When I began this book, I was worried that the experience of reading it would be like the experience of reading Petrarch all at once: Laura/laurel...got it...oh look, there it is again, and again... Thankfully, the collection covers 5 centuries of sonnet writing in English, from Wyatt to Heaney and even more contemporary. As a result, the style of the sonnet changes as you read, as do the rhyme schemes and the topics.

Though many of the sonnets were familiar to me--particularly those from the Renaissance and the 19th century--there were many that were new. I learned that there were more (and better) sonnets being written between Milton and the Romantics than I had formerly thought. It was also interesting to see how the traditional roots of the sonnet in a Petrarchan unrequited love story get re-written, revised and overturned in later centuries. I was even struck by how differently two authors could look at the tradition. It is clear that Barret Browning was working against Petrarchanism in her "Sonnets of the Portuguese." What I was surprised to learn was Christina Rossetti's response that wished Browning's love affair had turned out badly so that England could have had a true female Petrarch!

As with any anthology, one can argue and quibble with selections and omissions. I was probably most surprised by how many sonnets some poets received while others got only 1. To my mind, I cannot understand how Lowell's "Life Studies" should only yield 1 sonnet when any number of second or third-rate poets could have been dropped to make more room. Other than that, I think this book gives a reasonable overview of the development of the sonnet in English. ( )