(FORTUNE Magazine) – The Oxford Book of English Verse edited by Christopher Ricks Oxford University Press, 690 pages

When was the last time you picked up a poetry anthology when the words "final exam" were not involved? If the answer is somewhere between embarrassing and immeasurable, take heart--it's been 27 years since Oxford University Press last saw fit to update the stately anthology that has been the closest most of our bookshelves will ever come to housing a self-contained Great Poetry 101 course. Measured within the sweep of eight centuries of poetry, however, 27 years is a mere stanza, a limerick, a couplet.

Don't be daunted; open the book. If you don't know where to jump in, try page 397. Begin with "A thing of beauty is a joy forever," and from there on choose your own adventure. Thumbing through Oxford '99 randomly (the only way to go, since it's no more a book designed to be read from front to back than the Yellow Pages is), I began with Keats' famous On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer, that appropriately transfixing ode to the power of poetry itself. You know--it's the one that begins "Much have I travelled in the realms of gold...." That sent me on a hunt for the work that inspired Keats: George Chapman's actual translation of Homer, included for the first time. (Editor Christopher Ricks, a Boston University professor known as a generous and open-minded critic, has broadened the definition of poetry to include translations, dramatic verse from Shakespeare and The Canterbury Tales, and even writers like Samuel Beckett.)

Flipping to the end of the book--after all, 27 years must have brought some changes in English poetry--I discovered short works that start with taut language, so swift that it dares you not to continue. Derek Walcott's Missing the Sea begins:

Something removed roars in the ears of this house, Hangs its drapes windless, stuns mirrors Till reflections lack substance.

How can you quit there? Or fail to delve deeper into Elaine Feinstein's translation of Tsvetayeva's Insomnia:

In my enormous city it is--night, as from my sleeping house I go--out, and people think perhaps I'm a daughter or wife but in my mind is one thought only: night.

Modern poems can be mysteries to plumb, so if you're in the mood for sheer exaltation instead, why not try Wordsworth? Start with Influence of Natural Objects in Calling Forth and Strengthening the Imagination and Boyhood in Early Youth. (Okay, so titles weren't his strong suit.)

Wisdom and Spirit of the universe! Thou Soul, that art the Eternity of thought! And giv'st to forms and images a breath And everlasting motion!

You don't see poetry that exclamatory these days, or poets who are so cheerfully reconciled to their role as conduit between man's humble yearnings and the timelessness of ideas and language.

If you're not comfortable with reading by free association, you can always play the "I wonder if they included..." game--rewarding since even disappointing omissions lead to new discoveries. I was sad to find Edward Lear's The Owl and the Pussycat eliminated, but delighted to come upon the same poet's The Dong With a Luminous Nose:

And above the wail of the Chimp and Snipe You may hear the squeak of his plaintive pipe While ever he seeks, but seeks in vain To meet with his Jumbly Girl again...

And seeking in vain to meet with Dylan Thomas' Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, I stumbled on these chilling lines of his:

I have longed to move away but am afraid; Some life, yet unspent, might explode Out of the old lie burning on the ground And, crackling into the air, leave me half-blind.

Go back several centuries to Donne, Spenser, Chaucer, and you may be scared off by Ricks' decision to un-modernize the English of the earlier poems. "Go and catch a falling star" becomes "Goe, and catche a falling starre"; "Go, soul, the body's guest" becomes "Goe soule the bodies guest," and so on. Methynkes this maketh reedinge hardyre, but as Ricks notes in the preface, "It is not necessarily a bad thing for a reader to be mildly slowed down...modernizing does have a dulling effect, a bland levelling."

Oxford's shrewd pre-Christmas publication date implies that this revised collection is more often than not going to be given away almost as swiftly as it's purchased. But may I suggest that if you've read this far, the ideal recipient of The Oxford Book of English Verse may be you--and that it might be perfectly suited for your office desk. Get rid of that embarrassing copy of The Art of War and make room for a book that can be thrown open to almost any page and instantly conjure five minutes (or an hour) of soul-lifting congress with Art. You may surprise yourself with what this volume can still teach you about language and love, history and politics, human aspiration and divine providence. And if all that sounds too intimidating, just start with poem No. 378. It's the one that begins, "This little pig went to market."

--Mark Harris