The Dance: Poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets Series)

A celebration in verse of the silent poetry of dance and the dancer, this anthology features a dizzying range of subjects: Chinese dagger dances and Hindu festival dances, belly dancers and whirling dervishes, high school proms and wedding waltzes, tango, tarantella, flamenco, modern dance, reels and jigs, disco, and ballet. Some of the world’s most famous choreographers and dancers move through the poems gathered here: from Nijinsky and Pavlova to Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire, from Isadora Duncan to George Balanchine and Martha Graham, from Bojangles to Baryshnikov.

The work of more than 150 poets—including Shakespeare, Milton, Hafiz, Rumi, Li Po, Rilke, Rimbaud, Lorca, Akhmatova, Whitman, Dickinson, Cummings, Eliot, and Merrill—reflects the grace, the drama, the expressive power, and the sheer joy to be found in dance around the world and through the ages.

Emily Fragos is a poet who lives in New York City. Her first book of poems, Little Savage, won the David Craig Austin Prize from Columbia University. She edited the Everyman's Library Pocket Poet anthology The Great Cat: Poems About Cats.