Poets Books

In the late 1970s, when the Mets really hit the skids and the Yankees got good again, it became necessary, if you were a kid in the Tri- State
area, to at least watch the Yankees, perhaps even to grudgingly root for them.  Forced into this spiritually untenable position, I chose to only
root for the scrubs, which made Cliff Johnson my favorite player.  I'll never forget the game where he tagged a pitch and Phil Rizzuto started
screaming that : "That one's outta here", bringing joy to the heart of every Heatchliff fan, only to have his towering popup caught by the
second baseman.  

"The Scooter" was easy to laugh at, with his myriad phobias, his propensity for saying unintentionally offensive things about minorities, his
tendency to leave the ballpark early when the Yankees were home, etc. But then there began appearing in The Village Voice a most
remarkable feature : verbatim text from Scooter's broadcasts rendered as poetry. We were suddenly confronted with the frightening prospect
that Scooter was not only making sense, but serving up literature, even profundity. Consider the wisdom, about baseball and about life [....]

As it turns out, this kind of exercise even has a name, it's called "found poetry." The Rizzuto poems are as good as any I've seen[...].

At any rate, this book is a hoot and once you read it you'll never again think of Rizzuto as just a good glove man, nor listen to a baseball
broadcast without noticing the frequently poetic nature of the announcer's line of patter.

GRADE : A

This literary gem is destined to be handed down from parent to child for generations to come.

Long before there was politics, or correctness, there was Phil Rizzuto. Rizzuto ably scoops up the essense of morality and ethics and fires to first with more deftness than Shakespeare, or that guy from Ireland (I can't remember his name--not Joyce, though; it was somebody else.) The poem we always relate and remember around the old campfire--when we go camping, and we have a fire, is the story Scooter tells in the honored oral tradition of Homer: of live-trapping squirrels in his attic and then letting them loose somewhere over by Yogi's house.

No doubt Rizzuto will forever be linked to the other great American Poets: Frost, Angelou, and Walden.

Some people are good at laying down sacrifice bunts, and some people are good at poetry. But nowadays so few people excel at both. Phil Rizzuto is that rare double-threat, and that's why this book is essential for anyone who likes bunts or poems.

My only complaint is that the editors have left out my all-time favorite Rizzuto moment, which was the time circa 1980 when Rizzuto and Frank Messer spent part of a day game discussing whether or not gorillas can swim. The answer proved elusive, but I have since learned that they can.

Even though it's a short book, a little bit goes a long way with this kind of thing. Use in moderation.

Plus, I miss Bill White's good-natured chuckling.

Still, these "poems" are pretty good at bringing back long-gone hot summer nights.

For me, nothing better epitomizes my age of baseball innocence than falling in love with the WPIX broadcasts of Phil Rizzuto, Frank Messer and Bill White during the late 1970s. This offbeat collection of the Scooter's unintentional poetry in his broadcasts is a graphic illustration of why Rizzuto was a true joy in the broadcast booth even if he wasn't a professional in the Mel Allen-Red Barber mold. I loved the format so much that I've actually reviewed the hundreds of old Yankee radio and telecast tapes in my collection searching for supplements to the collected verse of the Scooter and have found enough that could fill a sequel volume. Thanks to Seely and Pyer for this wonderful collection that no Yankee fan should be without.

The condition was better than advetised. My father was delighted that the cd was there. Thanks for the good work.

Some of Dylan thomas's greatest work.
I spend many hours just browsing through and marvelling at his command of the English Language. Recommended for all lovers of poetry.

Dylan Thomas is immortal for the phrase "rage against the dying of the light", and probably should be. He had a real gift for the music in words. At first it seems that they should all be set to music, but as you hear them and let them play in your mind, you realize they are already their own setting. Some of his poems have been set to music, but none improved.

While I praise his real and powerful gifts, I also want to note that there is a certain adolescence in his themes of dying and death that, for me, diminish his greatness. However, it has and continues to attract the young who, in the abundance of everthing that is youth, think it mature and so, so, sophisticated to pine for death. For example in his own epitaph, he is upset with the fact that he has to die and blames his mother for bringing him into a world where his fate is to feed worms. Please! This from a man who basically drank himself to death at a sadly early age (not tragically - drinking yourself to death is hardly tragic, it is stupid).

For me, his early poem "Woman on Tapestry" is powerfully beautiful and demonstrates his gifts and strengths. Or take a look at the vitality and rhythm of "The Countryman's Return" (It opens: "Embracing Low-falutin' London (said the odd man in a country-pot, his hutch in the fields, by a mother-like henrun)". That's pretty good stuff.

The CD with Dylan Thomas' voice is a nice addition because the music is all the more obvious.

As a reader of his own poems Dylan Thomas has no equal. The immense power, the great musicality , the depth of feeling are simply above those of other writers I know. Compare the tepid TS Eliot slowly measuring out his syllables, to the booming flow of Thomas' poetry.
But the voice on the C.D. is one thing, and the poems as we read them another.
The poems are often to me too unclear and mysterious. Yet they at their best have a richness, a power in feeling, a strength uniquely their own.
In his greatest poems there are great memorable lines' Do not go gentle into that good night, Rage, rage against the dying of the light " Or at the end of another great poem about dying , "After the first death there is no other"
As I feel his verse Thomas belongs with Wallace Stevens and Gerald Manley Hopkins and Yeats and Keats and Shakespeare as great makers and masters of their own special music.
What a treasure.

If you truly are a lover of great poetry than this book should be very satisfying. Over the years there have been several volumes that have tried to attempt to collect some of the best poems by Dylan Thomas but none has come close to how complete and accurate this book is. THE POEMS OF DYLAN THOMAS, collects practically every poem that he ever wrote during his lifetime. All of his greatest and best loved poems are here and an added bonus is the CD in the back flap of the book(a special treat by all means) which has the acclaimed poet reciting eight short poems which are also included in the book. Dylan Thomas only lived to the age of 39, but in his brief run here on planet earth he wrote some of the finest, romantic and beautiful poems of his generation. Poetry scholars and literary historians have called him the greatest poet of the 20th century and although there have been many great poets (too many to mention) he stands as one of the most well known and best loved poetic geniuses of all times. Great book of poems that I highly recommend for anyone that has ever been moved and stimulated by the beauty and euphoria that poetry like the ones contained in this beautiful book can bring to a person's soul.

I should say that I'm only 200 pages into this book, but I simply wanted to relate how steady it has been to now in its blend of chronicle, elucidation, and detail. Particularly impressive is how Kenner uses an often very dense (Jamesian, Pound-ish) style of commentary to achieve this. I glanced through a copy of his selected essays (`Historical Fictions') and was disappointed to see that in them it often fell flat, whereas here it flows. Strong works of criticism often seem to fail with first intrusion of any flourishings of "style". I think that part of the revelation of Eliot the critic was his careful push away from a certain weightiness of thought while retaining depth and the critic's persona (which until then might have been all the rage, but for Eliot must have been a conscious decision, and is all the better for it in contrast with many of the zigzagging claims and stances that have come in the interim since). In critique it is the thinking that counts.

Pound oozes style, but his thought is what breaks the waves.

There is a sentence that one doesn't know what to do with. Does it express what it should? It is mine and I would say it needs to be modified. This is a 500 page book and it has had lapses so far. But like Pound's poetics, the stretching into the peripherals of Kenner's way of writing wins dividends and he wanders into prose critical summations complete with all the strength of good poetry.

The "Era" of the title tells you that this is also a book of people and the events around them, and Kenner paints the literary picture in continuously brief and slightly worn strokes. Here he can sometimes get a little misty, perhaps even dewy. A wide range of references will tend to rush away from the events given the slightest notice. But this is Pound's era, and how else are we to see the man? I shall read on and discover.

not so much an ruk, as a demonstration of squid's panoramic influence on modernism, kenner's book remains one of da mostest ighly praised exemplars of american literary criticism. conveyin as much biography as analysis-and evun more cultural istory, kenner's sui generis ang leaps from topic to tale to close readin, wiv little effort at transition, in an angular act of synthesis dat demands acts of cultural leap-frogging much dig squid's own cantos (though mercifully less strenuous). kenna offers suggestive accounts not only of squid and modernism, but of da liberatin role of chinese poetry, translation, greek syntax, istory and economics, wyndham lewis, eliot, enry james, williams, and da objectivists. kenna imself savvily refrains from attemptin to define "a squid tradition," coz he needn't. squid imself was-famously-the mostest important literary taxonomist and canon-maker of american modernism; and dis book, wiv its convincin accounts of da almost servile fawnings paid to squid by da igh modernists, shows why squid was so central: he was at once da mostest advanced and deeply traditional literary reada of is era. kenna shows ow fa squid, "all poets were contemponareous," and though few could claim is readerly breadf, squid's eclectic cultural borrowings (a should i say thefts) expanded da palette to include influences wiv which recent avant-gardists is only beginnin to reckon. indeed mostest of squid's influence as bin simplified to is emphasis on da desired objectivity of poetic lingo, or, as williams redefined it, to da notion dat a poem is "a machine made out of lingo." shared by da objectivists, and, more complexly, by da lingo poets, dis linguistic outlook as become one of da crucial trends in experimental poetics.

Intimidated by Pound's Cantos, I picked up Kenner's book in hopes of a pony. In fact, there are more text specific companions (see my other reviews) but this work provides a fascinating, invaluable overview of the modernists and their work. From the opening encounter with Henry James to Pound's last days in New Jersey and Italy, Kenner walks by the poet's side through the Cantos and his career. The sections on Wyndham Lewis, Buckminster Fuller, Clifford Douglas, and T. S. Eliot are illuminating, but so are the explorations of more obscure writers like Ernest Fenellosa, Guido Cavalcanti, and Henri Gaudier. The author's knowledge of the world, like Pound's, seems almost limitless. Readers looking for nods to contemporary literary theory may be disappointed since there's little queer, feminist, Marxist, or Lacanian critique, but as a conventional and weighty glimpse at influences and allusions in the Cantos, it's excellent. Reading Kenner is probably a lot like being in a lecture class with him. However dull it may be on the cutting edge, the sheer glare of brilliance and erudition leaves you dazzled and eager to go the original source for more light.

For years I didn't get Pound, and I once asked a friend if the Emperor had no clothes. "No, but to get Pound you have to become Pound," she said. That remains one of the truest things I've heard about Pound, and about the modern poetic he inspired. From the brave spirits who hope to apprehend his writing, Pound demands a total commitment to his manner of thinking, his myriad languages, his vast reading, his eccentric economic/social theories, his storehouse of memories, and the evolution of his ideas over nearly a century. What he brought to poetry was the idea that poems aren't ornamented expressions of deep feeling, but precise instruments for exploring politics, religion, history, economics, science and just about everything human.

Hugh Kenner came closer to being Pound than anyone (though Peter Makin gives him a good run for his money), and "The Pound Era" isn't so much a work of literary criticism as it is an intricate daybook, or maybe a modern novel, on coming to terms with the demands Pound makes on a reader. It's a one-of-a-kind study that should be read and re-read by anyone even half-interested in Pound's achievement. But it also (to my mind at least) shares some of the Master's flaws as Kenner makes great, sometimes showy, occasionally mannered paratactic leaps between seemingly unrelated details to convey a picture of Pound's age. It's well worth looking past the stylistic excesses though for Kenner's unparalleled explication of one of the best known and least understood 20th-century poets.

This is an impressive read. I came to it at just the right time in my life. I had been reading the poems of Marianne Moore and Buckminster Fuller as well as studying Ancient Greek. This is a dense but ultimately very rewarding book. It incorporates passages of troubadour lyric and Greek and name-drops a lot of historical characters with which you may or may not be familiar. For those interested in Pound and his times, I highly recommend it. For those unsure, check out the excerpts that Amazon provides. This is not everyone's cup of tea. But, as I said, I came to this at the right time in my life.

First, you have to understand that I am a confirmed lover of Jeffers' poetry. Then you can understand why I have fallen back in love with this volume and recommend it as a great introduction.

Although I had read a few of his poems in a college anthology, this volume introduced me to a more serious love of Jeffers back in the late '60s. I first saw it in the hip pocket of a young man with a backpack and ponytail when we met on a hiking trail in the Rockies. Like I suspect many others, that young man's enthusiasm got me to read Jeffers--from the same paperback--more seriously, and I became thoroughly infatuated with Jeffers long, mighty lines and stark but beautiful images.

When I paid more attention to Jeffers, however, I no longer liked this anthology. It seemed shallow; the selections far from those I would have made myself. (Of course, those selections changed every few weeks.) Had I written a review during those years, I would have lamented the lack of the volume that has since been made available by Tim Hunt's excellent volume of selected works, and recommended this only because no other introduction was available. I was, I guess, a Jeffers snob.

Now, however, I have a renewed appreciation for this volume. The essential poems are largely included, the shortest of Jeffers' long poems (the powerful and comparatively accessable "Roan Stallion") is included, and the size and price are unintimidating. I find myself happily purchasing copies to give as gifts to friends willing to gingerly give Jeffers a try, and it seldom fails to be appreciated at least somewhat. I own just about everything Jeffers wrote, yet this volume is still the one I take with me on airplanes. I am over my snob period, and love this volume again.

If you don't know Jeffers, I recommend this volume highly as a great way to learn about a poet once considered America's best ever. (If you do know Jeffers, you don't need this review.)

I was first introduced to the work of Robinson Jeffers in an essay by Edward Abbey in which he spoke about the stark unpretentious beauty of Jeffers' poem "Vulture" and from the moment I read it I have been a great fan ever since.

Selected Poems, by Robinson Jeffers includes a great sampling of poems that spans Jeffers entire career, while also including the long poem Roan Stallion, which gives the reader a feel for Jeffers more ambitious longer works such as Cawdor, Tamar and Dear Judas.
It seems that, while some bristle at what could be seen as Jeffers at times misanthropic themes, I believe it is precisely the stark objectivity in poems such as "Original Sin", "We are Those People" and "Vulture" that give his work such vitality and importance.
Thus, what some erroneously perceive as Jeffers' misanthropy, can be better understood as a poet's attempt to bring about the realization of a biocentric view of the universe, which attempts to express the real indifference of Nature. In doing so, Jeffers re-integrates humanity into the natural world, in which every living being is subject to the constant cycles of life, death and rebirth, which is the ultimate law of Nature.

Jeffers' work is not poetry merely for poetry's sake, which is all too often the case in the work produced today, it is Nature translated into the written word--a poetry of the Earth and a celebration of not only life, but also of the mountains, rivers, earth and sky, that provides shelter and nourishes us all.

Robinson Jeffers is considered by many scholars to be one of the greatest 20th century American regional poets. Anytime superlatives are used to describe someone or something in this manner there is room for debate. I do not have the academic credentials to enter into any debate concerning the degree of Jeffers' greatness, but I do weigh in with those who highly praise his work. Though born in the Eastern portion of the United States, Jeffers settled in Carmel, California early in his life and spent his last 58 years there. The rugged California coast coupled with the Pacific Ocean provided much of the imagery in his poetry. Included here are several of these poems such as "Morro Bay," "The Purse Seine," and "The Place for No Story" to name a few.

The poems chosen for inclusion in SELECTED POEMS are spread across the last 40 years of his life, 1924 thru 1962, the last few published posthumously. In addition to covering the greater portion of his mature productive years, the poems selected offer a sampling of most of his styles and themes.

One of his earlier narrative poems, "Roan Stallion," has been chosen for inclusion. This powerful poem invokes myth-ritual, theology, racial memory, shock for shock's sake, and blood-lust to name but a few of its themes and undercurrents. "Roan Stallion" is meant to be read, not analyzed, but it, along with the "Tamara" narratives have been analyzed to death by multiple critics and students of Freud. Because his themes in poems such as this were uncomfortable for many people, his popularity as a poet has suffered.

In addition, and again unfortunately for his popularity, Jeffers was an outspoken isolationist during WW II, and wrote a number of poems with themes critical of U.S. involvement in the war. Among those included here are "We Are Those People," "So Many Blood Lakes," and "Calm and Full the Ocean."

Tor House, Jeffers' home in Carmel, and the adjacent Hawk Tower which he built with his own hands for his wife, Una, are open to the public on a limited basis. On two weekend afternoons most weeks, there are two or three docent led tours open to about ten people per tour (reservations a necessity), This book is carried on the tour by the docent, and at appropriate places in the house, garden, or tower, the tour stops and poems are read aloud by volunteers.

My favorite poem for reading on the tour is "The Bed By the Window."

It starts with:

. . . . ."I chose the bed downstairs by the window for a good

. . . . . . . .death bed

. . . . .When we built the house; it is ready waiting."

And concludes with:

. . . . ."When the patient daemon behind the screen of sea-rock

. . . . . . . .and sky

. . . . .Thumps with his staff and calls thrice 'Come Jeffers'"

Jeffers wrote this poem in 1932, kept the bed empty and waiting, and, some 30 years later, in 1962, when he knew he was dying, had himself moved into it and did die there. Reading that poem aloud, while standing beside the bed and looking out the window toward the sea was a one of a kind emotional experience for me. I'm glad that I volunteered to read this poem aloud on that occasion. SELECTED POEMS has had special meaning for me ever since.

Jeffers was a phenomenon. You will love it or hate it. Depends on your world view. It has a spiritual basis but is not religious. It is pantheistic; can you stand it?

It's not about consumerism, or the present moment. It's about time and the river (with apologies to Thomas Wolfe). His shorter poems are sometimes breathtaking in their beauty; his epics may please those who read romance novels.

Warning: you may be changed beyond redemption by reading this.

Recently while planning a trip to California, my mother came across a historic home tour of Tor House, the home of poet Robinson Jeffers. I love poetry so I read one of his poems posted on a web site, but it didn't appeal to me. However the house did. I met my family in Ca. and at the end of our vacation we toured Tor House. On the tour was an English professor who told us he taught poetry and spent a good deal of time discussing Jeffers' poems in his classes. Also, the docent's account of Jeffers' life was so intriguing. I realized I had given up on him too soon. My favorite story was that Jeffers apprenticed himself to the stonemason who built the original house so that he could build a tower for his wife Una, the love of his life. They lived simply and fairly happily with their twin sons. He was an incredible lover of nature and animals, and chose the hawk as his symbol. Their house is covered with hawks and unicorns (Una's symbol.) It is so interesting that a man who wrote so passionately against violence identified himself with the traditional symbol of war, the hawk, but this creature meant something completely different to him. Power and freedom.

I picked up this book in the gift shop. Opening it in the middle, I read "Contemplation of the Sword." The poem's dark, austere honesty is balanced by the seductive imagery, sinuous phrases and dramatic punctuation. It's obvious he hated violence and detested the anger that rose in him for hating violence. He loved his wife and children fiercely and wanted to keep them safe. He's a very passionate, emotional man and that comes through vividly in his poems. I love that his work is still relevant today. The emotions that he felt are emotions that I feel. These beautiful poems are works that will compellingly push the reader to think about the world, our place in it and our responsibility for it. The poetry is so rich, ripe and fluid that I hunger for more. Fortunately, the Stanford University Press has compiled a massive five volume set of Jeffers' poems. The bounty is abundant.

This has to be a book which will live through history as one of the best of the best. It's not your usual book. Not your usual Christian book. Not your usual poetry book. Not your usual story.

It's all of those, and still a look at the creation of manking through Jeaus' life and death. Not like anything i've ever read. Give it a try. I don't think you will regret it.

I think of "The Singer" as a collapsing of the four Gospels in the traditional Christian Bible. Told in allegorical fantasy or science fiction this was one of my favorite books when I was a teenager and it introduced me to Calvin Miller's fiction. It isn't easy to read, things jump around a bit, and are at the same time condensed, but I also remember sharing it with non-Christian friends who thought it was pretty cool too. As an adult now I can see more the Gospel of John is the strongest influence on the work but there is also a strong role for women in it.

I read this book a few years after it was first published. I was a young teen and in search of.... meaning. Throughout the years, I have thought of this book, thought of re-reading it, but didn't want to lose my memory of how gently, how beautifully it tells the story of Christ. I remembered it with such fondness that I didn't dare risk re-reading it.

Finally, I've decided it's time to take a drink from the well Calvin Miller created in The Singer once again. I'm sure it will be just as refreshing as it was the first time I read it, and... perhaps I'll enjoy it even more this time!

This allegory of the life and death of Jesus Christ has several pages of illustrious and thought provoking poetry. Unfortunately, the majority of its content falls short of brilliance. I think that it is a nice book for devotional reflections, but aside from that, it has no real artistic value. My rating is 2.7.

This is one of those books I read over and over again. I have read it probably 20 times since my first reading. Calvin Miller puts biblical stories into narrative poems that are so well written they force you to turn the page again and again. This book is the first in the Singer Trilogy, followed by The Song and The Finale. It is a poetic retelling of three biblical books: The Singer parallels the 4 Gospels, The Song retells the story of Acts, and The Finale is Miller's version of the book of Revelation.

Miller writes explicitly Christian fantasy in these books. He is also widely known for his non-fiction AND Christian life application books.

The Singer is a powerful retelling of the life of Christ, where instead of Jesus and The Gospel you have the Singer and his song. His song, if you are open to it, can bring healing and restoration. The World-Hater, wants to destroy both the Singer and his star song. Miller's words moved me to tears the first time I encountered them. The story is so well written, it can be read over and over without losing its freshness. The book is also excellently illustrated by Chicago artist Joe DeVelasco. The drawings done in pen and Ink style add to the power of the story by transporting you into the events.

No matter how many times over I reread this book, it is always fresh and new and draws me into the story of Christ in a different way. It is truly a classic and a treasure for any bookshelf. Each time I pick these up and reread them, I find a deepening of my relationship with Christ, and of my prayer life.

Miller also has a Symphonic Trilogy that retells different stories from the book of Genesis. The two I owned were A Requiem for Love and A Symphony in Sand. As far as I can tell, there are also 2 stand-alone books by Miller in this style that are often compared to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Lewis's Narnia. They are The Valiant Papers, an account of a guardian angel's experiences, and The Philippian Fragment, the retelling of the book of Philippians from the New Testament. I have owned most of these and lent them out to not be returned. I now have The Singer Trilogy, Valiant, and Singer Trilogy 3-in-1 hardcover. Over the next few weeks I will review those I still have, but cannot encourage you strongly enough to pick them up if you find them in a used bookstore. They are all great.

Over the next few weeks, I plan on reviewing some of the others that I still have from this author. And if I find the others again, I will review them. (It has just been too long since I lent them out and did not get them back for me to review them from memory.)

Other Miller Books:
The Singer
The Song
The Finale
The Valiant Papers
The Philippian Fragment (Currently OP)

Rigoberto Gonzalez makes it seem so easy: his poems sing with a clear, uncluttered voice about our quotidian existence. But don't be fooled. There is great craft in those easy, flowing lines. This is a beautiful, slender book of poems; a dazzling debut.

I read this book for a summer class in college and I was blown away! The poems are definitely a cut above. And I'm one of those hypercritical readers of poetry. This one you can't put down. A warning to those who scare easily. Don't read these right before you go to bed they will haunt your dreams. Check out that man who distributes nightmares poem.

I am amazed how this poet manages to find the beauty in his community; how he manges to shape the darkness, like clay, scattered throughtout the experiences of people often left out of American literature. Fieldworkers, widows, migrants all are given room to exist on the page. The lives of these people are explored and reconstructed in a manner that doesn't scream "victim". Instead, the poet makes the reader aware of the almost casual beauty surrounding these characters. It is this insistence on protraying these characters in an "honest" light without injecting ethnocentric values into the poems that makes the poems resound, even after the pages rest on the shelf. These poems remind me of a line by Paul Monette--"people who were always singing and we were the song". Other Chicano poets have, lately, failed to remember in a way that seems new. Gary Soto, Alberto Rios, and Lorna Dee Cervantes, to me, are the holy trinity of Chicano poetry because they posses the tools of the poet: craft, beauty and a community to write about. Rigoberto Gonazlez will join the ranks of these three.

Reading Rigoberto Gonzalez's poetics was a feast, a delight on a snowy night in New England. Having just returned from Michoacan, I savored the poet's use of space, diction, and lyricism, mapping a necessary poetics in the American imaginary.

It is clear that the poet is meticulous with language. He uses the senses to their maximum potential and creates something wonderful that is poetry. As an aficionado of poetry, I so anticipate such caliber of poetry and prose from Rigoberto Gonzalez in the future.

In the poem "Philandera..." the poet writes of "crocheted creations...extended only with the failure of crops: six doilies bought a week's nixtamal; a tablecloth kept even the chicken feet fat." This metaphor-izes how I felt about this marvelous collection. When one is feeling low for some reason, one can read these poems to still feel the beauty of the universe, in those details right under one's nose. A hint of sadness lingers throughout the book, only to heighten the redemption found in lucidity. If one sees as this poet does, one can never become nihilistic. Rigoberto Gonzalez's poems are "crocheted creations" which are like his Morelos: "puckered and kissable."

Perhaps one of the more interesting parts of this book, I thought, was the introspective view of the world situation as voiced by Pugh to Bronwen. Keeping in mind this was originally published in 1952 that would mean some of what was at issue for O'Brian was the Cold War and the nuclear threat, but it is fairly easy to interpret the concerns as equally applicable to today. The threat is different but the results on the human psyche are the same, as are Bronwen's curious response asking how that relates to the idea that a person has a soul.
Other interesting tidbits include Pugh's description of characters such as Lloyd, Ellis, and Skinner. Loved this bit on Skinner: "The stuff he adduced was such an intolerable farrago of rubbish that I was shocked that it should have imposed upon a man of education and some reading. It was such an incoherent, verbose mumbo-jumbo, with esoteric twaddle jostling Gnosticism, scholarship of the lucus a non lucendo order that I could not refrain (burning with my private fire) from saying some sharp things about his authors." (p. 124)
I had no issue with the person playing "Q" assuming it was just a rhetorical device.

This is the sort of book that, when you finish the last page, compels you to sit in silence for at least half an hour, contemplating it. It doesn't allow you to pick up another book right away because you don't want to break the spell that's been cast over you, and the spell lingers for hours and days.
I already knew, from the Aubrey-Maturin books, that O'Brian was a master of characterization and of plot and action, but here, with the sailing and the battles removed, I could see even more clearly how masterful his prose is. It is hauntingly beautiful.
Like some other reviewers, I was confused and unsure what to think of the ending. There was a part of me that thought O'Brian was pulling a fast one, which I didn't like, but the other part of me was so enamored of the characters and the writing that I just didn't care. Especially when you consider that this was his first novel, you simply can't ask for better. It has echoes of Hardy, or even (if you remove all the melodramatic passion--just my opinion) of Wuthering Heights, with the harsh but beautiful landscape mirroring the harsh but beautiful people.
Highly recommended.

I cannot describe how much I think of this book, even 4 years after reading it. How many books have that effect?! For me, it was one of the most vivid renderings of passion, loneliness, the relationship between men and women, and most importantly, the parallel of our emotional state to the land we occupy. The country of Wales was just as powerful as the relationship between the characters in the novel. What more can you ask for? Find a quiet spot and read this book!

Patrick O'Brian is more than a writer. He's a publishing phenomenon via his superb Aubrey-Maturin series.
But TESTIMONIES was his first novel, originally published in 1952. It tells of an English professor of Welsh origins, Joseph Pugh, who abandons teaching at Oxford and moves to a cottage in Wales. There he explores the primal mountain back country and tries to understand the farming culture of his ancestral land. A lonely, middle-aged bachelor, Pugh can hardly keep house, even to basics--cooking, cleaning, maintaining his clothes. He has never known intimacy, let alone close friendship, but he falls fatally in love with the wife of his sheep-farmer neighbor Emyr Vaughan, a violent man . . . He pines for months, keeping his love sickness to himself, but when he becomes gravely ill he is taken into the Vaughan house, where he and Bronwen discover each others' feelings, with tender reserve. The denouement is poignant, inevitable, yet O'Brian handles this difficult material deftly, without over-writing. For a beginning writer in his 20s this is masterful work at the pinnacle of writing.
An acute recorder of time and place, human behavior and motivation, action and reaction, O'Brian uses words persuasively, passionately, a craftsman to the core. He captures country, culture and character with Hardy's lyrical affection, idiosyncratic ethnicity, thoughtfully observed. His meticulous work is reminiscent of the great American writers Faulkner, Steinbeck and Capote, or O'Brian's fellow Brits John Fowles and William Golding.
Back in 1952 O'Brian anticipated with TESTIMONIES the struggle for relationships, understanding and love in an era--the last half of the 20th century--in which men and women judge and choose first from ethnic or cultural biases or appearances or political/social correctness and only later, maybe, start to understand each other and become acquainted. Or is xenophobia genetic, eternal?
Fast forward to Norton's republishing of TESTIMONIES in 1983. We see that beyond Aubrey-Maturin, O'Brian had the chops in 1952, though few knew and it took many years for many of us to find him. Doris Lessing in the '90s offered two books under assumed names to test the market for unknowns. Result: rejection (she couldn't even get the books read!). So how many others like O'Brian flower unknown, unappreciated? What is their 'testimony?'
Napoleon allegedly remarked that ability is useless without opportunity. O'Brian won his opportunity, finally, and made the most of it. We are the beneficiaries and TESTIMONIES is the proof--res ipsa loquitur.
This book is one of those few that is unforgettable and will remain in the mind and heart for the rest of the reader's life.

Having been so affected by this book, it is so pleasing to see the unanimity of readers. I finished the book last evening and have been engrossed all of today without waning; it just won't go away. What a mavelous love story where passion is never enjoined except in the spirit. What a painful tragedy that leaves one stunned and wishing himself dead. What a range of humanity. What a blessing on us all that there are writers of the power and imagination of Patrick O'Brian.

What is most interesting about this book -- which centers on the poetry of the Bedouin tribe of Awlad Ali -- is not the poetry per se, but that it gives an insider's view of the craft of Ethnography. It shows, through the eyes of a skilled ethnographer, and almost by indirection and in reverse order, how meaning is attached to cultures by the people who live in them.

By peeling back the skin of the Awlad Ali culture - one of the nomadic tribes that once hovered around the edge of the Western Egyptian Desert -- we learn, not just "the ways" of this and similar Nomadic tribes, but more generally, the steps needed to attach meaning to the onion called culture. This analysis reveals, layer-by-layer, the structure and texture of the Awlad Ali worldview. It also reveals the various ideologies that supported its construction.

The Awlad Ali tribe is a society based on blood kinship, on honor, and on a kind of fierce tribal autonomy and independence. And however abstract these categories may seem, and however much they may seem settled at birth, they are in fact constantly being re-negotiated in the tribe's everyday efforts to survive: "lived deeds" in the Awlad Ali culture always trump ascribed status and words. The culture has especially derogatory names and references to those who talk, but fail to act.

Moreover, cultural meaning and societal rules remain close to the ground: that is, closely attached to survival needs. Ascribed status - that is patrilineal genealogy, maleness, etc. definitely have a pride of place in the culture, but these do not settle the matter of status once and for all: What one does with these is the final arbiter of ones position and status within the tribe.

As an American peeping into another culture, what I learned in a somewhat painfully indirect way is that most of rest of the world - even primitive tribes -- still speak and relate to each other in the language of humanity: poetry, songs, prayer, proverbs, folklore, tales, myths, etc. To them, these are not mere cultural trinkets, ornamentations and affectations, to be tossed about during holidays, or to be commercialized and then tossed aside, or just the colorful tools used to promote a particular kind of politics or political organization, but they are the real meat of human discourse. They serve as the actual conduits through which deep human feelings are conveyed and transmitted.

As a backdrop to our own culture, there are at least two lessons to be learned (indirectly and in relief) from this book:

(1) That it is possible to construct a cultural worldview (a complete cosmology of meaning) entirely without the need for a category called "race" or without reference to the idea of a "religion." The author, who was Christian and a partly-white female, lived in the home of the tribe she was studying for two years, which was nominally Muslim, but with all of the many intersecting categories of meaning: race and religion, were never mentioned to her or ever played a role in tribal discourse.

(2) That we Americans live in a social world that is bereft of normal meaningful human attachments and discourse. In comparison to the Awlad Ali tribe, we live in a world of greatly diminished humanity in which racism, acquisition of things, commodification and consumerization of those things, rationalizations and political spin, false piety, rationing of intangibles qualities, knee-jerk bipartisanism, sublimated hatred, and artistic shallowness, are substitutes for real meaning.

Is this all just an inevitable part of modernity? It is difficult to know, but we must be grateful to this author for showing us with great skill that there are other images of, and paths to meaningfulness.

Ten Stars

the book is written by an american woman with mideastern roots -- she provides great insight into the traditionals of the bedouin and arab worlds. I read this before I went to Egypt and it provided great foundation for understanding the culture of the town and village. I like her writing style -- she makes anthopological analysis interesting by explaining in the context of her interactions with the bedouins.

I agree with the other reviewers. It was the best ethnography I can remember reading. What struck a chord with me was her description and explanation of the women's submission to the men, that the submissiveness was valuable only when it was voluntarily given. The idea of women being submissive to men is not only Islamic, but exists also in Christianity.

Lila Abu Lughod, an Arab American woman, lived among the Awlad Ali tribes of the North West of Egypt for two years. Veiled Sentiments is the book she wrote on the lives and poetry of Awlad Ali. Abu Lughod field work was clearly not carried out from a "superior" stance; she sympathized with her subjects and dealt with them as equal human beings rather than inferior specimen or cultures. Abu Lughod attitude, intelligence, training and tremendous analystical ability helped her in developing great insight and understanding of this fascinating culture.

Abu Lughod analysis of concepts such as "hishma" was truly incisive and shed a great deal of light on the nature of modesty between women and men and amongst men and women. The analysis seems to explain behaviors and norms witnessed elsewhere in Egypt and indeed other parts of the Middle East.

An important thesis of Abu Lughod is that the Awlad Ali people often communicated in very conservative and modest way directly through words; they only said what was proper and fitted the norms. Yet a second mode of communication far more true and expressive was found in their little songs or poems.

Abu Lughod discussed gender relation amongst Awlad Ali at length and the relationship between women and the families of their husbands and the society at large. I really enjoyed this book and would highly recommend it. For an excellent work on veiling and gender issues, I would recommend Leila Ahmed's Women & Gender in Islam.

"Veiled Sentiments" is academic. It is the outcome of the author's living in a Bedouin community in northern Egypt (the Western Desert) for two years, a feat of no mean proportions.

Lila Abu-Lughod came to a deep understanding of such aspects of the culture as blood ties, veiling and poetry not only because of her talent and training but also because she has ties to that culture. She calls academics like herself "halfies" because they belong both "inside and outside the communities they write about." She realizes that such a situation benefits them in terms of gathering knowledge within close cultures.

The veiling of women (or rather women's veiling of themselves) is an important topic because of recent events including world politics and of the ongoing research in feminism. It is also important because it is so often misunderstood and so difficult to understand even when it is explained.

After reading Abu-Lughod's renowned (in the world of academics) book, "Veiled Sentiments," I think I have a better handle on veiling than I ever would have had otherwise. It was not easy to absorb the concepts that surround it. That it took ¼ of a 315 page book to do it (a conservative estimate) is a testament to the intricacies of and the psychological motivations behind this cultural /religious practice.

Learning more about veiling alone made this study one well worth reading. But the surprise for both the reader, and-as explained by Ms. Abu-Lughod-the author herself is the discovery of this culture's use of poetry. To take it one step further, the insight into how societies in general (at least ours and that of the Bedouins) similarly use their poetry and relate to it.

Abu-Lughod finds that poetry is used somewhat differently among women in the Awlad ` Ali tribes than it is used by men. Because I am writing my own book of poetry called "Skyscapes: A Woman's View," I was especially interested in this aspect of "Sentiments;" it also was, by the author's own admission, an amazing and important cultural discovery. A group of women in China have their own secret language apart from the men; now this anthropologist brings to our attention how the poetry and veiling customs of these women reveal their emotions and are rooted in the traditions of a society in which they live quite separately from men.

Though this book is not meant for mainstream readers, I hope that many who have no ties to anthropology will make an effort to read it. I believe that women will find it especially interesting but men will also find pertinent information for today's political climate within its pages. No amount of travel could impart the depth of understanding of this culture, and-by extension-similar cultures that this book does.

(Carolyn Howard-Johnson is the author of "This is the Place..." )

To add to the ranks of the surprised ones... It was boringly browsing the other day through my landlady's bookshelves, and I found an intriguing volume of prose called "Seasons at Eagle Pond" by a name that rang a bell but didn't quite make it to my conscience... This was only a few weeks ago. I began an incessant search for Donald Hall's poems within my collection of anthologies, local libraries and the Internet. Then I purchased "White Apples and the Taste of Stone" and my embarrassment for not knowing Hall previously only yields now to the pleasure and comfort of having, at last, come across him. These are human poems; they speak to you and befriend you; later they may haunt you... Among them you will find pieces that are witty, fast, meditative, funny, horrific, mad and yes, very very sad. This collection exudes the world and vision of a keen observer of life. It will leave a reek of charged life around you! Simply great.

Donald Hall, past Poet Laureate of the United States, has had a long and fruitful career. This compilation is well done - hardcover, good paper, clean printing and attractive typeface, and includes Hall's best work. His poems can make you laugh, or sigh, or weep. This is a "must have" for anyone who loves and values poetry.

Having met Donald Hall and reading his poems, I am convinced he is a modern day Robert Frost. If you love poetry read this book. If you love New England read this book. If you truly love life as Mr.Hall does, read this book!

Even a baseball fan , such as myself will love this collection of Poems. I knew Donald Hall from his baseball writings and love of the game. Now as U.S. poet laureate, I had to see more of hime as evidenced by this book. Not a one night read, but a pleasure to pick up and dwell on and savor slowly.
Ernie Grassey

I feel somewhat embarrassed to say that Donald Hall was not a poet I was familiar with until just recently. And what a great thing I have been missing. I realized that Donald Hall was in a very old anthology I have from 1963 called "The Modern Poets." There is a jaunty photo of him smoking a cigar. The Bio does not mention his wife Jane Kenyon.

What a powerful effect these poems had on me. The come alive in a way I cannot accurately describe. They bring me closer to things I seem to remember, and with simplicity and depth, deliver the earth to my feet. Don't take my word for it. Take a look into this world for yourself.

Just because this is children's literature dosen't mean it is just for children. If you have an appreciation of literature or even if your not a big reader, this story will warm you heart with its wonderful characters, lovely story and beautiful writing. So simply written, it can be read to children, so beautiful the writing people older than 8 will defenitely will enjoy!! Randall Jarell is in my opinion, one of the kings of children's literature!

Randall Jarrell has given us a beautiful little story here of a bat and Maurice Sendak has given us some wonderful illustrations in the form of black and white drawings. There is not much to not like about this work. The children love it, and the adult reading it to the children will find it just as interesting and hypnotic as the child, if not more so, but on a different level. The text is wonderfully simple and a pure joy to read. I recommened this one highly.

We had a "bat book drive" in my daughter's class because they needed more research material about bats for a project they are doing than we could find in the local library. Instead of only purchasing scientific-sounding non-fiction, I was also looking for story and poetry books in which the charateristics and habits of bats were woven throughout the stories and poems. I read this book to my eight-year-old daughter the night before we took it to class. She demanded that I give her the book so that she could read it again herself. And, with stars in her eyes, stated that the poem at the end about a bats life was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard, and that she would be memorizing it. It was amazing how much she had learned and remembered about bats after the first time through the book. Lovely illustrations as well.

A beautiful story, beautifully written, about a little bat who composes poetry. One of the best children's books I've ever read; I order several copies at a time and give them for birthday presents.

This book is a gem. It's tender, clever, and deftly written. It's wonderful for reading aloud. I had trouble finding it for years, and I'm so pleased to see that it's available again.