Poetry Books

This was the text for my college Shakespeare classes over 20 years ago (different edition of course) I still have it and still use it. A wonderful book for students and those who want not only the complete works but some well written and authoritative information about Shakespeare and the world in which he lived and wrote.

The texts of the plays are well foot-noted and the type is easy on the eyes. Well worth the investment.

If you can't afford the Oxford Edition of Shakespeare's complete works than this is the next best edition you can find.

While reading reviews of this edition elsewhere on the Web, I came across this review by David Allen White, professor of English @ the U.S. Naval Academy and editor (with Charles Boyce) of Shakespeare A to Z:

"Re-writing Shakespeare is nothing new. The Nahum Tate version of King Lear--with the happy ending--held the stage for nearly a century and a half. The great actors of the romantic age, Kean and Booth and Macready, not only spotlighted the heroes in the tragedies but felt free to beef up their roles. Directors began more than 50 years ago to monkey with the historical settings of the play, often with imaginative and instructive results. Scholars, critics, and directors have ridden various hobbyhorses through the plays for years, introducing us to Freudian Hamlets and Marxist King Lears and feminist Tamings of the Shrew.

"Recent Shakespeare production and scholarship, however, add a perverse twist to this long tradition. We no longer care what the Bard actually wrote. Years of deconstructionist theorizing have taught us that words are needy and we, readers or actors or scholars, have the right, indeed the obligation, to give them the gift of meaning--our meaning, the more bizarre the better.

"For the 23 years that I've taught Shakespeare at the United States Naval Academy, I have always used the same text, The Complete Works of Shakespeare, edited by David Bevington of the University of Chicago. Professor Bevington is an old-school scholar with a distinguished career. The book he edited had many advantages: large print, full character names before each speech, specific indications of settings, modernized spellings, solid introductions that connected the plays to the students' experience of love and politics, morality and order, passion and faith, and comprehensive but not overwhelming notes. Every few years a new edition would appear, and I would open it with interest and a little apprehension. But the changes would be minor--thinner paper (approaching the substance of tissue, a malady afflicting many recent books), hints here and there of encroaching academic perversity in the notes--nothing sufficient to make me seek another text. The 4th edition's introduction to The Tempest caused me to swallow hard: We learn there that Prospero's authority "is problematic to us because he seems so patriarchal, colonialist, even sexist and racist in his arrogating to himself the right and responsibility to control others in the name of Western and Christian values." But this is an imperfect world, and I soldiered on.

"Notified that a 5th Edition would appear this fall, I took time to examine it closely. Many of the introductions remain the same; but new editors and commentators have significantly altered others. Despite the myth of progress that reigns in all the disciplines of modern academia, "new" is often far from "improved." Apparently, Professor Bevington has either ignored the changes or allowed the young scholar-colts to have a romp. In some of the new introductory essays, especially under the guise of new brief histories of stage performance, questionable judgment, to put it mildly, has crept in. For example, the introduction to Othello ends with the following observation:

'In another recent development, Emilia has stood out in several productions as the raissoneur and heroic figure in the play, speaking as she does on behalf of maltreated women, urging Desdemona to stand up for her rights. One recent Chicago production went so far as to rewrite the ending: Othello and Iago both survive unpunished for what they have done, while Desdemona and Emilia lie dead as their innocent victims. This deliberate and provocative overstatement might seem extreme to some viewers, but unquestionably did signal the direction of recent performance history of the profoundly disturbing play.'

"It may be time to stop buying tickets to that great play.

"The current obsession in academia is "queer theory," and the homoerotic is everywhere, not just in Shakespeare studies. But this particular perversity fills the introductions to the new Bevington, especially the introductions to the comedies. Compare the following passages, the first from the introduction to As You Like It in the 4th Edition, essentially a carry-over from earlier editions:

'Rosalind's disguise name, Ganymede, taken from Jove's amorous cupbearer, has homoerotic connotations that are easily misinterpreted today. Shakespeare delicately acknowledges the suggestion, to be sure, both in Phoebe's pursuit of a young lady (but really a boy actor) in male attire, and in Orlando's courtship of "Ganymede" as though addressed to Rosalind. Yet this innocent titillation, found also in Shakespeare's source, is not meant to hint at homosexual attraction as we understand it. On the contrary, the point is that Orlando can speak frankly and personally to "Ganymede" as to a perfect friend, one to whom he can relate in platonically spiritual terms without the distracting note of sexual interest.'

"These are eminently sane and sensible remarks. Now from the Introduction to As You Like It in the 5th Edition:

'Rosalind's disguise name, Ganymede, has connotations that suggest ways in which human sexuality can be partly understood as socially constructed. If Rosalind in disguise as Ganymede wins the affection and eventually the love of Orlando, while her father and the others are equally taken in by the disguise, are maleness and femaleness chiefly matters of sartorial convention and superficial appearance? When Phoebe falls in love with Ganymede, is not her infatuation a way of showing that the roles of the sexes can be put on and off? Theatrically, the device of having a young male actor play Rosalind who then disguises him/herself as a young man adds to the witty confusion of sexual identities by introducing homoerotic possibilities. Not only can the roles of the sexes be put on and off, sexual desire itself is unstable...'

"This is ideology masquerading as interpretation.

"To be sure, the range of possible interpretations of Shakespeare's work is wide, for he encompasses all of humanity and tells profound and mysterious truths about human life. Such inexhaustible expansiveness invites discussion and dispute and differences. At the end of the Introduction to Richard II in this volume, for example, there is a brief but superb account of various interpretations of that rich role by leading actors. Professor Charles Forker of Indiana University provides that account; another old-school scholar, he knows more about that play than any other living soul. Too many of the revised introductions, however, are more interested in advancing the latest academic-political orthodoxy than in discovering and illuminating the natural and conventional moral order so abundantly on display in Shakespeare's works. Nothing is more orthodox--still--among contemporary literary critics than the alleged truth that there is no truth, that all interpretations are valid except the author's own.

"Thus Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream can be presented as "the denizen of a drug culture, with the love potion as the weed he gleefully distributes. The experience of the forest becomes a drug-induced 'high,' for audiences as for the actors. The fairies, sometimes played by adult and hairy males, can exhibit a streak of cruelty." And, indeed, in a recent production at the Shakespeare Theater in Washington, D.C., the fairies were hairy males who carried something like miners' lights. So much for lightness and charm and magic. This same Dream introduction gives the game away in words that are echoed in many of the other essays: "These modern interpretations are arguably neither more nor less 'true' to Shakespeare's text than earlier or more 'traditional' versions. What they do demonstrate is the play's remarkable permeability and openness to differing views."

"The new Bevington retails for $90; in good conscience, I cannot ask students to fork over such a sum of cash for a book that is now rife with nonsense. So next fall I'll assign The Riverside Shakespeare, which fortunately is still in its 2nd edition. I fervently hope it is not soon updated.

"Of course, the Bevington volume has come to reflect the universities it serves, where young students pay small fortunes to be taught that there is no enduring meaning or beauty to be found in the poetry of Shakespeare, no tradition worth preserving, no "truth" other than personal whim and innovative foolery. If the price of the new Bevington is petty theft, the tuitions charged by these institutions have become, at least for the study of the humanities, highway robbery.

"I know a father who gave his son the equivalent of a year's tuition and told the lad to go to Europe, to travel, to observe, to learn for as long as the money would hold out. The young man came back after two-and-a-half years, mature and educated, and instantly found a good job. The time has come for imaginative, alternative learning. I talked recently with a very intelligent young woman who loves literature; she is completing her sophomore year at Yale, where she had hoped to pursue an English Literature major. She informed me with sorrow that she was abandoning that plan. Her reason was quite simple: she had already sat through too many classes where lunacy prevailed. She mentioned the possibility of looking at traditional Catholic convents. Could this be the first refreshing drop of a wave of the future? It would not be the first time that civilization was preserved in the convents and the monasteries. Nymph, in thy orisons, be all of Academia's sins remembered."

(Allen, David White, "An Unweeded Garden," The Claremont Institute, http://claremont.org/publications/crb/id.959/article_detail.asp [originally published March 22, 2004])

I guess it's safe to say that, based on his review, Professor Allen'd give this edition 1 star...right?

I purchased this book as a birthday present for a graduating high school student who is a big fan of Shakespeare.
This volume has a lot to offer to both students and casual readers. In addition to very readable text of all the plays and sonnets, the fifth edition provides historical and literary context, including drawings and photos, as well as insightful essays on each of the plays. The essays include background, plot summaries and discussion of major themes and would be very useful to anyone seeing a play, especially for the first time. The helpful glossary is extensive, so the reader doesn't have to look up unfamiliar words or feel intimidated by the language. Professor Bevington's fifth edition of the Complete Works is a gem, authoritative and attractive. The birthday girl thinks so, too-- she gives it an A+.

This is truly a great book. Not only does it contain all of Shakespeare's works but it also has an enormous amount of information. There's a little bit on his life and a bit more about the theater during his time. There are also some great drawings in the beginning of the book.

Drummer Hoff (Stories to Go!)
This book was enjoyed by my daughter when she was 5 and now my grandson is enjoying this version of the book, the pictures are smaller than the first copy we had but still terrific and the rhymes are great. Older kids can finish the end of the rhyme after a few times of reading, little ones like my grandson who is 2-1/2 just like the sound of the story and beautiful award winning illustrations.

If your family is like mine and missed this little gem all these years, now is the time to rush out and get a copy. For more than a year, from the day we found this at a garage sale, Drummer Hoff has been a "must read" when visiting Grandma's house. The color, the repetitive rhythm of the text (that even the 19 month old now recites), and the details that continue to add interest--all make this a fun read-aloud, especially when the adult adds motion and volume to the KaBoom ending.

Though the little ones are far too young to be introduced to heavy subjects like war, it has only been natural to add our own "and only the birds and flowers and bugs are left" to the last two pages, and there will be time enough to discuss the larger story begun here.

Overall, just a great read, illustrated with pictures that will help children far more than some of the cartoonish excesses that are passed off as art in far too much juvenile literature.

I purchased a copy of this book for each of my two grandsons. I had read it to all three of my children and they all loved it - the repetition and the rhymes and the pictures. When my daughter told me that she had taken it out from the library to read to her son, I decided to get each one a copy of the book so they could enjoy it all the time.

Very exciting book for young children! My children and grandchildren love this book!

This was another of my favorites as a child and was happy to find it on AMAZON. As a child, my mom would take us to the library. I would be heartbroken if DH was missing. Now, I read it to my son at bedtime and give all the fine gentlemen appropriate brogues. Aye, Corporal Chowder, 'e brought th' powder.

Not to mention we love the stained glass imagery. A Wonderfully artist and a great quick story.

This is a great book. I bought this book because my husband enjoyed this book when he was a child. He still enjoys this book today and reads it to our 6 year old son.

The lesson we learned from this book is there are always some problems no matter where you go.

I highly recommend this book because it's fun to read, educational, and it never gets old.

My dad was, is, and will always be a huge Dr. Seuss fan. He read this, as well as all the other Seuss classics, to me as a child. I had a devil of a time finding it a few years ago; had to special order it. It has an honored place on my bookshelf.

It taught me two valuable lessons: 1) Tackle your problems instead of running away from them, and 2) The grass is not necessarily greener on the other side.

Those two bits of knowledge have stuck with me for many years and led me through many challenging times. Thank you, Dr. Seuss!

What can I say, Dr Seuss is popular for a good reason. These are fun for all ages. The rhyming, the cute stories, the good morals. These books make reading for homework fun.

This was my favorite Dr. Seuss, and one of the books that stuck with me. I came across it recently while I also happened to be reading Campbell's Transformations of Myth Through Time.

A young man, beset with the travails of life, sets off to find paradise. The premise having been set, this story is actually predominantly about his many encounters and experiences on the road to paradise -- how he gets conned, imperiled, left to the mercy of the elements, enlisted into a battle he has nothing to do with, lost and alone in a crowd, etc. Having risen to the occasion repeatedly, he arrives at (literally) the door to paradise a changed man. In the end, Dr. Seuss leaves open question of what paradise really is.

This is an archetypal Hero's Journey.

And there is another parallel. Campbell often talked about the danger of concretizing the symbols -- for example that there is a physical holy land, the place where your myth takes place, to which you as a human being must physically travel to touch divinity. The alternative is to recognize your myth as metaphoric, and to recognize that the divinity of your God is your own divinity, and to sanctify and make holy the land and the place where you are, etc. 'Solla Sollew' speaks to this theme.

Can't really add much more than what everyone else has already said. I'll just add that this is my very favorite Dr. Seuss book... great story and great illustrations.

ISBN 0399231935 - A quick glance through the pages of the board book edition from G. P. Putnam's Sons didn't give me high hopes for this book, but I have - once again - been surprised by what can work in a board book!

The owl and the pussycat hop in a boat and head out to sea, where Owl proposes in song. They buy a ring from a pig and are married by a turkey... and that, you have to know, hardly tells the tale at all.

In few, very well-chosen, words, Lear's story can hardly be done justice in a simple recap. Jan Brett's illustrations are just slightly less difficult to put into words - the detail initially seemed to me to be a negative: young children tend to like simpler, less busy, illustrations. I think this is one time they will happily learn to love the busy-ness. The remarkable detail of everything, from Owl's feathers to the individual fronds on the palm trees, adds gorgeous depth to the book.

In addition, a second love story - told only in pictures - takes place, courtesy of Brett. Pussycat carries a yellow fish (we're going to call that one a girl) in a bowl onto the boat and the fish is seen on every page. Underwater, another yellow fish is seen "talking" to other underwater animals and each one he talks to joins him as he follows his trapped-in-a-bowl love, until Owl and Pussycat unknowingly have an underwater parade following them. Is everyone eventually with the one they love? Of course they are! Very well-worth picking up for your short person!!

This is a beautifully illustrated version of _The Owl and the Pussycat_. My three-year-old son absolutely loves looking at the whimsical pictures of the fish and other sealife that are abundant in this book. The pictures are done with beautiful colors and have their own story.

What a beautiful version of Edward Lear's poem. I've always been a James Marshall fan, but this book is absolute tops for his illustrations. The colors are glorious, the characters, as his always are, deftly and lovingly handled. I understand that it was his last work, and it's a shame that it is out of print. Buy it, save it, and pass it around.

Jan Brett's Caribbean-inspired illustrations for the classic Edward Lear poem are teeming with life, and the effect is stunning. The colors, textures, and shapes are a visual treat. Each page also has a different pattern of "straw" border, adorned with a different tropical flower.

The pictures overflow with detail, to the point where there's even a sub-story (pardon the pun) involving two yellow fish.

I didn't give it the full 5 stars because the way the text is broken up across spreads makes it difficult to read the poem with any kind of flow, and because some of Brett's admittedly gorgeous illustrations could (and perhaps should) have had more of a connection to the text. For one notable example -- there's no pot of honey on the boat, and we never get a look at the money wrapped up in the five-pound note!

But there's no denying the beauty of the illustrations, and the Caribbean theme works surprisingly well. This is a great book for anyone -- for newcomers to the splendid silliness of the poem as well as for old fans of the poem who are looking for an edition with fabulous illustrations.

I have always liked Lear's rhymes, especially this one, but more than the rhyme, it's the illustrations in this version that I like. We live in Florida and all our sub-tropical and tropical flora and fauna is in this book, beautifully illustrated and very recognizable to my 3 year old daughter. Following along with the secondary story of the two damsel fish (I think they're damselfish, but if they're not, the fault is my fish identification skills, not Brett's illustration) is really fun for her too. A bit further south, but still full of recognizable plants for us Floridians, is another of Jan Brett's books, "The Umbrella."

Judith Sherman's Say the Name can be seen as a theodicy that arises out of the Jewish tradition and in response to the events of the Holocaust. In poetry and prose we see, on the one hand, the horror of human evil, and on the other, the hope and meaning that arises out of tragedy in the form of poetic expression and imagination. Sherman a provides vivid and horrific account of physical pain, mental suffering, and moral wickedness. In a moving passage, Sherman recounts:

Today a woman runs suddenly from the Appell line--she runs towards the electrified fence. The dogs get to her before she reaches it. Screaming, she tries to put push the dog away...The animal is not called back, he attacks until there is no more movement. Every horrified one of us wants to rush and help--no one does. Silence. There are so many of us here, how are we so crushed into silence and inaction? The reason right there, in front of us--they watch us closely, provocatively, hand on the trigger and dogs at the ready--hoping for another futile sacrifice...We are filled with rage and pity and helplessness and are paralyzed by their brutality (102).

This passage confronts us with the reality of evil as experienced by Jewish women in German concentration camps. Based on this reality, it is not difficult to see how people who believe in God, and have a particular image of God, can question or call into account the God in whom they believe. Sherman's account reveals a questioning of the divine. Is God not outraged? Does God not hear what is going on? Indeed, where is God? "Where is the judge? Where are you, judge? Is there a judge?" (117).

Her response to these questions is to invoke biblical imagery and to invite God to come and witness, and account for the tragedy that has taken place. In her poem, "The Invitation," she invokes the imagery of Jacob's ladder and asks that God come down the ladder and witness the sights "not fit/ for Godly eyes/ not fit for thee/ is it for me?/ who will make it fit for Thee?" (118). Or again, having experienced so much pain, she requests that God take on her pain, "You have it/ and be/ branded" (122). Does God identify with our pain? Is God in solidarity with those who suffer? It seems that Sherman is inviting God to be present with the women beaten down by guards, chased by dogs, shot to death, and with those who have to witness these events without the ability to respond. It is a moving book in which the author has mustered up the courage to recount her experiences and to "say the name."

How can there be so much evil in the world? More pointedly, how can an all powerful and loving God allow such evil? Where is God? These and other tough questions are asked by Judith Sherman as she reflects on her time spent at the Nazi concentration camp Ravensbruck at the young age of fourteen. Combining narrative prose with short poignant poetry, Sherman walks the reader through the painful and emotional events, describing her sense of frustration at a God who has abandoned her and the rest of the Jewish people. Most accounts of the Holocaust elicit deep emotions and feelings and this book certainly does that, but in a unique way. The prose unfolds the details of her story and then all of a sudden you become struck by the overwhelming emotion and powerful insight of a short three or four line poem. This combination has a strong effect and throughout the book the poems remain clearly in your memory and serve to give more meaning to the details and descriptions of the horrendous struggles of a concentration camp.

With detailed descriptions, Sherman focuses on everyday objects, such as a pair of shoes, and transforms them from their ordinary status into things that have a greater significance and meaning. The transformation and emphasis on objects shows how Sherman's outlook on life has changed and through this outlook Sherman has finally been given the voice to tell her story, giving the reader the chance to connect to it in a moving and profound way. Reading this book will give new meaning to the themes of theodocy, family, memory, the human spirit, and most of all will give you a new outlook on life.

After having learned at length about the atrocities of the Holocaust in history class every year of middle and high school, and after hearing personal accounts from my many Jewish classmates about their grandparents in concentration camps, I felt almost overloaded with news of the horrors and wasn't particularly excited about reading another book about the Holocaust.

But Say the Name is different. Judith Sherman manages to convey the depths of despair and suffering that occurred during her time in hiding, in concentration camps, on a death march without any trace of stridency, but rather with her own quiet and simple words that are humbly defiant and moving. She communicated to me, for the first time really, how it feels to not have any control over what happens to your body, to be stripped of a voice, to be robbed of a name. This poetic novel, more than any other I have read on the topic, speaks to the psychological death as well as the physical one that the Nazis inflicted on so many millions. Judith Sherman resists both, however, and her spirit is evident in the fact that she was able to share in writing her deepest and most agonizing thoughts and memories about her experience.

Another aspect of the book is Sherman's relationship with God, which is a complex and vacillating one. In some passages it almost seems as if she is referring to a lover who has betryaed her, and she is filled with sadness, anger, longing, and ultimately a love that she will not forsake. She does not, however, blindly accept "the will of God," instead demanding over and over, "where are you?" If God should be praised for the blessings he gave her, then he should also be held accountable for his apparent abandonment of his people.

To read this book is to explore memory, theodicy, religion, family, genocide, the human spirit, and will leave you saying its name.

Say the Name is a powerful and poignant account of a young woman's experience in Nazi imprisonment during WWII. After years of silence, Judith Sherman was compelled to come out and tell her story, not only for herself and her family, but for the millions of other who had no voice. The unnamed victims of human suffering in camps like Ravensbruck cannot be put away with the history books. They are people who were made to be things, but they were not things. Sherman describes in her prose and poetry how the life that they had known before the war melted away, and was replaced by a reality that terrorized, brutalized, and destroyed. This reality was the dehumanizing force of the Nazi regime.

I wonder how an author who is so modest with her prose, who even wrote that "words fail" to capture the "monumental horror" of the Holocaust, is able to to move the reader with her words with such remarkable ease. Her voice resonates with the child, the daughter, the mother, the friend, and the person who had to ask God, "Why?". Sherman's writing, and especially her poetry, are evocative and elegant for sure, but I think that it is the place that she is writing from that creates this feeling of "being there' with her. Her pain and the pain of those she names is human pain. Their loss is human loss. As people we have lost something by allowing evil like this to exist in the world. It doesn't have to.

Her tale is not one of Jewish suffering but human suffering and survival. She recalls the ways she resisted the forces that sought to destroy her. Sherman's life was never the name when the war was over, which is to say that the experience never ended. However, she is able to take her pain and wordlessness and make something that helps others understand. I thank her for that. Sherman's book would be good for students of all ages and particularly those interested in the stories and history of the Holocaust. I guarantee this courageous little book will move you no matter what you're looking at it for. Her connections with human suffering are particularly intense regarding family loss, motherhood, friendship, the struggle with divine over the existence of evil, and the loss of the "ordinary things" we take for granted when we're home.

Judith Sherman's Say the Name is a survivor's account of a teenage girl's struggle with God and humanity in Ravensbruck concentration camp during the Holocaust. Sherman, now a wife, mother and grandmother living in the United States, writes her memoir some 50 to 60 years after the Nazi's carried out their "Final Solution."

Sherman's poetry and prose in this book reflect a loss of people, places and things that make up the fabric of a person's life, culture and beliefs. She is, at turns, angry and bewildered. She demands an accounting for these atrocities. But ultimately Sherman's quest for survival and her insistence on remembering the names of women who were killed conveys a sense of humanity and even of hope. This is Sherman's first book, and she is not a polished writer. She writes in fragments and one has the sense of poetry scribbled on napkins over the years and then included in the memoir. Her book is all the stronger for this.

The book is worth purchasing for the biographical background. His youth and adulthood were extremely tough and lonely. Hughes seems to have lost his religion early in life.

Excellent book and historical treasure that I intend to pass down to my grandchildren in the future.

I prefer his earlier stuff but there are poems in this book that make the entire thing worth it. Nude Young Dancer, Minstrel Song and countless others made me want to weep and smile. What can I say, I felt this guys pain...

If you haven't heard of Langston Hughes, I suggest that you purchase this, THE COLLECTED POEMS OF LANGSTON HUGHES, as an introduction to his style. Hughes was part of the definitive Harlem Renaissance Movement of the 1920s through the late 1940s, that was a very important period of time for African-Americans in the United States. For the first time, their voices were really being heard [and recognized] in the genres of music, writing, and sculpture, in this country.

This book is an amazing collection of five decades of his most powerful, intelligent and sensitive works. The poems start in 1921 through 1967. There are also several poems, written for children, that I didn't even realize Langston had penned! So beautiful and unexpected. What's more, one of his most well-known poems is featured, here, "What Happens to a Dream Deferred." Langston Hughes' views of race, society and social issues are truly timeless and compelling. For me, reading his works is like listening to a quiet, constant patter of rain on the rooftop, gradually growing with intensity, until the raindrops start flowing like teardrops from the great sky. That is how Hughes uses language. Essentially, he derives his beautiful rhythmic poetic language from an infinite river of words, he then pours them over on another and tells stories. This is truly the book to add to your poetry collection.

More than the exiled Eliott, greater than Walt Whitman, consistently clearer than Ginsberg, more powerful than Pound, freer than Frost, more American than Wallace Stevens, moreso even than the mighty Merton, here at long last is our greatest American poet receiving over-due respect.

A thick tome I purchased for my English learners which will instead fill my bed and my head for many cold and lonesome months ahead. Like the collected Poe, the collected Giovanni, an essential element to any American literature shelf, here for the first time meticulously researched and reported, with promise for more should any further works emerge. This is our American voice, clear and strong. This is the consummate volume of this great American poet, the one who wrote:

"( . . .) I've known rivers, ancient dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers."


May we once more grow deep with him, and by him. Read him, once more, here, complete and correct. Read him, and recall our America. Read him.

A Child's Christmas In Wales CD: And Five Poems
Hurrah! Now I won't have to wait for the radio to play Dylan Thomas reading his wonderful Child's Christmas every Christmas. Truly a beautiful recording of the other poems as well.

My goodness, these illustrations are ugly. They completely detract from the beauty of the language. Either read it out loud to a blind person or stick with the version illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman.

This reading of A Child's Christmas in Wales is tops! It wouldn't be Christmas for us without hearing Dylan Thomas tell his story. He recounts a holiday of simple, family and neighborhood doings, and paints a picture of snowy, seaside Wales of the 1920's.

I love this story, as do all my children, who, from their earliest years, have not much struggled with the density of the language nor the scatteredness of the story. 5 of my 8 great-grandparents are from Wales, and the remaining 3 have the blood in them as well, so maybe it is like drinking water for us.:-D Our minds are all scattered, and words, even English words ;-D, fall on us in clumps....which makes it doubly hard to keep a clean house. LOL

The sort of prose-poetry imaginative way of seeing and describing the world unique to Welshwomen and Welshmen and Welshchildren, which does not seek to keep up the pretense that history can be separated from myth, story and desire, and which requires loving with eyes wide open to [and eventually embracing] one's own and others' bumps, bruises and idiosyncracies included, is extraordinarily well represented here. So, by the way, is speaking and listening to the close and Holy darkness!

My favorite version isthe one illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman. To me she has captured the complexity of the Welsh personality best, though i have nothing to say against the other illustrators praised in these reviews. I DO have a warning for you: there are some skinny versions flying about which do not have the poem-story complete and correct. This sort of work cannot suffer removal or modification, IMHO.

gbg

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.

I enjoyed reading this - as well as my husband. It may look small but it packs quite a punch! Some are funny, some thought provoking and some just plain hot!

Steamy Erotic Poetry is a real pleasure. Without being vulgar it is VERY sensual. Solomon knows, admirably, that Aphrodite is a laughter loving goddess, furthermore, and running throughout his poems is a rich sense of humor. Finally, this is a book that is lovely and loving: a gift (as it was for us) for Valentine's Day.

John Solomon's book was incredibly well written and while it wasn't the longest book ever written it is well worth the money. I recommend that people pick up a copy of this book. And give it a shot. As a matter of a fact, one of my friend's have currently borrowed the book from me. She mentioned she enjoyed the book as well. On a side note, John's book arrived quickly and efficiently. Again, I really think people should buy a copy of this book.

Hmmm...

This is good stuff.

This man loves his wife, that's for sure!

As for me, to discover he is content while reading this book, is an understatement of the first degree.

John Solomon grants us the favour of an intimate glimpse at his sexual feelings towards his lady. It's cooking, hot and steamy as you can expect of a heating boiler. It makes your ears turn red and your head to sweat. I enjoyed the book very much. It's tangible, visible, perceptible and enjoyable when you are engaged in a similar liaison and can recognize the train of thoughts he is experiencing throughout the day.

With an exquisite taste of humor and sexual feelings, he plays with words and ties them like a string. This man has a delicate feeling for what the phenomenon of pleasure is doing to you as a male human being. A great lesson for many serious believing men to enjoy life with the girl of their dreams. And for women to learn a little more about the feelings and fantasies that are racing through the male head while admiring his love.

A final word must be said, this book is a danger to the dispassionate reader.

A nice job!

I bought the previous edition which inspired me to write a few poems in similar style... this new one is even better and I'm SO glad I bought it! Lovely, erotic thoughts, sexy ones and funny ones, expressed with economy of words. Thoughts and verses to share together and smile over, and revisit. Thank you for a real treat!

If you can get past an idiotic short introduction by Bill Murray, you'll enjoy a wonderful experience. Billy Collins has created true poetry that will make you think and laugh.

I heard Billy Collins speak in Wellington early one chilly Sunday morning. He commented that he was amazed anyone would want to get out of bed and listen to him on such a cold day ...he wouldn't! Of course we all thought it worth the effort, nothing beats hearing a really superb poet reading his own work superbly.I heartily recommend this cd, it's always in the most played pile near my cd player and on my ipod,so that I can listen to him any time.
A great selection of his work and interesting pre-ambles before each poem.

As always, Billy Collins is above and beyond in his poetry readings. Great humor, great heart and an accessibility rarely found in intellectual circles! You will fall in love with him and with poetry all over again.

This is a figure of speech of course - once upon a time... never mind, but you'd burn your dinner or if it's cooked, then the food on your fork will miss you mouth, if you try to cook or eat as you listen to Billy Collins read. It's a treat.

My high school students fell in love with Collins. Even the chronically apathetic perked up during his reading... use this in your classroom, and follow it up with selections from Poetry 180. You'll be glad you did.

This a great collection of poems from the past! If you enjoy whimsy, this is for you!

with eliot, a maximum of content is achieved through a FORM worked with a
care and conciousness not seen perhaps since the greeks. he understood,
as he once wrote, that the novel form ended with flaubert. in the centuries after picasso and stravinsky there is no place for anything in
literature which makes people remain sitting, whithout standing and perhaps dancing. the same thing could be said about pound, very different though very twin.

The Eliot of despair, the Eliot of 'Prufrock' and 'Wasteland' is contended with and overcome by the Eliot of the 'Quartets'. The message of modern mankind's meaninglessness, the broken fragments ( of Tradition) shored against his ruin is replaced by the vision of sacred turning, a Christian vision of redemption. Eliot is a writer whose work and life break down into these two distinct periods each of which has its champions in defining what is best in him.
As one raised on 'April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land' and 'Let us go then you and I when the evening is spread out against the sky, like a patient etherized upon a table' the most memorable lines are certainly of the first phase where it ends not with a bang but with a whimper.
Yet my admiration for the hypnotic power of Eliot's memorable lines is strongly qualified by my knowledge of his 'Burbank with a Baedaker, and Bluestein with a Cigar' with his all too fashionable literary anti- Semitism. Of course Eliot was not preaching death camps and extermination but he did connect his work to the tradition of Christian Anti- Semitism.
Thus I have always had difficulty being comfortable with my 'enjoying of Eliot's poetry. And I have never been able to sympathetically read 'The Quartets.' They have always seemed to me to be too impersonal characterless and abstract.
Eliot who for most of the century strode the English Departments as if he were a colossus did noble work in reviving interest in 'The Metaphysicals' but somehow failed in my mind to write a poetry humanly rich in the deepest sense.

When you think of the best poets ever, T.S. Eliot is one of those that comes to mind. His work is well crafted, intelligent, beautifully written, and has a flow to it that few poets can match. And this is a fine collection for the Eliot lover or for the reader unfamiliar with Eliot. It's divided into several sections. The first section is his Prufrock section, poems from 1917, which contains probably his finest poems: "Prufrock", "Preludes" "Rhapsody on a Windy Night", "Hysteria", among others. Then there is the Poems 1920 section which also contains many fine poems ("Sweeney Erect" and "The Hippopotamus" being my favorites). Then follows his masterpiece The Wasteland. Then The Hollow Men which is followed by the wonderful Ash Wednesday. Then the Ariel Poems (which contains "Journey of the Magi"). Then there are two unfinished poems, "Sweeney Agonistes" and "Coriolan" which I thought were weak. Maybe they would have been great had he ever finished them. Then there is a section called minor poems followed by the mediocre "Choruses from 'The Rock.' And then there is what I consider to be his true masterpiece, "Four Quartets." And the book finishes with some occasional verses, one of which is a sweet and touching poem to his wife. This is a great collection of poems.

Yep, this is a great collection of Eliot's works. I initially found out about Eliot throught the Movie 'Apocalypse Now' in which Brando is heard reciting the poem 'The Hollow Men'. The poem sounded so good I hunted it down and came across this little book.

My favourite poems would have to be 'The Hollow Men', 'Love song of Prufrock', 'Ash Wednesday' and 'Rannoch, by Glencoe (perfectly captured, drive through Rannoch and you'll see ;-)

Yep, definetly worth a read.