British & Irish Books - Page 12

Poetry: An Introduction

Michael Meyer

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

Editorial Review:

Adapted from Michael Meyer's best-selling Bedford Introduction to Literature, this anthology responds to the needs of all kinds of poetry courses. Instructors across the country report that especially at schools where there is a decreased emphasis on literature and the humanities, students do not necessarily see literature as relevant to their lives. They are sometimes totally new to poetry and are often intimidated by it; they sometimes have difficulty approaching and reading a poem and lack confidence in their critical and interpretive abilities. With these factors and students in mind, Meyer has put together an enticing collection of poems from many time periods, cultures, and themes, with voices ranging from the traditional to the hottest contemporary poets, always mixing in plenty of quirky and humorous selections that students will enjoy. Editorial features such as the author's new sample close readings and thematic case studies offer students real help with reading, appreciating, and writing about literature. Poetry is a book designed to make students life-long readers of poetry.

Letters of Ted Hughes

Ted Hughes

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Ted Hughes described letter-writing as “excellent training for conversation with the world.” These nearly 300 letters—selected from several thousand—show him in all his aspects: poet, husband and father, lover of the natural world, proud Englishman, and a man for whom literature was a way of being fully alive to experience.
There are letters dealing with Hughes’s work on classic books, from the early breakthrough Lupercal to the late, revelatory Birthday Letters. There are letters discussing, with notable frankness, his marriages to Sylvia Plath and then to Assia Wevill. After marrying Carol Orchard, in 1970, Hughes ran a farm in Dorset for several years, and there are letters touching on his interest in
astrology, his strong and original views of Shakespeare, and his passion for farming, fishing, and the environment in general. Letters to Seamus Heaney and Philip Larkin situate Hughes among his peers as never before.
Letters of Ted Hughes reveals the author as a prose writer of great vigor and subtlety. It deepens our understanding of—and our admiration for—this great twentieth-century poet.

Selected Prose of T.S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Worthy collection 4 out of 5 stars.
12 of 12 people found this review helpful.

I found this book to be a useful compendium of essays that are usually scattered or incompletely represented in anthologies. It's an excellent supplement for a course on Eliot's work or to learn more about his critical perspectives and how they shifted over time. Very worthwhile.

What criticism should be. 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 10 people found this review helpful.

Eliot's reputation has taken a beating in the last 20 years. He has been charged with anti-semitism, racism, elitism, and even misogyny. All of these charges are basically true. Nevertheless, as a critic his judgements are sound and dead-on. Read either "Traditon and the individual Talent" or "Dante" from this book and tell me if you think I am wrong. The book is worth the price for these two essays alone.

Editorial Review:

Thirty-one essays-categorized as “essays in generalization,” “appreciations of individual authors,” and “social and religious criticism”- written over a half century. This volume reveals Eliot’s original ideas, cogent conclusions, and skill and grace in language. Edited and with an Introduction by Frank Kermode; Index. Published jointly with Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Matilda Who told Lies (Picture Puffin)

Hilaire Belloc, Steven Kellogg

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

A Surprisingly Awful Book 3 out of 5 stars.
3 of 7 people found this review helpful.

Obviously from the German style of fairy tales, this book is beautifully illustrated, but somewhat horrifying for adult sensibilities. Children, however, did not seem nearly as horrified as the adults who read this book, suggesting the pictures of Madeline burning alive in her apartment was just part of the moral for them. An interesting read although not one I could wholeheartedly recommend to be read to children.

Very Good for Children ages 0-61 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I am a 61 year old grandmother and I still like this book. I bought my first for my 1st grandchild before he was born. He liked it right away. This book is simple, clever, very colorful and the pictures are charming. Through it children can learn colors, animals, numbers, counting and beginning reading.Tiny babies enjoy looking at the bright colors. Toddlers enjoy counting the animals. Pre-schoolers enjoy reading it to you.
The left hand pages say the number and the color. The right side pages show the number and unfold to become a picture of the animal. It is printed on heavy, shiny stock so it is sturdy and can be wiped clean with a damp cloth. Thirteen years of our family's grandchildren still enjoy their copies. In March another one will have their chance.
bobi keenan Santa Ana, CA

Editorial Review:

Meet Matilda, whose unfortunate habit of lying leads her to an unusually unfortunate fate. Grinning, sneering, and smirking, Matilda is the timeless sister of the boy who cried wolf in this hilarious Victorian cautionary tale with deliciously wicked two-color illustrations.

Essay on Man and Other Poems (Dover Thrift Editions)

Alexander Pope

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Crown jewels in Pope's diadem 5 out of 5 stars.
20 of 21 people found this review helpful.

Pope's defining masterworks, "Essay on Man" and "The Rape of the Lock", are crystalizations of the 18th Century's defining impulses. The "Essay on Man" proselytizes on behalf of the deistic belief in an ordered, rational universe where humankind is no divine favorite but can understand its place on the Great Chain of Being and find happiness through knowledge and acceptance. Most will join with Voltaire in his hearty rejection of the doctrine "Whatever is, is right," yet it is impossible to deny the ennobling quality of Pope's optimism:
"Grasp the whole worlds of reason, life, and sense,
In one close system of benevolence:
Happier as kinder, in whate'er degree,
And height of bliss but height of charity."
Where "Essay on Man" expresses the rational principles of the Enlightenment, "The Rape of the Lock" exemplifies the love of the frivolous, the fashionable, and the feminine which gave such light and warmth to an era famed for its elevation of the intellect. The poem exemplifies the Rococo, that most playful of styles in literature; nowhere else in English lit does so much of the spirit of Boucher come through. Pope's verse swirls and sparkles in melodic luxuriance, his creamy couplets smooth and shapely as a woman's legs.
This compact edition also includes the "Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady", one of the most beautifully severe (and overlooked) poems in the language-- a rare triumph of Neo-Classical lyric. Here also are the famous "Essay on Criticism", the galloping satire of the "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot", Epistle IV of the "Moral Essays", the "Ode on Solitude" and "The Dying Christian to His Soul", and the famed little epigram from a dog's collar-- all magnificent, all of them compact and gracious in expression, articulate and penetrating in thought. The serious devotee of Pope will want to go on to the treasures (and scholarly annotations) of the Twickenham edition, but this is a terrific anthology of some indispensable works from this controversial and indispensable genius.

Editorial Review:

Celebrated title poem—a survey of the nature of the universe and man’s place in it—along with "The Rape of the Lock," "Ode on Solitude," "The Dying Christian to His Soul," "Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady," "An Essay on Criticism," "Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog," "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot" and more.

Prelude: 1799, 1805, 1850 (Norton Critical Edition)

William Wordsworth, Jonathan Wordsworth, M. H. Abrams, Stephen Charles Gill

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Wordsworth: Poet of Anxiety 5 out of 5 stars.
20 of 21 people found this review helpful.

I entirely disagree with the prevailing reviews on The Prelude. We have no other secular poem about the futile search for meaning in a meaningless world so fine as the Prelude: it is the Paradise Lost of those who search or long for a fleeting significance. What is significant about the poem is not that we believe what Wordsworth claims about the power of nature and the mind, but that he tried so hard to search out some sense of meaning and order- Wordsworth is the first Modernist writer before there was a name for his anxiety. This edition is wonderful in the way that it presents the 1805 and 1850 versions on opposite pages- it also contains the 1799 version- a real tour de force. Read The Prelude, read it carefully and take it too heart- there is no Song of Myself without Wordsworth's humane yet Promethean quest for significance.

Editorial Review:

This book is the first to present Wordsworth's greatest poem in all three of its separate forms. It reprints, on facing pages, the version of The Prelude that was completed in 1805, together with the much-revised work published after the poet's death in 1850. In addition the editors include the two-part version of the poem, composed 1798-99. Each of these poems has its distinctive qualities and values; to read them together provides an incomparable chance to observe a great poet composing and recomposing, through a long life, his major work.

The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Vol. 1: The Poems, 2nd Edition

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

The reason to buy this edition 5 out of 5 stars.
23 of 23 people found this review helpful.

There are two editions of Yeats' poetry with similar titles, this one (The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume 1: The Poems, edited by Richard Finneran, with 751 pages and published by Macmillan) and The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (also edited by Finneran, but published by Scribner with only 576 pages).

The Collected Works: Volume 1: The Poems, contains all of Yeats' verse, including the poems from his plays and essays (hence the almost 200 additional pages in length). If you want every poem Yeats wrote, buy this edition.

Complete but costly 4 out of 5 stars.
20 of 20 people found this review helpful.

If you are, like me, a huge fan of the William Butler Yeats then you will find yourself slowly accumulating the 'Collected Works' volume by volume and not concern yourself with the cost. You will probably start with this volume, enjoy reading every poem written and feel this is an excellent volume.

If, however, you are looking for a volume to study Yeats or enjoy the best of his verse you may be better served by 'The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats" or "The Yeats Reader: A Portable Compendium of Poetry, Drama and Prose", both edited by Richard J. Finneran and less expensive, more portable paperbacks.

Editorial Review:

Here is the complete, standard edition of the verse of Ireland's greatest lyric poet, including poems from Yeats's plays and essays--edited by internationally acclaimed Yeats scholar Richard J. Finneran. This top-selling reference has been steadily in demand since its original publication in 1989.

Poetical Works: Tennyson (Wordsworth Poetry Library)

Alfred Tennyson

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

The poetry of Lord Tennyson touches my soul deeply. 5 out of 5 stars.
29 of 41 people found this review helpful.

I am a mariner, in fact a rather old one. The Tennyson poem, Crossing the Bar, as I remember it as a young man and as I read it today as an old man, has taken on new meaning and touched the center of my sensibilities.

Tennyson is a masterful poet, his verse is hypnotic 5 out of 5 stars.
18 of 20 people found this review helpful.

Of Tennyson's poems, In Memoriam A. H. H. and Maud stand out as personal favourites. In these poems he evokes a gentle blend of melancholy, connectedness with the land and countryside, and a tangible sense of the eternity of life and nature and ones personal destiny within these. His poems are mesmerizing, his rhythmic language and masterful blending of words draws a reader in, and has a hypnotic effect. He isn't trite, clumsy, or contrived. His subjects share the spirit of the Pre-Raphaelite painter's subjects, they are often brooding, forlorn, existing an empty, melancholic, roaming life in a garden of Eden. To the reader, his subjects are real, full and beautiful and are at once human and metaphysical.

Editorial Review:

Although Tennyson (1809-1892) has often been characterized as an austere, bearded patriarch and laureate of the Victorian age, his poems speak clearly to the imagination of the late 20th century. His mastery of rhyme, metre, imagery and mood communicate their dark, sensuous and sometimes morbid messages. Much given to melancholy and feelings of aching desolation, Tennyson's verse also carries clear messages of hope: 'Ring out the old, ring in the new', and 'Tis better to have loved and lost/Than never to have loved at all'.

Don Juan

Lord George Gordon Byron

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Lord Byron is the King of Hearts 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

The poem is as sexy as the life of its author, who died fighting for Greek national independence and lived with joie de vivre manifested both within his distinguished career as a poet, his sexual trysts, and his eccentricities, which included party trick mug made from a human skull. The book is a monumental achievement, a literary aphrodesiac, a genuine specimen of romance and whit. Byron's voice speaks clearly, beguilingly, insouciantly and with authority from beyond the grave in this literary classic.

Editorial Review:

Byron’s exuberant masterpiece tells of the adventures of Don Juan, beginning with his illicit love affair at the age of sixteen in his native Spain and his subsequent exile to Italy. Following a dramatic shipwreck, his exploits take him to Greece, where he is sold as a slave, and to Russia, where he becomes a favorite of the Empress Catherine who sends him on to England. Written in ottava rima stanza form, Byron’s Don Juan blends high drama with earthy humor, outrageous satire of his contemporaries, and sharp mockery of Western societies, with England coming under particular attack.

Poems

C.S. Lewis

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Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

C.S. Lewis, the poet: Great Work from a master writer! 5 out of 5 stars.
24 of 24 people found this review helpful.

Many readers, even some of C.S. Lewis' biggest fans, don't realise that Lewis wrote poetry. In fact, Lewis once said that poetry was his favorite literary form. Well, as it turns out Mr. Lewis was an excellent poet, full of style, emotion, and above-all, imagination! The poems in this collection show C.S. Lewis to be a true master of rhyme and meter, and he is also quite masterful in his uses of imagery, sound, and metaphor. There are also some fine non-rhyming pieces here, but it is really his excellent sense of rhyme that sticks out in your head long after you put the book away. Much of the work here (though not all) is of a spiritual nature, and Lewis expresses his faith in Christ quite openly, but never crosses the line into the type of overt "preachiness" that taints much of Christian-oriented poetry. Poems such as "As the Ruin Falls" (which was later turned into a song by Christian musician Phil Keaggy), "Reason", "Pan's Purge", "Deadly Sins", "Pattern", and "Love As Warm as Tears" rate right alongside some of the finest spiritual rhymes ever written, and for fans of Lewis' popular Narnia stories, there is even an imaginative piece called "Narnian Suite". If you are a fan of C.S. Lewis, or just a fan of classic-style poetry, then please crack open this fine book and enjoy!

Editorial Review:

A collection of Lewis’s shorter poetry on a wide range of subjects-God and the pagan deities, unicorns and spaceships, nature, love, age, and reason: “Idea poems which reiterate themes known to have occupied Lewis’s ingenious and provocative mind” (Clyde S. Kilby, New York Times Book Review). Edited and with a Preface by Walter Hooper.