favorites made the cut! Thank you NetGalley for this gift of poetry! Feeling all the feels!

This book goes through many of the worlds most famous poets and their poetry. Though a little academic in terms of writing style, the sources and resources are well informed and provide solid information. Not my favorite book about poetry, but the writing style is done well and keeps things interesting.

100 Poems to Break Your Heart is a collection of different poems by a large variety of different poets.

I want to begin this review by explaining that this collection isn't what I thought it would be. When I first requested this on Netgalley, I thought it was a collection of Hirsch's own works. Instead, Hirsch explains his perspective on each of the 100 poems, detailing his own interpretations. Personally, I like to make up my own interpretation rather than having someone else tell me what to think.

If you like modern poetry and critical reading, then this book is for you.

The poems were fine. I liked the selection that they included in this anthology. The explanations did get a little tedious after a while, but I found myself skipping some and reading others.

Thank you so much to NetGalley for the arc. This book is 100% what the title says. Its 100 poems to break your heart, but not always in a bad way. Its a collection of some of the most heartbreaking poems around.

I didn't realize when I requested this book that it was not just a compilation of poems, but also close readings of the poems that explained just why they would "break your heart". For me, some of these worked better than others, and by the time I had reached the end of the book, I was frankly pretty tired of the commentary and just wanted to read the poetry. I think the poetry selections were somewhat uneven--the Sharon Olds poem, for example, would have been better replaced with "I Go Back to May 1937" and some of the later contemporary poetry, I didn't find "heartbreaking" at all. I guess I was also expecting more older poetry--I think the exclusion of John Donne here is particularly egregious--so I was a little disappointed at how heavily contemporary this collection leaned. I definitely am glad I read this but the marketing is somewhat misleading and I feel like the commentary could definitely use some jazzing up.

I expected 100 Poems to Break Your Heart to be a collection of poems, but this book also gives information on how each poem is written. I get that some readers want to interpret the poetry by themselves, but I thought it was quite interesting to read the analysis and backstory.

I received an advanced copy of the book 100 Poems to Break Your Heart by Edward Hirsch via NetGalley, and here is my honest review in return!

This book centers around the idea that although reading about others’ pain and loss is often very heartbreaking, it also makes you feel “less alone and more connected.” Edward Hirsch has put together a collection of poems, mostly translated poems from the 19-21st centuries, that are associated with sadness, sorrow, loss, etc.

I had never read translated poetry before, perhaps because I thought poetry could not be translated properly. Hirsch acknowledges that poems lose something of their nature during translation, but he suggests that these poems “add to the sum of our human experience,” and thus reading them, even if in translation, is worth it. I agree.

One thing that I really liked about this book was its format, but I am aware that although this was a positive for me, it could be a negative for a lot of people. Each poem is accompanied by a description of its historical context, the poet’s background, and a mini analysis. Hirsch leads you through almost each line of the poem, helping you understand the bigger picture by giving you information about certain events that took place in the world, or in the poet’s life, when the poem was written. I am not an advanced poetry reader, and I’m usually too lazy to look up information about the poems I read unless I really, really like them. So the format of this book was super helpful to me! I had such easy access to resources; everything I needed was in one page! It also helped me develop my poetry analysis skills, because in addition to providing context, Hirsch also analyzes the poems for you, and you get a good sense of how to break down the poems etc. Now again, I enjoyed this because I’m not an advanced poetry reader, and I don’t know a lot about poem analysis besides the basic stuff. Obviously if you are a pro in poetry interpretation/analysis, the explanations in this book may seem too simple or limiting to you.

I read some reviews which criticized the book for “forcing” them to interpret poems in one single way. I understand that some people may enjoy searching for various possible meanings in poems, and coming up with different interpretations; if you are one of these people, this book might not be for you. I personally like to have answers; I like interpreting poems, but I also want to know what the most likely interpretation is (e.g. what the poet was ACTUALLY thinking about). Since Hirsch makes his interpretations based mostly on historical facts, I like to have a safe interpretation that I know is “most probably” the truth.

These are my personal preferences, I totally understand people who think otherwise. But just keep in mind that the aim of this book is to investigate the heartbreaking nature of certain poems, not to serve as the perfect illustration of how poetry should be handled… So for newbie poetry readers, this book will be a great tool! But more advanced poetry readers or people who like to have their imagination go wild while reading poetry will not have such a positive experience with this.

One thing I should add is that I thought this book was too long. Of course, the more the merrier, and I appreciate the author’s efforts in finding and putting together so many great poems. But I believe that poetry is something to cherish from time to time, it’s not enjoyable to sit down and read poetry like reading a novel. The background info/description bits of the book dilute the poetry a little bit, so it is more bearable, but I still found it difficult to finish the book after a certain point, and found myself skipping some poems that didn’t seem necessarily interesting to me.

I received a digital copy of this book from NetGalley, which really affected my reading experience negatively. I always prefer physical books, but with this book I just NEEDED a physical copy. I would have loved to highlight and take notes on the margins, hold the book in my hand etc. It would have made such an emotional book much better. So I actually think I might get a physical copy once the book gets published. If the publishers are reading this: please send me a free copy :) Thanks!

Overall, if you’re new to poetry, read this! If not, well… You can take your chances.