The volume includes 111 authors and nearly a thousand poems ranging from pre-Hispanic (XIV and XV) to modern and contemporary times, through the era of New Spain (XVI centuries and XVII) and neoclassical, academic, romantic and modernist currents (XVIII and XIX). Poets include Nezahualcoyotl, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Gutierrez de Cetina, Manuel Acuna, Salvador Diaz Miron, Manuel Jose Othon, Amado Nervo, Jose Juan Tablada, Ramon Lopez Velarde, Xavier Villaurrutia, Jose Gorostiza, Carlos Pellicer, Octavio Paz, Rosario Castellanos, Jaime Sabines and Jose Emilio Pacheco, among many others. This work can be considered "canonical" on the grounds that any reader who accesses it will get the most complete and best poetry ever written in Mexico.