Poems Books

This, of course, is a retake on the wonderful Finish Folk Tale, Kalevala. I am not going to ruin the tale here by going into a blow by blow account here, as Publisher's Weekly did above (hey guys, why not just go ahead and retell the tale for us on all your reviews and save us the time spent reading the original). There will be no spoilers here. This basically is the tale of a witch, a rather grumpy lovable witch. While I do agree with PW in that this version is not as good as the original, it certainly will do for a kids book and this is what this one is. The art work by Barbara Cooney is fantastic, some of the best I have seen for quite some time now. The text is clear and concise. This is a wondeful read along book and one you will want to add to your collection. Highly recommend this work.

I learned to read with this book, and now, as an adult, i am still in love with it. It has beautifull illustrations and a great plot.

Beautifully illustrated and written, an unusual story of magic, nature, and the age-old battle between good and bad, with the bad being a grumpy, tantrum-throwing, but all in all, rather endearing witch. My daughter's favorite for many, many years.

"LOVE AND SCORN is highly original work. The poems are hard-felt and new, with surprises around every corner. Carol Frost is a realist, a realist of excitements and exaltations. She is one of the three or four best of her generation." --Donald Justice

Carol Frost's poetry really speaks to me. It is full of mystery--the mysteries of love, beauty, death, surprise, cruelty, art--yet at the same time is dazzlingly direct. Each of her best poems, and there are many, leaves an indelible scar. If you love poetry you can't afford to ignore this book!

There isn't much I can say about these poems in the way of explantion--that is, not without taking away any of the lingering resonance that they exude upon the reader. I will tell you that this is truly great, original poetry, written in lines that, though they are often quite free free verse, rank very highly on the memorability scale. Carol Frost, I assure you, will someday be considered a great and important poet, a poet of nature, bodies, myths--and with this book of new & selected poems, she is well on her way. Reading her work is a sometimes humbling experience, though it will leave you grateful.

Let me leave you with a half dozen or so of my favorite pieces: "Waking," "Flicker," "Sin," "Pure," "Scorn," "Apple Rind," "To Kill a Deer."

The imagery is very sharp and it has a rolling rhythm that is easy on the ears and mind. Often thought-provoking and always captivating. Bravo!

Anyone who has ever loved not wisely but too well, to remember the words of a tragic officer , will love the wisdom of Miss Angelin's supernal collection. There are too many palpable hits within the pages of Life Dance of Tantalus to mention them all , but I am constrained by awe to share the opening stanza of Do Not Weep :''From the first day I saw him / Flowers grew inside my heart / And he became the torment of my days.'' Miss Angelin's love of language is evidenced in the verbal music of Life Dance of Tantalus.

I just ran across this book I'm so impressed on how deep and wonderful it is! It really shows all aspects of the emotions that we go through during the process of falling in and out of love, from the yearning you feel down to your soul to the exquisite ecstasy of physical embrace. I highly recommend it for a good read as well as a gift.

My wife sent me this beautiful love book to me in Vietnam on our 19th anniversary and it captured our love for each other and the fun of it. A hut mate saw it and ordered a copy to send to his wife.

Chuck Howe

I read this years ago. Found it very poignant as I was engaged to the co-author at that time. Would like to have a copy now for a keepsake. Lost the original in a move.

This poetry is both witty and touching. I gave this book to my husband on our first wedding anniversary in 1969. I signed it, "Happy Anniversary # 1. I love you, Your 'very married' mate." Thirty three years later, I regifted it to him and inscribed, "When first I gave this to you my instincts were good. But I could not have known how very married we'd become. I love you (even more deeply.)"

This is a book that, like love, transcends time.

I have had the exceptional good fortune of knowing the poet, Darshan Singh. He was the most extraordinary man I ever met. His poetry sings from the heart the sweetest, saddest songs of yearning, love, and restless separation. And yet, perhaps because he has been down a path that we all, sooner or later, seem destined to travel, his verse is consoling. I for one find great comfort in his restless cadences, his literary companionship. He once remarked that poetry is the music of the soul, and so his seems to be. No matter the conventions, his verse comes from some other place, beyond human time, in the world of mysticism. The often-elaborate metaphors he introduces pull us into ourselves. Yet, throughout, the language is simple, the verse accessible. His point of view is centered and profound. He writes from revelation.

Darshan Singh often said don't write unless you have something new to say, or a new way of saying it. Here he has met his own challenge. This poetry brings something new to western culture. Through the efforts of translators Lerner and Bedi, we have in verse dramatizations of the archetype of separation and reunion: the love of God for all creation, the grief of God at our spearation from that love, and the reciprocating desire of each awakening soul to find its way back home to the Creator. In these verses, the archetype plays out in relationships of lovers and beloved. the central conceit is that the love of God, divinity itself, grace, in its essence, is transmitted from beloved to lover through the eyes, and is given, in accordance with the will of the beloved, when and if the beloved sees fit, and at the beloved's own initiative. The poor lover sues and waits, and suffers, but never complains. Such is the lover's plight. And at the end, after many promises, and much playing and teasing, at the end, it is by grace that the lover has caught the zeal of the beloved and is transformed, miracle of miracles, into the beloved. The soul is not separate from God, the verse seems to say. But the soul fired with love is the luckiest creature alive. That soul wins the prize.

Truly, this book is a wonder, a gift from a far-distant shore.

Having great respect for the works of the renowned mystic Urdu poet Darshan Singh, this newly translated collection was purchased with anticipation. Thankfully, I was not disappointed. The book is high quality, with artistic formatting. And the verses of Darshan Singh? Goodness--such beauty! They move me to tears on each re-reading. It is said that translation from Urdu to English is fraught with problems and a true rendering basically impossible. Even with that as an accepted fact, any lover of mystic poetry will be enthralled by this collection.

I laughed and cried over Love's Last Madness. I have long admired the poems of Darshan Singh even though only a limited number had been translated into English. Now, the Lerner and Bedi translation brings 86 of his wonderful ghazals to us in English for the first time. As in the poetry of Hafiz and Rumi, image after startling image evokes the moods and struggles of a serious mystic traveler.

While reading, I sharply felt Darshan's sense of urgency as he struggles into awakening consciousness. He says:

"If only I'd awaken, I'd perceive what this life means;
My existence now, an obsessive confusion of dreams." (4:4)

I sighed with him as he sees the world falling short of expectation. Darshan's perceptive criticisms do not spare the social institutions, both religious and philosophical, from which he turns his face. For example:

"I, too, walked the path explored by the rationalists:
The wayfarers were half asleep, their guides wandering lost." (8:3)

I shared his empathy with despairing humanity, entangled in delusion:

"Every hour is grief, each breath a sigh for the times -
Am I really living or paying for some crime?" (21:1)

I thrilled with him as he glimpses the faces of those who may guide him into reality:

"They were clothed in poverty, as humble as the dust,
But waiting at their door I saw the sovereigns of the age." (7:1)

I agonized with him as he suffers the transforming blows and testing of his guides. For this subject Darshan often uses imagery of worldly love:

"How unexpected is your visit - and to ask of my condition!
What new ingenious torture prompts you, my dear?" (83:4)

I took heart as Darshan hints at the great turning points of the mystic's immense journey. One such landmark is the transcendence of mind:

"Every mote I saw scintillating with your beauty
In a world where intellect stands bewildered." (18:4)

Another landmark is the transcendence of selfhood or ego. I could share his apprehension at the prospect of loss of self, and I vicariously exulted with him in his freedom from it:

"Of self I lost awareness, so life's secret was revealed,
A boon of my oblivion, not the fruit of my wits." (60:7)

Through Darshan's poetry I saw through an intimate window into the mind and heart of a man of our own time who deeply immersed himself in the spiritual quest. This is the record of "the anguished vigil of a love gone wild...." (22:5)

I say this is the most powerful poetry I have read in my life. I cannot read it for more than a few minutes. The poetic images are so intense, the emotions are so powerful. I love this book.

This is the best book on Arabic poetry in the United States.

This book touched my soul so much that I shared it with all my friends and family. They cried with me at the intense emotion expressed by the great poet Bayati and his masterful translator, Bassam Frangieh. Frangieh succeeds in doing so much more than translating: he unveils the meaning of the text and presents it faithfully and smoothly in English verse. This book is the essence of loneliness, love and homeland. No one has ever translated Bayati into English before. Frangieh's work is unique and immensely valuable.

A pregnant pause between word three and four of one of these sonnets changed my life. Hacker writes an accessible, witty, beautiful, tender, sexy masterpiece (a novel, really) which has become, since its pub date, a folk rite-of-passage for many readers (even non-poetry lovers), a pole-raising standard for other poets, and the source for many phrases worth remembering: from "age is not the muddle of the matter" to the rhyming of "fit of pique" with "geste heroique." This is a page-turning classic -- erudite, lyrical, and peopled by women one would want to know. A smart person's tour de force!

One of my favorite books of poetry ever. No matter the gender of my lover, this is the book I read when things are going great...and when they fall apart. Sexy, deep, and gorgeous language. I'm always grateful she's around.

Marilyn Hacker through her poetry describes her life with her lover, both in New York and Paris. She, being older, talks about insecurities and the torture of being away from the one you love. From the first meeting to the phone call goodbye, Marilyn describes the appropriate lust over another person. This poetry is amazing.

Reading this, I had the sensation I was reading excellent, adroit, wry, thing-oriented, deep, and best of all, humorous poetry, yet dragging the book around like a secret stash of pistachio cookies. The hilarious --yet, how does he do it?, melancholy--sestina ostensibly a cowboy's journal, with three or four end words all being BEEF (plural beeves) had me skipping down the halls at work. Other poems such as "Ode to Complexity" declare themselves great by the way in which they seem so universal, joyful, and intelligent. Humor and smarts makes this a good one to get for yourself and for others. Good for Caroline Knox, Dean Young fans.

Are you sick of those boring, polished, egocentric journal entries which have been passed off as "poetry" for the past 40 years or so? If so, check out MAINE -- the most dynamic, bizarre, unpredictable collection of poems to be published in several generations. At last: a poet not afraid to have a voice -- or actually, many voices! Avoiding the pitfalls of the various "schools" of poetry, Winter's sometimes wacky, sometimes disturbing persona poems are really out there -- in a good way. With total command of the English language and various poetic forms, this Outsider (where did he come from?) covers more ground than one would think possible in an 80-page book. There are sonnets, sestinas, odes, a whole section of ballads which reference points as disparate as Marshal Dillon, Handel's "Messiah" and icicles clinging to the limbs of frozen lovers... (In general, there is no shortage of erotic imagery in this book, and not the usual sort of Pablum that could have been written by a computer -- this stuff is strong, it's personal, and it's weird.) Geographically, Winter also covers a lot of ground, from New York to the Old West to utterly mythicized desert and northern landscapes. This is an amazing compedium of subject matter, emotions, dramatic voices, poetic approaches and lexicons. And with none of the usual "Me me me" obscurity which isolates most contemporary academic and "language" poetry from a potential readership, you will feel quite welcome in the airy rooms of these superbly original and accessible poems.

In their blurbings for the book, David Lehman and James Tate both write how Jonah Winter has fun with language, form and theme. It's true. He writes sestinas about cowboys, for crying out loud -- for once, content allowed to breathe new hilarious life via form, rather than being crammed into a form or restricted by that form. This is a New York-y book and a New York School-y book, hence Lehman's interest in it I suppose, but don't let that prejudice you. Winter is going in even more strange directions and talking about even more mundane/absurd people and places than O'Hara, Schuyler et al. Cool book.

My 5 year-old son is smitten with everything spooky and monstrous and creepy. If it has all those components AND makes him laugh, he is over the top! "Making Friends with Frankenstein: A Book of Monstrous Poems and Pictures" definitely does it for him. This is one of those books that we checked out of the library and renewed until we couldn't renew any more. We're buying two copies. One for our own library and one for his class.

And let me tell you about the accompanying artwork! The author notes that "I write my poems and do my drawings at the same time. That way, I can include some things in the pictures that I don't include in the text and vice versa." McNaughton's brilliant illustrations partner with his sometimes shocking, always funny, and generally perfectly-metered rhyme to make this book an oft-requested read. This is an ageless keeper.

While there is no shortage of mind-stimulating poetry and literature for young kids these days, I still can't help but stand up and cheer for collections such as these. I think that helping kids learn the entertainment and enjoyment side of reading is so crucial at this age, and this book fills that need perfectly. McNaughton has a talent for giving you both the creeps and the giggles at the same time with his icky prose and imaginative illustrations.

Are all these Silverstein-esque poems about monster's? No, but they pretty much all appeal to the young readers sense of humor. "Call a doctor/Call the vet!/I've just been bitten/By teacher's pet!" The grossest one to read aloud would probably be "Ogre My Dead Body! (The Ogre's Song" which goes a little something like this, "An wen I needs a midnite snack,/Heer them hewmin bones go CRACK!/CRACK, CRACK, midnite snack,/Heer them hewmin bones go CRACK!" OK, this might not make the best bed-time reading. Better save it for day-light.

I thought that the book was funny, and kind of gross. My favorite poem was "Georgie Porgie" because it was hilarious. I also like "Teacher's Pet" and "Heartless" because they were also hilarious. I would recommend this book to people who like poems, like me.