Poetry Books - Page 15

The Aeneid of Virgil (Bantam Classics)

Virgil

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 31 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Grotesque parody of Virgil 1 out of 5 stars.
10 of 27 people found this review helpful.

Every two or three years some semi-educated American Classics professor trots out another translation of Virgil or Homer - these being the last two Classical poets that anyone can be prevailed upon to read, even in translation. It was much the same in the nineteenth century, except that back then every educated person understood more or less what metre was and how poetry differed from prose. In America at least the educated are no longer at all sure what metre or poetry are, and 'poets' apparently just sit down and scrawl out some prose that they think sounds vaguely poetical. Occasionally they will even chop up their prose into 'verses' of more or less equal length.

Noted reviewers can be prevailed upon by the publishers to give blurbs to these American professors' abominable travesties of Virgil or Homer, and the poor ignorant masses read this stuff in college. A few - a VERY few - are even impressed by these translations, God help them.

I remember a class I was in where everyone groaned about how aweful Mandelbaum's Virgil was. The consensus was Virgil must have been a very second-rate poet. I was the only student that knew Latin - I had been studying it since the age of eight. I tried to tell my fellows that Virgil was at least as interesting as Spenser or Shakespeare, and much more beautiful, but no one believed me.

I will say however that Mandelbaum is not the worst of the lot. To split your sides laughing, try Fagles, who converts Virgil into low buffoonery. Fagles by the way, had not studied Latin for decades when he made his translation - apparently he never read Latin for pleasure. And he presumed to translate the Aeneid! Enough said.

Editorial Review:

Aeneas flees the ashes of Troy to found the city of Rome and change forever the course of the Western world--as literature as well.  Virgil's Aeneid is as eternal as Rome itself, a sweeping epic of arms and heroism--the searching portrait of a man caught between love and duty, human feeling and the force of fate--that has influenced writers for over 2,000 years.  Filled with drama, passion, and the universal pathos that only a masterpiece can express. The Aeneid is a book for all the time and all people.

The Invitation - Boxed Set

Oriah

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 82 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

truth & beauty 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Within the pages of this beautiful little book, the reader finds magic, truth, beauty and healing.

As an author, Chinese Medicine & Healthy Weight Management, and healer, I recommend this book highly to my patients and friends, as well as to you.

You have to read this book! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I love this book! The poem the Invitation is great. This book is very inspirational and has been a treasure of mine for years.

Awesome plus plus 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

What can I say except.....wow what a read. The kind of book I'll read over and over. Highest recommendation to anybody thinking of buying this wonderous book, you won't be disappointed.

Editorial Review:

In The Invitation, Oriah expands on the poem that started it all, exhorting us to fully examine our lives, learn to live with intimacy and joy, and, above all, be true to ourselves. The Dance is the celebrated follow-up that reveals how to let go and enjoy the dance of life.

To dance, alone or with others, is to slow down and realize that who we are is enough. Finally, in The Call, Oriah shows that each of us has our own call, our own specific place in the universe, and a contribution that only we can make.

The Canterbury Tales (Norton Critical Editions)

Geoffrey Chaucer

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

This Norton Critical Edition includes the most admired of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Each is presented in the original language, with normalized spelling and substantial annotations for modern readers. Among the new added to the Second Edition are the much-requested "Merchant's Tale" and the "Tale of Sir Thopas."

"Sources and Backgrounds" are included for the General Prologue and for most of the tales, enabling students to understand The Canterbury Tales in light of relevant medieval ideas and attitudes and inviting comparison between Chaucer's work and his sources.

"Criticism" includes nine essays, four of them new to this edition, by leading Chaucerians, among them F. R. H. DuBoulay, E. Talbot Donaldson, Barbara Nolani, and Lee Patterson.

A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.

About the Series: No other series of classic texts equals the caliber of the Norton Critical Editions. Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with the comprehensive pedagogical apparatus necessary to appreciate the work fully. Careful editing, first-rate translation, and thorough explanatory annotations allow each text to meet the highest literary standards while remaining accessible to students. Each edition is printed on acid-free paper and every text in the series remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice for excellence in scholarship for students at more than 2,000 universities worldwide.

The Bhagavad Gita (Penguin Classics)

Anonymous

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

biblical gita 2 out of 5 stars.
5 of 7 people found this review helpful.

full of mistranslations of key concepts..

there is just so much of this that it forms an underlying structural
orientation of the translation, starting with the [long] introduction
with bible quotes to justify translation choices..

the last words of krishna are changed to "thy will be done"
lifted straight from mathew, luke and the lords prayer..

a translation by an academic bible scholar, shows its origins..
and ruins the subtleties of this timeless discourse..

carl
namaste

Editorial Review:

A vivid new translation of the jewel of Hindu spirituality

ONE OF THE GLORIES of Sanskrit poetry, The Bhagavad Gita is the ancient spiritual text that forms a sublime synthesis of the many strands of Hindu belief. Taken from the Mahabharata epic, it details a dialogue between the divine Krishna and the human warrior Arjuna before a mighty battle in which Arjuna must decide whether to wage war against his own family. Krishna imparts spiritual enlightenment to Arjuna, teaching him the paths of knowledge, devotion, action, and meditation, and helping him to see beyond the temporal to the eternal. This new translation captures both the clarity of Hindu philosophy and the beauty of Sanskrit poetry.

The Divine Comedy: Volume 1: Inferno (Penguin Classics)

Dante Alighieri

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 27 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Medieval vision of the afterlife 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful.

This was required reading for a graduate course in medieval history.
Dante Alighieri's (1265-1321) "Devine Comedy" weaved together aspects of biblical and classical Greek literary traditions to produce one of the most important works of not only medieval literature, but also one of the great literary works of Western civilization. The full impact of this 14,000-line poem divided into 100 cantos and three books is not just literary. Dante's autobiographical poem Commedia, as he titled it, was his look into the individual psyche and human soul. He explored and reflected on such fundamental questions as political institutions and their problems, the nature of humankind's moral actions, and the possibility of spiritual transformation; these were all fundamental social and cultural concerns for people during the fourteenth-century. Dante wrote the Commedia not in Latin but in the Tuscan dialect of Italian so that it would reach a broader readership. The Commedia was a three-part journey undertaken by the pilgrim Dante to the realms of the Christian afterlife: Hell, (Inferno), Purgatory, (Purgatorio), and Paradise, (Paradisio).

The poem narrated in first person, began with Dante lost midlife. He was 35 years old in the year 1300 and in a dark wood. Being lost in the dark wood was certainly an allegorical device that Dante used to express the condition of his own life at the time he started writing the poem. Dante had been active in Florentine politics and a member of the White Guelph party who opposed the secular rule of Pope Boniface VIII over Florence. In 1302, The Black Guelphs who were allied with the Pope, were militarily victorious in gaining control of the city and Dante found himself an exile from his beloved city for the rest of his life. Thus, Dante started writing the Commedia in 1308 and used it to comment on his own tribulations of life, and to state his views on politics and religion, and heap scorn on his political enemies.

Dante's first leg of his journey out of the dark wood was through the nine concentric circles of Hell (Inferno), escorted by his favorite classical Roman poet Virgil, author of the Aeneid. Dante borrowed heavily from Virgil's Aeneid. Much of Dante's description of hell had similarities to Virgil's description in his sixth book of the Aeneid. Dante's three major divisions of sin in hell where unrepentant sinners dwelled, had their sources in Aristotle and Augustinian philosophy. They were self-indulgence, violence, and fraud. Fraud was considered the worst of moral failures because it undermined family, trust, and religion; in essence, it tore at the moral fabric of civilized society. These divisions were inversions of the classical virtues of moderation, courage, and wisdom. The fourth classical virtue, justice, is what Dante came to believe after his journey through hell that all its inhabitants received for their unrepentant sins. There were nine concentric circles of hell inside the earth; each smaller than the previous one. For Dante the geography of hell was a moral geography as well as a physical one, reflecting the nature of the sin. Canto IV describes the first circle of hell, Limbo, which is where Dante met the shades, as souls where called, of the virtuous un-baptized such as Homer, Ovid, Caesar, Aristotle, and Plato.

In the four circles for the sin of self-indulgence Dante met shades who where lustful, gluttons, hoarders and wrathful. In the second circle of Hell, lustful souls were blown around in a violent storm. In Canto V, one of the great dramatic moments of the poem, Dante had his first lengthy encounter with an unrepentant sinner Francesca da Rimini, who committed adultery with her brother-in-law. Like all the sinners in hell, Francesca laid the blame for her sin elsewhere. She claimed to be seduced into committing adultery after reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere. At the end of the scene, Dante fainted out of pity for Francesca.

In Canto X, the sixth circle of hell reserved for heretics who are punished by being trapped in flaming tombs, Dante took the opportunity to use the circle to chastise political leaders for participating in political partisanship. A Florentine who was a leader in the rival Ghibbelline political party, Farinata degli Uberti, accosted Dante. Both men aggressively argued with each other, recreating in hell the bitterness of partisan politics in Florence. Farinata predicted Dante's exile. Dante used this Canto to show the dangerous tendencies of petty political partisanship that he harbored.

The seventh circle of hell was subdivided into three areas where sinners were punished for doing violence against themselves, their neighbors, or God. In Canto XIII Dante encountered Pier della Vigne in the wood of the suicides. The shades there were shrubs who had to speak through a broken branch. Pier spoke to Dante about how he had been an important advisor to Emperor Frederick II, and how he blamed his fall, and his suicide, on the envy of other court members. This Canto was especially important because Dante came to grips with his own "future" fall from political power and exile. Pier's behavior served as a strong example to Dante how not to act in exile. Whether he had been tempted to commit suicide is not clear; however, he certainly had been prone to the selfish and despairing attitude that Pier represented.

The last two circles of hell contained the sinners of fraud. In the eighth circle, there were ten ditches for the various types of fraud such as Simony, thievery, hypocrisy, etc. Canto XIX described the third ditch, which contained those guilty of Simony, the sin of church leaders perverting their spiritual office by buying and selling church offices. Simonists were buried upside down in a rock with their feet on fire. Pope Nicholas III mistakenly addressed Dante as Pope Boniface VIII who was the current Pope in 1300, and whose place in hell was thereby predicted. This is not surprising since Boniface was the person most responsible for Dante's exile. In an interesting literary twist, Nicholas "confessed" to Dante, as if he was a priest, his sin of greed and nepotism. He admitted that even after becoming Pope he cared more for his family's interests than the good of the whole Church. Dante responded to Nicholas' "confession" with a stinging condemnation of Simony drawn from the Book of Revelation. After this encounter, Dante came to understand that hell was a place of justice.

Canto XXXIV, the last one in the Inferno, depicted Satan with three heads. Each head was chewing the three worst sinners of humankind. The middle head was chewing on the head of Judas Iscariot, who was a disciple to Jesus and his betrayer. The other two heads were chewing Brutus and Cassius; the murderers of Julius Caesar, and the two men Dante faulted for the destruction of a unified Italy. Dante considered the two ultimate betrayals against God and against the empire as the worst betrayals perpetrated in the history of humankind.

Thus, Dante's intent in his Commedia was to teach fourteenth-century readers that if one wanted to ascend spiritually towards God then one needed to learn the nature of sin from the unrepentant. By doing this, one could learn to overcome the same tendencies found in themselves. He wanted people to realize what he had come to learn that political partisanship would only stand in the way of unifying Italy and keep it from regaining any of its former glory that it enjoyed during the time of the Roman Empire.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in literature and medieval history.

Editorial Review:

This vigorous translation of the poet's journey through the circles of hell re-creates for the modern reader the rich meanings that Dante's poem had for his contemporaries. Musa's introduction and commentaries on each of the cantos brilliantly illuminate the text.

Translated with Notes and an Introduction by Mark Musa

Imagine

John Lennon

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 81 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Dream is over 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

When this film was first released, it was quite interesting, introspective and entertaining. Now on DVD it almost seems like an afterthought with the release of The Beatles Anthology DVD set. It still holds up well, but sometimes the anti-war Lennon gets boring. Makes you wonder how great his solo career may have been had he concentrated on his music more than his politics & causes. A nice addition to any Beatles or Lennon fans collection.

A worthy documentary 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

John is my favorite Beatle, so I really enjoyed watching this documentary about his incredible life. Although by now some of the film footage has been issued in other films (this was after all made in 1988), not everyone has seen all of the films and documentaries made about John or The Beatles, and it's always a treat regardless to see interviews and film footage you haven't seen before. Among the great moments are the confrontation with cartoonist Al Capp during John and Yoko's bed-in, John's heated argument with a female journalist who thought turning in his MBE was some empty protest, interview footage with John's aunt Mimi, and the bonus feature of an interview with John's former schoolmaster. The film is also loaded with great songs, many of them accompanied by videos, like "Strawberry Fields Forever," "Mother," "Imagine" of course, "Jealous Guy," and "God" (a song that always gives me chills).

As great as the documentary is, though, and as priceless as the film footage is, I kind of wish there had been more balance given to the different parts of John's life. I know that the original first cut was massive (20 hours), and that obviously it had to be edited down a lot to be shown in theatres, but another hour or so wouldn't have hurt. It seemed like most of the focus was on John's life in the Seventies, which in itself could be the subject of several films. It would have been nice to have given equal time to his childhood, early adulthood, and Beatle years in addition to mostly his solo years. While most fans already know his pre-1970 life backwards and forwards, particularly the Sixties, it still could have been expanded a bit more. When you're getting just John's perspective on the Beatle years, it's a slightly different experience than learning about them as a collective group. Other than that, I thought the film was fantastic, and with a number of nice extras.

Editorial Review:

Fully orchestrated XG MIDI file and sheet music for XG compatible instruments and devices including: the Clavinova digital piano * the Disklavier piano * portable keyboards.

Logic of Scientific Discovery

Karl R Popper

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Very interesting 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

I have to ask myself, "What is the basis for my scientific knowledge?" On a daily basis, as I am a chemist. I have often been struck by arguments for "induction" as lacking credibility, because how can one argue of probabilities with an unknown sample size? Popper argues that a proposing scientific hypothesis is an inductive act, but it is a creative act not a logical one, but that scientific knowledge is dedective.

I agree with him. The nature of science is such that one must put for statements about how the world works and test them. A scientist should always try to find a way of proving himself or herself wrong. If the predictions of the test are shown to be false, then the hypothesis must be false. That is the basis of scientific knowledge. The rest, the best theories we have are just "working models" and we can never justify why they work. They're simply our best working models now.


I don't find Popper's argument disheartening. Popper points out that we don't have to justify our search for explanations of the world, because they may do us benefit (if we happened to live in a world with stable physical laws, for instance).

I think many scientists would fundamentally agree that the laws of nature can never really be proven. They can't, but they speak volumes about what is relevant to us as a species (which is why Popper's argument that "induction" is creative is so interesting). All Popper asks of a scientific hypothesis is that it can, in principle, be demonstrated false by experience.

This is by far one of the most interesting and (I feel) important books I've ever read.

Editorial Review:

"One of the most important documents of the twentieth century."
--Sir Peter Medewar, New Scientist
"One cannot help feeling that, if it had been originally translated as soon as it had been published, philosophy in this country might have been saved some detours. Professor Popper's thesis has that quality of greatness that, once see, it appears simple and almost obvious."
--Times Literary Supplement

The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 40 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Disappointed in Maya Angelou's poetry 1 out of 5 stars.
5 of 8 people found this review helpful.

Maya Angelou is one of the weakest poets to be published in America. She writes drab, shallow prose puddles that seem more theater monologues. Her style equivalent to the average telephone conversation. Though a good actress, she doesn't seem capable of the multi-level metaphors, imagination or deep engagement.

Her work runs conversational, sleepy at best. A famous actress, however, her writing is weak, a surface which reflects almost nothing profound. What a horror to think Americans find in her writing even the slightest bit of literary prowess.

The uneducated reading public not familiar with great poetry like Elizabeth Bishop encounter Maya Angelou as a source of little more than sapid, over-done, monotone breathing exercises. Barely the stuff of literature.

Poor binding and overall physical book quality. NO reflection on the poetry. 2 out of 5 stars.
1 of 4 people found this review helpful.

I bought one for me and one as a gift, but the pages were uneven and the binding fragile with a dented cover on one of the two. For the price, I expected a sturdier book. I wonder if I just got defective ones. I've seen poorly made books sold at outlet bookstores. The two I received wouldn't last long before they fell apart.

I'm a huge fan of her work, so I'll be hitting the bookstores ASAP to find sturdier versions of the same collection.

Editorial Review:

For the first time, the complete collection of Maya Angelou's published poems-including "On the Pulse of Morning"-in a permanent collectible, handsome hardcover edition.

Euripides' Medea

Euripides

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 28 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Amazing 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

The book was in excellent condition and it was a joy to read! It was a quick and easy read. If you enjoy scandal, murder, and women overpowering men, then this is the book for you!

Great Buy!! 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This book is an absolute bargain at this price and the shipping was super fast. This translation is great for younger readers and speaks to them in an easily understandable tongue.

It's all Greek to me. 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Wonderful play, great translation. Collier really makes ancient Greek understandable and enjoyable. Great edition.

As Described 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

The item was exactly as described and sent in a an expeditious manner. Would do business with this source again.

Truly deserving of five stars 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I've heard a few professors say that while the Dover Thrift Editions are very economical for cash-strapped college students, the translations are hit or miss. I've read some Dover editions of classical works for both classes and on my own and that's definitely true, but as someone interested in ancient literature (largely prose, but I like verse as well) and who has been constantly frustrated over the years with the very complex (to put it mildly) translations that have flooded the market in years past, Rex Warner's translation of the Greek tragedy Medea was not only easy to follow, but I just wanted to keep reading until I was finished - and was disappointed when it ended!

So, yes, this is one Dover Thrift Edition where you get more for your money. - Donna Di Giacomo

Editorial Review:

A bold new translation of this shockingly modern classic work by Forward Prize-winning poet, Robin Robertson