Anthologies Books

The Poets' Corner: The One-and-Only Poetry Book for the Whole Family

John Lithgow

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

From listening to his grandmother recite epic poems from memory to curling up in bed while his father read funny verses, award-winning actor John Lithgow grew up with poetry. Ever since, John has been an enthusiastic seeker of poetic experience, whether reading, reciting, or listening to great poems.


The wide variety of carefully selected poems in this book provides the perfect introduction to appeal to readers new to poetry, and for poetry lovers to experience beloved verses in a fresh, vivid way. William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, and Dylan Thomas are just a few names among Lithgow's comprehensive list of poetry masters. His essential criterion is that "each poem's light shines more brightly when read aloud." This unique package provides a multimedia poetry experience with a bonus MP3 CD of revelatory poetry readings by John and the familiar voices of such notable performers as Eileen Atkins, Kathy Bates, Glenn Close, Billy Connolly, Jodie Foster, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, Lynn Redgrave, Susan Sarandon, Gary Sinise, and Sam Waterston.


Every reader will enjoy reciting or listening to these poems with the entire family, appreciating how each one comes to life through the spoken word in this superlative poetry collection.

Der Prophet (German Edition)

Kahlil Gibran

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 264 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

hideous piffle for dimwits 1 out of 5 stars.
4 of 14 people found this review helpful.

This book is a sort of Hallmark Greeting card compilation of the type of vacuous garbage-thought that made the 1970s a cultural disaster. Are you a sentimental pacifist who thinks Gandhi was swell, but never heard of the Moriori? Do you think of love as some sort of emotional flatulence that comes and goes the way weather does? Do you think evil is only a result of people being insufficiently nice to one another? Are your views on child rearing that you should let the kids do what they want because they're individuals? Do you think business is evil and soul destroying, and hurts the world more than it helps? Do you think religion is bad, but spiiiiirituality is good? Do you think criminals shouldn't be punished, because it's not really their fault? Do you think a mindless pursuit of pleasure is necessary for a healthy life? Well, if you believe any of these things, and enjoy saccharine sweet sing-songey prose, this book is for you. It comes in an attractive hard cover, making it appear to be a very serious book, on the same level as Jonathan Livingston Seagull, but with more naked lady pictures inside. It will provide you with many prim moments of doltish piety in your cloud cuckoo land. You may even be able to use this tome to pick up on people who are as morally defective as you are.

Personally, I prefer my wisdom to be, you know, at least vaguely wise. If I want florid saccharine language, I'll go read some Browning or other Victorian poetry. You can pick up antique volumes of such stuff for cheap, since books which required effort to write or read are unfashionable these days. They also look nicer on your bookshelf. As a bonus, it might actually be good for you to read Browning, whereas reading Gibran is sort of like giving yourself a mental venereal disease.

Please, humanity, restore my faith in basic human decency: stop reading this book. This book destroys souls and stunts aesthetics. If you must give copies of the book to people, give it to people you don't like. Give this book in the same spirit the British sold Opium to the Chinese. The end result will be much the same if they take the precepts of this silly book seriously.

Editorial Review:

B/W Illust.

My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer (Wesleyan Poetry)

Jack Spicer

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

The Murderer of Modernism 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

In the decades following WWII, a tremendous amount of complex, appealing, outward-facing, socially engaged and universally relevant poetry was written in the United States by poets who more or less all knew each other, wrote about each other, and went to the same parties. Ferlingetti published Allen Ginsberg, who staged a happening at the funeral of Frank O'Hara, who was a close friend of John Ashberry, who promoted the books of Kenneth Koch, and so on. Together, these poets' work influenced everything from political speeches to hip-hop, and perhaps more importantly, their eclectic, immediate, deeply personal, free-spirited outpourings drowned out the recondite, referential, fascist, formalist modernism exemplified by Eliot and Pound, and cured American poetry of the disease that continued to plague our architecture and our prose. (Notice there's no "postmodernism" in poetry--"Howl" made it irrelevant.)

Jack Spicer is the self-selected black sheep of the group. His poems are stubbornly self-reflexive: they are about poetry and poets, and the struggle to the death between them. He likes to quote Pound. He disses New York. He writes "A band of faggots. . .cannot be built into a log-cabin in which all Western Civilization can cower." (Take THAT Ginsberg and O'Hara.) He talks about being in hell. He sees ghosts.

In his pity, privacy, and focus on writers and death, he reminds me of Roberto Bolano and David Markson. But there is also an energy, a wealth of invention, and a darn human likeability to his work that. . . well, maybe there was something in the air in mid-twentieth century America, which we can all breathe even now by reading these poems. "Love makes the discovery wisdom abandons." Ahh--joy. "Two loves I had, one rang a bell/connected on both sides with hell." Who of us hasn't been there? And as for modernism--"Love ate the red wheelbarrow." Yes again. Thank the ghosts. Read this and breathe.

Editorial Review:

In 1965, when the poet Jack Spicer died at the age of forty, he left behind a trunkful of papers and manuscripts and a few copies of the seven small books he had seen to press. A West Coast poet, his influence spanned the national literary scene of the 1950s and '60s, though in many ways Spicer's innovative writing ran counter to that of his contemporaries in the New York School and the West Coast Beat movement. Now, more than forty years later, Spicer's voice is more compelling, insistent, and timely than ever. During his short but prolific life, Spicer troubled the concepts of translation, voice, and the act of poetic composition itself. My Vocabulary Did This to Me is a landmark publication of this essential poet's life work, and includes poems that have become increasingly hard to find and many published here for the first time.

Leaves of Grass: The Original 1855 Edition (Thrift Edition)

Walt Whitman

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

A small part of 'Leaves of Grass' 4 out of 5 stars.
25 of 25 people found this review helpful.

The original edition of 'Leaves of Grass' published in 1855 contained twelve poems only. The subsequent editions beginning in 1856 were to greatly expand the work. Thus I would recommed that anyone who wishes to know the true range of Whitman's work find another selection of his work of which there is a larger share of his great work.
Whitman is the poet who Emerson prophesied, the American visionary poet who sang of the complex greatness of the society, and connected his own soul with its expansive facts of life.

What More Can Be Said? 5 out of 5 stars.
16 of 16 people found this review helpful.

It's difficult to think of something appropriate to say about a man who spent his life trying to express the panorama of humanity through the lense of his own heart. From a drop of blood to the grandeur of a shipyard or a continent, he takes all readers on a journey wild with raving, raging, sorrow, longing, humbleness and pride. At once he is totally modern and yet rife with history.

For readers new to poetry, Walt Whitman is wonderfully accessible. One can pick up Leaves of Grass and virtually start and stop anywhere and pick up something wonderful every time.

Not to be missed.

Editorial Review:

"The most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed." — Ralph Waldo Emerson. Inspired by transcendentalism, Whitman's immortal collection includes some of the greatest poems of modern times, including his masterpiece "Song of Myself." Shattering standard conventions of symbolism and allegory, it stands as an unabashed celebration of body and nature.

Odyssey

Homer

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 142 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

DON'T buy into the Fagles "hype"! 1 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Although I respect Fagles as a modern translator, I cannot recommend his translations of Homer...I would probably only recommend his translations of Sophocles's 3 Theban Plays.

Homer's Iliad and Odyssey don't sound like Epics anymore under Fagles...they are turned into mild nice sounding children stories! He tones down Homer to the point that I feel that Fagels wants his personality to shine NOT Homer's! I am gravely disappointed by this.

I also find that he not only forces beauty into the text but adds too much of his personal warmth that gets in the way of the texts and creates a vision of Homer's epics that is truly unsound to the original.

Not only that but the font and design of the print is an eye sore, I don't like the choice the publishers and Fagles gave to the works. It doesn't make for easy reading...

Stanley Lombardo's translations are unparalleled in their print layout, design and font...not to say vivid and powerful evocative translation.

I continue to find Richmond Lattimore's facinating translations the most accurate to how the Ancient Greek language sounds to English ears. I would buy Lattimore over Fagles (and Fitzgerald).

And I still think Rieu's famous Prose version from 1946 is hard to beat for it's modernity and readibility.

...Find out for yourself by comparing a few versions but don't be duped into this mysterious "Fagles hype"!

Editorial Review:

If The Iliad is the world's greatest war epic, then The Odyssey is literature's grandest evocation of everyman's journey though life. Odysseus's reliance on his wit and wiliness for survival in his encounters with divine and natural forces during his ten-year voyage home to Ithaca after the Trojan War is at once a timeless human story and an individual test of moral endurance.

Translated by Robert Fagles
Introduction and Notes by Bernard Knox

Dante's Divine Comedy Paradise: Journey to Joy (v. 3)

Kathryn Lindskoog

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 106 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A powerful translation of a masterpiece 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

There have been several excellent translations of Dante in the past few years, all worth reading in their own right. But I retain a special affection for John Ciardi's version, as it's the first one I ever read, at the unprepared & overwhelmed age of 15. I knew of its reputation as a major classic & I was ignorant enough to be unfazed by the prospect of reading it.

Well, to say that I was soon in over my head is an understatement! But Ciardi's fine, lyrical translation, as well as his extensive but always clear notes, enabled me to go on without drowning. And what a journey it was! At the time, I was simply dazzled by the invention & imagery of the work; now that I'm older, I can appreciate its many psychological & spiritual levels. Both the capstone of the Middle Ages & the gateway to the Renaissance, Dante's masterpiece is a stunning exploration of the religious & political world of its time. A lifetime of knowledge went into its creation, and every intricately woven thread of poetry shines like gold, without ever becoming pedantic.

Whether you accept or reject a literal belief in God & Hell, the poem remains an astonishing revelation of & descent into the human psyche, the heart of darkness. Dante's insight that the damned have ultimately chosen their fate remains psychologically true today ... how many people trapped in the private hells of their own lives have placed themselves there, bemoaning their fate while unable to find the courage or strength to escape it?

But that's merely one level of meaning in this magnificent work. A visionary epic of learning, of faith, of poetry, it becomes deeper & richer with every new reading. If you don't know the original language, the next best thing is to read as many translations as possible -- and I still recommend Ciardi's as one of the best. This is an illumination of Hell that can't dim or fade with the years -- most highly recommended!

Editorial Review:

The Divine Comedy is perhaps the greatest Christian classic ever written, and probably the greatest adveture story ever told. Dante wrote it to entertain, guide, and enrich ordinary readers, not just the intellectual elite. This clear new version with unique aids makes the fascinating story accessible to such readers today.

Those who love Dante best as a storyteller and teacher will find in this book what they have been waiting for...the freshest, clearest, most exact, and most readable Divine Comedy in the English language, with full-page illustrations and original notes.

Dylan Thomas Reads a Child's Christmas in Wales and Five Poems/Cd

Dylan Thomas

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 24 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

The voice 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

If you have read A Child's Christmas in Wales, you know that it has to be a classic. But you can't fully appreciate it until you have heard Dylan Thomas read it. What a deep, expressive, poetic voice. For years, I have listened to the recording on a Caedman record. It is wonderful to have it on a CD.

from a little bit of Wales comes universally human warmth... 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I love this story, as do all my children, who, from their earliest years, have not much struggled with the density of the language nor the scatteredness of the story. 5 of my 8 great-grandparents are from Wales, and the remaining 3 have the blood in them as well, so maybe it is like drinking water for us.:-D Our minds are all scattered, and words, even English words ;-D, fall on us in clumps....which makes it doubly hard to keep a clean house. LOL

The sort of prose-poetry imaginative way of seeing and describing the world unique to Welshwomen and Welshmen and Welshchildren, which does not seek to keep up the pretense that history can be separated from myth, story and desire, and which requires loving with eyes wide open to [and eventually embracing] one's own and others' bumps, bruises and idiosyncracies included, is extraordinarily well represented here. So, by the way, is speaking and listening to the close and Holy darkness!

My favorite version isthe one illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman. To me she has captured the complexity of the Welsh personality best, though i have nothing to say against the other illustrators praised in these reviews. I DO have a warning for you: there are some skinny versions flying about which do not have the poem-story complete and correct. This sort of work cannot suffer removal or modification, IMHO.

gbg

Editorial Review:

A Child's Christmas in Wales is the nostalgic recollection of Dylan Thomas' childhood that has become a classic among Christmas tales. With powerful grace, Thomas performs this renowned work, along with five of his most well-known poems. Features: A Child's Christmas in Wales Fern Hill Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night In the White Giant's Thigh Ballad of the Long-legged Bait Ceremony After a Fire Raid.

The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 50 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Your thoughts don't have words every day... 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

"Your thoughts don't have words every day..." But, oh, how skilled was Emily Dickinson at finding words to match her thoughts. And what intriguing thoughts they were - clever, insightful, playful, impassioned, meticulous... Whether describing life from the point of view of a bee or pondering the ravages of death, Dickinson was unique in her approach to her work and the world she saw around her. One of her poetic gifts was finding ways to express profound thoughts through brevity.

Most of us are exposed to Dickinson only through the most publicized and commercialized selections of her work. This complete compilation offers us a chance to see Dickinson in her entirety and find the many treasures that have not been exposed to the masses. I first really discovered Dickinson in college, and I clung to a paperback of her complete works for years and was happy to at last be able to replace it with a more durable hardback. Not only are we treated to her life's work here, but in some cases we get different drafts of a single poem - giving us a window into the development of her thoughts. Crack open the cover, and it is as if we have been allowed to wander unsupervised into Emily's room and peruse her papers. And we discover how true the poet's own words can be:

"A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.

I say it just
Begins to live
That day."

Editorial Review:

The only authoritative paperback collection of all of Emily Dickinson's poetry. The editor has assembled a reading text of the preferred forms of all 1,775 poems, and has included in his introduction an explanation of his selection of texts, plus a helpful outline of Emily Dickinson's career.

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: 4.0 of 5

Quite a Bang for Your Buck!.......... 4 out of 5 stars.
24 of 24 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 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.

The Best American Poetry 2008: Series Editor David Lehman, Guest Editor Charles Wright

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Writers Unite 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 16 people found this review helpful.

This year the job was done very well. The works were pulled from unique sources regardless of the place (a theological review & the New York Review of Books etc.) & the writers were focused upon. John Ashbery is in this year's work as well as the entire Dark Room Collective. I saw Kevin Young's poem appear in Poetry & knew this would be included. They did a good crunch time job of uniting all the sources & strongest writers of our generation to pull together the best work. Kudos to Lehman & Wright.

Just a note: This is my third year buying the collection & it's the best I've seen, Gluck, Trethewey, Young, everyone basically.

I thought 2006 was dominated by Kay Ryan's poem.
I thought 2007 was focused upon "sounds" as opposed to word choice.

& this years collection is focused upon voice.

Editorial Review:

The Best American Poetry series is a beloved mainstay of American poetry. This year's edition was edited by one of the most admired and acclaimed poets of his generation, Charles Wright. Known for his meditative and beautiful observations of landscape, change, and time,Wright brings his particular sensibility to this year's anthology, which contains an ecumenical slant that is unprecedented for the series. He has gathered an astonishing selection of work that includes new poems by Carolyn Forché, Jorie Graham, Louise Glück, Frank Bidart, Frederick Seidel, Patti Smith, and Kevin Young and showcases a dazzling array of rising stars like Joshua Beckman, Erica Dawson, and Alex Lemon.

With captivating and revelatory notes from the poets on their works and sage and erudite introductory essays by Wright and series editor David Lehman, The Best American Poetry 2008 will be read, discussed, debated, and prized for years to come.