Marianne Moore Books

The third in a series from a PBS show of the same name. (see the reviews on the other two tapes in this series)This is so well done that you can listen to it over and over and always come away with something new and stimulating each and every time. With out going into a detailed explanation of the series this is simply a superb compilation of some of the thoughts and ideas as expressed by some of our era's best author's, lecturer's and thinkers. It is so well organized and presented that all three tapes flow one into the other. As with many series where the latter in the series are not as strong as the first, this is not the case here. All three are equally as strong without repeating and without pandering to the listener. It is a must own series for those who enjoy being stimulated to THINK! And for those who don't you might be surprised--you might still come away with an experience that you will enjoy. Own all three.

Comming from your ear phones is an irrestible seduction into the present that makes your being quivver with hope.

While this is subtitled "A Christmas Tale", this wonderfully written story is a story of belonging in a small, isolated community - a wonderful gift that is set at Christmas. Two aspects of the story make this a memorable bit of literature: First, the discription of the physical setting and the small details making the village unique, isolated and realistic are superb. Second, the understanding of human group behavior is outstanding - both in the definition of "outsiders" and in the common story required to become an "insider". This aspect is established early and confirmed by the climax of the story.

Excellent writing, excellent control of characters, interesting and simple plot ... well worth your time.

This is one of the most fascinating books I have ever read. The story is simple: A boy and a girl get lost in the mountains on their way home; it's Christmas Eve, and the two are somewhere in the Alps. What makes the books so unique is the way in which the children's ordeal is described: They are moving through a landscape that is made almost abstract by the snow; this is pure poetry! - Stifter is a forgotten genius of 19th century European literature; I'm glad that his touching Christmas Tale - and ideal Christmas present, by the way - is now available in this beautiful edition!

I have submitted a more formal review elsewhere, but wanted to encourage readers who study modernist poetry to consult this book. You do not have to be a specialist in the poetry of Mina Loy, Marianne Moore, or Else Lasker-Schüler in order to find this book useful. Whereas we have heard something about Moore and Loy, learning about Else Lasker-Schüler's alternate identity, the Jewish, male Prince Jussuf, was really entertaining, and an example of how travestism is not necessarily based on sexuality. Miller has done a great job of blending cultural studies with poetic analysis. I especially appreciated her comments on the cultural settings particular to women in New York and Berlin. The three main chapters deal with the naming acts of the poets, the ways in which they construct their poetic bodies, and how Judaic traditions have had an influence on the poetry of all three. This volume can be read cover to cover, or in isolated sections. Miller has taken examples from numerous unpublished manuscripts, so Cultures of Modernism is a find for those working specifically on these poets as well. Happy reading!

Darlene Williams Erickson was a Professor of mine many years ago. Her poetry classes excited me and her gentle encouragement touched the lives of many throughout her life. This book is only a hint of her talent for the fine art of poetry and her ability to express feelings and emotions.

I highly recommend her work and look forward to experiencing more of it.
K Branham

Every Marianne Moore fan needs this book, and even the casual reader will benefit from all the uncollected poems Grace Schulman includes in this volume, nearly twice as big as the standard Complete Poems Moore published in her lifetime.

Moore was a savage editor of her work, and insisted on collecting only what she considered the very best of her poems, often significantly revised over the years. Schulman pulls back the curtain to let you see the earlier versions, in the chronological order in which they were written, along with many very fine poems that didn't pass muster with Moore. You get four versions of the famous "Poetry," for instance ("I, too, dislike it")-the 1919 original included in the body of the text and the three variants Moore wrote over the next 40 years tucked helpfully in the Notes at the back.

The upshot is that you get a much clearer sense of Moore's development and characteristic concerns. Every bit as formidable, she also becomes just a little more human when you see the full range of her writing. Some of the false starts and minor pieces can often be more revealing than the Greatest Hits (though sometimes what Moore considered minor can be scary.) Now that Schulman's book is available as a paperback, I wonder how many of these lesser-known poems will eventually find their way into the anthologies.

Schulman also won me over by including Moore's earliest poem, written for Christmas in 1895 when she was 8:

Dear St. Nicklus:

This Christmas morn
You do adorn
Bring Warner a horn
And me a doll
That is all.

This book is an outstanding analysis of "reading and writing nature" in the works of four great American poets. I found the book specific and compelling. It helped clarify for me the problems of perception and cognition as they have been analyzed, written about and lived by American poets. It enhanced my own experience of and appreciation for these writers. The book also opens a door onto the larger dimensions of nature that can become locked or occluded through disuse. I recommend this book for anyone who is interested in the relationship between art, nature and the imagination.

I really enjoyed this alot. I felt I was transported into a world of great poems. There really wasn't a bad piece here. Indulge and buy this book.

............this small book of poetry contains the work of nearly forty of the best known American poets. From Emily Dickinson to Walt Whitman to Edgar Allan Poe to Robert Frost, there are poems in this collection that are sure to appeal to everyone! Also represented in this collection are ten women poets and eight African Americans including Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes and Phyllis Wheatley. There's even a poem by Abraham Lincoln that reveals his thoughts about his childhood experiences.

This collection is a simple, inexpensive way to introduce oneself to the wonderful world of American poetry. Each poet is introduced with a short biography followed by his or her most memorable work. Great buy!

This book is the manifestation of the dream of former U.S. Poet Laureate Joseph Brodsky when he said, "Poetry must be available to the public in far greater volume than it is." Brodsky believed that poetry books should be distributed free of charge in many places, such as supermarkets and factories. He also had the idea that an anthology of poetry should be, "found in every hotel room in the land." Brodsky went on to create the American Poetry & Literacy Project in 1993, and is the compiler of this book.

This little anthology covers more than 350 years of American poetry. It includes poets who were famous in their own time such as Edgar Allen Poe, and poets whose talents weren't realized until after their death, such as Emily Dickinson. It displays American patriotism in poems such as Walt Whitman's, "I Hear America Singing", and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride." Poems such as, "Dream Deferred (Harlem)" by Langston Hughes, and "Incident" by Countee Cullen, explore themes of racial prejudice and African American culture. War, loneliness, nature, children, all the many issues and emotions we as human beings find ourselves dealing with today, are all included in this small, yet well-comprised anthology.

Many of my personal favorites include poems about poetry itself. These poets and writers give serious, and not so serious, contemplation to the art of writing. On page 65, the teacher and library assistant Marianne Moore begins her poem, "Poetry" with these lines:

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all
this fiddle.

Moore, known for her complex poems was known as the "poet's poet," and was the editor of the literary magazine The Dial, according the book's biography about her.

Pulitzer prize winner Archibald Macleish's poem, "Ars Poetica" gives his view of what a poem should be on page 72:

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs

The books biography on Macleish says that he was an editor for Fortune magazine, Librarian of Congress, and Assistant Secretary of State.

According to Andrew Carroll, the Executive Director of The American Poetry and Literacy Project, Joseph Brodsky never saw the final version of this book, "101 Great American Poems" before his death. He leaves us however, with Brodsky's inspiring words in his Introduction to the book:

"Books find their readers, and if not, well let them lie around, absorb dust, rot and disintegrate. There is always going to be a child who will fish a book out of the garbage heap. I was such a child, for what it's worth..."

For us, Brodsky's own poetry and the legacy he left behind in The American Poetry and Literacy Project, continues to be worth a fortune.

Brian Douthit
Author Of Perfectly Said: when words become art

This book is quite wonderful. It includes some of my all time favorite American Poets. I recommend it to anyone who likes poetry.

Also Recommended: Quotes, Poems, and Words That Flow by Kevin Grommersch

This is a wonderful collection of American poetry classics. It contains most of the poems that have been taught through the years in American schools as the ' classics ' of American Literature. It does not really touch the American poetry of the past fifty years.
Most of its poems are the shorter poems of great poetic masters , for instance for Wallace Stevens, " Thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird' and the 'Emperor of Ice- Cream' but not the 'Idea of Order at Key West' for Eliot, " Prufrock" but not the "Wasteland " or the "Quartets".
A wonderful collection most highly recommended.

Apparently, there was once a PBS-special program
called QUEST: DISCOVERING YOUR HUMAN POTENTIL . . . I
unfortunately never caught it when it was on the air, but was
lucky enough to be able to track down a cassette with
the same title.

Edited by Deepak Chopra, it featured Steven Covey, Thomas
Moore, Bernie Siegel, David Whyte, and Marianne Williamson,
along with Chopra . . . they all spoke about the mind-body
connection and shared their ideas on how to harness your
inner power.

With speakers this fine, I came away with many useful
ideas . . . my only disappointment was that the program
did not label the speakers either before or after they had
something to say.

Yet I believe I was able to identify many of the speakers . . . in
addition, I gleaned these tidbits:

[Siegel] If you're stuck, then change your attitude toward life. If
you want to be happy, choose happiness.

[Siegel] Most people say, "My day will come." When they realize
they have a limited number of days, that's when they get into action.

[Williamson] Life isn't about so much about making ourselves
better, as it is about relinquishing all the illusions and the blocks
to greatness that are bred into us in the world.

[Williamson] Buckminster Fuller said, "Geniuses are just people
who had good mothers."

[Siegel] When you do allow love into your life, you have a longer,
healthier life. You are rewarded by the fact. For example, when
you save a bird, you don't expect a "thank you" in return.

[Siegel, quoting advice he got from Ashley Montagu] To be more
loving, act as if you're more loving.

I enjoy the thought provoking and positive attitude of this book!
lifts spirits!

Taken from a PBS series this is the first of three tapes to come from that effort. It is simple the best compilation of thought provking and stimulating ideas on tape that I have found. I am a counselor who works with adolescents and I am always looking for some way to inspire, motivate, or encourage young adults to begin the process of self knowledge and self awarness and to see beyond themselves into the world they are about to enter as adults. So many tapes are too simplistic or too complicated but this series seem to intrigue these individuals as no other tape I have used has been able to do. It is a series that anyone from early adolescents to geriatrics will find extremely valuable and thought provoking. No schmoltzy solutions, no formulaic set answers to life--just wonderful stimulating ways to encouarage the listener to examine who they are, what they feel and where they want to go. You will listen to this series over and over and will hear something new each and every time.

The Quest audio cassettes are a fine compliment to books by the guest speakers. In some cases the cassettes provide nuances, insights, and clarification not possible in the printed text form. Stephen Covey for example has a deep raspy almost mischievous laugh when he discusses inauthenticity weakening relationships of trust. His sense of humor isn't readily apparent in The Seven Steps... bestseller, but here it is on this compilation. And Thomas Moore's few comments on narcisism are wonderfully refined and to the point, so much so that he does a better job conveying this somewhat difficult concept in speaking than in printed form i.e. "Care of the Soul" where there isn't the same impact. A few of the speakers are too New Agey and fluffy for my tastes but Moore and Covey give the nearly one hundred minutes of listening time great depth and texture.

This piece is so heavy and so thought provoking that you have to absorb it slowly... just great. It takes you on a spiritual journey into fundamental questions about life and spirituality. But what really makes this compilation of ideas so good is that it offers you real answers, real solutions to your problems and human weaknesses that you can use. Listening to this tape is spiritual therapy. A classic, like nothing you've experienced before.

Marianne Moore's poetry is perceptive and unassuming. She often writes with a dry sense of humor. Her interest in sports, especially baseball, is also expressed in her poetry. She enjoys odd behavior in animals and writes about them just as they are. "An Octopus" is one of her longer poems and needs several readings to be appreciated. Moore creates poems that are filled with intuitive insight and beauty.

I believe that it was Robert Frost who commented with regards to modern poetry, that it was like playing tennis without a net. Marianne Moore created her own net - her poetry is built upon strict syllabic counts she imposed upon herself. The result is finely crafted poetry that is never self-indulgent.

I have found her syllabic count to be a good way to introduce structure into student's poetry. I have found it to be a good writing exercise. And in using the structure in these ways, I have become ever more impressed with the quality of work she achieved. But more than the technical quality, I enjoy the humor and just plain fun of her animal poems.

Having interests in both science and poetry, I was excited to find a book about both, which was not merely a collection of "scientific poetry" but which actually had something worthwhile to say. The book presents a wonderful insight into the lives of three poets in particular, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore, and is enlightening as to the ways in which they responded and reacted to the increasingly science and technology oriented society they lived in. Since this trend towards a reliance on science and technology has only escalated since the 1920s and 30s it is interesting to compare their position to our own. Certainly, I have gained a new appreciation for the poetry, and a new understanding of the period. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the ways poetry is written to reflect our position as humans within a social context.