Single Authors Books

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

John Lithgow

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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.

The Divine Comedy (The Inferno, The Purgatorio, and The Paradiso)

Dante Alighieri

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Total reviews: 31 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Solid translation for a schizophrenic work! 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This translation was easy enough to understand although the work itself suffers from a major problem and that is a sharp contrast that exists between exciting moments to ones where the lack of action is utterly unbearable. I suggest you read this version which makes it easier to understand Dante's thinking. Which is something you will want to get a firm grasp on as you enter the later sections which can be laboriously slow.

Three and a Half Years Later... 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

...I finally finished this wonderful book (today)! To tell the truth, it was the kind of book I put away for a few weeks or months and then picked it up again, reading a few cantos at a time. As assumed by most, I believe the Inferno may be the best of the three Canticles if only for the descriptive passages, and my memories of first hearing about it in the tenth grade. In fact, that first canto/introduction was what got me to start reading the book. So, as for the story, the Inferno, I feel, was the only canticle that did not really have a dry spot, simply because most of us have heard about the circles of hell in popular culture, so it was nice to read about Dante's interpretation of it all. As for Purgatorio and Paradiso, I felt that they did have some slow sections. The Purgatorio Canticle picked up where the Inferno left off, and so those parts were nice, but as Dante started his journey up the mountain, it was a little dull until he started to observe the punishments of those who sinned, but were ultimately destined for Heaven. The same thing happens in Paradiso; it starts off well, then takes somewhat of a dive, until there are some interesting "guest appearances." I will not go into detail, but it was fun to learn about some of these historical figures. But that is the problem with writing about Heaven, is that there really should not be any spheres or levels, but Dante has done so to mirror the other Canticles, which seems like the most balanced way to do it. Aside from this, another high point for me was when he finally meets St Peter, St James, and St John, who, represent Faith, Hope, and Love, respectively. This is kind of like the Gates of Heaven passage, except there are no gates, but there are some very interesting questions that are answered. The cantos on Angels were essentially disappointing, but once they reached the Empyrean in the last four cantos, the Divine Comedy really ended on a high note.

Now, I saved my review of the guides for the end, because they are such a large part of the Comedy. Virgil was a simply amazing guide through both Hell and Purgatory, as he represented Human Reason, and really fit in perfectly, even shooting down Dante when he felt bad for a sinner, or practiced some other fault. That might not make sense as Virgil did not believe in God, but it still works. Beatrice, as Dante's guide in Heaven and representation of Divine Revelation, was also a great choice, if only for her role in his life. After all, I would have done the same if I were writing a similar story. In addition to these two, there is a third and forgotten guide of Dante's, which leads him through the Empyrean and represents the Contemplative Soul; St Bernard. This really came out of nowhere for me, because I thought it was only Virgil and Beatrice, but since he was only around for about four cantos, it is not like I can say I was surprised, in the sense that he is forgotten and that he is there, since Dante always uses the theme of the Trinity. Still, all three guides make the Divine Comedy an even more memorable piece of Literature that has deserved its place in history as a magnificent piece of literature.

***Notes on this Edition***
I really enjoyed all the effort that the translator John Ciardi put into this wonderful work. And I do not mean just putting this book into the English language, but actually maintaining the style in which Dante wrote the book, as this translation also follows the "tercet" pattern that Dante wrote it in. However, as assumed, it becomes a bit tedious, since he keeps the rhyming patterns, meaning that it is not a straight translation and that Ciardi had to take artistic freedoms to make it work. However, he more than compensates for this by writing a brief summary at the beginning of each canto and gives notes at the end to clear up any confusion or any changes. The notes, however was what also made it such a long read, as they take up more time than the actual text, but given that this book was written more than 600 years ago, it is also helpful in understanding everything, since it was sometimes hard to understand the original text, which all of its rhymes and poetry patterns. Still, I feel that this edition was perfect for myself in my first reading of this historical text, which has made me wonder whether I should learn how to read it in the vernacular! It was that great!

T.S. Eliot - "Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them-there is no third."

Editorial Review:

Dante Alighieri's poetic masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, is a moving human drama, an unforgettable visionary journey through the infinite torment of Hell, up the arduous slopes of Purgatory, and on to the glorious realm of Paradise-the sphere of universal harmony and eternal salvation.

A Light in the Attic

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 65 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

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Last night while I lay thinking here
Some Whatifs crawled inside my ear
And pranced and partied all night long
And sang their same old Whatif song:

Whatif I flunk that test?
Whatif green hair grows on my chest?
Whatif nobody likes me?
Whatif a bolt of lightning strikes me?...

Here in the attic of Shel Silverstein you will find Backward Bill, Sour Face Ann, the Meehoo with an Exactlywatt, and the Polar Bear in the Frigidaire. You will talk with Broiled Face, and find out what happens when Somebody steals your knees, you get caught by the Quick-Digesting Gink, a Mountain snores, and They Put a Brassiere on the Camel.

From the creator of the beloved poetry collections Where the Sidewalk Ends and Falling Up, here is another wondrous book of poems and drawings.

Notable Children's Books of 1981 (ALA)
Best Books of 1981 (SLJ)
Children's Books of 1981 (Library of Congress)
1981 Children's Books (NY Public Library)
1981 USA Children's Books of International Interest
Winner, 1983-84 William Allen White Award (Kansas)
Winner, 1983 Garden State Children's Book Award (New Jersey Library Association)
1984 Garden State Children's Book Award for Non-Fiction (New Jersey Library Association)
1984 George C. Stone Center for Children's Books (Claremont, CA) "Recognition of Merit" Award

Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell

Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

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Robert Lowell once remarked in a letter to Elizabeth Bishop that “you ha[ve] always been my favorite poet and favorite friend.” The feeling was mutual. Bishop said that conversation with Lowell left her feeling “picked up again to the proper table-land of poetry,” and she once begged him, “Please never stop writing me letters—they always manage to make me feel like my higher self (I’ve been re-reading Emerson) for several days.” Neither ever stopped writing letters, from their first meeting in 1947 when both were young, newly launched poets until Lowell’s death in 1977. The substantial, revealing—and often very funny—interchange that they produced stands as a remarkable collective achievement, notable for its sustained conversational brilliance of style, its wealth of literary history, its incisive snapshots and portraits of people and places, and its delicious literary gossip, as well as for the window it opens into the unfolding human and artistic drama of two of America’s most beloved and influential poets.

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

Jack Spicer

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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.

The Shadow of Sirius

W.S. Merwin

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Featured on NPR's "Fresh Air" and "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" on PBS.

Honored as one of the "Best Books of the Year" from Publishers Weekly.

“Merwin is one of the great poets of our age.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review

"[Merwin's] best book in a decade—and one of the best outright... The poems... feel fresh and awake with a simplicity that can only be called wisdom." —Publishers Weekly

"Merwin's gentle wisdom and attentiveness to the world are alive as ever. These deeply reflective meditations move through light and darkness, old love and turning seasons to probe the core of human existence." —Orion

The nuanced mysteries of light, darkness, presence, and memory are central themes in W.S. Merwin’s new book of poems. “I have only what I remember,” Merwin admits, and his memories are focused and profound—the distinct qualities of autumn light, a conversation with a boyhood teacher, well-cultivated loves, and “our long evenings and astonishment.” In “Photographer,” Merwin presents the scene where armloads of antique glass negatives are saved from a dumpcart by “someone who understood.” In “Empty Lot,” Merwin evokes a child lying in bed at night, listening to the muffled dynamite blasts of coal mining near his home, and we can’t help but ask: How shall we mine our lives?

somewhere the Perseids are falling
toward us already at a speed that would
burn us alive if we could believe it
but in the stillness after the rain ends
nothing is to be heard but the drops falling

W.S. Merwin, author of over fifty books, is America’s foremost poet. His last two books were honored with major literary awards: Migration won the National Book Award, and Present Company received the Bobbitt Prize from the Library of Congress.

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 54 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.

Books written by Richard Noble - The Hobo Philosopher:
"Hobo-ing America: A Workingman's Tour of the U.S.A.."
"A Summer with Charlie"
"A Little Something: Poetry and Prose"
"Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother"

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

Ballistics: Poems

Billy Collins

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Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A Billy Collins poem is instantly recognizable. “Using simple, understandable language,” notes USA Today, the two-term U.S. Poet Laureate “captures ordinary life–its pleasure, its discontents, its moments of sadness and of joy.” His everyman approach to writing resonates with readers everywhere and generates fans who would otherwise never give a poem a second glance.

Now, in this stunning new collection, Collins touches on a greater array of subjects–love, death, solitude, youth, and aging–delving deeper than ever before. Ballistics comes at the reader full force with moving and playful takes on life. Drawing inspiration from the world around him and from such poetic forebears as Robert Frost, Paul Valéry, and eleventh-century poet Liu Yung, Collins drolly captures the essence of an ordinary afternoon:

All I do these drawn-out days
is sit in my kitchen at Pheasant Ridge
where there are no pheasants to be seen
and, last time I looked, no ridge.

Collins reflects on his solitude:

If I lived across the street from myself
and I was sitting in the dark
on the edge of the bed
at five o’clock in the morning,

I might be wondering what the light
was doing on in my study at this hour.

And he meditates on the effects of love:

It turns everything into a symbol
like a storm that breaks loose
in the final chapter of a long novel.

And it may add sparkle to a morning,
or deepen a night
when the bed is ringed with fire.

As Collins strives to find truth in the smallest detail, readers are given a fascinating, intimate glimpse into the heart and soul of a brilliantly thoughtful man and exemplary poet.

Beowulf: A New Verse Translation (Bilingual Edition)

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Total reviews: 244 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In Beowulf warriors must back up their mead-hall boasts with instant action, monsters abound, and fights are always to the death. The Anglo-Saxon epic, composed between the 7th and 10th centuries, has long been accorded its place in literature, though its hold on our imagination has been less secure. In the introduction to his translation, Seamus Heaney argues that Beowulf's role as a required text for many English students obscured its mysteries and "mythic potency." Now, thanks to the Irish poet's marvelous recreation (in both senses of the word) under Alfred David's watch, this dark, doom-ridden work gets its day in the sun.

There are endless pleasures in Heaney's analysis, but readers should head straight for the poem and then to the prose. (Some will also take advantage of the dual-language edition and do some linguistic teasing out of their own.) The epic's outlines seem simple, depicting Beowulf's three key battles with the scaliest brutes in all of art: Grendel, Grendel's mother (who's in a suitably monstrous snit after her son's dismemberment and death), and then, 50 years later, a gold-hoarding dragon "threatening the night sky / with streamers of fire." Along the way, however, we are treated to flashes back and forward and to a world view in which a thane's allegiance to his lord and to God is absolute. In the first fight, the man from Geatland must travel to Denmark to take on the "shadow-stalker" terrorizing Heorot Hall. Here Beowulf and company set sail:

Men climbed eagerly up the gangplank,
sand churned in the surf, warriors loaded
a cargo of weapons, shining war-gear
in the vessel's hold, then heaved out,
away with a will in their wood-wreathed ship.
Over the waves, with the wind behind her
and foam at her neck, she flew like a bird...

After a fearsome night victory over march-haunting and heath-marauding Grendel, our high-born hero is suitably strewn with gold and praise, the queen declaring: "Your sway is wide as the wind's home, / as the sea around cliffs." Few will disagree. And remember, Beowulf has two more trials to undergo.

Heaney claims that when he began his translation it all too often seemed "like trying to bring down a megalith with a toy hammer." The poem's challenges are many: its strong four-stress line, heavy alliteration, and profusion of kennings could have been daunting. (The sea is, among other things, "the whale-road," the sun is "the world's candle," and Beowulf's third opponent is a "vile sky-winger." When it came to over-the-top compound phrases, the temptations must have been endless, but for the most part, Heaney smiles, he "called a sword a sword.") Yet there are few signs of effort in the poet's Englishing. Heaney varies his lines with ease, offering up stirring dialogue, action, and description while not stinting on the epic's mix of fate and fear. After Grendel's misbegotten mother comes to call, the king's evocation of her haunted home may strike dread into the hearts of men and beasts, but it's a gift to the reader:

A few miles from here
a frost-stiffened wood waits and keeps watch
above a mere; the overhanging bank
is a maze of tree-roots mirrored in its surface.
At night there, something uncanny happens:
the water burns. And the mere bottom
has never been sounded by the sons of men.
On its bank, the heather-stepper halts:
the hart in flight from pursuing hounds
will turn to face them with firm-set horns
and die in the wood rather than dive
beneath its surface. That is no good place.

In Heaney's hands, the poem's apparent archaisms and Anglo-Saxon attitudes--its formality, blood-feuds, and insane courage--turn the art of an ancient island nation into world literature. --Kerry Fried

Paradise Lost (Penguin Classics)

John Milton

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Total reviews: 26 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Possibly the Best Edition Out There 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

I have read "Paradise Lost" four times, and took no less than three semesters on it at university. This was the edition we used to work. Modernised spelling, coherent punctuation (plus variations of it in the notes), good introduction, and enormous work in the notes; this edition has all you need for a good reading of the epic poem.

As to the poem itself, some people are hard on it for all the wrong reasons. Remember that it is a 17th century poem, that English was not exactly similar as it is today, and that there are many, many words which were first used in English in "Paradise Lost". Milton was innovative with words, and he gave English new words, and expressions, such as the most famous "all Hell broke loose", which was first uttered in "Paradise Lost".

A poem like this cannot be read without good notes, and this is what this edition has to offer. Notes aren't enough, though, they have to be good, and in this edition, they are. The poem itself is not burdened by the numbers of the notes, because there are so many, the editor decided not to show them in the text per se, but at the end of the book, you will always have the reference, the lines, which the notes are about.

As to the poem itself, if you don't know it, you certainly know of the story of the Fall of Man, Adam and Eve, and the rebellion of Satan in Heaven. I'll only say that Milton's God is one seriously problematic figure in the poem, and that it caused centuries of academic discussion as to whether Milton's God is a good God or a devilish one, whether "Paradise Lost" was truly a "myth", in the old sense of a story which explains why we're here and how it got to be, or whether it was an attack on Christianity. Scholars still discuss this today, so make your own mind if you can!

Editorial Review:

Edited with an introduction and notes by John Leonard.