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Selected Poems (Oxford World's Classics)

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A Fascinating Meditation on the Relevance of Verlane
Brilliant, but not always
Buy it for the bonkers annotation.
A Case of Confusion

Selected Poems (Oxford World's Classics)
Paul Verlaine
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Collected Poems and Other Verse (Oxford World's Classics)
The Flowers of Evil (Wesleyan Poetry)
One Hundred and One Poems by Paul Verlaine: A Bilingual Edition
Rimbaud: Complete Works, Selected Letters
Rimbaud Complete (Modern Library Classics)

ASIN: 0192833324

Book Description

`Verlaine, possessed by the madnesses of love, brimming over with desires and prayers, the rebel railing against the complacent platitudes of society, of love, of language'. Jean Rousselot Verlaine ranks alongside Baudelaire, Mallarme, and Rimbaud as one of the most outstanding poets of late nineteenth-century France whose work is associated with the early Symbolists, the Decadents, and the Parnassiens. Remarkable not only for his delicacy and exquisitely crafted verse, Verlaine is also the poet of strong emotions and appetites, with an unrivalled gift for the sheer music of poetry, and an inventive approach to its technique. This bilingual edition provides the most comprehensive selection of his poetry yet, offering some 170 poems in lively and fresh translations and providing a lucid introduction which illuminates Verlaine's poetic form within the context of French Impressionism and the poetry of sensation. Parallex text

Customer Reviews:

A Fascinating Meditation on the Relevance of Verlane.......2004-01-02

As often is the case with general volumes of poetry, or books available in many editions, a good reveiw necessarily consists of two parts: first a review of the original material, and then a review of the specific edition.

For the original material, Verlaine is an amazing poet. He represents possibly the first and greatest lyrical poet to be initiated into modernity. His lyricism is not baroque, whimsical, or decadent - it is haunted and beautifull. It is like the music of Chopin (as it could be said that Rimbaud's is closer to that of Liszt). He represents a unique tract among the many poetic styles gestating in a Paris newly thrust into what we call modernity. There was the cynical and disolute Baudelaire, the ribald and frenzied Rimbaud, and then the melancholy and lyrical Verlaine. These three writers could easily be seen as a trifecta of greatness: they together represent the principal moods that have dominated literature to follow in their tracks.

The editions of a poets works, however, should certainly be considered independent of the poems themselves. Translation and selection of poems from such a broad body of work is both highly prejudicial, and (perhaps as a result) also creates a unique beauty in each seperate edition.

This edition, though, is a stand out among others available. First, because it probably is the largest English collection of Verlaines work (170 poems or so) and second because it's assembly, tranlations, and annotation reveal a very profound thoughtfullness on the part of the translator and editor, Martin Sorrell.

Most selections of Verlaines work are contrite and myopic, pick only certain early poems which have been translated and anthologized ad nauseum with no greater depth than that of a poem-a-day desk calendar or the litterary equivalent of easy listening music. In contrast, Sorrell's presentation is symphonic. The poems he has selected are true to the life of the poet - complete with ragged edges and blissfull moments.

How could one appreciate Verlaine's true genius if he is only shown in an artificial, sacrine, sanatized way? Sorrell boldly includes a large amount of poems from Verlaine's later work, largely disparaged by other critics, and provides very thoughtfull annotations about the inspirations, impacts, and ultimate relevance of each poem.

In this way Sorrell has created a very thoughtfull meditation on the life and work of Verlaine, and shares it with his audience so even a layman can appreciate it.

There is also a parallel French Text, which I find indespensible. Although not all of the translations are done the same way I would, diversity is what makes literature beautifull, and I am very interested to see the relationship between Sorrell's scholarship of Verlaine's life and the way in which he translates Verlaine's verses. This is a valuable tool not found if you were to simply read a French edition of Verlaine's poems or preuse an anthology.

In the end, this book is a excellent illustration of why translations and collections can be usefull even to people who have already read Verlaine in French.

Brilliant, but not always.......2003-06-16

Verlaine is perhaps my favourite poet--many of his poems are exceptionally beautiful, salacious even. However he wrote prolifically, and as is often the case with prolific artists, his work is of uneven quality. Nevertheless, at his best, Paul Verlaine's poetry is among the most remarkable that I've ever read. I highly recommend this collection.

Buy it for the bonkers annotation........2002-04-02

'The reader seems to have some disaster of far vaster import than he can fathom. That is the mysterious effect of Mallarme's poetry. One gets a strange emotional effect past analysis'. So declares translator C.F. MacIntyre of a typically impenetrable Mallarme sonnet. Unfortunately, it's an effect the non-French reader will never experience. In translation, somebody like Robert Frost once said, what is lost is the poetry, and no other writer exemplifies this truism more clearly than Mallarme. Most translations will at least yield some sort of broad narrative or imagistic or intellectual sense. Mallarme's self-contained, bookish, exquisitely artificial poetry (Borges was a fan) exists on a plane beyond sense. It is an intensely intricate agglomeration of sounds, forms, distorted grammar, codes and riddles whose 'meaning' is not literal. Mallarme is usually compared to a costumier, jeweller or musician, such is this artisan's devotion to the poem as crafted object. The only real way to translate Mallarme is not to find literal English equivalents for his words as printed, but to find new word-constructions with sounds and resonances that transmute the originals' spirit, rather than sense. But if the translator had that kind of gift, s/he wouldn't be wasting it on Mallarme translations. Despite MacIntyre's best efforts, then, literal Mallarme in English sounds like the worst kind of sub-decadent pot-pourri, like the imitations of French Symbolism Oscar Wilde churned out in his youth. [...]This does not mean the volume is useless. French students struggling with the originals can use the translations as a kind of grammatical glossary, and will find MacIntyre's synopses and explanatory notes, with background and critical infomration, helpful, if dated. The casual reader, however, will find much to enjoy. After a few poems (including the famous 'Herodiade' and 'L'apres-mide d'un faune'), I gave up struggling with Mallarme, and gave into the pleasures of MacIntyre's annotations. A real-life Charles Kinbote, he doesn't even seem to like Mallarme very much: one poem 'is built up of so much nothing, like a fragile pastry of whipped cream. It is artful in the worst sense of the word... He should have had a stern editor! (As I have)'; 'Line 4 is particularly good, [a critic] insists, because it suppresses the classic caesura! I don't think many readers would suffer if the whole sonnet had been suppressed'. He refers to Mallarme's art as a 'dead end', execrates 'his miserably bungled up French', and cheerfully admits that he doesn't really understand the poems! So what qualified him to translate them?! A delectable egotism blows through the pages, from its overheated, homoerotic dedication, and the unwarranted, though very welcome, detours into autobiography and war memories, to the Olympian sneers at previous commentators. Published in sexually unliberated 1957, MacIntyre is forced to euphemise Mallarme's detailed and relentless erotics, which leads to some splendid tongue-twisting; the frequent suspicion that MacIntyre himself misses the point of a poem like 'What silk...' ('the mouth will not be sure/in its bite of finding savor,/unless he, your princely lover,/breathe out, diamond-like, in your/considerable tuft the cry/of Glories stifled as they die'), which he says is about a woman brushing her hair at the mirror (!), is quashed by his mocking one persistently misreading critic: 'Really now. I wish I still had Herr Wais's niaive innocence. I really do'. Barmy, endearing and delightful.

A Case of Confusion.......2000-06-27

[...] At any rate, for those who are not familiar with the movement, I would suggest reading, in this order: Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine and Mallarme, as that is the sequence in which they came to the fore of French Lit (though you could make the case that Veralaine and Rimbaud were contemporaneous, I would suggest that Verlaine's most important work came after his interchange with Rimbaud). Since these are the most influential French poets of the modern era, and had an impact on every modern "movement" that occured in literature thereafter, you can not go wrong with any of them. There are those who contend that poetry especially is lost in translation. I would agree, yet all these poets are represented by "facing" texts these days. The original text is mirrored by the translation on the opposite page. Oxford and Penguin both are good choices. The translators are uniformally well-educated and erudite, the printing is excellent and the overall scholarhip, including introductions, is top-notch. You can't go wrong with these editions.

The Major Works: Including Endymion, the Odes and Selected Letters (Oxford World's Classics)

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"Arise, good youth, for sacred Phoebus' sake..."

The Major Works: Including Endymion, the Odes and Selected Letters (Oxford World's Classics)
John Keats
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Lord Byron: The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics)
The Major Works: Including The Prelude (Oxford World's Classics)
The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics)
The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics)
Shelley's Poetry and Prose (Norton Critical Edition)

ASIN: 0192840630

Book Description

This authoritative edition was originally published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series under the general editorship of Frank Kermode. It brings together a unique combination of Keats's poetry and prose - all the major poems, complemented by a generous selection of Keats's letters - to give the essence of his work and thinking. In his tragically short life Keats wrote an astonishing number of superb poems; his stature as one of the foremost poets of the Romantic movement remains unassailable. This volume contains all the poetry published during his lifetime, including Endymion in its entirety, the Odes, 'Lamia', and both versions of 'Hyperion'. The poetry is presented in chronological sequence, illustrating the staggering speed with which Keats's work matured. Further insight into his creative process is given by reproducing, in their original form, a number of poems that were published posthumously. Keats's letters are admired almost as much as his poetry and were described by T. S. Eliot as 'certainly the most notable and most important ever written by any English poet'. They provide the best biographical detail available and shed invaluable light on Keats's poems.

Customer Reviews:

"Arise, good youth, for sacred Phoebus' sake...".......2004-02-10

This review is of -John Keats: The Major Works-,
edited by Elizabeth Cook (Oxford World's Classics)
ISBN: 0192840630, 2001, 667 pp.
There are now 3 major editions of the complete poems
of John Keats. Each of them has its own excellencies.
There is the -John Keats: Complete Poems-, edited by
Jack Stillinger (Belknap Press, Harvard) ISBN: 0674154312,
-John Keats: The Complete Poems-, edited by John Barnard
(Penguin Classics) ISBN: 0140422102, and also this
present volume, edited by Elizabeth Cook, ISBN: 0192840630.
A fact which both John Barnard and Elizabeth Cook point out
as editors is their debt, as well as the debt of all Keats
scholars, to Jack Stillinger. As she says in her "Note on
the Text": "In deciding which source text to use I am deeply
indebted to Jack Stillinger who in -The Text of Keats's
Poems- (1974) and in his subsequent edition of Keats's
-Poems- (1978) presents his informed and considered arguments
for and against each transcript and state of text. Prior
to his work editors had frequently created Keats's poems
from a patchwork of different source texts."
The glories of this Oxford Classics edition are the
same as with many of their editions, the fine "Introduction",
the wondrous notes to the poems (pp. 557 - 641), an excellent
selection of "Further Readings", Glossary of Classical
Names, Index of Keats's Correspondents (with much helpful
background information about them), and an Index of Poem
Titles and First Lines. In this volume, there are also
Appendix I, "St. Agnes' Eve" as found in George Keats's
manuscript, and Appendix II, "La Belle Dame sans Mercy",
as printed in the -Indicator-, 10 May 1820. Some editors
and Keats lovers feel the changes that Keats made to
the latter poem to publish in the -Indicator- mar the
wondrous tone and atmosphere, so they print the first
version.
In her "Introduction," Elizabeth Cook stresses several
important aspects of Keats's psyche and his reverences
toward other authors (Spenser and Milton, in particular).
From the side of the aspect of his psyche, she states:
"Keats conceived of history as a process of *actualizing*
the world's sum total of what is knowable and thinkable.
In Stoic fashion he postulates a finite quantity of
world-stuff of which Milton has used up an unfairly
large portion, therby depleting not only his contemporaries,
but posterity [later writers] as well.
* * * He writes with the assumption that a certain quota
of qualities, capacities, and experiences is allotted to
each individual." In relating of Keats's sensitivity,
sense of dedication, and love, she says: "In June 1818,
when one brother, Tom, was dying of tuberculosis and
the other, George, planning to sail with his new bride
for America, Keats wrote to his friend Bailey, 'My Love
for my Brothers from the early loss of our parents and
even for earlier Misfortunes has grown into a affection
"passing the Love of Women"." This was a section of
verse from the Old Testament regarding the love of
Jonathan, King Saul's son, and David, the exiled,
hunted song singer, which Herman Melville was also
attracted to.
The formatting in this edition is very readable,
the font is medium, not small, the layout of the
pages is uncrowded and accessible, so that even with
the longer poems one is not presented with a complicated
task by smaller type.
The excellence of this Oxford edition is the inclusion
of 87 (!) of Keats's letters to various correspondents
(pp. 348 - 543), as well as the prose pieces, "When
Alexandre the Conquerore was wayfayring" (which according
to the Notes was "Composed probably late 1815 while Keats
was a student at Guy's [Hospital]. The only source for
this fragment is Walter Cooper Dendy, -The Philosophy of
Mystery- (London, 1841), pp. 99-100 where it is quoted at
the end of a chapter on the pathology of 'Poetic Phantasy
or Frenzy." The other prose pieces are "Keat's Marginalia
to the Shakespeare Folio", "Keats's Marginalia to Milton's
-Paradise Lost-", a piece on "Mr. Kean" [the actor], and
the "Rejected Preface to -Endymion-." Keats's letters are
a very valuable source of information of his views on
poetry as a craft and an avocation, as well as providing
commentary on his times.
The only caution with these large-size Oxford Major
Works is that one should be very careful not to crease
the outside binding, as the pages if not sufficiently
glued, might tend to come apart. Otherwise the Oxford
Classics editons, and this one in particular, are
treasured resources of fine works as well as extremely
helpful scholarship.
-- Robert Kilgore.

Selected Letters (Oxford World's Classics)

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Selected Letters (Oxford World's Classics)
John Keats
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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John Keats: The Complete Poems (Penguin Classics)
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John Keats
Keats
Shelley's Poetry and Prose (Norton Critical Edition)

ASIN: 0192840533

Book Description

'Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul?' Keats's letters have long been regarded as an extraordinary record of poetic development and sout-making. They represent one of the most sustained reflections on the poet's art we have from any of the major English poets. Yet quite apart from the light they throw on the poetry, they are great works of literature in their own right. Written with gusto and occasionally painful candour, they show a powerful intelligence struggling to come to terms with its own mortality. Sometimes bitterly jealous in love and socially and financially insecure, at others playful and confident of his own greatness, Keats interweaves his personal plight with the history of a Britain emerging from the long years of the Napoleonic Wars into a world of political unrest, profound social change, and commercial expansion. This selection of 170 letters, written between 1816 and 1820, includes a new introduction and notes by Jon Mee explaining both the personal and political contexts that brought them to life.

Selected Poetry (Oxford World's Classics)

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Selected Poetry (Oxford World's Classics)
William Wordsworth
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Selected Poetry (Oxford World's Classics)
Samuel Johnson: The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics)
Shelley: Poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets)
Selected Poetry (Oxford World's Classics)
Poetry and Prose of Alexander Pope (Riverside Editions ; B 59)

ASIN: 0192834886

Book Description

Wordsworth (1770-1850) is one of the most important and enduringly popular of all the English poets. Wordsworth's verse declares a belief in the power of poetry to teach by appealing to the imagination and to the `grand elementary principle of pleasure, by which man knows, and feels, and lives, and moves'. His unique relationship with the poet and political activist Samuel Taylor Coleridge, founded in the political and social ferment of 1795, produced a revolution in literature, resulting in the joint volume, Lyrical Ballads (1798-1805) - a landmark in the history of English Romanticism. In this edition the poems are given in the texts in which they first appeared, and were appreciated by Keats, Shelley, Hazlitt and other contemporaries. This selection, chosen from the Oxford Authors critical edition, includes all Wordsworth's finest lyrics, and a large sample of The Prelude (1805), his extraordinary autobiographical poem in blank verse and the first truly great acheivement of a new era in English

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Step aside Byron, Dryden, and Shelley
Consult the Genius of the Place
Yevtushenko Selected Poems

Selected Poetry (Oxford World's Classics)
Alexander Pope
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics)
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ASIN: 0192834940

Book Description

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) is regarded as the most important poet of the early eighteenth century. An invalid from infancy, Pope devoted his energies towards literature and achieved remarkable success with his first published work at the age of 21. A succession of brilliant poems followed, including An Essay on Criticism (1711), Windsor Forest (1713), and his masterpiece The Rape of the Lock (1712). A second period of great poetry was begun in 1728 with the appearance of the first Dunciad. All these works, which exhibit Pope's astonishing human insight, his wide sympathies, and powers of social observation (displayed to greatest effect in his talent for satire), feature in this selection. In his introduction - an eloquent defence of Pope's poetic practice - Pat Rogers argues that we must abandon our Romantic conception of poetry as a record of fleeting and subjective states if we are to understand Pope fully. Instead, we must see him as an accomplished practitioner of the poetry of ideas and of satirical reflection on human society. This collection is chosen from the Oxford Authors critical edition of Pope's major works.

Customer Reviews:

Step aside Byron, Dryden, and Shelley.......2005-08-09

Step aside Byron, Dryden, and Shelley Words are not enough to describe the great pope, I have read the works of many poets but none come close to Pope. Practically self educated he puts words in such a way and with such wit, that you often feel and say "That is so true, so beautifully described"........ take a minute and contemplate on the below. A great Master
1. Some in search of wisdom, lose their common sense and then turn critics in their own defense.
2. Men deal with their life as children with their play, who first misuse then cast their toys away.
3. Launch not beyond your depth but be discreet , and mark the point were sense and dulness meet.
4. A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong which is but saying, in other words that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.

Consult the Genius of the Place.......2005-05-16

When I first started reading this collection, I thought that eighteenth century poetry was dry and inferior to later forms of literature, especially when compared with the innovations of the twentieth century. After delving deeply into some of Pope's major poems, I realized how wrong I was. Pope's wit was astounding, and he was a true poetic genius in his ability to capture concepts and arguments in beautifully rendered images and metaphors. His abilities are best summarized in these famous lines from his "Essay on Criticism": "True wit is nature to advantage dressed, / What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed."

I was often surprised by Pope's ability to articulate ideas that had occurred to me, but I was never able to articulate myself. It is a testament to Pope's insight into the human condition that his lines still ring true three hundred years since their first appearance. The subtle, complex ideas found in his poetry will expand your thoughts in ways you never though possible, especially if you have never experienced poetry from this period before.

For me, some of the highlights from this collection are "The Rape of the Lock", a beautifully detailed mock-epic steeped in the material culture of the eighteenth century; "Windsor Forest", a topographical poem that encodes and critiques the history of England in a description of its landscape; "Epistle to Burlington", a stinging criticism of "false taste"; and "Eloisa to Abelard", an emotionally wrenching letter of tragic medieval romance. For those interested in the writing and critiquing of literature (admittedly, not everyone), the brilliant "Essay on Criticism" will be the standout piece here, with its vast complexities and beautiful imagery. Furthermore, the detailed notes in the back of this edition should fill you in on any historical or literary references that will assist in your interpretation of the poems.

This edition is an amazing introduction to the poetry of one of the greatest writers in the English language, and a good first step into a fascinating period of literature. Don't be afraid! Read this book!

Yevtushenko Selected Poems.......2002-12-19

This was concurrently, my introduction to Russian poetry and the poetry of Yevgeny Yevtushenko back in my early 20's. The simple prose style of the translations was appealing to a 20 year old. But since then, many of the poems have become touchstones for my own receeding youth and my Slavic family heritage. The lengthy opening poem, "Zima Junction", tells of Yevteshenko's own youthful days growing up in a small town in Siberia. The final poem, "People", affirms the spirituality of life without a single reference to religion. "Encounter" describes a chance encounter of Yevtushenko with Hemingway in Copenhagen. ("It was the very image of Hemingway. Later I heard that it was Hemingway.") "Babiy Yar" is perhaps, the most famous poem in the collection. It describes the slaughter of Russian Jews by the Nazis and the collusion of the antisemite Soviet regime. The last few lines of this poem are some of the most moving I have ever read.
"No Jewish blood runs among my blood,
but I am as bitterly and hardily hated by every anti-semite as if I were a Jew. By this I am a Russian."

The Flight to Italy: Diary and Selected Letters (Oxford World's Classics)

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Breakout and breakthrough
The Immediate View. . .

The Flight to Italy: Diary and Selected Letters (Oxford World's Classics)
Johan Wolfgang Goethe , and T. J. Reed
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Italian Journey: 1786-1788 (Penguin Classics)
Maxims and Reflections (Penguin Classics)
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Crime and Punishment (Enriched Classics)

ASIN: 0192838865

Book Description

This is the authentic day-to-day record of the first eight weeks of freedom as Germany's greatest poet heads for the Italy he has been yearning to see since childhood and finds himself in a new world of warmth and light. Leaving behind the difficulties of a decade in Weimar, the burden of administration, a difficult love-affair, and the frustration of not having time to work on his literary projects, he discovers himself again as a sensuous being and an artist. Goethe's fresh and spontaneous notes, sometimes dashed down at crowded tables in primitive Italian inns, bring together art and nature, Antiquity and the Renaissance, aesthetics and science, observations of climate, rocks, plants and the Italian people, in an unpremeditated mixture through which the poet's mature vision of the natural and human world can be seen taking shape. Never before translated into English, this diary brings us close to a great European writer at a turning-point of his life.

Customer Reviews:

Breakout and breakthrough .......2005-01-28

Goethe's Italian journey came after ten hard years administering and working at Weimar. In these years his literary output contracted. The trip to Italy was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream, a dream inspired in part by his own father's earlier journey and love of Italy. In Italy Goethe found yet another side of his multifaceted self . He opened to the world and the light and to sensuous reality. His connection with Nature is a fundamental theme of his poetry and in Italy he found a Nature which seemed imbued with organic form and Art , and an Art imbued with Nature. In a sense leaving home enabled him to come home to a central side of himself.
Goethe was a writer- scientist- artist whose central theme was his own inner development. This development took a dramatic turn for the good, and these journals of his Italian trip are a central part of ' the great confession' which was his work.

The Immediate View. . ........2001-09-23

Those who love Goethe or love Italy or love traveling might have come across The Italian Journey, Goethe's late-in-life rendering of his experience "fleeing" Weimar and hopeless love to fulfill a lifelong dream of being in Italy. I can't say staying in Italy or visiting Italy or studying Italy because Goethe's quest was so much more profound and fundamental; in Italy Goethe hoped to BE. This diary and these letters, however, are Goethe's immediate impressions, un-editted and not reconsidered. These are his immediate considerations and his emotions expressed in the diary he wrote for Frau von Stein, the woman he loved more or less hopelessly for several years. I love both books, but this one, unlike Italian Journey, is not neatly refined and carved and considered from a mature viewpoint; this is full of the urgency and passion and longing that propelled Goethe across the Brenner and up the slopes of Vesuvius. It's just GREAT.

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What immortal hand or eye
Perhaps The First Modern Poet.

Selected Poetry (Oxford World's Classics)
William Blake
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics)
The Major Works: Including The Prelude (Oxford World's Classics)
The Major Works: Including Endymion, the Odes and Selected Letters (Oxford World's Classics)
Shelley's Poetry and Prose (Norton Critical Edition)

ASIN: 0192834894

Book Description

William Blake (1757-1827) was a poet of striking originality, whose poetic world of myth and mysticism continues to fascinate. By turns a haunting lyricist, an apocalyptic visionary, and an unorthodox thinker, Blake was for years ignored or derided. Sustained by his belief in the artistic imagination, he drafted poetry, prose visions, and epigrams, and manufactured beautiful illustrated volumes of his lyrics and verse narratives. Towards the end of his life, Blake's unique and irreducible talent was recognized by a group of younger artists, who rescued much of his achievement from oblivion. This selection represents the full range of Blake's accomplishment as a poet, ranging from early Poetical Sketches to late lyrics, and including such major works as The Book of Thel, Songs of Innocence, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Visions of the Daughters of Albion, America, Songs of Experience, and Europe. The collection is chosen from the Oxford Authors critical edition, with Michael Mason's introduction and notes providing the ideal guide to a remarkable oeuvre.

Customer Reviews:

What immortal hand or eye .......2005-12-16

The prophetic Blake of Zoas, Jerusalem , and the other long -poems has always escaped me.
The Blake of the short memorable lyrics , of the 'Songs of Innocence and Experience' reverberates in my mind.
The Blake of proverb always strikes a strong note.
All the radical ideology ,and the fervor of an upturner of worlds , the solitary angry social critic too has not meant that much to me.
But 'Little Lamb who made thee/Dost thou know who made thee?/
and Tyger/Tyger/ Burning bright in the forest of the night/ these fascinate as only real poetry does.
Little Lamb who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee?

Perhaps The First Modern Poet........1999-09-01

Contained in this collection are most if not all of Blake's most essential works,including "The Marriage Of Heaven & Hell";the two songs,"Auguries Of Innocence"; etc..In the creative fertility of this great poet came some of the greatest lines ever written in the English language,or any language for that matter.His conjuring of visions perhaps is the first written document of modern poetry,heralding what is to come.

Selected Fables (Oxford World's Classics)

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Fables
Delightful

Selected Fables (Oxford World's Classics)
Jean de La Fontaine
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Best Short Stories (Dual-Language)
French Stories (Dual-Language)
The Fairy Tales in Verse and Prose/Les contes en vers et en prose: A Dual-Language Book
Easy French Reader
Short Stories in French: New Penguin Parallel Text (New Penguin Parallel Texts)

ASIN: 0192824406

Book Description

La Fontaine (1621-95) is best known for his comic and delightful fables. This lively new translation of the most famous among these captures the wit and nuances of the original La Fontaine deals with the universal themes: greed and flattery, envy and avarice, love and friendship, old age and death. Spare, allusive, often severe, his writing is characterized by its humanity and wisdom, as well as by an irrepressible and ironic humour. The selection - of 110 of the 240 Fables - spans La Fontaine's long writing life and shows his progression from short, charming Children's tales to longer, more philosophical fables. The parallel French text, scholarly introduction, and detailed notes and appendices make it ideal both for students and for all lovers of poetry.

Customer Reviews:

Fables.......2001-03-13

Fables are entertaining and interesting, reasonably easy to understand for the intermediate French student. Not being familiar with De La Fontaine I was hoping for a short story format, and was surprised to find all of the fables in verse (poetry). All in all, a good book.

Delightful.......2000-07-03

This book contains many short french stories that are sure to be a big help to any beginner through intermediate level student. It enriches french vocabulary while simultaneously getting the reader used to translating in a non-strict, understandable manner. The opposite page with the english translation is a big help when one gets stuck on a new word!

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the greatest poetry ever written

Selected Poetry (Oxford World's Classics)
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

The Bloodaxe Book of 20th Century Poetry: From Britain and Ireland
Lyrical Ballads (Routledge Classics)
Man and Superman and Three Other Plays (Barnes & Noble Classics)
The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play
Selected Poems (Penguin Modern Classics)

ASIN: 0192834916

Book Description

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) remains one of the best loved of the great English poets. Hardy thought of himself as a poet all his life, although his poetic career only flowered after he had retired from novel-writing in his mid-fifties. Over the next thirty years he wrote the poems that have established him as one of the great and most enduringly popular English poets of the twentieth century. His verse touches all the common themes of human existence: birth, childhood, love, marriage, ageing, death. If Hardy's age brings anything to them, it is an old man's ironic and elegiac sense that in life hopes are likely to be defeated and losses sustained, and that the world was not designed for human happiness. This collection is prepared by Samuel Hynes, editor of the Oxford English Texts edition of The Complete Poetical Works of Thomas Hardy, and selected from the Oxford Authors critical edition. The introduction and notes illuminate Hardy's central place in the tradition of English poetry.

Customer Reviews:

the greatest poetry ever written.......2001-06-05

Gerard Manley Hopkins is the greatest English poet to ever put pen to paper, bar none. Yes, even better than Shakespeare. Every student of English lit should read Hopkins. Hopkins writes from a profound love and awe of God and the beauty of His creations, but also from a deep despair resulting from chronic depression. His mastery of classical English combined with his magic use of sounds and word inventions is sheer genius. Read him.

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John Keates Selected Poetry

Selected Poetry (Oxford World's Classics)
John Keats
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Selected Poetry (Oxford World's Classics)
Selected Poetry (Oxford World's Classics)
Samuel Johnson: The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics)
Poetry and Prose of Alexander Pope (Riverside Editions ; B 59)
The Major Works: Including The Prelude (Oxford World's Classics)

ASIN: 0192832751

Book Description

John Keats's abiding poetic legacy is one of extraordinary and triumphant richness. Before the moment of `self-will' when he declared his intention to be a poet, Keats (1795-1821) had chosen the medical profession. His apothecary's training influenced his conception of poetry as an art that could mitigate the world's suffering. Keats's generous spirit triumphed over personal sadness, finding expression in his concept of life as a `vale of Soul-making' rather than a vale of tears. He published only three volumes before his death at the age of 25, and, while many of his contemporaries quickly recognized his genius, snobbery and political hostility led the Tory press to vilify him. This selection, chosen from the Oxford Authors critical edition of Keats's major works, demonstrates the remarkable growth in maturity of his verse, from early poems such as `Imitation of Spenser' and `Ode to Apollo' to later work such as 'The Eve of St Agnes', `Ode to a Nightingale', and `To Autumn'. Elizabeth Cook's introduction, notes and glossary of classical names offer helpful insights into Keats's life and work.

Customer Reviews:

John Keates Selected Poetry.......2007-01-18

A classic collection of John Keates' poetry. Contains all of his best poems and many more. A wonderful reading experience.

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