---
product_id: 5439922
title: "Selected Poems (Penguin Classics)"
brand: "thomas hardy"
price: "$37.01"
currency: USD
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 11
url: https://www.desertcart.us/products/5439922-selected-poems-penguin-classics
store_origin: US
region: United States of America
---

# Selected Poems (Penguin Classics)

**Brand:** thomas hardy
**Price:** $37.01
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

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- **What is this?** Selected Poems (Penguin Classics) by thomas hardy
- **How much does it cost?** $37.01 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.us](https://www.desertcart.us/products/5439922-selected-poems-penguin-classics)

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- thomas hardy enthusiasts

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## Description

Selected Poems (Penguin Classics)

## Images

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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    "Emotion put into measure"
  

*by R***N on Reviewed in the United States on May 6, 2012*

I commend this volume for three reasons.  First and foremost for the 180 or so poems by Thomas Hardy (out of the approximately 950 he wrote).  Among critics and self-professed serious students of English poetry, Hardy is often mildly disparaged as a poet.  Yet among poets themselves, Hardy is/was admired and loved, even by "moderns" such as Pound, Jeffers, and Larkin.Two aspects of Hardy's poetry stand out.  One is his adherence to rhyme and meter.  But Hardy is marvelously creative and diverse in his use of meter, his rhyming patterns, and the structure of his poems.  He relies heavily on good old Anglo-Saxon words (many monosyllabic) and constructions.  For those, like me, who often are uncomfortable with the free form and discursiveness of much modern poetry, Hardy is a welcome alternative.  (The majority of the poems in this selection are less than twenty lines; very few are more than fifty.)  The other conspicuous characteristic of Hardy's poetry is the somber atmosphere.  The most common themes are death, the passage of time, nostalgia and regret.  His poems are simple (few annotations are needed to read and understand them); they are more emotional than intellectual, more concrete than abstract; and they are very personal.  Ultimately, then, THOMAS HARDY: SELECTED POEMS demonstrates a high degree of poetic craftsmanship and discipline and it constitutes a very moving body of work.The second reason for commending this particular volume of Hardy's poems is Robert Mezey's Introduction and notes.  At just over twenty pages, the Introduction is an ideal length.  In it, Mezey succinctly makes his case for stating that "among the moderns", Hardy's "only peer is Frost and, perhaps, Yeats."  One of the virtues of Hardy's poetry that Mezey identifies (and his selection confirms) is that with Hardy "the sense we get [is] that the moral and the aesthetic are rarely, if ever, separate things."  The Introduction is learned, but it is not ivory tower:  at one point Mezey compares a wonderful "song-like" rhyme in a Hardy poem with a rhyme from a Randy Travis song.Lastly, this volume stands out for me for what it revealed of Thomas Hardy himself, that he was very decent and very human.  I occasionally indulge myself by fantasizing about what it might have been like to spend an evening with a famous writer:  of all famous writers, Thomas Hardy is one of those I most would have liked to have done so, and who (I sense) would have genuinely, without condescension, been interested in me.One of several bonus features of the book is an Appendix containing miscellaneous comments Hardy made about poetry, writing, and life.  Two of them seem worth sharing here:"The business of the poet and novelist is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things, and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things.""Poetry is emotion put into measure.  The emotion must come by nature, but the measure can be acquired by art."After years - nay, decades - of reading only prose, I have resolved to expand my horizons (or, if you wish, deepen my soul) by reading poetry regularly - say about one book or collection each month.  THOMAS HARDY: SELECTED POEMS proved to be an excellent beginning.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Thomas Hardy, is somewhat new for me, however ...
  

*by S***Y on Reviewed in the United States on November 18, 2014*

Thomas Hardy, is somewhat new for me, however after reading just a few poems I knew it was just right for what I had been looking for. No man can read Hardy's poems collected but that his own life, and forgotten moments of it, will not come back to him.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Five Stars
  

*by J***R on Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2015*

Excellent selection as intro to Hardy's verse. Nice to go beyond the famous novels.

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*Last updated: 2026-02-21*