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The Portable William Blake (Viking Portable Library)

William Blake

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

The introduction alone is worth the price of admission 5 out of 5 stars.
15 of 22 people found this review helpful.

The best of William Blake (and then some!), taken off the shelf, dusted off and propped up for the rest of eternity to consider. From the aphorisms of "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" (required reading) to the later prophetic books, it's Blake in all of his...Blakeness. And let's give a hand to Kazin for his fantastic Introduction to one of the heavy-hitters of the Western tradition.

William Blake stands in paradise next to Dostoevsky 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 16 people found this review helpful.

Francis Bacon, David Hume, Bishop Berkeley, John Locke, Edmund Burke; just a few of British philososphers. Some, like Burke and to some extant Hume are very tiresome and repulsive if one were to view them in a Nietzschean light. Other philosophers like Bertrand Russell, I loathe. Adam Smith and Thomas Carlyle: the former a crafty swindler who discovered clever ways to exploit the massess and cheat an honest man, the latter an insipid moron who boasted to the world that he was an atheist liberal who supported slavery.

British philososphy is not very exciting with such hum drum guys like the Locke who have a tiresome system of rationalizing every aspect of existence and smug bitter atheist[..]like Russell. It seems that British philosophy is dryer than dust.

Until one discoveres Blake...

William Blake (1757 - 1827), at once the purest philosopher, the most facinating figure, the greatest painter and most perfect poets ever set forth from Britain. Blake almost in the immense impressivness of his art and poetry to not be British, yet he is. Really the only true poet in the English language, the only true philosopher from Britain, for all true philosophers are poets and all true poets, philosophers. Blake is truly a noble soul

I read The Marriage of Heaven and Hell about a month ago. I am certain that it is one of those rare pieces of art that appears in literature; a beautiful work of art that appears so before its time (we seem only to begin to catch up to Blake in English) so before its time like the novels of Dostoevsky, especially Notes from Underground, lyrically Dostoevsky at his best, but my great Russian Brother is not the subject of this.

William Blake is the perfect embodiment of the Dionysian in art and literature. His works, such as the illustrations of Milton and especially Dante are the most beautiful paintings by an British hand. Particularly in the case of his illustration of the gates of Hell. This perfect haunting beauty is my ideal. Haunting in its depth of artistry, haunting in its appearence with Vergil looking at Dante in an ominous and yet celebratory way. One simply does not know. The mystery is half of Blake's magnificence and perfection.

Blake understands that many questions are left unanswered and that is my stand. I agree with him and Nietzsche when he is against the neo-classical ideal of rational explanations of every aspect of existence. I loathe many philosophers. Silence all who dare to cheapen our beautiful illusions.

Dylan Thomas: The Caedmon Collection

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Beginning in February 1952, Dylan Thomas made a series of memorable and historic recordings for a new record label called Caedmon. In fact, Dylan Thomas was the first to record for this new label, started by two 22–year–old women, Marianne Roney and Barbara Cohen. Little did they know that in addition to capturing a part of history they also launched an industry of spoken–word recording.

This collection not only contains the incredible Caedmon recording sessions, but also recordings from the BBC, CBC, and other archival material Caedmon originally published in the 1950s and 1960s.

Highlights include: "A Child's Christmas in Wales" and "Five Poems"; "Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night", his prose: Adventures in the Skin Trade and Quite Early One Morning, and his final work – Under Milk Wood, a play.

With stunning original album cover art, and an introduction read by former poet laureate Billy Collins, this unique collection includes not only Dylan Thomas reading his finest works, but also rare recordings of Thomas reading his favorite writers, including W.H. Auden and William Shakespeare.

A Season in Hell and The Drunken Boat

Arthur Rimbaud

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Classic translation 4 out of 5 stars.
16 of 17 people found this review helpful.

This is one of the better translations of a Season in Hell. It's very faithful to the original French without compromising its poetry; many of the passages are nothing short of brilliant. Also, it's a bilingual edition for those who are either able or willing.

However, Varese struggles a bit under the poetic demands of the Drunken Boat. For example:

(Varese):
I can no longer, bathed in your languors, O waves,
Obliterate the cotton carriers' wake,
Nor cross the pride of pennants and of flags,
Nor swim past prison hulk's hateful eyes!

>> But trust me, for the superb quality of translation in A Season in Hell, this book's well worth the price.

Essential Rimbaud 4 out of 5 stars.
8 of 12 people found this review helpful.

This book is an essential portrayal of Rimbaud's most celebrated works. It includes a brief biography of Rimbaud. It is a great introduction to works by poets of that genre. People who enjoy this will also like Baudelaire and Verlaine. I recommend it highly.

Passionate, Painful, Agonizing and Surreal 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 13 people found this review helpful.

.
What an amazing passionate book of prose and poetry! It's alive with pain, chaos and joy, screaming in anguish in streaming movement that is pouring out of the pages in utter agonizing derision and pain, flowing in surreal release of tension and expression.

The beginning of the book has a short bio and although short and concise, it vaguely talks about how scandalous Rimbaud and his companion Verlaine were in descriptive sexual analogy, refusing to use the word "sexual" and "lover."

Here was a young man who found a gay lover 20 years his senior and traveled in complete uncertainty and insecurity, a "Faustian Man," such as Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's 'On The Road.' Rimbaud was a man who lived in the present moment of risk, spontaneity and the faith to walk in uncertainly and courageously. And this of course brings true living over the comfort zone of existing, which accompanies such an artist with intense pain, guilt, creativity, joy, hurt, anguish and exploding passions. The pages reek with chaotic artistic surrealism.

This man was a rare creator. An outcast of society, a vagabond in decadence and carousing avenging scandal, however a living man of flowing movement, unlike our dead, civilized and rational society. And for this, the man and his poetry snubbed and forgotten, only to be noticed at a later time and recognized for its aesthetic, passionate value. This is typical with almost all true creators of autonomous ability and dangerous living.

From page 23:

"Boredom is no longer my love. Rages, debauchery, madness, - I have known all their soarings and their disasters, - My whole burden is laid down. Let us contemplate undazed the extent of my innocence. I would no longer be capable of begging the solace of a bastinado. I don't fancy myself embarked on a wedding with Jesus Christ as father-in-law. I am not a prisoner of my reason. I said: God, I want freedom in salvation: how am I to seek it? Frivolous tastes have left me. No more need of devotion or of divine love. No more regrets for the age of render hearts. Each of us has his reason, scorn and charity; I reserve my place at the top of that angelic ladder of common sense. As for established happiness, domestic or not . . . no, I cannot. I am too dissipated, too weak. Life flourishing through toil, old platitude! As for me, my life is not heavy enough, it flies and floats far above action, that precious focus of the world. What an old maid I am getting to be, lacking the courage to be in love with death! If only God would grant me celestial, aerial calm, prayer, - like the ancient Saints, - Saints, giants! anchorites, artists such as are not wanted any more! Farce without end? My innocence would make me weep. Life is the farce we all have to lead."

Editorial Review:

New translation of Rimbaud's great, visionary poems.

Paradise Lost

John Milton, David Scott Kastan, Merritt Yerkes Hughes

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"Paradise Lost" remains as challenging and relevant today as it was in the turbulent intellectual and political environment in which it was written. This edition aims to bring the poem as fully alive to a modern reader as it would have been to Milton's contemporaries. It provides a newly edited text of the 1674 edition of the poem modernised spelling and punctuation. Marginal glosses define unfamiliar words, and extensive annotations at the foot of the page clarify Milton's syntax and poetics, and explore the range of literary, biblical, and political allusions that point to his major concerns. David Kastan's lively Introduction considers the central interpretative issues raised by the poem, demonstrating how thoroughly it engaged the most vital issues of Milton's time, and which reveal themselves as no less vital, and perhaps no less contested, today. The edition also includes an essay on the text, a chronology of major events in Milton's life, and a selected bibliography, as well as the first known biography of Milton, written by Edward Phillips in 1694.

Great Short Poems (Dover Thrift Editions)

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

wonderful collection of poems 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Paul Negri presents here more than 150 poems ranging from the 17th century till today. You'll find English and American poems. A very recommendable collection for little money!

The short poem 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This anthology contains many of the finest ' short poems' ever written. It is of course one of tens of such anthologies in which these great works are presented to the reader. What strikes me always in reading them, or rereading them is how much beauty and goodness can be given in a few short lines.
A short poem presents an opportunity to the reader to not simply read the poem, but to go over and over it , and finally memorize it. Then that poem the reader takes with them everywhere. It becomes part of oneself. And those lines are there for whatever time in life one may need them.
This anthology contains just to mention a few Dylan Thomas ' Do not Go Gentle into that Good Night' the "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day" sonnet of Shakespeare, " Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening " of Frost, and many other poems which are part of the collective poetic consciousness of the English reading world.
Whether in this anthology, or in others like it, or in the collected poems of the respective poets, these poems are there and available to us all.
How lucky and blessed we are.

Editorial Review:

This outstanding 150-poem anthology spans over 400 years of English and American literary history. Memorable compositions include Donne's "Death Be Not Proud," Blake's "The Tyger," Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," Byron's "She Walks in Beauty," Shelley's "Ozymandias," as well as works by Tennyson, Whitman, Dickinson, Yeats, Frost, and many others.

The Harp and Laurel Wreath: Poetry and Dictation for the Classical Curriculum

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Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Convinced that a critical part of education is to foster in our children a love of the beautiful and true, teacher and writer Laura Berquist presents this wide selection of poetry for every age level from grades one to twelve. Language development is significantly enriched by exposure to good poetry. This book is an important resource because it provides in one volume many poems that concern noble actions or ideas presented in beautiful patterns of sound.

This book contains all the poems recommended in Berquist's best-selling Designing Your Classical Curriculum. The extensive selection includes poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Robert Browning, William Shakespeare, G.K. Chesterton, William Butler Yeats, Robert Frost, and many others. There are three indices to help locate specific poems. This book also includes dictation selections that are useful tools in the development of the child's writing ability, as well as study questions and answers for each poem.

A Child's Christmas In Wales CD: And Five Poems

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.

Editorial Review:

First recorded in February of 1952, this remastered recording of Dylan Thomas reading his A Child's Christmas in Wales recalls all of the sights, smells, and sounds of a long-ago-Christmas.

Thomas's wonderful recollection of this holiday in the seaside town of his youth is captured in this vivid performance. Also included are five other selected poems read by Dylan Thomas, including his well-known Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.

Whether sharing his wistful memory of a holiday spent with people long past, or addressing the perennial problem of our mortality, Thomas gives us great pleasure in our personal and common memories while affirming life with a resounding "Yes!"

Contents:
A Child's Christmas in Wales
And five poems: Fern Hill; Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night; In The White Giant's Thigh; Balad of the Long-Legged Bait; Ceremony After a Fire Raid

Conamara Blues: Poems

John O'Donohue

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Translating the beauty and splendor of his native Conamara into a language exquisitely attuned to the wonder of the everyday, John O'Donohue takes us on a moving journey through real and imagined worlds. Divided into three parts -- Approachings, Encounters, and Distances -- Conamara Blues at once reawakens a sense of intimacy with the natural world and a feeling of wonder at the mystery of our relationship to this world. Whether exploring the silent, eternal memory of Conamara or focusing on the power of language and the vagaries of human need and passion, O'Donohue tenderly reveals the fragile vulnerability of love and friendship. The result is a musical, transcendent, and deeply moving series of poems that exemplifies O'Donohue at his finest.

Written with penetrating insight and distilled transparence, Conamara Blues offers a singular and lasting imaginative vision of a landscape of hope and possibility -- powerfully exhibiting the mastery of a poet at the height of his lyric powers.

Flower Fairies of the Winter (Flower Fairies)

Cicely Mary Barker

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

Rich illustrations make even skeptics believe in the fairies 5 out of 5 stars.
13 of 14 people found this review helpful.

Cicily Mary Barker portrays accurate floral depictions with vibrant imagination. The fairies are endearing and realistic. Her exquisite illustrations and quaint, lovely poems are a joy for readers of all ages. Especially delightful in this edition is the Hollyberry Fairy.

Same faires in the "Complete Book of the Flower Faires" 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I loved the book but I made the mistake of buying this and all the rest of the seasons, trees and flower fairies books as well as the Complete Book of the Flower Faires". I then realized that all the pictures in the small book were the same as the big one. So I wasted $ with shipping both ways. Oh well live and learn. Beautiful pictures though.

Editorial Review:

First published in the 1920s, the "Flower Fairy" books by Cicely Mary Barker have delighted generations of children with their exquisite illustrations and engaging poems. In "Flower Fairies of the Winter" we meet the warm and mischievous fairies of the coldest season. Characters like the Yew Fairy and the Holly Fairy encourage us to look at nature and learn to appreciate the true beauty and wonder of the 'ordinary' world around us.

Le Morte Darthur (Norton Critical Editions)

Sir Thomas Malory

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 69 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Signet translation much better than others 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I bought this Signet translation by Keith Baines after a frustrating attempt to read the Modern Library translation by William Caxton. Caxton's dry, stilted rendition left me hungry for a cleaner, more modern version.

Here's a prime example from page 1:

Caxton: "It befell in the days of Uther Pendragon, when he was king of all England, and so reigned, that there was a mighty duke in Cornwall that held war against him long time. And the duke was called the Duke of Tintagil. And so by means King Uther sent for this duke, charging him to bring his wife with him, for she was called a fair lady, and a passing wise, and her name was called Igraine."

Baines: "King Uther Pendragon, ruler of all Britain, had been at war for many years with the Duke of Tintagil in Cornwall when he was told of the beauty of Lady Igraine, the duke's wife."

If Caxton was my high school English teacher demanding that I diagram his sentences, I might forthwith set myself through with mine dagger most deadly.

Anyway, if you just want to enjoy the Arthurian tales in their cleanest English version, buy Signet's paperback. It's also half the price of other translations.

Happy reading!

Editorial Review:

Based on the Winchester Manuscript, this edition of the famous mediaeval romance offers substantial critical and contextual support for the student. Using the original spelling, the editor has restored the paragraphing and the narrative structure of the romance. Four chronologies, including one of the Wars of the Roses, contemporary accounts of the war, material on chivalry, tournaments and battle, and a guide to reading Malory's English are included.