Some of the many poets whose works are included in this collection are Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson, Hardy, St. Vincent Millay, Langston Hughes, Anne Sexton, Randall Jarrell, Muriel Rukeyser, Robert Lowell, Sharon Olds and Phillip Larkin, among many others. This is certainly a good collection with, as the title suggests, a focus on heartbreak. What a topic for Covid times, although there are many kinds of losses and many centuries during which poets grappled with this emotion. Grief does not only belong to today.

This collection will most appeal to serious readers of poetry. There are many kinds of poems including sonnets, aubades, a villanelle, a nocturne and more. The erudite editor has selected poems that have special meaning to him and he explicates them all. Some readers may not want all of this additional content but it is worth looking at, at least some of the time. Other times, readers can dip in and read whatever poem they like on its own merits. Readers who take their time with this title will learn a lot and feel a good deal as well.

I am really disappointed in this book of poetry.  The layout was poor and made it difficult to find the poems.  They were buried in a wall of text instead of being the highlight and easy to find.  Maybe this will be corrected in the final proof?   

I'm a newbie to reading poetry.  While I appreciated the level of detail in the dissection and analysis, it felt like a college textbook. I feel most readers are like me in that they are either new to poetry or casual readers.  This level of detail was unnecessary.   

I'd suggest this to readers who are advanced poetry readers that want to really understand the context and analysis of the poems.  As a new casual reader, this just wasn't for me.

Like any poetry collection, there are some hits and some misses here - but overall, this is a well-put-together collection with a promising premise. My biggest dislike about this particular collection is that it leans too heavily to male poets for me. Of course, given that the editor is a man, I'm not sure that's a surprise. 

There are better collections, but this one isn't a total loss.

Bem, não foi exatamente isso que eu esperava quando me deparei com esse livro.
É um bom livro para quem gosta e busca análises de poemas, porém eu não queria isso e acabei me decepcionando.
Uma coisa que me incomodou foi que a análise e o poema em si ficavam meio misturados entre parágrafos, poderia ser uma coisa e depois outra. 
A capa é simplesmente maravilhosa, mas infelizmente esse livro não era pra mim.

This was not what I expected it to be. I expected 100 poems with short bios of each author, but what this book is instead is a detailed analysis of the poems and the poets. While there were some aspects of the author's analysis I enjoyed, most of the time I found it to be superfluous. For certain poems, his analysis was so detailed that he would examine the poem almost line by line, and I found myself skipping some parts so that I could get to the next poem. Sometimes I felt as if the author was meticulously dissecting the poetry with a scalpel and then using the technical terms to describe it's anatomy instead of showcasing the feelings and emotions of the poems. 



Thank you to Netgalley + Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for sending me an ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

deciding to DNF this one at bout 40 percent. I just felt like I wasn't really getting anything out of these poems and was getting quite bored which is not ideal.

This anthology is a charming collection of poems centred around loss, death, grief, sadness and fear. Each poem is accompanied by a detailed analysis and the context in which it was written. 

Edward Hirsch does a wonderful job in explaining the poems, but the analysis often overpowers the poem. It is often too unnecessarily detailed. The book goes from being a light read to an educational one, which is fine if that’s what you want although I would have preferred shorter insights. 
The selection of poems is quite good though. 

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

A beautiful book by a beautiful and celebrated poet.  I love poetry, and I find as I get older, I look to poetry more and more often to understand my world and to express those thoughts and feelings that are percolating but not quite polished or defined. Edward Hirsch curated a poignant collection of 100 poems on grief, loss, loneliness, fear, suffering...heartbreak.  His collection draws from 200 years of poetry, from classic poets to modern authors.  Some poems were familiar, and some were new for me.  What makes this stand out is the way Hirsch unpacks each poem, explaining meaning and references, teaching the reader so you can more fully experience each poem.  I know this is a book I will purchase for myself, to reference when needed, and to gift to a friend or family member.  This grateful reader appreciates the ARC from NetGalley!

I started this book, and in the beginning, it felt strange, and I kept hoping that once we're done with the introductions and what the author thinks about the poems, the poems would be presented. That, sadly was not the case. Perhaps this is on me for not combing through the description more thoroughly than I did, but this book is about what the author feels about the poems he mentions as the 100 poems, and not the poems themselves. Also, they don't feel like they're on heartbreak? Just saying.

I really wanted to like this, I loved the premise but the layout meant I struggled. I think I would have preferred the poem first then the analogy as the layout made it hard to read. 

I also found a lot of the poems to not be heartbreaking or about love but very religious and they felt dated which was a shame.

I liked that there were lots of female writers showcased and enjoyed that aspect.

Thank you for the arc.

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.