"One Hundred and One Poems" by Roy Cook is a remarkable anthology of American poets. Some are no longer familiar, but their poetry sheds light on an earlier America, one that inhabited a less complicated world. One-third of the 'famous poems' belong to such well-known American poets as William Cullen Bryant, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Eugene Field, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Vachel Lindsay, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Edwin Markham, Edgar Allan Poe, James Whitcomb Riley, Edward Sill, and John Greenleaf Whittier. More contemporary poets such as Robert Frost, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Edgar Lee Masters, and Carl Sandburg are also included, together with a number of noted English poets (Elizabeth and Robert Browning, Burns, Byron, Gray, George Elliott, Leigh Hunt, Keats, Kipling, Milton, Sir Walter Scott, Shakespeare, Shelley, Tennyson, and Wordsworth). Many poems reflect the virtues of honor, commitment, respect of God, patriotism, honesty, perseverance, courage, respect for others, and loyalty. Others are playful and simply fun to read. Lay this old, outdated collection next to your favorite chair. Its great reading, and you won't be disappointed.
