Good poetry makes you feel something. It will give you goose bumps, make you cry, chuckle, or put you in high spirits. Michael Fitzgerald-Clarke knows this, and he creates the right connection. These are mature poems that reach out to the reader, and speak directly to them. The depth and substance of the word imagery speaks confidently and powerfully, and then lingers long after the last poem has been read. The varied hues in Clarke's work, makes it easy for the reader to find the exact colour to match their changing moods.
These powerful poems leave the reader wanting more and Dennis Smith's evocative photography adds another inspirational layer, to delight and satisfy.

Mihail Eminescu (January 15, 1850 - June 15, 1889), late Romantic poet, probably the single best-known Romanian poet. His poems span a large range of themes, from nature and love to history and social commentary. His carefree early years were evoked in his later poetry with deep nostalgia. His life, work and poetry are a strong influence especially in the Romanian culture as studying his poems is a requirement in Romanian public schools and often memorization and analysis of "Luceafarul" is mandatory for high school graduation exams.

John McCrae, physician, soldier, and poet, died in France a Lieutenant-Colonel with the Canadian forces. The poem which gives this collection of his lovely verse its name has been extensively reprinted, and received with unusual enthusiasm. The volume contains, as well, a striking essay in character by his friend, Sir Andrew Macphail. McCrae was also the co-author, with J. G. Adami, of a medical textbook, A Text-Book of Pathology for Students of Medicine (1912; 2nd ed., 1914). He was the brother of Dr. Thomas McCrae, professor of medicine at John Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore and close associate of Sir William Osler. McCrae was the great uncle of former Alberta MP David Kilgour and of Kilgour's sister Geills Turner, who married former Canadian Prime Minister John Napier Turner.

It is at my persuasion that these poems are now published. The earliest of them were read to me in London in 1896, when the writer was seventeen; the later ones were sent to me from India in 1904, when she was twenty-five; and they belong, I think, almost wholly to those two periods. As they seemed to me to have an individual beauty of their own, I thought they ought to be published. The writer hesitated. "Your letter made me very proud and very sad," she wrote. "Is it possible that I have written verses that are 'filled with beauty,' and is it possible that you really think them worthy of being given to the world? You know how high my ideal of Art is; and to me my poor casual little poems seem to be less than beautiful--I mean with that final enduring beauty that I desire." And, in another letter, she writes: "I am not a poet really. I have the vision and the desire, but not the voice. If I could write just one poem full of beauty and the spirit of greatness, I should be exultantly silent for ever; but I sing just as the birds do, and my songs are as ephemeral." It is for this bird-like quality of song, it seems to me, that they are to be valued. They hint, in a sort of delicately evasive way, at a rare temperament, the temperament of a woman of the East, finding expression through a Western language and under partly Western influences. They do not express the whole of that temperament; but they express, I think, its essence; and there is an Eastern magic in them. -- ARTHUR SYMONS

George Meredith was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, S England, UK. He was educated privately and in Germany, and on his return to London rejected a career in law. Although his best-known work, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, was written in 1859, he achieved no real literary success to begin with, and lived in poverty, forced to eke out a living by becoming a manuscript reader. Later works, such as The Egoist (1879) and Diana of the Crossways (1885), brought him financial reward. His main poetic work is Modern Love (1862), based partly on his first, unhappy marriage. Other books include Evan Harrington (1860), Harry Richmond (1871), and Beauchamp's Career (1875). His prose works include Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth (1883). He was awarded the Order of Merit in 1905, and enjoyed much recognition towards the end of his life.

Robert Browning represents the intellectual and argumentative strand in English poetry, in contrast to the more ornate style of Spenser and Tennyson. His poetry demonstrates that a poet must be a sharp observer of the human condition. The most moving poems deal with his feelings for his wife, Elizabeth Barrett. Browning married her in 1846 and they settled in Casa Guidi in Florence where he composed many more poems. Elizabeth died in 1861, saddening Browning greatly, and in turn drove him back to London where he became a well known figure in London literary circles. In 1869 he published "The Ring and the Book" that finally established his reputation as a major poet. "The Ring and the Book" brought out Browning's interests like the Italian scene, moral casuistry, and the complexity of the human personality. In later poems after his wide public acclaim he touched on subjects like classical literature and criminal psycology. "Asolando", Browning's last volume of poetry, was published on the day of his death in Venice on December 12th, 1889. His body was interred in Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey.

Journalist and poet, born near Orange, New South Wales, Australia. A World War 2 correspondent, he was the author of several books of light verse, including The Animals Noah Forgot (1933), but is best known as the author of "Waltzing Matilda', adapted from a traditional ditty, which became Australia's national song.

Australia has produced in Andrew Barton `Banjo' Paterson a national poet whose bush ballads are as distinctly characteristic of the country as Burns's poetry is characteristic of Scotland.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox wrote verses which appealed to the public and never one verse strained or ungramatical, as she states in her memoirs, her first check paid for a dress to wear to a wedding. Her financial returns were not of importance, though she was known and loved by thousands of readers. She wrote for the same reason that a bird sings. It was what she was made for. Her marriage was a love match. It is doubtful if anyone knows the names of all her published poems. They were a great multitude and everyone found ardent admirers--and critics. The world is better because Ella Wheeler Wilcox lived.

Üzeyir Lokman ÇAYCI was born in Turkey, in Bor, where he attended primary and high school. Then, he graduated in 1975 as an Architect - Industry Designer at The Fine Arts State Academy in Istanbul. His work full of original ideas has soon started drawing the attention of the experts. He got admitted to some major exhibitions and published in specialized revues. After his graduation he worked in the Koç Holding design department where he excelled as a designer.
He started writing poems and novels when he was 14 years old. Many of them have been published in various national and local revues and papers, with very favourable notes by the press, the critics and the anthologies. The interest for his poetry shown by Ümit Yasar OGUZCAN, Turkish poet of great fame, gave him access to significant platforms. In Esir Kulüp de Beyoglu in Istanbul, gathering many experienced poets of the country, he recited during years his poems with musical accompaniment at the poetry evenings. At this moment, the German, English, and French translation of his poems is in progress.

Professor Carhart was born in Evanston, Illinois, on June 28, 1877, the daughter of Henry Sprague Carhart, Chairman of the Department of Physics of the University of Michigan, and Ellen M. Soulé, Professor of French and Dean of Women at Northwestern University. She took both her bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Michigan. In 1921, she received the Ph.D. degree in English from Yale University. After leaving Michigan, she taught for several years at the University of Colorado as head of the work in Engineering English. She then came to California, first as a teacher of English at the Pasadena High School, then as head of the Department of English at the Union High School in Palo Alto. For one year she was Educational Director and Assistant Superintendent at the State School for Girls in Ventura.

Poet, born at Plas Wilmot, near Oswestry, Shropshire, WC England, UK. He studied at the Birkenhead Institute and at Shrewsbury Technical School, left England to teach English in Bordeaux (1913), and began to write. Wounded in World War 1, he was sent to recuperate near Edinburgh, where he met Siegfried Sassoon, who encouraged his poetry writing. One of the most important poets of World War 1, his poems, expressing a horror of the cruelty and waste of war, were first collected in 1920 by Sassoon and reappeared in 1931 with a memoir by Edmund Blunden. Several were set to music by Britten in his War Requiem (1962). The Collected Poems, edited by C Day Lewis, were published in 1963. He was killed in action on the Western Front on his return to France, a week before the armistice.

The first copies of the combined Songs in which the two sections were printed together were A and R in 1795. That same year, Blake printed eight sets of Innocence and nine sets of Experience impressions to form Innocence copy N, the "Innocence" section of combined Songs copy J, the "Experience" sections of combined Songs copies J, O, and S, and both sections of combined Songs copies I, L, M, and BB. "Innocence" of combined Songs copy O was once joined with "Experience" of combined Songs copy K, and untraced Innocence copy W was probably once combined with "Experience" of combined Songs copy N. In c. 1802, Blake printed three copies of Innocence, along with two copies of Experience. In c. 1804, he printed another three copies of Innocence; in c. 1811 he printed two more copies.

Although best known for his sparkling and witty plays, Oscar Wilde also distinguished himself as a prolific poet. From "Ravenna," a prize-winning poem he wrote in college, to "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," penned during his time in prison for homosexual acts, Wilde created a fascinating body of verse. More than 35 of his works appear in this excellent collection, and they reveal the scope and brilliance of his writing. Many were inspired by his time in Italy, including "Sonnet: On hearing the Dies Irae sung in the Sistine Chapel." Other brief pieces, called Impressions, capture the feeling of a moment: "Le Jardin" evokes a garden as winter descends. Still more honor his fellow poets, including "On the Sale of Keats' Love Letters." An enlightening anthology that Wilde lovers will treasure.

Although the Brontës have long fascinated readers of fiction and biography, their poetry was all too little known until this pioneering selection by Stevie Davies, the novelist and critic. Charlotte (1816-1855) is certainly a competent poet, and Anne (1820-1849) developed a distinctive voice, while Emily (1818-1848) is one of the great women poets in English. All three sisters, as Stevie Davies remarks in her introduction, were Romantic in inspiration, writing poetry of passionate personal feeling and of pure imagination. They share certain themes-liberty, loneliness, love-and harbor the myth of a lost paradise. Read together with their novels, the poems movingly elucidate the ideas around which the narratives revolve. And they surprise us out of our conventional notions of the sisters' personalities: Emily's rebelliousness, for example, is counterbalanced here by great tenderness.
This selection of over seventy poems gives an idea of the variety of thought and feeling within each author's work, and of the way in which the poems of these three remarkable writers parallel and reflect each other.