Edward Hirsch’s 100 Poems to Break Your Heart hurts so good, as John Mellencamp once sang.

This anthology collects poems from Wordsworth (1815) to Meena Alexander (2018) in order to showcase grief in its many manifestations. Hirsch provides mini-essays following each poem to contextualize the work, including information on the author’s life and the social/political times in which it was written. Hirsch includes not only poets who write in English but translations from the Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Hungarian, Polish, Yiddish, Hebrew, Turkish, German, Portuguese, and Arabic. It is estimated that as of today the world has lost 6.62 million to Covid-19—and the real number is likely higher. We all are grieving someone or something, a tradition or a pre-Covid ritual now gone. 100 Poems to Break Your Heart is in line with Hirsch’s poetry advocacy, a continuation of his How to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love with Poetry (Ecco, 2000) as well as his own stunning elegiac Gabriel: A Poem (Knopf, 2014). Included in 100 Poems to Break Your Heart is one of my favorite poems by Muriel Rukeyser:

 

Poem

I lived in the first century of world wars.

Most mornings I would be more or less insane,

The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,

The news would pour out of various devices

Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen.

I would call my friends on other devices;

They would be more or less mad for similar reasons.

Slowly I would get to pen and paper,

Make my poems for others unseen and unborn.

In the day I would be reminded of those men and women,

Brave, setting up signals across vast distances,

Considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values.

As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened,

We would try to imagine them, try to find each other,

To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile

Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other,

Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means

To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves,

To let go the means, to wake.



I lived in the first century of these wars.

I read poems mostly for the way they make me feel. That said, I really enjoy sometimes reading poems alongside an expert explication to help me understand the poem and where it sits in relation to its time, its author, and its history. And who points out the technical things that help illuminate HOW the poet has gotten an emotional reaction from me. I just read one or two poems and their accompanying essays each day. It's like a mini-course in writing and reading poetry.

Review copy provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I really liked the selection of poems the author selected, they were well chosen and remarkably analyzed. The 100 poems were well rounded in regards to touching different aspects of heartbreak and I find that Hirsch made it quite easy for me to show solicitude for others.

I don't think the cover/description exemplifies the true contents in this book. A handful of the negative reviews state how they were not expecting the author's analytical opinions rather than short 100 poems. Based on the vague description, I initially thought that too but I thoroughly enjoyed this read.

I’m going to be honest, this wasn’t what I was expecting so I’m going to pick it up at a later time!!

Thanks to NetGalley for this advanced paperback edition copy of 100 Poems To Break Your Heart!! This book is magic. Beautiful, beautiful magic.

The world doesn’t like to encourage wallowing, but I believe it’s a vital part of the human experience. I love sad poems for the same reasons why I read Joan Didion and rewatch New Moon every few months—I’m a glutton for punishment.

Each meticulously chosen poem is accompanied by interpretations, notes, and the author’s thoughts. A book like this has the potential to be pretentious and stuffy, but luckily it was neither.

Bravo

This book is beautiful. The poems are wonderful and inspiring. This book is for anyone trying to process and work through grief, loneliness, or fear. This book is as it says, a guide in trying times. I loved it and will recommend this book.

This book was a completely unexpected surprise, in the best way! I expected to read page after page of poems, as I have in other books. This book added insight into the poets behind each poem. I read explanations of the technical aspects of the poetic structures, and the contexts around the poems’ messages. The author provided interpretations of the meanings behind the words. The tone of the book was instructive, in nature—both informative and engaging. Not only was I able to read through a few of my past favorite poems with new perspective, I was exposed to works I’d never read. I thank NetGalley, Edward Hirsch, and the publisher for allowing me to review this gem!

100 of the most moving and inspiring poems of the last 200 years from around the world, a collection that will comfort and enthrall anyone trapped by grief or loneliness, selected by the award-winning, best-selling, and beloved author of How to Read a Poem

Implicit in poetry is the idea that we are enriched by heartbreaks, by the recognition and understanding of suffering—not just our own suffering but also the pain of others. We are not so much diminished as enlarged by grief, by our refusal to vanish, or to let others vanish, without leaving a record. And poets are people who are determined to leave a trace in words, to transform oceanic depths of feeling into art that speaks to others.

In 100 Poems to Break Your Heart, poet and advocate Edward Hirsch selects 100 poems, from the nineteenth century to the present, and illuminates them, unpacking context and references to help the reader fully experience the range of emotion and wisdom within these poems.

For anyone trying to process grief, loneliness, or fear, this collection of poetry will be your guide in trying times.

A great collection of poems that will absolutely break your heart. Well written poetry for those who are feeling pain

I rarely read publishers' blurbs anymore because they are too often way off the mark. I definitely should have looked at the one for 100 Poems to Break Your Heart more closely though. I was expecting a compilation of poetry for times of grief or sadness, and while it is that, it is also quite dense and full of analysis. Edward Hirsch has chosen 100 poems and arranged them chronologically, from 1815 to 2018, with poems from many diverse sources. There were several that spoke to me, such as Sharon Olds' "The Race", Kate Daniels' "The Addict's Mother", and Patricia Smith's "Ethel's Sestina". The last one is about Hurricane Katrina and begins "Ethel Freeman's body sat for days in her wheelchair outside the New Orleans Convention Center." It is indeed heartbreaking.

I would have preferred a more modern collection of poems with less analysis that would have allowed me to develop my own thoughts about the poems, but this is a good volume to choose if you are looking for plenty of grief ("We are not so much diminished as enlarged by grief") and analysis to go along with it.

Thank you to Mariner Books and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book.

A deep dive into 100 poems that address the forces that bring us difficulty and challenge in our lives. As a novice poetry reader, I was intrigued by the analysis and reflections on each of the 100 poems. If you love poetry, you'll enjoy the journey found within this book.

A lovely volume with something that will resonate with everyone. A recommended purchase for public and HS collections.

I have to say... this is a great collection!

While I have a good deal of love for poets like Shel Silverstein and Ogden Nash, my favorite poems are the ones that rip my still-beating heart from my chest and stomp on it. And if you're like me, this is a collection for you.

There's plenty of 20th and 21st century poets I've been meaning to read, like Philip Larkin and Victoria Chang, and old favorites like Mary Oliver and Adrienne Rich... but even among favorites, there's poems here that I haven't read before (or at least ones that I don't *remember* reading over the last two decades).

The book also contains a good variety of content, despite the conceit of the title. There's a thousand different ways to have your heart broken and the poems in this collection definitely show that off well.

The introduction to this gathering of poems make its clear why we need to be turning and returning to poems such as those continued in this marvelous collection. We are living in a broken world and need to reclaim our ability to feel and deal with that brokenness. A beautiful selection with really good intros.

Beautifully compiled, richly detailed collection of some of the most heart wrenching and yet heart affirming poems ever written. This is a scholarly work that is user friendly. Bravo.