Poetry Books - Page 9

The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry

Richard Ellman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A new edition of the acclaimed anthology—the most comprehensive collection of twentieth-century poetry in English available.

"The most acute rendering of an era's sensibility is its poetry," wrote the editors in their preface to the first edition. Thirty years later, this thorough and sensitive revision freshly renders the remarkable range of styles, subjects, and voices in English-language poetry, from Walt Whitman and Thomas Hardy in the late nineteenth century to Carol Ann Duffy and Sherman Alexie in the twenty-first century.

With 195 poets and 1,596 poems, The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry richly represents the major figures—Yeats, Frost, Stevens, Williams, Hughes, Olson, Bishop, Larkin, Plath, Rich, Heaney, and Walcott, among others. It also gives full voice to postcolonial and transnational poets, ethnic American poetries, experimental traditions, and the long poem. Each volume concludes with a Poetics section that provides essential contexts for reading the poems.

With substantially new introductions, headnotes, annotations, and bibliographies by the award-winning scholar and teacher Jahan Ramazani, this anthology is indispensable for all who love poetry. Two volumes, slipcased.

Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems

Billy Collins

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

Wonderful Collection of Poems 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Billy Collin's new book, "Sailing Alone Around the Room," is actually a compilation of the old and the new. The book is filled mostly with selections from previous published books along with a final chapter containing twenty newly published poems. Collins has a wonderful way with words. He takes the ordinary and turns it into the extraordinary. His poems are very enjoyable and usually speak to some universally understood theme such as love, loss, grief, nostalgia or just average everyday observations. Collins takes everyday observations or activities and brings new light to them or lets the reader find comfort in the familiar. The majority of his poems are written in a conversational tone and easily digested.
"Forgetfulness" (29), "The History Teacher" (38), "Pinup" (75), and "Victoria's Secret" (109-112) all originally form Collin's earlier books are examples of wonderfully fun poems to read. They are contemporary and most anyone can relate. "The Best Cigarette" (55) and "On Turning Ten" (63) are both beautifully written poems that just reek of nostalgia. In "On Turning Ten" Collins, as the voice of a ten year old, recalls his carefree days as a youngster, before he hit double digits. It is simple, yet compelling. One of my favorites is "Marginalia" (94-96). Here Collins speaks of the many different types of writing one might find in the margins of different books, who might have written the words and the underlying meaning of them. The use of metaphor in this poem creates wonderful imagery and the words just flow off the tongue. I have to say my favorite poem of the whole book though comes from Collins' new poems. The poem is titled "Dharma" (137) and it is about his dog. It speaks to the dog lover in most of us and to the paradigm that is a pet. It made me smile and chuckle a little and aren't good poets supposed to bring out the emotions in us?

Collins' poems are thoughtfully crafted and take the reader on a wonderful ride through life's joys and disappointments. He takes us from the ordinary to the extraordinary, sometimes all in one poem. This is definitely a book I would recommend to anyone who likes poetry. I would also recommend this book for those who aren't sure about poetry, with its universal themes and conversational tone it is easy to relate to and enjoyable to read. I am sure that I will find myself rereading many of the fine poems in this collection in the years to come.

Editorial Review:

Sailing Alone Around the Room, by America’s Poet Laureate, Billy Collins, contains both new poems and a generous gathering from his earlier collections The Apple That Astonished Paris, Questions About Angels, The Art of Drowning, and Picnic, Lightning. These poems show Collins at his best, performing the kinds of distinctive poetic maneuvers that have delighted and fascinated so many readers. They may begin in curiosity and end in grief; they may start with irony and end with lyric transformation; they may, and often do, begin with the everyday and end in the infinite. Possessed of a unique voice that is at once plain and melodic, Billy Collins has managed to enrich American poetry while greatly widening the circle of its audience.

The Social Contract and Discourses (Everyman)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 25 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Collectivism Against Individuality 1 out of 5 stars.
6 of 10 people found this review helpful.

The fallacy is in his assumption that individuals must forfeit all sovereignty to the state. The second specious argument is in the creation of a General Will. The third is that the general will will not do anything to harm any of the individuals within the collective.

The collectivist social contract was most assured well intentioned, but it's opposition to individualism has obviously anti-individualist consequences.

This is evident in his support of democratic censorship. If the general will is offended, then censorship is justified.

In his desire to create equality, he justifies both socialism and communism, and democracy in its purest form - majority rule.

Editorial Review:

"Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains." These are the famous opening words of a treatise which, from the French Revolutionary terror to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, has been interpreted as a blueprint for totalitarianism. But in "The Social Contract" Rousseau (1712-1778) was at pains to stress the connection between liberty and law, freedom and justice. Arguing that the ruler is the people's agent, not its master, he claimed that laws derived from the people's general will. Yet in preaching subservience to the impersonal state he came close to defining freedom as the recognition of necessity. Rousseau's powerful treatise expresses views on the rights, liberty and equality of all people. It remains a classic of political theory and one of the most influential works of abstract political thought in the Western tradition.

A Streetcar Named Desire

Tennessee Williams

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 110 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Glorious Bird's iconic melodrama 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

This is probably the most famous piece of literature from the US that I hadn'd read yet, until now. Nor watched as a play or movie. And still I seemed to know everything about it.
Having just read Gore Vidal's memoirs, where he calls TW the 'glorious bird', I was motivated to finally get acquainted with the streetcar. What fun. It is Gone with the Wind updated for the 20th century. It is the downsizing of rural gentry. It shows downward social mobility in a narrative framework of Southern Gothic. It is powerfully vulgar and perceptive. It is so politically not correct. ('Polacks are like Irish, only less highbrow.')
But with all the mad fun, let's be clear about this: despite the popular use of the term 'tragic' for the descent of Ms. Blanche into madness, this is not really a tragedy in the full sense of the word. Being a piece of stage writing makes it one only in the sense of not being a comedy. What it is, it is a really great melodrama.
A word about the genius casting for the movie: Marlon Brando dominated it more than the text justifies. Gore Vidal says in his memoirs that Kazan actually destroyed the play by pushing the Blanche character into 2nd row. He says that TW did not mind, since it made him famous.

Editorial Review:

The story of Blanche DuBois and her last grasp at happiness, and of Stanley Kowalski, the one who destroyed her chance.

Death of a Salesman

Arthur H. Miller

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Total reviews: 202 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

" A contemporary classic. . . listen to this album." --The New York Times Death of a Salesman burst upon the scene in 1949, and is as fresh and meaningful today as it was when it opened on Broadway - and won the Drama Critics' Circle Award, the Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize. As Death of a Salesman is Miller's great play, Willy Loman is Lee J. Cobb's great role. He created the part on Broadway, just as Mildred Dunnock created the role of Linda Loman. They both recreate their roles here, with an exceptional cast including Michael Tolan as Biff, Gene Williams as Happy, and in the role of Bernard - Dustin Hoffman. Arthur Miller took an active part in this production, undertaken expressly for this recording - from Miller himself recording the introduction with which the play opens to choosing the director, participating in the casting, and attending the rehearsals. Arthur Miller was born in New York City in 1915. His first theatrical success occurred in 1947 with All My Sons, which earned him the Drama Critics' Circle Award. In 1949, Death of a Salesman was given the Pulitzer Prize and Drama Critics' Circle Award. The Crucible won a Tony Award four years later. His other plays include A View From the Bridge, The Price, After the Fall, Incident at Vichy, The American Clock, Danger: Memory, The Ride Down Mt. Morgan, and Broken Glass.

The Iliad of Homer

Homer

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 67 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Invaluable Documents but...an uneasy read. 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I recognize and agree that Lattimore's translations of "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" are the MOST TRUE to Homer and Ancient Greek we have ever seen.

Two minor examples: he uses long verse lines (like Homer), maintains Homer's sentence structure and he keeps and repeats all the Epitaphs exactly as they appear in Homer.

Lattimore's choice of words and sentence organization can sometimes seem jumbled and complicated and his manner/style somewhat archaic, it is because Lattimore is showing how Homer "sounds" in English as if you were translating it directly and perfectly from the Greek. That is Lattimore's aim, to render Homer as EXACTLY as possible. For this I am grateful...he has helped many to develop a more scholarly aptitude.

This aside,

I give it 3 stars because I find that his translation is not condusive to reading. Lattimore's 1950's American English is out of date and the story moves excessively slow. I often find Lattimore's Homer stodgy, hard, complicated, and often boring!


My favorites are still Stanley Lombardo's (Prosaic Verse) and E.V. Rieu's (Novel-like Prose) versions. Both full of fire-like Excitement, shimmering Beauty and monumental Drama.

I always recommend having 2 or 3 different versions of Homer on shelf, Lattimore is always on mine...not for reading enjoyment though but only for comparing.

Thanks

Editorial Review:

"Each new generation is bound to produce new translations. [Lattimore] has done better with nobility, as well as with accuracy, than any other modern verse translator. [In] our age we do not often find a fine scholar who is also a genuine poet and who takes the greatest pains over the work of translation."--Hugh Lloyd-Jones, New York Review of Books

100 Best Loved Poems (Dover Thrift Editions)

Philip Smith

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

100 Best loved poems. 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I love poetry, I have enjoying reading this book, I have read it over and over. Thank-you.

You will be challenged as you read "Swimming the Storm" 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

"Swimming the Storm" is a poetry book that would make you
associate with the poet's journey through life. You will experience his anger, love, heartbreak, desperation, joy, reconciliation, acceptance, and much more. Michael Coulombe confronts his pain and love effectively. He expresses his state of being emotionally and visually with stimulating words.

I love the poems: "Need," "Tear," "Why am I the Enemy?" "A Kiss," Bit I found "Anger" one of my top favorite poems. I just love that one; And You will be challenged as you read "Swimming the Storm." I highly recommend it to anyone.

From: Bazhe, author of:
Damages (nonfiction)
and Identities: Poetry

Quality reading, bargain prices 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I needed this for a friend's daughter and decided to get one for myself, because of the inexpensive price. What a bang for my buck!

Editorial Review:

"The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," "Death, be not proud," "The Raven," "The Road Not Taken," poems by Shakespeare, Blake, Wordsworth, Byron, Keats, many more.

A Room of One's Own (Cambridge Literature)

Virginia Woolf

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Total reviews: 42 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Obligatory Reading 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Virginia Woolf in her best form - personal but not self-centred, concentrated and ready to fight for what she believes is right. This long essay gives her views on the position of women in literature but offers also an overview of their role through centuries - from the imaginary Shakespeare's sister to her contemporaries. A must read for all readers regardless of sex!

Still Relevant and Important 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.
~Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

Virginia Woolf's very intense A Room Of One's Own, is actually a long essay she wrote "with ardour and conviction" on the the topic of women and fiction, that she prepared when asked to speak about this subject at women's colleges. A Room of One's Own was published in 1929, when young women were still discouraged from attending college (due to genuine fear that a good education would make women unfit for marriage and motherhood), and although it's not angry in tone the essay reflects a society in which severe limitations were put on women and their achievements. Virginia Woolf speaks about the creative process that lead to her talks, of her notebook in which she recorded a multitude of ideas, thoughts, and mental meanderings, and writes about the train of thought that led to her conclusion, that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction". In A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf grapples with what is exactly meant by women and fiction (not a simple matter), and demonstrates and expresses the complexity of her thought in her trademark stream-of-consciousness writing. Defying conventions of the time, she talks about the actual food served at the luncheon party, of the soles and partridges and potatoes, and of the importance of food to the artist in a more general sense. She discusses numerous things in this full, layered essay of her thoughts, among them a sense of loss due to the war which began in August of 1914, that changed the underlying current of life--previously filled with music and poetry, with romance--and of the special difficulties women artists face (still relevant today!). Her message is simple (though the means is not), that women must have money (a fixed income) and a room of their own (privacy) in order to have the freedom to create, luxuries that men may take for granted. She imagines Shakespeare's "sister", equal in talent and genius, but because of her sex, never writes a word, never expresses her genius, never lives to old age because she takes her own life in quiet desperation. Her essay is meant to encourage young women, to inspire them to create, as she's sympathetic to their plight. In A Room of One's Own,Virginia Woolf wants the limitations removed, and for women to have the same intellectual freedom that men have had for centuries, so that they, too, may express their genius.

(This is a passage slightly modified from my blog about books, Suko's Notebook, suko95.blogspot.com, which I invite you to visit.)

Editorial Review:

Cambridge Literature is a series of literary texts edited for study by students aged 14-18 in English-speaking classrooms. It will include novels, poetry, short stories, essays, travel-writing and other non-fiction. The series will be extensive and open-ended and will provide school students with a range of edited texts taken from a wide geographical spread. It will feature writing in English from various genres and differing times. A Room of One's Own is edited by Jenifer Smith, English Advisor, Suffolk LEA.

The Canterbury Tales (Modern Library)

Geoffrey Chaucer

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Editorial Review:

It would be impossible to overstate the influence of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. A work with one metaphorical foot planted in the Florentine Renaissance literary tradition of Boccaccio’s Decameron and the other in works ranging from John Bunyan, Voltaire, and Mark Twain to the popular entertainments of our own time, The Canterbury Tales stands astride the cultures of Great Britain and America, and much of Europe, like a benign colossus.

Beyond its importance as a cultural touchstone and literary work of unvarnished genius, Chaucer’s unfinished epic poem is also one of the most beloved works in the English language–and for good reason: It is lively, absorbing, perceptive, and outrageously funny–an undisputed classic that has held a special appeal for generations of readers. Chaucer has gathered twenty-nine of literature’s most indelible archetypes–from the exalted Knight to the bawdy Wife to the besotted Miller to the humble Plowman–in a vivid group portrait that captures the full spectrum of late-medieval English society and both informs and expands our discourse on the human condition.

Presented in these pages in a new unabridged translation by the esteemed poet, translator, and scholar Burton Raffel–whose translation of Beowulf has sold more than a million copies–this Modern Library edition also features an Introduction by the well-known and widely influential medievalist and author John Miles Foley that discusses Chaucer’s work as well as to his life and times.

Despite the brilliance of Geoffrey Chaucer’s work, the continual evolution of our language has rendered his words unfamiliar to many of us. Burton Raffel’s magnificent new translation brings Chaucer’s poetry back to life, ensuring that none of the original’s wit, wisdom, or humanity is lost to the modern reader.

The Gift

Hafiz

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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.