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.

Thank you Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing and Netgalley for sending me a copy of 100 Poems to Break Your Heart by Edward Hirsch. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Well let's dive right in.

Going into the book I was expecting a collection of poetry and as a seasoned veteran of books and poems breaking my heart I was interested in what was in store. In my opinion, the sypnosis is a bit misleading as the book more revolves around the factual depiction of the poems in question rather than the emotions surrounding them. I think definitely if you are very interested in analysis and knowing the backstories then this is a great book for you! I enjoyed some parts and the insight into the pieces but found myself wanting to draw my own interpretations more. I truly believe with a different sypnosis / summary, this book could reach a much more desired audience and go further in an educational and analyzing sense. A wide range of content was talked about which was appreciated as it covered a big time span and really gets you to see the evolution of poetry (which is something that interests me). Overall, a solid analytical book and a very pretty abstracted cover as well.