Here is a capacious and sparkling gathering of poems an anthology that extends its reach from the Englishspeaking world to Asia Africa Europe and Latin America. This unique volume includes such wellknown figures as Pablo Neruda Anna Akhmatova Paul Celan Seamus Heaney Wole Soyinka and Elizabeth Bishop but also offers the less familiar but equally welcome voices of Ugandan Okot pBitek Indian A.K. Ramanujan and the Japanese poet Shuntaro Tanikawa. With insightful essays by such eminent scholars and poets as Helen Vendler Kwame Anthony Appiah Sven Birkerts Carolyn Forch and Bei Dao placing the selections from each region in their cultural political and literary contexts The Poetry of Our World guides readers through the richest and most eclectic selection of world poetry available today. show more