Poetry Books - Page 6

The Road Not Taken and Other Poems (Dover Thrift Editions)

Robert Frost

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Clean cold lines of New England poems 5 out of 5 stars.
36 of 36 people found this review helpful.

These early poems of Frost ( 1916) already display his characteristically clear and cold lines, his fine delineations of Nature, his moral meanings. "Two roads diverged in a wood- and I / I took the one less traveled by/ and that has made all the difference.
Frost was a tremendously ambitious and hardworking poet, who some biographers have accused of sacrificing life and family to art. His poetry has a stark beauty about it, the beauty of the birches he devotes a major poem to.
This collection lacks many of his major poems , but nonetheless gives the feeling and flavor truly of a major American poet.

Five stars for the price 5 out of 5 stars.
32 of 32 people found this review helpful.

This collection of Robert Frost poems is a clear 5 star for the low price. Dover consistently provides great literature at an extremely low price. Despite the great bargain, you may want to spend more and purchase a book of Frost's complete poerty. Although this book has a nice selection, some of his greatest poems are missing from this collection, notably "Mending Wall" and "Fire and Ice." Still, if you just want a few selected poems to carry you back to another era into a New England woods on a snowy evening you can't go wrong here.

Editorial Review:

Originally published in 1916 under the title Mountain Interval, this volume contains many of Frost's finest and most moving poems. In addition to the title poem: "An Old Man's Winter Night," "In the Home Stretch," "Meeting and Passing," "Putting in the Seed," "A Time to Talk," many more. All complete and unabridged.

The Canterbury Tales (Penguin Classics)

Geoffrey Chaucer

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 30 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Too bad I bought this book. 2 out of 5 stars.
1 of 48 people found this review helpful.

I find it very unfortunate that I wasted my money on this book when I could have read the entire story on the Internet. Of course, the story is out of copyright, and you'll find it all over the Internet, in complete.

Don't waste your money like I did. Even worse, I never even read the book.

My rating is only on the size of the book, because like I said, I never read it, and I am forced to issue a rating (I only wanted to enter a comment).

The Hobo Philosopher 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I suppose that any freshman college student has read some of these Tales. I had a professor who read a few of them to us in the Olde English. It was really fun and you really got a grasp of where the English language was coming from - and poetry.
I went on from my English class and read the whole works. They are good, classic short stories. You are really going back to the basics here. The stories are all easy to read and are about the everyday type people and their everyday lives. You get classic English literature, history, short story writing techniques, and the roots of the English language all in one medium sized book. Can't beat it. It's a bargain.

Editorial Review:

With their astonishing diversity of tone and subject matter, The Canterbury Tales have become one of the touchstones of medieval literature.

Translated here into modern English, these tales of a motley crowd of pilgrims drawn from all walks of life-from knight to nun, miller to monk-reveal a picture of English life in the fourteenth century that is as robust as it is representative.

Translated by Nevill Coghill

Ham on Rye

Charles Bukowski

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 127 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

"Was I the only person who was distracted by this future without a chance?" 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

So asks (p. 245) Bukowski's alter ego, Henry Chinaski, as this gripping romansbildung draws to a conclusion. The rather mysteriously-titled Ham on Rye is undoubtedly Bukowski's finest and most obviously autobiographical novel. In it, he gives us a variably chilling, pathetic, hilarious, and defiant portrait of Chinaski's first 20 years, taking us right up to the attack on Pearl Harbor and Chinaski on his way to the Skid Row existence brutally chronicled in Factotum, the second volume in the Chinaski series.

There's something heart-wrenching in Bukowski's description of the early years of his anti-hero Chinaski. A loser father who vents his self-hatred by sadistically beating his son; a spineless mother who can't stand up for either herself or her son--and whom Chinaski loves as little as he does his father; a sometimes comic assortment of misfit schoolmates who attach themselves to a reluctant Chinaski; boring, unrewarding, and mind-killing classes in primary, middle, and high schools; the wondrous discovery of books in the public library; the horrors of out-of-control acne, so like leprosy in both appearance and social consequences; the initial vagueries and eventually fires of pubescent longing; the (d)evolution of an abused and lonely boy into a hard-drinking, hot-tempered, bullying youth; and the beginning of a series of one dead-end job after another: these are the moments in Henry Chinaski's life captured in the novel. It's little wonder that by the story's midpoint, Chinaski is a young cynic, disgusted with the "proper" socially successful world to which his parents aspire. As he tells us (p. 174),

'The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned nation of a--holes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves.'

Bukowski's brilliant, disturbing novel is a chronicle of hope defeated and tenderness abused. By novel's end, Henry Chinaski has turned from a lovable, mistreated child into a genuinely unlikeable lost soul. To a certain extent, in later novels and in real life, both Chinaski and Bukowski will save themselves through art. But the climb up from the hellish youth and adolescence chronicled here will be long and difficult.

Editorial Review:

In what is widely hailed as the best of his many novels, Charles Bukowski details the long, lonely years of his own hardscrabble youth in the raw voice of alter ego Henry Chinaski. From a harrowingly cheerless childhood in Germany through acne-riddled high school years and his adolescent discoveries of alcohol, women, and the Los Angeles Public Library's collection of D. H. Lawrence, Ham on Rye offers a crude, brutal, and savagely funny portrait of an outcast's coming-of-age during the desperate days of the Great Depression.

Divisadero

Michael Ondaatje

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 74 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

From the celebrated author of The English Patient and In the Skin of a Lion comes a remarkable new novel of intersecting lives that ranges across continents and time.

In the 1970s in Northern California, near Gold Rush country, a father and his teenage daughters, Anna and Claire, work their farm with the help of Coop, an enigmatic young man who makes his home with them. Theirs is a makeshift family, until it is riven by an incident of violence—of both hand and heart—that sets fire to the rest of their lives.

Divisadero takes us from the city of San Francisco to the raucous backrooms of Nevada’s casinos and eventually to the landscape of south-central France. It is here, outside a small rural village, that Anna becomes immersed in the life and the world of a writer from an earlier time—Lucien Segura. His compelling story, which has its beginnings at the turn of the century, circles around “the raw truth” of Anna’s own life, the one she’s left behind but can never truly leave. And as the narrative moves back and forth in time and place, we discover each of the characters managing to find some foothold in a present rough hewn from the past.  

Breathtakingly evoked and with unforgettable characters, Divisadero is a multilayered novel about passion, loss, and the unshakable past, about the often discordant demands of family, love, and memory. It is Michael Ondaatje’s most intimate and beautiful novel to date.

101 Great American Poems (Dover Thrift Editions)

Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson, T S. Eliot, Marianne Moore

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Quite a Bang for Your Buck!.......... 4 out of 5 stars.
23 of 23 people found this review helpful.

............this small book of poetry contains the work of nearly forty of the best known American poets. From Emily Dickinson to Walt Whitman to Edgar Allan Poe to Robert Frost, there are poems in this collection that are sure to appeal to everyone! Also represented in this collection are ten women poets and eight African Americans including Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes and Phyllis Wheatley. There's even a poem by Abraham Lincoln that reveals his thoughts about his childhood experiences.

This collection is a simple, inexpensive way to introduce oneself to the wonderful world of American poetry. Each poet is introduced with a short biography followed by his or her most memorable work. Great buy!

Editorial Review:

Rich treasury of verse from the 19th and 20th centuries, selected for popularity and literary quality, includes Poe's "The Raven," Whitman's "I Hear America Singing," as well as poems by Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson, T. S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, many other notables.

A Family Christmas

Caroline Kennedy

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 26 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"When I began assembling [this] collection, I was skeptical that I would learn anything new about Christmas, but reading and reflecting on the history and spirit of Christmas brought back many memories, and taught me a great deal … The literature of Christmas ranges from the miraculous to the tragic, the profound to the ridiculous, but always represents the connection to something larger than ourselves." –Caroline Kennedy

In A Family Christmas, Caroline shares the Christmas poetry, prose, scriptural readings, and lyrics that are most dear to her, drawing on authors as diverse as Harper Lee, Nikki Giovanni, Martin Luther King Jr., Billy Collins, John and Yoko, and Charles Dickens. There are also many lesser-known gems throughout and personal treasures from her own family -- including a young Caroline’s Christmas list to Santa Claus and a letter from her father as President to a child concerned about Santa’s well-being. This diverse and unique anthology will become a timeless keepsake, and will enrich your heart and mind with the spirit of Christmas.

A Family Christmas includes selections from:

Groucho Marx, Emma Lazarus, Mark Twain, Sandra Cisneros, Pearl S. Buck, Truman Capote, Gabriela Mistral, Ogden Nash, Clement Clarke Moore, Vladimir Nabokov, Marianne Moore, Calvin Trillin, E. B. White, and many more.

Caroline Kennedy is the editor of the New York Times bestselling A Family of Poems, Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, A Patriot’s Handbook, and Profiles in Courage for Our Time, and is the coauthor of The Right to Privacy and In Our Defense: The Bill of Rights in Action. She serves as the Vice Chair of the New York City Fund for Public Schools.

The Romantic Dogs

Roberto Bolano

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Editorial Review:

Discover Roberto Bolaño as he saw himself, in his own first calling as a poet.

Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) has caught on like a house on fire, and The Romantic Dogs, a bilingual collection of forty-four poems, offers American readers their first chance to encounter this literary phenomenon as a poet: his own first and strongest literary persona. These poems, wide-ranging in forms and length, have appeared in magazines such as Harper's, Threepenny Review, The Believer, Boston Review, Soft Targets, Tin House, The Nation, Circumference, A Public Space, and Conduit. Bolaño's poetic voice is like no other's: "At that time, I'd reached the age of twenty/and I was crazy. /I'd lost a country/but won a dream./Long as I had that dream/nothing else mattered...."

Grendel

John Gardner

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 164 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Distrubed.... 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

I'm disturbed by the amount of people bashing _Grendel_. It's simply an amazing novel. Perhaps those offering sour reviews simply misunderstand the novel--Gardner, from my reading, isn't really attempting a retelling of the _Beowulf_ story. Instead, he's attempting to cast a philosophical statement *against* a philosophical school of thought that was, and still is, gaining ground when Gardner wrote _Grendel_: existentialism and nihilism, which is embraced by the dragon. Gardner just uses the Beowulf story to frame this social commentary. Consider Gardner's philosophical statement: in a time in history when so many were and are embracing the pointlessness of life, Gardner tells us that there is meaning and real in the world around us. Beowulf smashes Grendel into the wall when they finally meet and forces him to sing walls to prove to Grendel that there is meaning and that reality does exist. And what does Grendel do? He sings walls and sees a different kind of dragon. Grendel, throughout that whole novel, searches for something real, something that carries meaning, and Beowulf becomes that. People read this novel and think it's depressing--it's not. In the end there's hope. Yeah, we know Beowulf is going to die, but before he does, he's going to accomplish great things, and there will be other great rulers after him.

If you're looking for an action story, stick with _Beowulf_. But if you're looking for a philosophical novel to controvert the overwhelming onslaught of postmodernism and beliefs that we're in the world all by ourselves and should find gold and "sit on it" as the dragon tells Grendel, _Grendel_ is one of the finest craftings written to date.

Perhaps those who would denigrate _Grendel_ simply do not understand its intent; it's intent isn't to entertain you; it's intent is to teach you and force you to question. And on those grounds, it's really hard to argue that it's not a fantastic book.

Editorial Review:

When Grendel is drawn up from the caves under the mere where he lives with his bloated, inarticulate hag of a mother into the fresh night air, it is to lay waste Hrothgar's meadhall and heap destruction on the humans he finds there. What else can he do? For he is not like the men who busy themselves with God, love and beauty. He sees the infuriating human rage for order and recognises the meaninglessness of his own existence. GRENDEL is John Gardner's masterpiece; it vividly reinvents the world of Beowulf. In Grendel himself, a creature of grotesque comedy, pain and disillusioned intelligence, Gardner has created the most unforgettable monster fantasy.

The Gift

Hafiz

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 74 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

An extraordinary new translation of the world-renowned mystic poet Hafiz.

More than any other Persian poet--even Rumi--Hafiz expanded the mystical, healing dimensions of poetry. Because his poems were often ecstatic love songs from God to his beloved world, many have called Hafiz the "Invisible Tongue." Indeed, Daniel Ladinsky, the accomplished translator of this volume, has said that his work with Hafiz is an attempt to do the impossible: to translate Light into words--to make the Luminous Resonance of God tangible to our finite senses.

With this stunning collection of 250 of Hafiz's most intimate poems, Ladinsky has succeeded brilliantly in translating the essence of one of Islam's greatest poetic and religious voices. Each line of The Gift imparts the wonderful qualities of this master Sufi poet and spiritual teacher: encouragement, an audacious love that touches lives, profound knowledge, generosity, and a sweet, playful genius unparalleled in world literature.

The Rose That Grew From Concrete

Tupac Shakur

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 184 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A Life Cut Short. . . again! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

A window into the mind of a 'rose' that was truncated too young. I think this collection of poems by 2-Pak showed the new direction that he was thinking of for those young men standing around on the street corners of our cities.

Greatest Rap Poetry Ever Read 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This is a great book to futher understand 2pac and the foundation of all of his music but the book has to much love poems but he was young so dont hate. Just Open your mind and read and you will find something that stimulates a feeling of that you can relate to.

Editorial Review:

His talent was unbounded, a raw force that commanded attention and respect.

His death was tragic -- a violent homage to the power of his voice.

His legacy is indomitable -- remaining vibrant and alive.

Here now, newly discovered, are Tupac's most honest and intimate thoughts conveyed through the pure art of poetry -- a mirror into his enigmatic life and its many contradictions.

Written in his own hand at the age of nineteen, they embrace his spirit, his energy...and his ultimate message of hope.