Poetry is a form of literature that evokes a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience or a specific emotional response through language chosen and arranged for its meaning, sound, and rhythm. Poetry is a wonderful skill and an addicting hobby. In one poem poets can covey the story of their whole life. Poetry can act as fossils, we can interpret the life of an era by reading a poem written in that era, and some poems are simply classics. Classic poems are relatable all, may at different levels. A classic is relatable the same way it was decades ago.

Some of the greatest poets who gifted the world with their classical pieces of poetry include Robert Frost, William Wordsworth, Emily Elizabeth Dickson, William Blake, John Keats, Walt Whitman, Alfred Tennyson, John Donne and the greatest of all William Shakespeare. These great poets explored through different genres, genres that never gets old which may include romantic or love, life, nature, morbidity and when nature resembles our life.

Below is a list of poetry books created by these great poets who blessed us with classic poetry that we can still relate to.

1. If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho By Sappho

This book written by Sapho is translated by Anne Carson. The poetry of this book gives a tantalizing window onto the genius of a woman whose lyric power spans millennia. Anne Carson combined all fragments of Sappho’s Work and presented this particular book.

2. The Essential Rumi By Rumi

This book is translated by Coleman Barks with translations from the Persian by John Moyne, A. J. Arberry, and Reynold Nicholson. In this book, there are poetries by the thirteenth-century Persian philosopher, mystic, scholar, poet Jelaluddin Rumi. His inspirational poetries speak with the universal voice of the human soul and brims with exuberant energy and passion.

3. The Complete Sonnets and Poems by William Shakespeare

This book is based on latest and extensive research on Shakespeare’s work. This book along with the poems provides account for relation between the poems and his dramatic works. The books also give information about interpretations of the immediate audience of the poems that is audience of seventeenth century when Shakespeare first wrote these poems and sonnets.

4. John Donne’s Poetry by John Donne

John Donne was English poet who wrote classic poetry and is known for his metaphorical and sensual writing style. John Donne is considered one of the prominent metaphysical poets and have been heavily criticised for that. This book contains a combination of poetry and sonnets by the metaphysical poet, John Donne.

5. On Love and Barley: Haiku of Basho by Basho

This book is translated by Lucien Stryk. This particular book is a selection of Basho’s haiku which is translated into English by Lucien Stryk. The poems in this book are written by one of the most renowned Japanese poets and a lifelong traveller Basho, who is also a master of Haiku. These poems are written in such a manner that evokes nature. All the plots remind us of nature be it cherry blossom or the winter snow. Basho’s poems which reflect the calmness that he achieved as a Buddhist monk, provides a soothing and calming tone.

6. Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake

This book has poems of one of the best English poet and painter William Blake. Songs of Innocence and of Experience is a two-set book. The book is an illustration of poems with artworks. The first part is “innocence” which contains mostly happy, and harmonious perceptions. The books contain 19 poems including The Shepherd, The Echoing Green, The Lamb, The Little Black Boy, The Blossom, The Chimney Sweeper, Spring, Nurse’s Song, Infant Joy, A Dream, On Another’s Sorrow, The Little Boy Lost, The Little Boy Found, Laughing Song, A Cradle Song, The Divine Image, Holy Thursday, and Night. The second part “experience” has 26 poems including Earth’s Answer, The Clod and the Pebble, Holy Thursday, The Little Girl Lost, The Little Girl Found, A Dream, Nurse’s Song, The Sick Rose, The Fly, The Angel, The Tyger, My Pretty Rose Tree, Ah! Sun-flower, The Lilly, The Garden of Love, The Little Vagabond, London and many more.

7. Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 The friendship of romantic English Poet William Wordsworth and English poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge is well known in the literal world they together launched the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballad. The reaction of their immediate audience and critics was modest but this remains a landmark in English literature and a classic to us. The book is in two volume. Some the works present in this book are Expostulation and Reply, The Tables Turned; an Evening Scene, on the Same Subject, Old Man Travelling; Animal Tranquillity and Decay, a Sketch, The Complaint of a Forsaken Indian Woman, The Last of the Flock, Lines Left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree which Stands Near the Lake of Esthwaite, The Foster-Mother’s Tale, Goody Blake and Harry Gill, The Thorn, We are Seven, Anecdote for Fathers, Lines Written at a Small Distance from My House and Sent Me by My little Boy to the Person to whom They Are Addressed, The Female Vagrant, The Dungeon, Simon Lee, the Old Huntsman, Lines Written in Early Spring, The Nightingale, Lines Written When Sailing in a Boat at Evening, Upon the Thames, The Idiot Boy, The Mad Mother, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,The Childless Father, The Old Cumberland Beggar, a Description, Rural Architecture, A Poet’s Epitaph, A Character, A Fragment and many more.

8. Selected Poetry by John Keats

John Keats was a prominent English poet of early nineteenth century. He belonged to the second generation of romantic poets along with Lord Bryon. This book, Selected Poetry by John Keats is an omnibus collection of his works portraying his profound understanding and maturity.

9. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

This is a work of American poet, essayist, and journalist Walt Whitman. This book Leaves of Grass is his best-known work. This book is also considered as a landmark in the history of American Literature. This book underwent updates and modifications throughout Whitman’s lifetime. He himself had compared this book with church under construction or a tree. As he constantly changed its tittles, dictations and many integral part oof it. ultimately the result was piece know world wide and appreciated by all.

10. Goblin Market and Other Poems by Christina Rossetti

Christina Rossetti was a well-known English poet. She wrote romantic as well as devotional poems. She also expertise in writing children’s poems. Her best-known work includes Goblin Market and Remember. This book Goblin Market and other poems by Rossetti includes her famous poem Goblin Market and other famous works of hers such as Up-hill, The Convent Threshold, Maude Clare, and “In the Round Tower at Jhansi, 8 June 1857′. Goblin market is a narrative poem which she has mentioned that she wrote for her children. The poem in this book was illustrated by her brother the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

11. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson

This book is aa collection of poems by one the most notable figures in the history of American Literature, Emily Elizabeth Dickson. She explored a lot of themes in her poems which include flowers and gardens, the master poems, morbidity, gospel poems and many other. This book is considered a distillation of thousands of poems that she wrote in her life time.

12. Robert Frost’s Poems by Robert Frost

 Robert Frost is a noteworthy American poet. He is the only poet to receive four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. His works first gained acknowledgement in England and then was published in the united states. He wrote about his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. This book contains many of his best works including “Birches,” “Mending Wall,” “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “Two Tramps at Mudtime,” “Choose Something Like a Star,” and “The Gift Outright,”.

13. The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke By Rainer Maria Rilke

This books contains works of Bohemian Australian poet René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilkebetter known as Rainer Maria Rilke This particular book of poetry has been translated by Stephen Mitchell. This book contains more than two hundred and fifty selected poems by Rilke, including complete translations of the Sonnets to Orpheus and the Duino Elegies. This book is considered a landmark bilingual edition which contains all of Snow’s commentaries on Rilke, as well as an important new introduction by the award-winning poet Adam Zagajewski.

14. Selected Poems by William Carlos Williams:

This book contains works of the American poet William Carlos Williams. His poems are unique is a way as he uses his skill of objective observation which he learned during his life as a physician. Professor Tomlinson has arranged William Carlos Williams’s works in a chronological manner in this book.

15. The Poems of Marianne Moore by Marianne Moore

This book contains works of one of the foremost American poets Marianne Moore. This book is a combination of all works of Marianne Moore. This book is edited by another American poet Grace Schulman.