I read A Very Short Introduction: Poetry and that was a better book. This book basically shows the prominent poets and poems but doesn't give more history and philosophy into poetry-making and the world of what was going when the poetry was made. It does that to an extent but it's mostly analysis of the lines it uses as examples. It's just not the kind of "A history of poetry" book I'm looking for but I would've rated this somewhere around 3.5 stars.