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Hart Crane Complete Poems and Selected Letters (Library of America)

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I didn't have time to make it shorter
A brilliant lyric poet who died far too young
A Poetry of Vision -- A Life of Excess

Hart Crane Complete Poems and Selected Letters (Library of America)
Hart Crane
Manufacturer: Library of America
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1931082995
Release Date: 2006-09-21

Book Description

No American poet has so swiftly and decisively transformed the course of poetry as Hart Crane. In his haunted, brief life, Crane fashioned a distinctively modern idiom that fused the ornate rhetoric of the Elizabethans, the ecstatic enigmas of Rimbaud, and the prophetic utterances and cosmic sympathy of Whitman, in a quest for wholeness and healing in what he called "the broken world." White Buildings, perhaps the greatest debut volume in American poetry since Leaves of Grass, is but an exquisite prelude to Crane's masterpiece The Bridge, his magnificent evocation of America from Columbus to the Jazz Age that countered the pessimism of Eliot's The Waste Land and became a crucial influence on poets whose impact continues to this day.

This edition is the largest collection of Crane's writings ever published. Gathered here are the complete poems and published prose, along with a generous selection of Crane's letters, several of which have never before been published. In his letters Crane elucidates his aims as an artist and provides fascinating glosses on his poetry. His voluminous correspondence also offers an intriguing glimpse into his complicated personality, as well as his tempestuous relationships with family, lovers, and writers such as Allen Tate, Waldo Frank, Yvor Winters, Jean Toomer, Marianne Moore, E. E. Cummings, William Carlos Williams, and Katherine Anne Porter. Several letters included here are published for the first time.

This landmark 850-page volume features a detailed and freshly-researched chronology of Crane's life by editor Langdon Hammer, chair of the English Department at Yale University and a biographer of Crane, as well as extensive explanatory notes, and over fifty biographical sketches of Crane's correspondents.

Customer Reviews:

I didn't have time to make it shorter.......2006-11-29

As an American boy growing up in Normandy, I would sit for hours, homesick, on the cliffs overlooking the Channel, thinking that if the fog ever lifted I could see Manhattan. And I would recite from WHITE BUILDINGS for hours, crying out to the fates that had separated me from my homeland, as Hart Crane had bubbled his way to the bottom of a purple sea some miles away I assumed. "As bells off San Salvador/ Salute the crocus lustres of the stars,/ In these poinsettia meadows of her tides,--/ Adagios of islands, O my prodigal,/ Complete the dark confession her veins spell." I hardly knew what I was saying, but some charms really do work and it wasn't long before I was repatriated, mouth first. I hope it's not heretical to suggest that Hart Crane's letters, while never less than interesting and often amusing, aren't that superb, and the book seems padded out in consequence to fit the desired "heft" of Library of America volumes. The Board might as well get used to the notion that not all poets have written thousands of pages, and for every Whitman you get a Hart Crane, who just didn't write very much. Does he deserve a place on the shelf with his 144 pages of poetry? Maybe there are some packing issues I don't understand, but otherwise, sure, throw in four hundred pages of Crane's letters.

Though nothing could really top the exquisite if critical presentation that the late Thomas Parkinson gave to his edition of the Crane-Yvor Winters correspondence, Langdon Hammer is able, through the sheer gift of size, to expand upon what we've had and complicate our hitherto too perfect picture of Crane. Crane's letters to Slater Brown and Wilbur Underwood are the liveliest, perhaps, but women also animate him and a recent biography that excoriated Crane for his misogyny seems sadly off the mark. However some biographers will do anything to create a scandal. One might profitably read through these letters to find out what Crane recommends in the way of early American modernism, his peers, because in general his taste is pretty good (and his dismissals of overrated trash are classics of vinegary invective). Of course he can sometimes gild the lily when praising, say, Harry Crosby's poems in a letter to his putative patron.

The index may be the single most useful feature of the poems + letters arrangement, for the index will help us find what Crane had to say about X or Y of his poems as he was writing them. He wrote, for example, a wonderfully impassioned letter to Otto Kahn, the industrial magnate who financed the writing of THE BRIDGE, outlining the different sections he had already finished and those still in the pipeline. Kahn also helped to finance the Metropolitan Opera, and Crane asks Kahn's help in finding employment there as a copywriter. He had the personality of a basso profundo; I wonder if the opera world would have changed if Hart Crane had been more in it.

A brilliant lyric poet who died far too young.......2006-10-20

Hart Crane is one of those powerful poetic voices that is its own style and immensely attractive. As others have noted, he was modern for his time, clearly American, and yet full of the great poetic traditions of the English language. His influences are identified directly in his works. He talks to Walt Whitman and discusses Emily Dickinson, Chaplin, Poe, and others. His early death was a great loss to English letters and the American voice in the 20th Century.

This wonderful volume from the Library of America (remember to thank them with your purchases and donations - they are non-profit after all) is more than eight-hundred pages, but only a few more than one-hundred of them contain all of Crane's poetry (including fragments). A few more have some essays and prose. The rest are filled with more than four hundred letters that Crane wrote to his parents, his friends, his literary associates, and others. The letters help us put Crane's work into a richer context, allow us to see some of the published works in earlier states, and make us ache and wonder what might have been if he hadn't jumped off the deck of the "Orizaba" into the Caribbean in 1932.

To provide just one tiny sample that amazed me from "Cape Hatteras" in "The Bridge" (Crane's great work) [the ellipsis in the second line is in the poem]:

Stars scribble on our eyes the frosty sagas,
The gleaming cantos of unvanquished space . . .
O sinewy silver biplane, nudging the wind's withers!
There, from Kill Devils Hill at Kitty Hawk
Two brothers in their twinship left the dune;
Warping the gale, the Wright windwrestlers veered
Capeward, then blading the wind's flank, banked and spun
What ciphers risen from prophetic script,
What marathons new-set between the stars!
The soul, by naphtha fledged into new reaches
Already knows the closer clasp of Mars, --
New latitudes, unknotting, soon give place
To what fierce schedules, rife of doom apace!

We can hear his lyric voice, see his fresh images, and his ability to form the words into powerful energy. This is the result of great talent married to hard work and a special sensitivity to the language. Harold Bloom call's Crane "our Pindar". Now, I think there is more to this image than the linking of two lyric poets. Most of Pindar's poetry is lost to us. One set of odes is complete, and the others survive as fragments. Even though Pindar died old and Crane died young, we wonder about what we might have had from both if Pindar's work had found a way to survive and Crane had found a way to live.

Some say that it was the oppression society put on Crane because of his homosexuality (bi-sexuality?). However, almost all the homosexuals in Crane's time did not commit suicide, and a fair percentage of the people that did commit suicide were heterosexual. The poet grew up in a chaotic family. Yes, his father became a successful businessman with his syrup factory (he also invented and sold the rights to Life Saver candies for a pittance), but Crane's mother and father fought constantly and melodramatically. So much so that Crane dropped out before finishing high school and moved away to New York. The poet's own emotional life was harsh and prone to self-destructive behavior including alcoholism. After 1927 his drinking became much worse. When you combine the home life that formed his emotional responses with his parents divorcing, his father dying suddenly, his mother's neediness, his failure to produce much work during his year in Mexico on a Guggenheim fellowship, the affair with Peggy Baird Cowley (the soon to be ex-wife of a friend), his discovery that the inheritance from his maternal grandmother that had been held in trust for him was gone because of a loan his father guaranteed with it, along with being beaten up aboard ship for making a pass at one of the crew and then getting seriously drunk, well, stepping off the boat into the sea in front of witnesses while exclaiming, "Good-bye, everybody!" isn't as big a leap as one might at first suppose.

But what a loss to us all.

This is a fine volume. The editor has provided biographical material for the people mentioned in the letters, notes on sources, notes for the text (including a fine foreword), and an especially helpful chronology of Crane's too brief life.

Hart Crane is a poet I did not know anything about until I had read Harold Bloom's introduction to his "American Religious Poems". Then I knew I had to get this volume and learn more about this important and brilliant poet. You might want to get to know his work and his life, as well.

A Poetry of Vision -- A Life of Excess.......2006-10-17

"Who asks for me, the Shelley of my age,
must lay his heart out for my bed and board."

In a short, tumultous life, Hart Crane (1899 -- 1932) wrote two of the greatest books of 20th Century American poetry: White Buildings (1926) and the Bridge (1930) as well as some splendid individual poems. His poetry is collected in this outstanding volume of the Library of America, edited by Langdon Hammer of Yale University.

Of the 850 pages of this book, only 144 are devoted to Crane's poetry. Most of the remainder of the text consists of 14 short essays by Crane and of 412 letters from his extensive correspondence written between 1910 and his suicide in 1932. These letters, together with Professor Hammer's notes and biographical sketches of Crane's correspondents, offer the reader a good portrait of Crane's troubled life, and they read with more immediacy and poignancy than any biography.

Crane dropped out of high school and left an unhappy home in Cleveland at the age of 17 to try to make his way as a poet in New York. Many of the letters in this collection detail Crane's stormy relationship with his parents, his father Clarence ("C.A.") Crane, a wealthy chocolate manufacturer, and his mother Grace Hart Crane. Crane was also close to his maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Belden Hart. In the "Quaker Hill" section of The Bridge, Crane said that the he had to "Shoulder the curse of sundered parentage". His difficult, shifting relationship with his family is amply chronicled in these letters.

But this collection includes much more than correspondence with a broken family. They offer insight into Crane's poetic ambitions and into the composition of The Bridge and of the shorter poems. They offer a view of New York City, seen through Crane's eyes, and of his literary friends and contemporaries, including Allen Tate, Waldo Frank, Yvor Winters, Malcolm Cowley, Peggy Cowley, Crane's patron Otto Kahn, and many others. The letters give the reader a portrait of a complex, troubled person who from late adolescence lived life hard and on the edge. Crane was promiscuous with a lengthy series of mostly homosexual affairs together with longer-term relationships with men and women. Crane's most intense male relationship was with a sailor named Emil Opffer (none of his letters to Opffer survive) and, just before his death, he had a passionate heterosexual relationship in Mexico with Peggy Cowley, as she was divorcing Malcolm Cowley. From his mid-20s Crane had deep problems with alcoholism which greatly hindered his ability to write. He was perpetually short of money and cadged and borrowed extensively from his friends and family. He fought constantly and was jailed several times. In a fit of depression -- when his life superficially seemed to be looking up he committed suicide by jumping off a ship, the Orizaba, en route from Cuba to New York City.

Read as a whole, this collection of Crane's correspondence and poetry raises difficult and probably unanswerable questions about the relationship between Crane's life and his work. Crane's excesses and passions in fact are an important component of his poetry. But while the life was a failure, Crane was a poet of romantic vision. Crane struggled for years to complete "The Bridge", a work which remains controversial and not unqualifiedly successful. In this poem, Crane took the Brooklyn Bridge as a symbol and tried to create a myth, in the machine age, that would unite America's past with its future and also give meaning to his own life. (Much of The Bride is autobiographical.) The Bridge is a work of difficult optimism as Crane traces America back to the voyages of Columbus and the days of Pocahontas with Walt Whitman and Edgar Allan Poe as guides. The poems ends on a note of affirmation and hope, as The Bridge becomes a path to transcendence and to the overcoming of materialism and lifeless routine through love and brotherhood.

Crane's short poems are higly concentrated and difficult. The poems I find most rewarding in "White Buildings" include "Voyages" a six-poem sequence detailing an intense love affair and "For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen" which is a predecessor of "The Bridge." The shorter poems include "At Mellvile's Tomb", the subject of an exchange with Harriet Monroe included in this collection, and "Chaplinesque."

One of Crane's masterpieces is his final poem "The Broken Tower" which describes how "I entered the broken world/To trace the visionary company of love, its voice/An instant in the wind." The Broken Tower ends on a note on the redemptive power of love while, soon after completing the poem, Hart Crane would commit suicide.

This is a volume that will bring Hart Crane to his readers. The letters chronicle a sad life cut short by excess. But Hart Crane's poetry, brief in amount though it is, has stayed with and inspired me for many years. Hart Crane holds a high place in America's literary heritage. He deserves his place in the Library of America.

The quotation at the beginning of this review is from Robert Lowell's sonnet "Words for Hart Crane" in his collection "Life Studies".

Robin Friedman

Complete Poems and Selected Letters of John Keats (Modern Library Classics)

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Excellent For College Study or Independent Reading

Complete Poems and Selected Letters of John Keats (Modern Library Classics)
John Keats
Manufacturer: Modern Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

ASIN: 0375756698
Release Date: 2001-02-13

Book Description

'I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death,' John Keats soberly prophesied in 1818 as he started writing the blankverse epic Hyperion. Today he endures as the archetypal Romantic genius who explored the limits of the imagination and celebrated the pleasures of the senses but suffered a tragic early death. Edmund Wilson counted him as 'one of the half dozen greatest English writers,' and T. S. Eliot has paid tribute to the Shakespearean quality of Keats's greatness. Indeed, his work has survived better than that of any of his contemporaries the devaluation of Romantic poetry that began early in this century. This Modern Library edition contains all of Keats's magnificent verse: 'Lamia,' 'Isabella,' and 'The Eve of St. Agnes'; his sonnets and odes; the allegorical romance Endymion; and the five-act poetic tragedy Otho the Great. Presented as well are the famous posthumous and fugitive poems, including the fragmentary 'The Eve of Saint Mark' and the great 'La Belle Dame sans Merci,' perhaps the most distinguished literary ballad in the language. 'No one else in English poetry, save Shakespeare, has in expression quite the fascinating felicity of Keats, his perception of loveliness,' said Matthew Arnold. 'In the faculty of naturalistic interpretation, in what we call natural magic, he ranks with Shakespeare.'

Customer Reviews:

Excellent For College Study or Independent Reading.......2002-03-18

In his short life John Keats created some of the finest poetry in the English language. I have read his shorter poems and odes many times, not for study, but simply for enjoyment. I am not a Keats expert, but I can now easily recognize quotations from Keat's odes, sonnets, and other poems. I especially like "The Eve of St. Agnes", a story of romance and danger in a medieval setting that illustrates Keats' remarkable command of language.

Keats is not difficult, but footnotes help with archaic words and references to more obscure Greek mythology. I prefer to read Keats unaided, then read the footnotes (best if tucked away in an appendix), and then return and read the poem again. For longer poems I jump to footnotes more quickly.

Initially, the inexpensive Dover edition "Lyric Poems", was exactly what I needed. Later, as I tackled longer poetry like "Endymion", I migrated to more complete collections with commentary and footnotes.

Keats" works are widely available in hardcover and paperback. Which collection is best for college study or independent reading? I have two favorites, one by Penguin Classics and the other by Modern Library. Both are available in softcovers.

The first is "The Complete Poems" by Penguin Classics, edited by John Bernard and a standard choice for college classes. I have the second edition, 1977. Barnard's extensive footnotes and commentary are quite good and offset his somewhat brief introduction. Additionally, the appendix discusses textual variations in Keats' manuscripts and has a useful guide to Greek mythology names. The third edition, 1988, adds 20 pages of selected letters, Keats' notes on Milton's Paradise Lost, and his notes on a Shakespearean actor.

The second choice (my favorite) is the newly published "Complete Poems and Selected Letters of John Keats", Modern Library 2001 edition (not the earlier 1994 hardcover version). Apparently as a direct challenge to Penguin Classics, this edition offers a longer introduction (22 pages) by Edward Hirsch and excellent footnotes (not too many, nor too few) by John Pollock. Also, as the title implies, it has selected letters by Keats, some 25 pages in total. Somewhat hidden in the appendix is commentary by six well-known literary critics such as T. S. Eliot, Mathew Arnold, and Keats' biographer Walter Jackson Bate. Lastly, the font is larger and more crisp in the Modern Library version (but is still quite acceptable in the Penguin edition).

Overall, I prefer Hirsch to Barnard, but both are good choices. Both are 5-stars.

On A Mission: Selected Poems and a History of the Last Poets

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On A Mission: Selected Poems and a History of the Last Poets
Abiodun Oyewole , and Umar Bin Hassan
Manufacturer: Henry Holt
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding

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The Last Poets

ASIN: 0805047786

T.S. Eliot: Selected Poems (Library of Classic Poets)

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The strange and haunting visions of T.S Eliot
A very good collection of Eliot's poems
Inspiring
The great Eliot at his greatest
Great Introduction to T. S. Eliot

T.S. Eliot: Selected Poems (Library of Classic Poets)
T.S. Eliot
Manufacturer: Gramercy
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Selected Poems (New Directions Paperbook)
Robert Frost: Selected Poems
Walt Whitman: Selected Poems
Robert Frost's Poems
Four Quartets

ASIN: 0517227223
Release Date: 2006-03-07

Book Description

This new addition to the elegant Library of Classic Poets series features selections from one of the best-loved poets of the early twentieth century. Elegantly packaged in a handsome edition with a satin ribbon marker, this volume is the perfect addition to any poetry library. From the prolific T.S. Eliot, a pioneer of modernism, here are his most groundbreaking works, including:

• "The Wasteland"
• "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
• "Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service"

Customer Reviews:

The strange and haunting visions of T.S Eliot.......2006-05-16

It took me sometime before I could genuinely come to understand and appreciate his poetry: yet, nevertheless, the writings of American-born, anglocized author T.S Eliot have always held a peculiar fascination for me, and, it seems, for a number of other writers and laypeople as well. From the personal yet somehow universal, melancholy and self-doubting music of "The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock" to the wild, multi-cultural, history spanning visions of urban chaos in "The Wasteland", Eliot's oeuvre is rich in religious, political, and philosophical themes, and played an enormous role in shaping the development of poetry in the twentieth-century (not to mention, on an obviously less signficant level, my own writing). Reading Eliot's serious poetry, however, requires a great deal of analytical prowess and is often a rather depressing experience (particularly in the beautiful "Prufrock"): nevertheless, those with patience will find that it is richly rewarding and can be appreciated on a superificial level simply for the entrancing rhythm of the music and haunting nature of the imagery, which, though informed by a number of sources, including Shakespeare, Dante, and Baudelaire, are written in a voice which is always distinctive and wholly original.

A very good collection of Eliot's poems.......2004-11-29

If you can only get one book of poems, get this one. It has the most important poems before "Four Quartets". If you want more,get also "Four Quartets" and "Murder in the Cathedral" or, even better, get the collected poems.

Inspiring.......2004-04-06

I admit I don't know a lot about poetry. For that reason I acknowledge that my review of Eliot's work is written with deference to other reviewers, i.e., I rely on their comments after having read Eliot's work. So this review is somewhat synergistic in that I've taken their comments into account as I offer my own observations.

One of my favorites in this work is from "Choruses From 'The Rock'":

"The Lord who created must wich us to create and employ our creation again in His service.
Which is already His service in creating.
For man is joined spirit and body.
Visible and invisible, two worlds meet in man;
Visible and invisible must meet in His temple;
You must not deny the body.
...For the work of creation is never without travail;"

The great Eliot at his greatest.......2001-10-03

T.S. Eliot is a major figure in 20th century literature for criticism, publishing and poetry. On the critical front he is known for his ýrediscoveryý of the Metaphysical poets Donne and Marvell, his collections of essays ýThe Sacred Woodý and ýThe Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticismý; as a publisher he was a director of Faber and built up a stable of ýmoderný poets such as Auden and Ezra Pound.

It is, however, for his poetry that he will surely last and this collection gives a marvelous selection of his works. The first poem in this collection ýThe Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrocký is a masterwork with superb imagery and a marvelous sense of humour and irony as it gives us the words of a man who seems much older than Eliot must have been when he wrote it, it was first published while he was in his twenties.

While some of his poetry seems to miss the mark as too dense and perhaps overly constructed others have rich layers of imagery and allusion that reward a little effort and rereading with a sense of large and vivid meaning and depth. ýThe Waste Landý, one of Eliotýs most famous poems and responsible, along with other poems of the period such as ýThe Hollow Mený, in giving Eliot a reputation as one of the ýdisillusionedý modern poets. Eliot denied this, saying he gave ýthe illusion of being disillusioned.ý ýThe Wasteland is four hundred lines long and is quite enigmatic, some scholars have said that it may have been less enigmatic before Ezra Pound helped and convinced Eliot to cut it back from an original 800 lines.

The last major work in this volume is ýThe Four Quartets.ý It is impossible in a short review to summarise the brilliance of these works. Written in the late thirties they are a masterful summation of the concerns of Eliotýs earlier works and a culmination of his examination of his own personal Christianity.

Between these three peaks are many works almost their equal. ýSweeney Agonistesý, ýAsh Wednesdayý, ýThe Hollow Mený, and excerpts from the ýThe Rocký among them.

To conclude this collection is a wonderful summary of the poetic works of one of the major literary figures of the twentieth century. For a complete overview of Eliot you should read at least one of his plays (ýMurder In The Cathedralý is my favourite) and one of his volumes of critical essays such as the two mentioned earlier. I would recommend this volume to anyone who enjoys poetry, particularly those who enjoy reading poetry over and over again.

Great Introduction to T. S. Eliot.......1999-06-01

I thought that this book was a great introduction to T. S. Eliot. It contains most of his really famous pieces, including The Waste Land, The Hollow Men, Ash Wednesday, A Love Song for J. Alfred Prufrock, and many others. If you like it, you might also try "Murder in the Cathedral."

Edna St. Vincent Millay: Selected Poems (Library of Classic Poets)

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Enchanting poems from an enchantress
Beautiful Poetry
...makes you want to read more, more...
Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay: Selected Poems (Library of Classic Poets)
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Manufacturer: Gramercy
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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What Lips My Lips Have Kissed: The Loves and Love Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay
Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay
The Selected Poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay (Modern Library Classics)
Collected Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay
Selected Poems

ASIN: 0517227215
Release Date: 2006-03-07

Book Description

This new addition to the elegant Library of Classic Poets series features selections from one of the best-loved poets of the early twentieth century. Elegantly packaged in a handsome edition with a satin ribbon marker, this volume is the perfect addition to any poetry library. Immerse yourself in the candid verse of Edna St. Vincent Millay, including such favorites as:

• "The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver"
• "Renascence"
• selections from A Few Figs from Thistles

Customer Reviews:

Enchanting poems from an enchantress.......2001-09-30

The introduction to this collection of poetry says that Edna St. Vincent Millay has been criticized for not being sufficiently "modernist". He poems are too sentimental, too easy-to-read, and borrow too much from 18th century styles. Well the critics might be right but I love this poetry and plan to read more.

Her most famous lines are here "My candle burns at both ends...it gives a lovely light", her first famous poem is here "Renascance"--this spooky poem gained her a mentor and an education at Vassar--and also present are poems from "Fatal Interview" and "Epitath for the Race of Man". My favorite poems are the short ones that talk of love: these are the easy-to-read poems dismissed by the critics.

If you read this poem then you must read the potrait of Edna St. Vincent Millay in "The New Yorker" and the memoir "The Shores of Light" by Edmund Wilson, the later book reviewer for The New Yorker magazine.

Edmun Wilson was just one of ESVM many jilted suitors. But she let him down gently her said. His book describes how he found work for her at Vanity Fair magazine. ESVM evidently charmed all the men she came in touch with. The editor of Vanity Fair complained that he could not have both of his editors in love with the same contributor to the magazine.

Many of the ESVM poems here have to do with nature, like the poem "Spring". Perhaps this is because she moved out of Greenwich Village to the country and there she wrote collections such as "The Buck in Snow". When she got married and left the city she didn't lose touch with her circle of fans and hangers-on including Edmun Wilson. Wilson describes here there at her farm reciting her poetry--she knew all her poems by heart--to wide-eyed admirers.

Alot of her poems here have no title. I imagine she might have felt that the title could be a distraction to a poem. If you can't think of a good one then don't create one at all.

Finally, feminists certainly will be upset with lines like "I, being born a woman and distressed By all the needs and notions of my kind..." But this is good stuff and lets us peer inside the female heart. They are just like us men it appears "...feel a certain zest to bear your body's weight upon my breast". This stuff is just as erotic and passionate as Shakespeare's sonnets and lyric poems--well not quite but good enough.

Beautiful Poetry.......2001-08-12

I first became intrigued with the life and writing of Edna St. Vincent Millay when visiting the region of her birth while vacationing in Maine. I picked up this book as an introduction to her work and was very pleasantly surprised. "Renaissance" is her best known work and it seethes with life, hope and evinces the young Ms. Millay's gift for creating beautiful prose! Many of the other poems, which often center around death and rebirth or the loss of a lover, are equally penetrating and stunningly written in lucid language and unique metaphor. Highly recommended!

...makes you want to read more, more..........2001-08-09

I have just finished this, my first reading of Millay's poetry and I must say I enjoyed it. This anthology makes me want to read more, not less. Her poems convince me that a biography of her life would probably be a worthwhile read also. The escape she is longing for and never quite leaps into, her obvious disdain for anything artificial or constrained combined with her love and respect for the naturally occurring (freedom)... these are dominant themes. And everywhere, TREES and other growing things! It is amazing how often the trees, fruit, grain, the forest, orchards, mushrooms, moss and even weeds are the things which Millay uses to convey her philosophical reflections. In my opinion, her finest poem (Renascence) written when she was 19 reveals early on this connection she felt between revealed nature and transcendence. "God, I can push the grass apart/And lay my finger on Thy heart!"

Colin Falck, in the Introduction comments that Millay was under-appreciated by those who considered her technique too traditional, and her content lacking in intellectual complexity. Did any of these critics read her sonnets I wonder? I agree with Falck's conclusion that "it is time we found a proper place for this intense, thoughtful, and magnificently literate poet." To the merciless critics I would send Millay's own words... "Cruel of heart, lay down my song./Your reading eyes have done me wrong./Not for you was the pen bitten,/And the mind wrung, and the song written."

Millay.......2000-05-10

Millay's poetry are so touching and inspiring to the soul. You can't experience poetry until you read "Rennaisance", and so many of her other poems that give you such a love for the human body and the nature around us. R.A.E.

The Selected Poems of D. H. Lawrence (Poetry Library, Penguin)

Average customer rating:

Liveliness of Thought and Feeling.
Not the highest poetry
A wonderful collection

The Selected Poems of D. H. Lawrence (Poetry Library, Penguin)
D.H. Lawrence
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Complete Poems (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
Complete Poems of D. H. Lawrence (Wordsworth Poetry Library) (Wordsworth Poetry Library)
Women in Love (Dover Thrift Editions)
Lady Chatterley's Lover (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
A Shropshire Lad (Dover Thrift Editions)

ASIN: 0140585400

Customer Reviews:

Liveliness of Thought and Feeling........2005-12-16

Lawrence wrote nearly 1,000 poems during a short lifetime in which he was also astonishingly prolific in other spheres--fiction, travel writing, essays, criticism, letters and plays. Lawrence was not simply a novelist who dabbled in other forms. His characteristic vision informed everything he wrote, especially his poetry. At three important phases of his life it became the primary channel of his experience and creative energy--the first year of his relationship with Frieda, the two years in Sicily, and the last year of his life. Bringing together the best of his poetry, this volume demonstrates that 'Lawrence is a great poet in every sense including the technical ... The form is the perfect incarnation of the content, the perfect vehicle for the liveliness of thought and feeling, the freshness, and depth of perception, the wit and wisdom he has to offer.' Superb. Without hesitation or reservation, five stars.

Not the highest poetry .......2004-12-06

The editor of this edition Keith Sagar has selected for it what he says are Lawrence's truly good poems which he reckons as one- hundred fifty of the roughly one- thousand Lawrence wrote. Sagar maintains that Lawrence's special quality as a poet is his emotional realism. And it seems to me undoubtedly true that Lawrence is powerful in his expression of his feeling. But then the question which might be asked is why the lines of Lawrence do not somehow sing in our memory , remain with us as for instance the lines of Keats, Hopkins, Yeats, Wallace Stevens do?
Why is it despite Sagar's objection that the consensus is probably right in seeing Lawrence as primarily a novelist, and only secondarily as a poet?

Here is a fine small poem of Lawrence from this book.

DESIRE IS DEAD
Desire may be dead
and still a man can be
a meeting place for sun and rain
wonder outwaiting pain
as in a wintry tree.

And one more small example.
WHATEVER MAN MAKES
Whatever man makes and makes it live
lives because of the life put into it
A yard of India muslim is alive with Hindu life
Anda Navajo woman, weaving her rug in the pattern of her dream
must run the pattern out in a little break at the end
so that her soul can come out, back to her.

But in the odd pattern, like snake- marks ont he sand it leaves its trail.

Am I wrong to think to think these poems are too prosaic to be the greatest poetry ?

A wonderful collection.......2003-05-22

Sagar states in the introduction of this selection of D.H. Lawrence's poetry, "We have come to think of his poetry as something of a by-product of, or relaxation from, other more strenuous and important work". There is no doubt it was to an extent, however, what is clear is that he took it just as seriously as his other artistic pursuits. Casual readers of Lawrence may be surprised to learn that he wrote around 1000 poems in his 45-years. His poetry runs in near-parallel themes to his novels - for example, "Sons and Lovers" character Miriam was inspired by the muse of "Love Poems", Lawrence's' then sweetheart Jessie Chambers. "Sons and Lovers" focused upon the cruelty of love - platonic, romantic, and parental. Lawrence's poems from his "Love Poems" collection, "Cruelty and Love" and "Snap-Dragon" capture the same theme, albeit far more personally.

In this collection we see Lawrence's poetic skills evolve - from young rebel to world-weary mystic. It's his ability to capture emotion so clearly and concisely which is Lawrence's greatest skill. What also shines through in his poetry is a sense of playfulness - take "The Mosquito" as a case example:

"It is your trump,
It is your hateful little trump,
You pointed fiend,
Which shakes my sudden blood to hatred of you:
It is your small, high, hateful bugle in my ear."

The poem is altogether hilarious, depicting Lawrence as a hunter of the tiny yet vicious bug, who evades his every attempt to squash it until he finally, after much effort, succeeds. Much more than this, however, it demonstrates Lawrence's uncanny ability to capture the essence of nature and its creatures, best evidenced in "Snake".

Lawrence's poems are all full of energy and spirit, technically adept, and yet not limited by form. Admittedly some of his work is too personal, leaving the reader alienated, but his successful poetry (mostly presented in this collection) transcends time and culture.

Selected Poems (Everyman's Library (Paper))

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Where have you gone, Mr. Longfellow?
Poetry written for the human soul!
you want it you got it
The best introduction to one of America's best loved poets.

Selected Poems (Everyman's Library (Paper))
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , and Christopher Bigsby
Manufacturer: Tuttle Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Inferno: The Longfellow Translation
The Minister's Wooing (Penguin Classics)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Poems and Other Writings (Library of America)
The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution
Paul Revere's Ride

ASIN: 046087229X

Book Description

In addition to "The Song of Hiawatha" and "Evangeline", this selection includes poems written after the death of his wife, such as "Palingenesis" and "The Cross of Snow," and later poems which draw on memories of his childhood including "The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls."

Customer Reviews:

Where have you gone, Mr. Longfellow? .......2005-02-07

Longellow is the poet of the American public school. 'Evangeline' 'The Courtship of Miles Standish' 'Paul Revere's Ride' ' The Village Blacksmith' ' 'A Psalm of life' and others. His reputation in the nineteenth century was great and overwhelming. Yet his reputation in the realm of poetry today is not with those artists of the canon, Tennyson and Browning in England, and Whitman and Dickinson in the United States. Perhaps it is because his poems are taken to be not inventive enough linguistically. Perhaps it is because the very thing many have praised him for his musicality seems today to be less than the irregular music of a Hopkins or Dylan Thomas.
In any case in Longfellow one will find sound solid lines, a certain moral stance , a kind of American integrity. For someone like myself reading Longfellow is a nostalgic trip and a new perspective on what I read so long ago. He has much to give even if it is not quite at the highest poetic level.

Poetry written for the human soul!.......2002-02-08

Whether you are simply exploring an interest in poetry or are a seasoned reader of the great poets, Longfellow's poems will move you. There is a poem in this collection that is perfect for every mood you could be in. If you are down and need to be lifted up, if you simply want to smile about the beauty of life, or if your heart has been broken, Longfellow's works will speak to your heart. Longfellow's works have spoken to my soul as no other poet or writer has ever before.

you want it you got it.......2000-01-26

I love this book it is something that men and women would enjoy. I have tons of information on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow because our house is a remake of his he lived from 1807-1882. If I were you I would buy it I am the biggest fan of his I have every single book of poems,songs,and more on him in paperback and hardcover. Buy it!

The best introduction to one of America's best loved poets........1998-11-10

When I was producing a video biography of Longfellow for Macmillan/McGraw-Hill in 1992, I needed a one-volume selection of Longfellow's poetry, and this book did the job very nicely. It includes Longfellow's best-known poems as well as two others that were never published during the poet's lifetime but must be classed with his finest work. The introduction by Lawrence Buell provides a useful biographical sketch and a thoughtful discussion of why Longfellow--the most famous American of his time--is not more widely read today. Buell's observations may get you thinking about this schoolbook poet in a different way.

Walt Whitman Selected Poems (Library of Classic Poets)

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Walt Whitman Selected Poems (Library of Classic Poets)
Walt whitman
Manufacturer: Gramercy Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Product Description

This collection brings together Whitman's greatest and most famous poems spanning the whole of his career. From the groundbreaking first edition of Leaves of Grass are seven poems, including "Song of Myself" and "I Sing the Body Electric." From later edition there are such masterpieces as "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," and "I Hear American Singing." Also includes is Whitman's great cycle of Civil War poems, Drum Taps, which he wrote in the months when he was ministering to the wounded in battlefield hospitals. Concluding this collection is one of his last poems, "Good-bye My Fancy!" - his touching farewell to his muse, his life, and his readers.

Selected Poems (Everyman's Library Classics)

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Selected Poems (Everyman's Library Classics)
William Wordsworth
Manufacturer: Everyman's Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Hyperion and Selected Poems (German Library)

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Poetic Language without a Plot
Deserves as many stars as there are stars in the sky...
One of the giants of ALL literature
One of the giants of German Literature

Hyperion and Selected Poems (German Library)
Friedrich Holderlin
Manufacturer: Continuum International Publishing Group
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

German | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

German | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Qualifying Textbooks - Spring 2007 | Stores | Books
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ASIN: 0826403344

Customer Reviews:

Poetic Language without a Plot.......2007-01-15

My Professor advised us to read this book without looking for a plot...because we wouldn't find one. He was right: Hyperion is a beautifully written account of one man's reflection on his life; it deals with love, friendship, and man's relationship with Nature. Holderlin's personal love for the Ancient Greeks also resonates throughout the poem. It should be read to enjoy and to be used as personal reflection on one's own life as well; but if you're looking for a plot, don't bother. There really isn't one. Pay close attention to the selection of poems included in the back: some of his better works have been included, and they are printed alongside the original German version as well. German scholars may find some discrepencies in the translations.

Deserves as many stars as there are stars in the sky..........2005-08-31

I read this in a state of intoxicated bliss. No, I wasn't intoxicated when I read it; the singing prose itself made me drunk with the very CONCEPT of life itself, the illimitable potential that humanity can manifest when it is on the highest road of spiritual and artistic discovery. HYPERION is the literary equivalent of something like Beethoven's "Ode to Joy;" among the very highest and most transcendent monuments of world culture, if imbibed in the proper mood, it can change your life altogether. (And this was only by way of the superb old translation in the Signet Classic, whoever did it was one of the greatest of all English translators...)

One of the giants of ALL literature.......2005-07-05

Hölderlin today deserves to enjoy a much wider readership than ever before given the veneration afforded to him by none other than Martin Heidegger for whom he was the greatest of the great. Sadly, Hölderlin was to leave us only one completed novel before his final descent into madness and obscurity but, my goodness, it is a gem of the greatest philosophic and poetic depth. This is without doubt one of the truly greatest novels to have ever been written. Certainly there is the typically German influence of music on this contemporary of Beethoven, hence the idea of applying the structural principles of sonata-allegro form to the novel. Anyone familiar with the musicological musings of Nikolaus Harnoncourt will know that the principles of sonata form structure in music were originally grounded on the classical principles of rhetoric - the art of presenting arguments - with all of its origins in Aristotle and which was a corner stone of education at this time. At the same time Hölderlin was to enjoy friendship with none other the great Hegel himself, thus lending this novel a philosophical profundity perhaps unrivalled by any in history - even by Camus or Satre.

The novel is set on the backdrop of a classical Greece of ancient ruins but occupied by the Ottoman Empire. Hyperion yearns to reawaken the glories of Classical Greece but kindles Romantic dreams of fighting for the liberation of his homeland, and leaves his idyllic Mediterranean world and the love of his life to fight in the name of freedom. The story unfolds in masterly fashion, enriched with its perfect balance of a nostalgic dreaming after a lost Classical world, matched with a Romatic passion for freedom and is told in the form of letters exchanged between Hyperion and friends in his idyllic homeland, all of which provide grippingly intense reading from start to finish.

The final lengthy epilog is some of the most profound philosophical meditations to ever appear in a novel. You can see why he won Heidegger's veneration when you read them. In this age where in central Europe at least, Hölderlin's star only gets brighter, Hyperion is absolutey essential reading. This is without doubt my favourite novel of all time, a work of rare profundity akin to Beethoven's late string quartets - so esoteric yet utterly divine in the profundity of its utterance.

One of the giants of German Literature.......2002-12-22

While Holderlin's poetry is truly brilliant and is his link to modernism, his single novel 'Hyperion' is also a major artistic achievement. Much more profound than its close epistolary relative and predecessor 'Sorrows of Young Werther', 'Hyperion' contains some of the most inticate and elegant prose in all of literature. Holderlin successfully attempts to impose the sonata structure in music upon a novel, and, even if he wrote nothing else, he would still rank among the greatest of German writers. The above is not meant to devalue Holderlin's poetry - his best poems being ineffably beautiful and timeless - but is only intended to bestow upon 'Hyperion' a higher place in Holderlin's oeuvre.

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