''The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry'' features the work of three Nobel laureates - W.B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney - as well as Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Moore, Patrick Kavanagh, Louis MacNeice, Eavan Boland and James Joyce. It also includes epigrams, traditional verses and Old Irish songs, with 250 new English translations by the greatest poets currently working, including Seamus Heaney and Ciaran Carson. Reflecting everything from Ireland's rich history of writing about the land, to its untypical prominence of women in and writing its poetry, and the abundance of oppositions that have preoccupied its verse through the ages (from Christian and pre-Christian attitudes, to Gaels and Vikings, Nationalism and Unionism, Catholicism and Protestantism, the Irish and English languages), this is an inclusive and masterfully arranged collection of Irish verse. ''The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry'' is an indispensable and important guide to the country's unparalleled literary culture.