J. D. McClatchy Books

After checking out Divine Comedies at the library and reading a few chapters of The Book of Ephraim, I knew I was willing to read the entire epic of The Changing Light at Sandover. Nearly six months later, after having read and reread Ephraim, Mirabell, Scripts and the Coda (the four sections of Merrill's magnum opus) I am ready to pass judgement. This epic is great but probably not GREAT. It requires a very heavy investment from the reader, not unlike Dante's Divine Comedy, or Joyce's later work. This investment pays dividends, but not the astronomical sort that one hopes when one is flipping through an opera dictionary, trying to discover Merrill's point.

Sandover is full of allusions, contradictions, and virtoso poetry, the latter being why I highly recommend it. As the other reviews tell you here, Merrill, elitist that he is, has not made the work accessible. Which is fine. So here is my short list of writers to be familiar with before you read it: Dante, Homer, Auden, Pound, Eliot, Proust, Wagner, Merrill's earlier work, Blake and Yeats. I also highly recommend Robert Polito's A Reader's Guide to The Changing Light at Sandover, which is more of a handy index followed by a compilation of reviews (including Bloom's and Vendler's) than say, a line-by-line explication of the sort available for Pound's Cantos. Thankfully, The Changing Light at Sandover does not require that.

The Book of Ephraim stands alone and whether you like it will probably be the best gauge of whether you will like the whole of Sandover. Mirabell I found very difficult going and, in all honesty can probably be skipped, like most people skip Purgatorio. Scripts for the Pageant is much more fun and The Higher Keys is really of a piece with it, tying up the loose threads. For all my pessimism, this really is the best modern epic I've found, a thousand times better than The Waste Land or Blake's prophetic works, or even Milton's Paradise Lost. The poetry and storytelling are so overwhelmingly confident that, once you have assimilated the scattered references, it is easy to get carried away. Large questions of free will, life after death and the nature of love are tackled with wit and sincerity. I'm glad I bought it and have it on my bookshelf. Since I put in the sweat, it is now a treasure-box I can open at any time.

There was a lot of attention given to Merrill when his Collected Poems came out, so I went out and read it. (The fact that I hadn't heard of him before should indicate that I don't read a lot of modern poetry). What was astonishing was how effortlessly the poems read, how thoroughly Merrill had mastered the technical aspects of the craft. The poems read as smoothly as prose, but line after line stayed in the memory - and when you went back you realized what a complex and subtle rhyme scheme many of the poems had.

But for some reason, there was a lot I could admire but very little I could love. They didn't just feel like exercises in style, but there was something too cool and smooth about their surface: there wasn't enough humanity in them.

The same isn't true of The Changing Light at Sandover. Don't be put off by the Ouija stuff: the heart of this poem isn't some sort of half-baked spiritualism, but simply the relationship between two people that love each other - the poet and David Jackson.

Let me quote a line from The Book of Ephraim that I memorized without trying, just from reading it a few times. The same technical mastery is there, but now there's something alive in them. Enough of the other reviews tell you what the poem is about, so here's a sample of how beautiful this strange masterpiece can be in its smallest details:

We take long walks through the turning leaves
And ponder turnings taken by our lives.

Look at each other closely, as friends will
On parting. This is not farewell,

Not now. But something in the sad
End-of-season light remains unsaid.

The Changing Light at Sandover is Merrill's magnum opus. It is also the greatest example of epic poetry in modern literature. Divided into four sections (four being a mystical number [seasons, elements, etc] and possibly alluding also to Eliot's "Four Quartets"), Sandover, is, as far as I am aware, the longest single poem in the modern cannon. Yet length alone is not what qualifies this as an epic poem. Like all true epic poetry, it borrows heavily from its classical predecessors, so Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton and even Tasso are alluded to throughout the poem.

The method behind the poem is fairly well known, and is in fact included in the poem's narrative. Merrill and his life-partner, David Jackson, would ritualistically cleanse themselves for a stipulated period, then consult the spirit-world by means of an Ouija Board. Merrill served as a kind of amanuensis, taking dictation from spirits from another dimension and translating the messages into poetry.

Merrill has been branded as an elitist by some, and there is no getting around the fact that he did consider himself and his partner as members of an order higher than that of most of mankind. He believed in a quasi-Gnostic hierarchy, wherein human beings are ranked according to their spiritual development. Unfortunately, the belief system he invokes leans more closely to Third Reich mysticism than to Buddhism or Hinduism. A great many people, according to Merrill's tenets, don't even have souls. They exist only on an animal level. One can see where this sort of thinking can, and has led.

I don`t want to infer, however, that Merrill, or this work, are in any manner political or polemical. This is a true work of art, full of imagination and of ideas. The sheer scope of creativity on display in "Sandhurst" is unsurpassed in the past 100 years of poetry, with the possible exception of "The Waste Land." It should be read and studied (and hopefully, cherished) by all lovers of literature. Whether or not Merrill existed on a higher plane than most of us is certainly debatable, even questionable. Whether or not his excursions into other spiritual realms were "real" or were delusional is also debatable. What is not debatable, is the fact that he produced a remarkable and very important poem in the process.

First of all I felt somewhat intimidated when it came to starting this epic work. I was afraid that my own background might prove inadequate for a product of such ethereal literary heights. It came as a relief when I found that I was well enough read to appreciate the majority of the literary and cultural references (at least I believe that I did.) Part of this was no doubt due to what I brought to the work, but equally part was due to the poet's uncanny ability to draw you in and connect you with the most intimate and obscure reference. I actually felt like I belonged to the circle- that I might be able to hold my own in such august company. This company included not only the poet, his partner, and their friends, but also the supposed spirits of Plato, Pythagoras, Robert Morse, Wallace Stevens, W.B. Yeats, Maya Deven, W.H. Auden, and even more.

So much for the exquisite and impressive poetic and literary aspect of the epic- the metaphysical basis was a another matter. Here I felt more than adequate. It is reported that Merrill and his partner styled themselves as metaphysical adepts. Indeed they drew the old criticism of being "spiritual elitists." Frankly, I do not sense that they were such. Such individuals exist, but they do not naively and uncritically seek out contact with the lower astral plane via ouija board. They do not take at face value the identities and messages of the beings so contacted. True, this may provide "interesting" material for the poet to run with, but it is of dubious value otherwise. In fact, some of the specific information (such as no souls escaping Hiroshima) just sounds plain wrong. As for three billion dead in the immediate future, or Mohammed being the servant of the Adversary and destined to bring about the last holy war, well, I'll let you judge for yourself. There is also something about treating the subject of spiritual patrons and the pattern of the wallpaper with seemingly equal weight in the poem that is somewhat disconcerting...

Just the fact that multiple "characters" reveal in the course of the poem that they are not who they originally said that they were (sometimes for decades) should tell you how much credence you should place in anything that they have revealed.

What irritates me is that some would equate this work with William Blake's. Yes, it is a remarkable work of art, an exquisite poem, but it is not Revelation. You have about an equal amount of gems and dross in a most impressive setting. However, it is up to you to judge which is which. You see, a true poet-prophet (such as Blake or Dante or Milton) rely on their own direct, intuitive connection with the Divine, and not upon a secondary entity to contact the Essence that will impart true immortality to their work. But then again, as far as I know, the poet himself never claimed that this was anything more than a most skilled riff of poetic art. It is indeed that.

The stage adaptation is included in the back of this volume. It is my humble recommendation that you read it first in order to make the main poem a little more accessible.

One furthur note, the "God B" refered to so often here is obviously the Demiurge- Yaltabaoth.


"Now the archon (ruler) who is weak has three names. The first name is Yaltabaoth, the second is Saklas ("fool"), and the third is Samael. And he is impious in his arrogance which is in him. For he said, `I am God and there is no other God beside me,' for he is ignorant of his strength, the place from which he had come."
---Apocryphon of John, circa 200AD

How can I start a review of the book that captured me into poetry? that led me to actually read and enjoy Dante and Milton? that even led me to reading odd epic poems and novels in verse that rarely make it into the top million rank here on Amazon?

How about "Great book - a life-changer in wholly unexpected ways."

I got my copy gratis back when I was doing occasional book reviews of the more traditional sort and not the slightest bit interested in the slender wisps of poetry that crossed my desk. There was something different about this one, though. This was five pounds of poetry ! Five-hundred and sixty pages ? One poem? How could that be? WHAT could that be?

But you've got to decide whether to spend a few bucks here, your situation is different. So the real question is what brought YOU to this page in Amazon. Needless to say, my five-star rating means that I will try to convince all comers to read "Sandover", but you must realize that you are a rather lonely explorer to have come this far. Your path reveals the nature of your search.

Maybe you've read some of Merrill's other work from the recent, rather successful "Collected Poems". Wonderful! While the critics can tell you about commonalties in all those poems, you probably noticed more of the vast range in that collection: from the tiny, surgically incisive "Little Fallacy", to the weirdly evocative "Lost in Translation" (bet you read that one more than once), to the extended, languorous narrative of "The Summer People", to the challenging and often enigmatic mythos in "From the Cupola."

This wholly different last pair, my favorites, were unexpectedly conjoined as the only two poems in the UK-published early book entitled "Two Poems." Together, they hint best at what "Sandover" will deliver: carefully crafted narrative and delight in poetic form along with intellectually challenging and sometimes cryptic layering. Expect some strangeness wrapped in a reassuring pale, cream cape, until the cape is tossed back to reveal a startlingly, spookily omni-dimensional vision. Sounds like fun ? Jump in...

I guess it's possible that you came here after reading Alison Lurie's recent lurid little "literary memoir." If so, congratulations for stepping over that indelicate little pile to consider the man's most epic work, instead of a shrewish listing of his peccadilloes. Of course personality and autobiography inevitably fuel poetry, and Merrill's "Sandover" is no exception. You might even, legitimately wonder, as I did, how the poetry of a rich gay man, who sounds suspiciously like an aesthete of the flightiest sort in Lurie (and apparently had a weird, mystic streak) can do anything more than entertain you. And how is that possible for 560 pages ?

You won't find the glib and thoughtless dilettante of Lurie's portrayal lurking beneath "Sandover." Merrill was not an overtly autobiographical poet, but he collected the pieces and wrote the tale of Sandover through 20-odd years of his life, In doing so he revealed the reality of privilege without arrogance, mysticism within a wry skepticism, and appreciation of love and beauty in all their forms. "Sandover" is actually a fine place for one who is neither gay, nor rich, nor mystical and, perhaps, like me, aesthetically-challenged, to get drawn-in to a world that twines these elements together in an endlessly interesting and attractive way. If you've read Lurie, I think you will find "Sandover" an especial pleasure - a much more graciously framed journey toward much more extraordinary horizons.

I suppose you might be here because you have developed a taste for the long poem: the epic or the novel in verse (maybe from my own `listmania' list of such works right here on Amazon). If so, you face a more interesting challenge. "Sandover" will offer many things that are familiar but probably some quite different. If the story in Vikram Seth's "Golden Gate" captivated you, you will find a quite compelling story here - but not one quite so down-to-earth. If the different cultures circumscribed by Walcott's "Omeros" or even Budbill's "Judevine" intrigued you, you will find other worlds here - otherworldly locales, indeed.. If Merwin's "Folding Cliffs" satisfied while it challenged you as a reader, you will find "Sandover" to be a surprising combination of the eminently readable and the multi-layered and re-readable. If Dante's, Milton's or even Frederick Turner's epic reach inspired you, you can count on "Sandover" to take you to the inner and outer reaches of the universe.

Finally, of course, you might be here just because you've heard that James Merrill was one of the finest poets of the 20th century. He was. In "Sandover" he combined many, many talents - as a formalist and as an experimenter in form and as one of the last poets to show a pure delight in words and their infective enlodgement in the human brain. The atomics of the poem satisfy and surprise no matter what magnification your readerly microscope is set on. Over and over you will find yourself startled at a just plain perfect piece of short verse - as tersely powerful as William's "red wheelbarrow." Then you will find yourself so captured by the narrative of the story, that only part-way through will you realize that you are in the midst of two pages of elegant "terza rima." Even the largest structural elements partition, loop-back and break off in ways that build a magnificent whole that is as captivating in its large-scale structure as in its single word choices.

Sandover is an endlessly captivating work - I've read it, all 560 pages, four times in ten years, and still pick it up and read a section or two every few months.

This beautifully illustrated hardback book would be a wonderful library addition for anybody that loves all forms of literature and also biographies of famous writers.

This book was well researched by J.D. McClatchy and wonderfully photographed by Erica Lennard. And for once, it's so nice to read a book in which the photos go hand-in-hand with the prose and descriptions.

As stated by other reviewers, this book includes a short biography of many famous writers, such as: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Washington Irving, Mark Twain, Wm Faulkner, Louisa May Alcott and many more.

The author then visited all the places that each author has lived, and has shown the reader the rooms (& accessories) that made each home so special to each writer.

Many of these rooms and writing accessories might surprise the readers, since after reading some of the authors' famous works, one would think that each author/poet had created such amazing literary works in the most inspiring and comfortable surroundings. Not so.... because when you look at each photograph, the reader may notice that some of the rooms in which the authors wrote, looked rather dark and lonely and cold (also, some of the furniture looks so uncomfortable) . In addition, many of the authors/poets wrote their famous works snuggled in their beds, (not even on a desk & chair)! Thus, J.D. McClatchy showed the reader each bedroom that the author slept in, or wrote in, and sometimes even lived in. Through these photographs, the reader can imagine what it must have been like for these famous writers to create their famous poems or short stories or novels.

It was so interesting to read and visually see how each author/poet viewed their writing experience. For example, if a writer needed to be surrounded by gardens, then J.D. McClatchy made sure that chapter included photos of the author's yards. Or, if an author preferred to pace back and forth outside on their porch, then J.D. McClatchy made sure to include photos of that special porch. Or, if an author liked to eat a big breakfast before beginning to write, then of course, this book would include photos of the kitchen and eating nook.

I am going to refer to this book often, so that the next time I re-read THE SUN ALSO RISES or AGE OF INNOCENCE (for example), I can imagine how the author felt during that writing experience.

This is a very unusual and wonderful book that covers the working environment of American writers. The oldest writer in the book is Washington Irving who lived almost 200 years ago. The author has researched the environment and writing space of famous writers. This book looks at how the living & working conditions of the writers impact on their works. The book includes gorgeous photographs of the homes and writing spaces of the many writers covered in the book.

You unlikely would read it cover to cover. Instead, like the houses it explores, you would pop in for an occasional visit. And such wonderful visits author J.D. McClatchy and photographer Erica Lennard provide. Their words and pictures share similarities-soft and gentle in color yet detailed and realistic in portrayals so vivid you feel like a guest awaiting your host(ess) to step into the room and greet you. Poet McClatchy has woven details of the authors' biographies into a fabric of words about a central pattern of the homes where they lived and wrote. The 21 homes you will visit range from the austere farm house of Robert Frost to the Victorian elegance of Mark Twain's mansion to Hemmingway's Key West estate. As you travel from home to home-including those of Alcott, Dickenson, Emerson, Irving, Longfellow, Melville, and Welty-you travel, too, through time, from when pen and ink were the primary tools of authors into the era of the manual typewriter, but not beyond. McClatchy and Lennard have given us a romantic sense of simpler times and of the lives of the men and women who wrote our Nobel and Pulitzer winning classics, mostly while sitting at simple desks and tables. Surprisingly, many of them wrote in their bedrooms, perhaps further proof that really good writing comes from those who shorten the distance between an arduous task and creative rest. This book would have a proper home on the coffee table to the classroom.

-- Lowell Forte, Cupertino CA

I love visiting historic homes and especially author's homes like Cross Creek (Rawlings), the rowhouse in Baltimore (Poe) and on Prince Edward Island (L. M. Montgomery). Now this book can take me to other homes for that special insight into favorite authors. I particularly like seeing the photos of their writing spaces. For some it's a handsome desk, while another worked at a worn wooden table. Just being able to picture where Hemingway spent his days in Key West or Emily Dickinson lived her quiet life, adds dimension to their writing.
Although this book is not unique in covering this topic, it gives a quality tour of the homes of 21 writers. Other titles that might intrigue you are Writer's Houses and the book, Home: American Writers Remember Rooms of Their Own.
For each author, you get a brief background on that person and the house. There are photos, a listing of visiting hours, phone numbers and web sites.

I found this book to be quietly revolutionary in its very conception. The author and photographic collaborator set out to show how physical space influenced and stimulated various well known American writers. They look at both the writer's residence and personal writing space within that structure. As an archaeologist I spend much of my time looking at how artifacts once served to reproduce worldview. Much of that interest in my field has followed Pierre Bourdieu's notion of habitus. This book does the same in that it looks at how home and writing space might stimulate both thought and words. And this is done in an absolutely stunning fashion with thoughtful text, quotation of relevant passages from the writer, and striking illustrations. Any one with an interest in writing, writers, history, photography, architecture, or material culture (as well as the just plain curious folks) will welcome this book as a holiday gift.

Many people in the United States remain fascinated with the Civil War, but relatively few students of the war study how it was viewed in the literature of the day. This is a pity because the poetry of the Civil War is among the best sources we have to see how Americans responded to the conflict, its origins, and its aftermath. This short anthology, "Poets of the Civil War" will introduce the reader to the extensive volume of poetry inspired by the Civil War. The anthology is part of the "American Poets Project" series of the Library of the America with the laudable goal of making readily accessible a selection of the memorable poetry that Americans have written over the years. The volumes in this ongoing series show that the art of poetry constitutes an important American achievement. Professer J.D. McClatchy of Yale University selected the poems and wrote a perceptive introduction to this Civil War volume.

The volume includes selections from 33 poets, arranged chronologically by date of birth. Although Civil War poetry continues to be written, the works in this collection all were written by contemporaries to the war. The poems differ widely in quality and in theme. The volume includes works by famous early American authors, including Bryant, Emerson and Longfellow. Some readers may be surprised to learn that these writers remained active during the Civil War era. The volume also includes a short selection of reflective poems by Emily Dickinson inspired by the Civil War. Dickinson is not often considered as a Civil War poet.

The two poets who best captured the Civil War in their works, Walt Whitman and Herman Melville, are well-represented here. Whitman's poems emphasize the compassion he developed for individual soldiers as shown by "The Wound Dresser". His poems have a feeling of immediacy. The anthology also includes Whitman's great poem on the death of Lincoln, "When Lilacs Last at the Dooryard Bloom'd."

Many readers may not be aware that Herman Melville wrote Civil War poetry. Melville's poetry has received a mixed reception over the years, but I find it offers a moving and thoughtful picture of the war. Melville wrote in a deliberately halting poetic style that emphasizes the ambiguities and conflicts he felt in considering the war. He tended to write about individual battles and events, and his work can be viewed as a sort of running commentary on the war and its aftermath. This selection includes Melville's poem on the battle of Shiloh with its description of the dead as "Foemen at morn, but friends at eve," and a lengthy poem on the horrors of the battle of the Wilderness.

The poems I enjoyed in this volume include the descriptions of battles, including Henry Brownell's eyewitness account of the battle of Mobile Bay, "The Bay Fight", Thomas Read's poem, "Sheridan's Ride", Silas Weir's poem "How the Cumberland Went Down", and Kate Sherwood's "Thomas at Chickamauga". Of the poets that are not well known today, I enjoyed the selection by Henry Timrod, the "Poet Laureate of the Confederacy" and the poems by John De Forest, who is better remembered as the author of the Civil War novel, "Miss Ravenel's Conversion."

The anthology reflects many points of view including strong Southern feelings and feelings equally intense for the Union. Many of the poets, North and South, are more concerned with the death and destruction resulting from the conflict that with the righteousness of their respective causes. But abolitionist poesm such as Julia Ward howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and Francis Harper's "The Slave Auction" find a place in this collection as do poems seeking a peaceful reconciliation of North and South upon the conclusion of the war. Poems with a reconciliationist sentiment include Francis Miles Finch's once well-known poem, "The Blue and the Gray." ("Love and tears for the Blue/Tears and love for the Gray.")

Poetry remains the most direct way to understand the heart of a people. Readers with an interest in understanding the Civil War will enjoy and learn from this short selection of its poetry.

Robin Friedman

Compiled, organized, edited, and featuring an introduction by J.D. McClatchy, Yale teacher and editor of the inaugural volume of the American Poets Project, Poets Of The Civil War: Selected Poems traces the advent, progress, and literary legacy of the American civil war as revealed in the enduring works of America's finest poets. Featuring classic works by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Walt Whitman, Margaret Junkin Preston and much more, the verses reveal poetry's unique ability to evoke emotions and capture fractured states of mind and being in America's most perilous time. Notes clarify some uses of archaic language, metaphors, specific historical references and the like in some poems. Highly recommended for poetry and civil war enthusiasts alike. From "Boston Hymn" by Ralph Waldo Emerson: The word of the Lord by night / To the watching Pilgrims came, / As they sat by the seaside, / And filled their hearts with flame. // God said, I am tired of kings, / I suffer them no more; / Up to my ear the morning brings / The outrage of the poor.

When you think about it, to truely understand a time and a culture, you must understand the culture's music. Poetry is of course a form of music. As an example, much can be gleened from the study of the music published and sung during recent American Wars. There is no doubt the songs of the sixties will be studied by historians and their relationship to that conflict. This wonderful small volume gives us a good sampling of the poetry inspired by the American Civil War. This is a good representative collection. The editor has included works by well known poets of the time to those that are not so well known (actually some that are relatively unknown). The volume is well noted, with explanation of the syntax and wording of the time, which is most helpful. I have been collecting Civil War books for years now and am glad I was able to add this one to my collection. Recommend it highly.

J D McClatchy, who has edited many volumes of poetry, and written some poems on his own, is one of our very best editors. His book of Longfellow is the best selection since the 1950s. Now comes a more comprehensive, and at the same time more intimate book. The sheer breadth of poets who might be said to be "Poets of the Civil War" is astonishing, and this is not even counting the many British, French, Caribbean poets who wrote on the war as well, this is just the Americans (both North and South). You can see the years pass by as the book begins with a not very memorable poem by William Cullen Bryant, who was born securely in the 18th century, while several of the poets made it through all the way into the 20th century, not within living memory but sort of. Anyway McClatchy hit on the idea of arranging the poems by the birthyear of the poets who wrote them, and this really points up in an elegant way the mechanisms by which attitudes towards the war seem to shift by generations.

The older poets, people like Bryant who might be described as being old even when the war began, have a very different take on it than those who were teens or even children when the war broke out. We can see this paradigm shift recapitulated in the case of a single poet, say Walt Whitman who, as McClatchy cleverly points out, was all gung ho about the war at first, but later on in life he saw the sadness and the tragedy of the war. "Drum Taps" indeed.

This writing teeters on the edge of Modernism and in fact, a fascinating sequel might be compiled, perhaps by McClatchy once again, in which the early US modernists (Amy Lowell, TS Eliot, Pound, Moore, etc) might be seen to be echoing the Civil War as a subject in their poetry. Like Lowell's poem about his Civil War ancestor. In the 20th century, McClatchy claims, poetry narrowed to the "increasingly oblique and intimate lyric." Yes, but this is only a partial truth. Plenty of poems were written on a national and epic scale, but they were increasing de-valued by partisans of New Criticism. Check out Cary Nelson's work in this area.

Though the work on view here in this book is indeed second rate, as McClatchy is eager to admit, it is not negligible, and in fact it's often thrilling, particularly the well chosen poems by Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, Ambrose Bierce, Francis Fich, Julia Ward Howe (the famous "Battle Hymn of the Republic"), Emerson's "Boston Hymn," and four great poems by the incomparable H W Longfellow.

Excellent edition of the works of one of America's greatest writers and dramatists. Readable type, good paper, scholarly notes & introductory material.

I find the plays of Thornton Wilder to be a refreshing delight. While they have humor, satire, a freedom with the conventions of drama, and a telling use of the ordinary to make a deeper point, they also have scenes of emotional power and depth without ever becoming maudlin. Wilder never needs to make things "real" to make a real point. I can't think of any of his characters that need the psychological torture or a pathos built on a foundation of narcissism or the endless drumbeat of sex as the universal explanation for whatever one wants to conclude about life. Yep, I enjoy what Wilder provides and enjoy it very much.

The play that most people associate with Wilder is "Our Town", but they know it mostly from the 1940 movie. The play is sparer and Emily does not live. I think the play is better because her death makes its point about life more strongly than it does when she pulls through. This wonderful edition from the Library of America has articles by Wilder on the production of the play and a series of letters between Wilder and the producer, Sol Lesser, on the making of the movie version are quite interesting. This volume also has notes by Wilder on some of his other plays and on other theatrical topics.

What most people may not know is that the musical "Hello, Dolly" is based on Wilder's play called "The Matchmaker". The musical paid him sufficient royalties that made him financially secure for the remainder of his life. Wilder had based "The Matchmaker" on earlier works. It has a fairly long tradition because it is such a delightful topic.

The volume opens with a series of very short "plays" that are really literary pieces more meant to be read than produced. These were previously collected in a volume entitled "The Angel That Troubled The Waters".

Then come the longer and performable and even regularly performed one act plays. "The Long Christmas Dinner" is probably the best well known. The effect of the time compression of 90 years of Christmases (not every year) is such an interesting effect. The actors age on stage, are born, and die for four generations (a fifth being hinted at). The ordinary language and the way we observe these lives in "fast forward" tell us so much. Quite a fine achievement.

Then come the big plays. Wilder won three Pulitzers. One for his novel, "The Bridge of San Luis Rey" in 1928. Another for "Our Town" in 1938, and then for the strangely wonderful "The Skin of Our Teeth" in 1943. "The Skin of Our Teeth" is said to be influenced by "Finnegan's Wake" and Wilder did love that book. It toys nearly every dramatic convention one can think of. The three acts aren't really related except by keeping the central characters. But they are not informed from the other acts. It is full of anachronisms such as mixing 20th Century New Jersey with an ice age. And not only do the characters talk to the audience (a Wilder trademark), they do so out of character as if the actor himself or herself is speaking. But they are playing a role there, too.

The volume also includes a number of Wilder's "uncollected plays" and which are quite enjoyable and valuable.

The book also includes a very informative chronology of Wilder's life and very good notes on the texts.

Strongly recommended for those who love drama and American letters.

The most comprehensive one-volume edition of dramatist Thornton Wilder's work published to date, Thornton Wilder Collected Plays & Writings on Theater is an 800+ page compendium of plays Wilder wrote throughout his career, essays that reveal Wilder's reflections on his own plays, an epistolary account of the film adaptation of the classic play "Our Town", a chronology, notes, and much more. Of special interest to literati is material that has never before been published: scenes from "The Emporium", an ambitious yet unfinished play that evolved out of Wilder's involvement with existentialist philosophy in his postwar years, as well as the complete screenplay that Wilder wrote for Alfred Hitchcock's movie "Shadow of a Doubt" just prior to reporting for military service in 1942. Like all Library of America editions, Thornton Wilder Collected Plays & Writings on Theater features a sturdy hardcover binding, a compact, relatively lightweight design, and an inset ribbon bookmark. A "must" for classic theater shelves, and recommended for college and public library collections.

The master anthologist J D McClatchy does it again with this superb edition of Thornton Wilder's plays and associated writing for the theater.

In the SF Chronicle the other day, a reviewer gave this volume horrible marks, he didn't like one thing about it. He said THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH is labored claptrap, and that was about the nicest thing he said.

I'm here to refute that opinion. To me Wilder is a great god of the theater and the shame is that some of his very best work has rarely or never been staged. Over the past ten years, as the different episodes of his two cycles have been given to us by Gallup and others, it's been one enchanting masterpiece after another! I had no idea how protean his imagination was, nor how everything had to be different from one another. What a shame he didn't finish the 7 ages of man, but the episodes we have, "Infancy," "Childhood," "Youth" and especially the new "The Rivers Under the Earth" are pretty spectacular, And as for THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS, what can I say, I don't believe any other author could have pulled it off. "A Ringing of Doorbells" gets sort of into Tennessee Williams country, but Williams lacked the control Wilder had in spades.

OK, I wasn't crazy about "In Shakespeare and the Bible," but I probably just don't understand it. I can't decide if Katy did the right thing, nor what the point was about her having changed her name from Mildred, nor what agreement is made by the other two more worldly characters, her fiancee and her aunt, after Katy makes her exit. "Bernice" and "The Wreck on the Five Twenty Five" are beyond praise and I wish I could step into a time machine and see Ethel Waters and Lillian Gish act in them in Berlin or wherever their fugitive premiere was. We don't usually think of Wilder as being interested in civil rights, and the famous plays we know by him deal with almost totally white worlds, but "Bernice" is all about a sort of Frantz Fanon liberation and empowerment after enslavement, just brilliant.

And the two "extra" (non cycle) plays are cute too, "The Marriage we Deplore" has a surprise ending, and "The Unerring Instinct" has a device I think John Waters would love -- or has he used it already?

The EMPORIUM grows in power and eerie knowledge every time I read more of it. Someday I hope to read the manuscripts for the whole thing, no matter how chaotic they are.

For many the great plus of this McClatchy-edited volume will be the screenplay for SHADOW OF A DOUBT. It is remarkable how much of it Hitchcock used! And yet while the editorial apparatus tut tuts the contributions made to the screenplay by NEW YORKER hack Sally Benson, I think she helped. She wasn't the carpetbagger some have made her out to be. Her writing is always good, and a thorough study of her work on the final screenplay of SHADOW OF A DOUBT must be undertaken at once. Is Benson still alive? Somebody must know. In the meantime we have this fantastic book will console us.

Hazmat was a wonderful collection of all sorts of poems. There were Tankas, and Haikus, and even some I didn't know such as Canzone, and Epigram. I thought that these forms were really intricate, and hard to do. I did enjoy the word use though. I thought that it was really cool the way he used words, and painted pictures. An example that sticks in my mind is; She blacks her hair, and powders her face, getting ready to fight the evil. I would recommend this awesome collection to anyone who enjoys grammar and is interested in different forms of poetry. All in all this was a wonderful book comprised of amazing work!

I read a lot and a lot of different genres. There are times I walk into a bookstore or log onto Amazon.com and tell myself: "Pretend you are someone else. Get something outside you're normal realm of taste." Suddenly, I'm buying jazz or British chamber opera, a novel by Someset Maugham, a Britney Spears compilation, a Luchino Visconti film about the Nazis etc.

I've read or skimmed quite a few novels and books of poetry old and new. J. D. McClatchy, a middle-aged gay New Yorker of Celtic decent, is quite simply writing the best contemporary poetry out there. He's published heavily in the elite "Poetry" magazine and turned out several books of poetry and criticism. He's to poems what Michael Cunningham is to novels: simply the most gifted stylist I've encountered.

His style in "Hazmat" has been compared to Baudelaire because his earthy, gritty, sensual, tribal, blue collar themes are presented in precise classical verse. San Francisco poet Tom Gunn and British poet Anthony Hecht and, for that matter, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe all presented decadent subject matter with with a sterling classical sheen. It's an interesting contrast.

McClatchy writes about relevant subject matter like terrorism, like the men's movement, like aging in our youth culture, etc. He escapes the need to wallow in abstraction and mythology and his poems seem, as poems seldom do, torn from the headlines.

The jacket tells you that HAZMAT means "hazardous material" and is an abbreviation used on signs at the entrances to long tunnels and suspicious containers. Well, the poems in J.D. McClatchy's HAZMAT are highly hazardous! Do not fear going through that tunnel or opening that lid. Stunning eye-openers and maximum pleasurable reading from beginning to end. Long live, JD!

Humor, anger, and all the eloquence of the black experience in America is to be found in some of the poems presented here on this audio cd from the THE VOICE OF THE POET SERIES: LANGSTON HUGHES. Also presented is commentary inserted in-between Hughes reading of his poems. You get the background of how a certain poem came into being. You get Hughes talking about his childhood and racial pride. You get Hughes voice, soft, sort of high pitched, and inviting. MY LORD, MERRY-GO-ROUND, THE NEGRO SPEAKS OF RIVERS, JUDGEMENT DAY, MY PEOPLE, WHEN SUE WEARS RED, and FIRE are a few of the poems recited on this cd by Hughes. For those able to do so, I recommend purchasing the audio tape, LANGSTON HUGHES READS HIS POETRY, because this cd truncates some of Hughes commentary and poems.

It does a disservice to Hughes to dismiss much of his body of work as "wry" to make a particular audience more comfortable with it. It does a similar disservice to Hughes' integrity to ignore that both his parents were black and play up distant white blood to make him more palatable, so-called universal, to the larger audiencences prejudices (most of black America share his same distant bloodlines). One of Hughes's biographers said you cannot respect Hughes without respecting black American people and their culture in the U.S. To disrespect one is to do so to both. Hughes's black pride permeates his so-called race poems and poems of social protest from the 30s and the vast majority of his work in general.

Langston Hughes showed his anger and bitterness toward the injustices of racism as he sharecropped his way among many different genres of the arts as a proud and unflinching black American. His genius, and lesson, was that he did not allow this bitternerss and anger to cause him to hate or infuse his body of work with hate. He may not have liked some in gerneral, but he "never, never" hated. Hughes had to much humanity in him to reward hate with hate. Even in his anger, Hughes could be benevolent. Hughes did not hesitate to like anyone who showed respect and gestures of friendship to him and his people. His lesson to black artists was be proud of their heritage in their work and not run away from it for a quick profit and fame in catering to the prejudices of the larger community beyond that of black America. His lesson was also that they should not be
consumed with anger and bitterness even though they had a right to be angry because through their words a world could be enlightened and made better.

Here in THE VOICE OF THE POET: LANGSTON HUGHES, as other works by Hughes, a man is revealed who was often angry and bitter, but who never lost sight that there was some good in the world worth fightiing for. This makes him a writer to be universally admired by everyone regardless of race, religion, and whatever.

I am an author and a poet. Langston Hughes' style of poetry is simply amazing. This CD gives a historical rendition on the era of his childhood, school years, work experiences and poetic growth. His world travels certainly expanded his vision of life and impacted positively on his writings. The enlightenment of his trip to Africa resulted in the poem "My People." This poem has a fascinating view of Africa, the people, and Hughes' connection with them. His articulation of the poem "Mother to Son" is amazing. He shows another side of life and how one's vision influences the rearing of a child. One of the greatest poems on the CD is "The Negro Speaks of Rivers." This was written while taking a trip to Mexico to visit his father. In this piece he gives a visionary perspective and uses the art of personification to make the connection of his people, history, and life from a historical standpoint. The poem "Words Like Freedom' and "Tomorrow" will touch the heart of the reader. The stories on the CD are awesome. The reflection he gives of life during his younger years certainly is a distinctive comparison from then to now, especially highlighting how individuals were treated based on the color of their skin. This CD is a must have for one's poetry library. This is not just a CD of poetry it is also a CD of history. Also check "Trilogy Moments for the Mind, Body and Soul" with the new selection of Epulaeryu poems.

This is a terrific addition to the Voice of the Poet series. Langston Hughes doesn't just read his poems; he talks about their genesis and about his life. For all the ugliness of Jim Crow, he never sounds bitter, but he tells the whole truth, doesn't sugarcoat anything. My one tiny disappointment is that in the book the format was changed on a couple of poems due to space constraints. This CD is worth it just for his story of how he became a poet. I listen to lots of audio poetry and this is one of the best collections I've ever found. You can't miss.

This Pocket Poets series has done us a great favor by publishing these short collections of a central theme. Past volumes focused on common poetic themes (i.e. love, war, friendship), and while there has already been a volume on animal poems, one devoted to bird poems is certainly time- and paper-worthy.

This little book gives lovers of poetry (and of birds) a chance to indulge in the seemingly forbidden enjoyment, in today's poetic world, of poetry as an ebullient celebration of the simple and mundane. With so many poets of our time are so caught up with catharsis, neuroses, unresolved parental issues, and the like, it's difficult to imagine those poets taking the focus off themselves long enough to consider something like birds, let alone write poems about them. Fortunately, as this book enchantingly demonstrates, our poetic heritage is too rich to let us forget that poet craft has a vast voice to speak of many things, and with a topic such as birds, the poem has the power to shake us out of our indifference to the ordinary, letting us see its beauty by honoring with beauty.

I presently own all the volumes of the Pocket Poets series to date, and this volume easily ranks among my favorites. It includes a fascinatingly broad range of poetic literature from the Bible to contemporaries like Seamus Heaney, and its last section pays homage to "famous" birds in poetry, such as Coleridge's albatross and Poe's raven. It's worth every cent, and has a very attractive dust jacket to boot, so you'll be tempted to leave it out on your coffee table just to impress your friends.

J.D. McClatchy, a superb poet and the editor of The Yale Review, has put together a number of landmark anthologies over the years, including the Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry and Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry. For the Everyman's Library Pocket Poets series, he has co-edited an anthology of Christmas Poems with John Hollander. And, most recently, he has edited the Library of America's outstanding edition of the poems of Longfellow. But perhaps nowhere has he brought his refined taste and peerless editorial acumen to bear more beautifully than on this Everyman edition of some of the finest poems about birds in the English language-ON WINGS OF SONG.

McClatchy sets the tone for this collection in his elegant foreword: "At the very dawn of civilization, birds were symbols of the spirit. Falcon or dove, stork or raven or owl, they were our messengers, fierce or gentle intermediaries between our earthbound lives and the upper air." Keenly aware of emblematic types and the categories that they fall into, McClatchy carefully arranges the anthology accordingly. The list of poets that grace this anthology include many timeless masters, ranging from Virgil to Chaucer, from Wordsworth to Yeats, and from Poe to Frost.

The great Romantic era poems about birds, such as Shelley's "To a Skylark" and Keats's "To a Nightingale" are duly included, but the surprises in the collection are numerous. Among my favorites is a little-known four-line poem by the Anglo-Indian poet Vikram Seth, entitled "Pigeons": "The pigeons swing across the square/Suddenly voiceless in midair,/Flaunting, against their civic coats,/The glossy oils that scarf their throats." A number of the poems are also downright funny. Chief among these is X.J. Kennedy's sardonic "Vulture": "The vulture's very like a sack/Set down and left there drooping./His crooked neck and creaky back/Look badly bent from stooping/Down to the ground to eat dead cows/So they won't go to waste/Thus making up in usefulness/For what he lacks in taste."

McClatchy does a masterful job of arranging the poems in a manner that refreshes and surprises the reader at every turn. ON THE WINGS OF SONG is a must have on every birdwatcher's and verse lover's shelf.

This pocket-sized hardcover of poems about birds provides a beautiful gathering of literary verse revolving around birds, separated by general bird categories from 'backyard' and 'barnyard' to 'birds of prey' and beyond. A fine gift for a literary birder.

The poems in FIELD KNOWLEDGE exude a gentle dispassion and allude to (or actually name) classical figures, reminding one of Richard Wilbur's jewels of form. They also recall Carl Dennis' PRACTICAL GODS as the sublime and the mundane intertwine seductively.

Morri Creech creates disconcerting but radiant images as he tackles such topics as the feelings of Job and his wife post tribulation Book of, Mary Magdalene's encounter with the risen Jesus in the garden, Orpheus in the underworld, starvation as a martyr's instrument, and a jarring narrative duel between desire as virtue and sex crime. Every poem strikes a distinct tone, but all together reinforce each other as words, phrases, and images iterate in different contexts. The title poem literally concentrates on a history of a field and is suffused with earthy things such as sumac and "blackberries they swear will boil down to ambrosial jam," yet transports one into philosophical musings about the truth of this place. This is the crux of FIELD KNOWLEDGE: to offer variations on how we may see the world, how we may gain knowledge, and whether we can trust that knowledge we may think is solid.

In the penultimate poem, Creech pens,
"More than the sounds that set the stones and trees
in place, and that arrange both shade and light,
a sad music ripens in the heart; caught
between oblivion and paradise...."

This fragment of verse describes the etched poetry of FIELD KNOWLEDGE sublimely.

Sometimes one must search through a book of poems, wading through mediocre verses in order to find the few true poems among them. Such was not the case with Morri Creech's PAPER CATHEDRALS, a book that I found tremendously moving, and Creech's latest volume, FIELD KNOWLEDGE, is an even finer collection. In fact FIELD KNOWLEDGE is, quite simply, the finest new volume of poetry I've read in the past few years. In my opinion, Creech is the finest of the young American poets, those in the first decade of their careers. But there is nothing young or unpolished about his poems. Creech writes with such assurance, even virtuosity, that his poems have about them an air of great maturity and, that rarest of qualities, permanence. Nothing is ever universal in its appeal, yet Creech has managed to, on the one hand, impress some of America's finest free verse poets, Susan Ludvigson and Li-Young Lee among them, and, on the other, some of America's foremost formalists, like J.D. McClatchy and William Logan. Anyone who follows contemporary American poetry knows that this kind of "crossover" appeal is a rare achievement, and it a tribute to both Creech's abilities and his sensabilities. Hart Crane once said, "It may not be possible to say that there is, strictly speaking, any "absolute" experience. But it seems evident that certain aesthetic experience can be called absolute, inasmuch as it approximates a formally convincing statement of a conception or apprehension of life that gains our unquestioning assent." It is extremely rare to encounter poetry that lives up to this description, that is so formally convincing and so capable of apprehending the world that it can stir both mind and spirit to a degree that we nod our heads, laugh, even weep at times. Creech pulls this off with regularity. And of course the irony is, that the poems, as they gain our unquestioning assent, first cause us to question ourselves, our sense, our faith, and our memories, the very means by which we attempt to apprehend the world. Simply put, FIELD KNOWLEDGE was the perfect choice for the first Anthony Hecht award. It is a rare achievement.

Not all poets make great readers of their own work. But Auden's voice-- so warm, so musical, so passionate-- is a joy to listen to. The recordings, done in many places over many years, are of a varying quality. But in each the voice comes shining through.

The poem selections are top-notch across the board, containing such favorites as "As I Walked Out One Evening," "Fish in the Unruffled Lakes," "Musee des Beaux Arts," four sonnets from "In Time of War," "Under Which Lyre," "The More Loving One" and "The Shield of Achilles." The CD version is supposedly abridged, but it is 57 minutes compared to the Audio Cassette version's hour. This also comes with a book containing the final text of the selected poems (sometimes slightly different than what he reads). The book also contains a nice introduction and background on Auden by poet J.D. McClatchy.

My favorite tracks have to be "Under Which Lyre," read with such wit that it made me laugh several times, and the powerful "Friday's Child". I believe one can listen to a streaming version of "Under Which Lyre" on poets.org -- although it sounds much better on this CD since streaming audio is generally scratchy. It could give you an idea if this CD is right for you.

This could hardly be bad when it contains such great poetry, but it manages to be appropriate for both long-time Auden fans and those who are just beginning. An outstanding product. 5/5 stars.

This a an excellent collection of auden's poetry, read by the poet. The CD is well recorded and presented in an attractive package, and comes with a book of the poems on the CD in words.

Bright Pages is comprised of writing selections from people who have attended Yale; this common ground is surprising in light of the variety of perspectives and styles the book contains. The introductions at the beginning of each section by J. D. McClatchy chronicle the personal history of the writer, and the selections are diverse and intriguing. Some of the writers that I enjoyed were Tom Wolfe, James Fenimore Cooper, Robert Penn Warren, Thornton Wilder, and Jonathan Edwards. The selections span sermons, short stories, poems, and cartoons. Each selection is so different from the others that the whole book is captivating-- there isn't a moment of repetition. In all, the book is very well organized and representative of the variety and depth of writers that have sprung from Yale.