McClatchy, J. D.

Thornton Wilder: Collected Plays and Writings on Theater (Library of America)

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Thornton Wilder: Collected Plays
A must have for anyone who loves Wilder, drama, and American letters
A "must" for classic theater shelves
Someone from Wisconsin

Thornton Wilder: Collected Plays and Writings on Theater (Library of America)
Thornton Wilder
Manufacturer: Library of America
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1598530038
Release Date: 2007-03-15

Book Description

Tender, beguiling, suffused with feeling and wit, the remarkable plays of Thornton Wilder occupy a unique place in American culture. His most celebrated play, Our Town, has achieved iconic status as an expression of the spirit and pathos of small-town American life; adapted for the movies and the operatic stage, it continues to resonate with audiences responding to its formal elegance, plainspoken poetry, and moving evocation of the inevitability of loss.

Collected Plays & Writings on Theater, the most comprehensive one-volume edition of Wilder's work ever published, takes the measure of his extraordinary career as a dramatist by presenting the complete span of his achievement, beginning with his early expressionist experiments and daring one-act plays such as "The Long Christmas Dinner" and "The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden" (one of Wilder's personal favorites), ranging through the full flowering of Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, and The Matchmaker, and encompassing the intriguing dramatic projects of his later years, such as his adaptation of the ancient story of Alcestis (The Alcestiad) and plays written for dramatic cycles based on the Seven Deadly Sins and the varied ages of an individual's life. Complementing the selection of plays is an illuminating group of essays that captures Wilder's reflections on his plays and contains a revealing epistolary account of the film adaptation of Our Town, as well as evaluations of dramatists such as Sophocles, George Bernard Shaw, and the Austrian satirist Johann Nestroy (whose farce Einen Jux will er sich machen Wilder brilliantly transformed into The Matchmaker).

Collected Plays & Writings on Theater also includes material never before published: scenes from The Emporium, an ambitious unfinished play that, emerging out of Wilder's intense engagement with existentialist philosophy in the postwar years, imagines a Kafkaesque department store whose enigmatic activities are as inscrutable as the mysteries of life itself; and the complete screenplay Wilder wrote for Alfred Hitchcock's film Shadow of a Doubt just before reporting for military service in 1942. Although faithful to the spirit of the film, the screenplay presented here restores Wilder's original dialogue, some of which (to Wilder's dismay) was altered for the movie. A study of family life, youthful illusions, and the desperation of a criminal on the run, the Shadow of a Doubt screenplay is a masterful exhibition of the art of suspense and taut dramatic storytelling, and is an essential part of Wilder's ouevre.

Customer Reviews:

Thornton Wilder: Collected Plays.......2007-05-12

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

A must have for anyone who loves Wilder, drama, and American letters.......2007-04-13

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Strongly recommended for those who love drama and American letters.

A "must" for classic theater shelves.......2007-04-11

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

Someone from Wisconsin.......2007-04-08

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry

Average customer rating:

A flawed but satisfying anthology
Useful despite its flaws
Sets the bar for 'Best American Poetry'
A Launch Pad For Poetry Lovers
A Great Anthology

The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry
J.D. Mcclatchy
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1400030935
Release Date: 2003-04-08

Book Description

Dazzling in its range, exhilarating in its immediacy and grace, this collection gathers together, from every region of the country and from the past forty years, the poems that continue to shape our imaginations. From Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop, John Ashbery and Adrienne Rich, to Robert Haas and Louise Gluck, this anthology takes the full measure of our poetry's daring energies and its tender understandings.

Customer Reviews:

A flawed but satisfying anthology.......2007-03-01

A required textbook for a poetry class, The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry is a flawed but satisfying anthology that is a great pick up for new readers and students to the world of poetry. Seventy-five poets are featured in the anthology, including mainstays and well-knowns like Sylvia Plath, Allen Ginsberg, Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich, Sharon Olds, Robert Pinsky, Mark Doty, and Yusef Komunyakaa among others. Editor J.D. McClatchy provides a short biography of each poet to go along with a handful of poems (usually six or seven) that differ in the length of a quarter page to several. This format is the ultimate flaw of the anthology, along with a few glaring omissions (no Frost or Hughes? then again, this has the words "Vintage" and "Contemporary" in the same title, which is as much an oxymoron as I can think of) thanks to McClatchy, but despite all that, the anthology ends up working well for what it's meant to do. All in all, The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry is best suited for newbies or students (as these poems have been featured in previous, and better, volumes and anthologies), and the cheaper list price doesn't hurt either.

Useful despite its flaws.......2006-11-13

This book is decidedly an anthology of poets rather than poems: everyone gets at least three pages and a half-page introduction. It's also fairly encyclopedic and catholic. The main use of an anthology of this type is to give the interested reader a quick idea of what, say, Merwin or Ashbery or Clampitt is all about. This task it discharges quite well.

Now for the flaws. There are some idiosyncratic omissions, which hurt the book; regardless of what McClatchy thinks of Robert Bly, he should have included a few of his poems and let the reader judge for himself. Similarly with Stanley Kunitz. I assume McClatchy likes Thom Gunn and left him out for being British, which is a little silly because he spent most of his life in California. These omissions make the book a little less complete as a reference.

More seriously, the anthology is a hard slog because so many of the poems are at least a couple of pages long. This means you can't dip in at random and read a poem and be surprised -- which is what anthologies are traditionally for. It would be a more readable book if there were fewer interminable blank verse meditations, many of them unengaging and not very characteristic -- e.g. one would not realize from the selections that Merrill and Hecht were masters of poetic form. That said, one does get some idea of each voice if one persists.

A persistent pattern in this period is the mid-career switch from highly formal verse to a distinctive personal style. (Lowell, Berryman, W.S. Merwin, James Wright, Plath...) It's fascinating to see the mature style next to the earlier style; the book does this sometimes, but not with Merwin.

On the whole this anthology is a slightly unhappy medium. It would have served its purpose better if it had been more conventional; on the other hand I'd have really liked to see an unabashedly personal anthology that more vividly reflected McClatchy's own tastes. Still, what we have is a useful introduction to a very rich period.

Sets the bar for 'Best American Poetry'.......2005-08-29

If you've ever been disappointed by the inconsistent quality of poems found in the "Best American Poetry" series published by Scribner (with series editor David Lehman), this anthology will show you why. Not every poem will give you chills or connect with your soul, but not a single one is bad or banal.

A Launch Pad For Poetry Lovers.......2005-04-28

I bought a copy of the first edition of this book (much prettier cover I am sorry to say) in high school. I thumbed through it, over and over, finding new and different poems to savor, getting exposed to countless amazing poets whose full books now grace my shelves (Anthony Hecht, Elizabeth Bishop, Adrienne Rich, Mona Van Duyn, Howard Nemerov). This book, by choosing generally shorter poems that catch your eye (with some exceptions) by a host of excellent modern poets with tremendous variations in styles, changed me from a poetry dabbler to a true poetry consumer and fan. I often give away copies of this book, with post-its marking my favorites. I highly, highly recommend this book, particularly to people intimidated by the number of diverse and excellent poets from which to choose.

A Great Anthology.......2003-05-14

This is a great anthology of later 20th C. American poets and a great book to use for a poetry reading group, because the selection for each poet is sufficiently long to provide a good introduction. It inspired me to acquire books by many of the individual poets.

I would prefer that the poems be dated and would greatly prefer it to be available hardbound - it deserves the permanence in my library.

McClatchy's editing of this and Contemporary World Poetry is outstanding!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Poems and Other Writings (Library of America)

Average customer rating:

Longfellow
McClatchy does it again
One of the great American poets
Not Just Gitchee Gumee

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Poems and Other Writings (Library of America)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Manufacturer: Library of America
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 188301185X
Release Date: 2000-08-24

Customer Reviews:

Longfellow.......2007-04-18

A refresher course of my favorite poems all in one volume. I even discovered one of my favorite Christmas songs was actually a poem by Longfellow. I keep it on my coffee table

McClatchy does it again.......2004-07-26

This time he presents an edition of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's books that's every bit as timely and interesting as his own very 20th century poems.

McClatchy's own writing in every field is widely acclaimed, and in a way he is the Longfellow we deserve, with both poems of spiritual affirmation and the poetry of doubt, jostling side by side, uneasy in harness. Longfellow's book Tales of a Wayside Inn is given a dramatic reading here, for McClatchy selects not only the best of the Tales but also tries to find room for the body and the heart in all its different avatars. His excerpts from Michael Angelo are, as well, in tune with what we now know and feel about Michelangelo in the present time of the early 21st century, that he was as great a poet as he was a painter and sculptor, and probably a gay man to boot. Poems like Longfellow's HIAWATHA and EVANGELINE are sensitively edited to bring forward their multicultural and ecological interests. All in all, Longfellow may be the most forwardlooking of all the poets of 19th century USA, and that's a strong statement considering we are putting him ahead of (among others) Emerson, Poe, Dickinson, Whitman, Very, and Melville.

One of the great American poets.......2004-07-05

Longfellow's conventional morality and straightforward manner of expression have long caused his work to be unfairly ignored by serious readers. But those who are willing to give him a try will be rewarded by masterful storytelling, resourceful treatment of American themes, a truly sympathetic imagination, and (perhaps most importantly for poetry lovers) constant metrical experimentation. Unlike, say, Tennyson, who arguably had a better ear, Longfellow was never really satisfied with blank verse and instead played with unusual (for the time) metrical forms. Many people today forget that Longfellow was a highly educated man -- a professor of comparative literature at Harvard and a speaker of numerous languages -- whose broad reading led him to unusual forms and themes.

For those who think of Longfellow as just a schlockmeister, I recommend starting with "The Cross of Snow" (his very private meditation on his second wife's violent death) and "The Slave's Dream." For those interested in great stories in verse, try the selections here from "Tales of a Wayside Inn" (yes, it's a darn shame that more was not included) and "Evangeline." For those interested in Americana, try "The Building of the Ship" and "The New England Tragedies" (the latter being verse dramas on religious persecution and the witchcraft hysteria in Massachusetts). And for those interested in formal experimentation, try "My Lost Youth" and "The Saga of King Olaf."

Like all Library of America editions, this is a beautifully printed book, with helpful notes and a chronology of the author's life. I just wish they had included more!

Not Just Gitchee Gumee.......2000-10-12

J.D. McClatchy here presents a thoughtful selection of Longfellow's verse. Although ignored by contemporary readers and dismissed by the academy, Longfellow is a wrtier who, though never profound, is sincere, engaging, accessible, and humble--qualities rarely associated with modern poetry. It is difficult to read such saccarhine classics as "The Children's Hour" and "A Psalm of Life" without either shrivelling from the sweetness or retreating into a shallow camp perspective, but for the reader willing to make the effort, Longfellow offers the deep rewards of meter, rhyme, and narrative--and the rare pleasure of lines that do not dazzle or daunt by ambiguity. As the poet writes, "Such songs have power to quiet / The restless pulse of care, / And come like the benediction / That follows after prayer."

One's only regret with this volume (a criticism one might make, I suppose, of any selection) is that McClatchy did not include more--specifically, the complete "Tales of a Wayside Inn," which, though represented rather amply, surely should have been included in its entirety as the happiest vehicle for Longfellow's story-based strengths. "The Bell of Atri," one of the most charming of the tales, should certainly be here. Then, too, the editor seems rather determined in his selection to present a more somber presentation of the poet than is warrented by his full corpus. (Perhaps he aims to make Longfellow more attractive to an audience accustomed to the confessional and the dour.) Oh, well. In compensation we do get useful notes, an excellent chronology, and the delightful novella "Kavanagh"--all of which make this surely the most pleasant poetry revival of the past several years.

The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry
Average customer rating:

A Good Find

Another gem

Poetry Worth Reading from around the World

The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry
J.D. Mcclatchy
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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World Poetry: An Anthology of Verse from Antiquity to Our Time

ASIN: 0679741151
Release Date: 1996-06-25

Book Description

This groundbreaking volume may well be the poetry anthology for the global village. As selected by J.D. McClatchy, this collection includes masterpieces from four continents and more than two dozen languages in translations by such distinguished poets as Elizabeth Bishop, W.S. Merwin, Ted Hughes, and Seamus Heaney. Among the countries and writers represented are:

Bangladesh--Taslima Nasrin
Chile--Pablo Neruda
China--Bei Dao, Shu Ting
El Salvador--Claribel Alegria
France--Yves Bonnefoy
Greece--Odysseus Elytis, Yannis Ritsos
India--A.K. Ramanujan
Israel--Yehuda Amichai
Japan--Shuntaro Tanikawa
Mexico--Octavio Paz
Nicaragua--Ernesto Cardenal
Nigeria--Wole Soyinka
Norway--Tomas Transtromer
Palestine--Mahmoud Darwish
Poland--Zbigniew Herbert, Czeslaw Milosz
Russia--Joseph Brodsky, Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Senegal--Leopold Sedar Senghor
South Africa--Breyten Breytenbach
St. Lucia, West Indies--Derek Walcott

Customer Reviews:

A Good Find.......2006-02-21

This poetry anthology is a great find. I discovered many talented world poets with this book. Good information about each poet.

Another gem.......2003-05-14

Given the daunting task of selecting from, literally, a world of poets, McClatchy succeeds admirably. Once again his editing has me running out to buy individual books by the poets in the anthology.

Now if he would do a book of "Contemporary English Language [But Non-American] Poetry" to offer closure....

An aspect of McClatchy's editing that I like is that the selection per poet is large enough to get a good introduction - the opposite is a fault of most anthologies - though this does cause worthy poets to excluded.

I would love for some publisher to publish this and Contemporary American Poetry in good hardbound versions. They are prized members of my library, but, sadly, are not durable.

Poetry Worth Reading from around the World.......2000-12-13

A solid selection of poems written by major poets from around the globe. Diverse cultures represented. The quality of the translations is very good, making the poems accessible to English-speaking readers. One recurrent problem: no explanatory notes are provided to help English-speakers, particularly younger readers and college students, grasp the historical, political, social, or cultural allusions in some poems. For example, the Viet Nam poet Nguyen's "Model Citizens of the Regime" takes on fuller meaning if the reader knows that the "jail" referred to in the poem is not a penal institution for criminals but actually a communist re-education camp to which Vietnamese children were sent to be indoctrinated in Marxist ideology. Having a bit of this geopolitical, social, or cultural context, readers can gain a fuller understanding of the poems. One small complaint: the anthology was published prior to the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska's receipt of the Nobel Prize, and therefore the head note for her selection does not make note of that honor.

Given the general lack of interest in poetry, especially poetry from other countries, we're nonetheless lucky to have this anthology.

Recitative
Average customer rating:
Recitative
James Merrill , and J.D. McClatchy
Manufacturer: North Point Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 0865472548

On Wings of Song: Poems About Birds (Everyman's Library Pocket Poet)
Average customer rating:

An Aviary of Delight

Splendid

Beautiful gathering of literary verse revolving around birds

On Wings of Song: Poems About Birds (Everyman's Library Pocket Poet)

Manufacturer: Everyman's Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0375407499
Release Date: 2000-03-28

Customer Reviews:

An Aviary of Delight.......2000-09-21

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

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

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

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

Splendid.......2000-07-17

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

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

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

Beautiful gathering of literary verse revolving around birds.......2000-07-04

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

Love Speaks Its Name: Gay and Lesbian Love Poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets)

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Loved it, Loved It, LOVED IT!!

Love Speaks Its Name: Gay and Lesbian Love Poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets)

Manufacturer: Everyman's Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Baudelaire: Poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets)

ASIN: 0375411704
Release Date: 2001-05-15

Book Description

From Sappho to Shakespeare to Cole Porter–a marvelous and wide-ranging collection of classic gay and lesbian love poetry.

The poets represented here include Walt Whitman, Hart Crane, Gertrude Stein, Federico García Lorca, Djuna Barnes, Constantine Cavafy, Elizabeth Bishop, W. H. Auden, and James Merrill. Their poems of love are among the most perceptive, the most passionate, the wittiest, and the most moving we have. From Michelangelo’s “Love Misinterpreted” to Noël Coward’s “Mad About the Boy,” from May Swenson’s “Symmetrical Companion” to Muriel Rukeyser’s “Looking at Each Other,” these poems take on both desire and its higher power: love in all its tender or taunting variety.

Customer Reviews:

Loved it, Loved It, LOVED IT!!.......2001-06-07

This was the best money I've spent on a book this year, maybe ever, and although I'm not much of a poetry book-buyer, I read my share of books. (I've reviewed gay- and lesbian-themed books free-lance for over 15 years.) "Love Speaks Its Name" is simply an excellent anthology of gay- and lesbian-themed poetry with artists as diverse as Sappho, Shakespeare, Whitman, Cavafy, Cole Porter, and several Baby Boomers sounding off on AIDS as well as traditional themes of love.

Why do I like this little volume so much? For one thing, it's part of the well-regarded "Everyman" library, which is to Knopf what Modern Library is to Random House. This means you can purchase identically-sized volumes of literature, even erotic poetry, from the same line. The publishers of "Love Speaks Its Name" took a fairly traditional, quality-oriented approach to content (including recent poets, as I said); but although the binding is a conservative navy blue the bound-in bookmarker ribbon is lavender (cute, no?).

Most of the anthologies of gay or lesbian poetry I've reviewed over the past 15 years fall into one of two categories (1) the professor had some favors to pay off, so excellence took a back seat to other factors (though in many cases you might not know this from the impenetrable deconstructionist jargon that constitutes the introduction); or, (2) the regional "Let's assemble a book! All comers welcome!" Well meant, but not always successful. With its erudition, user-friendly language and delineation of Love into themes like "Longing" and "Ecstasy," "Love Speaks Its Name" is a class act all the way.

For a ridiculously small amount of money you can immerse yourself in this book and find out just why Cavafy is so highly regarded, even in translation, why Auden is still audacious today, why Amy Levy's young death was such a loss to the world of poetry, and discover the NON-bowdlerized lyrics to "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" (there are so many versions floating around it's hard to find the real deal).

Book Description

James Merrill’s audacious and dazzling epic poem, The Changing Light at Sandover, remains as startling today as when it first emerged in separate volumes over a period of several years. Individual parts won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and the entire poem, when it was collected into one volume in 1982, won the National Book Critics Circle Award. It is now an American classic, here in a definitive new hardcover edition that includes Voices from Sandover, Merrill’s recasting of the poem for the stage. The book carries us to the scene of Merrill’s Ouija board sessions with his partner, David Jackson—the candlelit Stonington dining room with its flame-colored walls and the famous Willowware cup they used as a pointer in their occult travels. In a shimmering interplay of verse forms, Merrill set down their extended conversations with their familiar and guide, Ephraim (a first-century Greek Jew), W. H. Auden, W. B. Yeats, Plato, a brilliant peacock named Mirabell, and other old friends who had passed to the other side. JM (whom the spirits call “scribe”) and DJ (“hand”) are also introduced to the lonely eminence God B (“God Biology”), his sister Mother Nature, and a host of angels and lesser residents of the empyrean who are variously involved in the ways of this world.
The laughter, the missteps, and the schoolroom frustrations of the earthly pair’s gradual enlightenment make this otherworldly journey, finally, and utterly human one. A unique exploration of the writer’s role in a postatomic, postreligious age, Sandover has been compared to the work of Yeats, Proust, Milton, and Blake. Merrill’s tale of the joys and tragedies of man’s powers, and his message about the importance of our endangered efforts to make a good life on earth, will stand as one of the most profound experiences available to readers of poetry.</p>

Customer Reviews:

A sample.......2003-11-20

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Modern Epic.......2003-05-28

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

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

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

Merrill's Masterpiece.......2002-04-26

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

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

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

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

Propelled me (startled me!) into poetry - 10 year ago........2002-03-02

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An Utterly Singular Experience.......2001-06-29

James Merrill's extraordinary poem is surely one of the most remarkable and distinctive literary accomplishments of the 20th Century (though there are many, most in acadamia, whou would disagree). Yes, it is very strange and ocassionaly obscure. But it is, after all, a narrative poem and not nearly as difficult as some claim.

Most and best of all, however, it is a work of which one seems to never tire. After 10 years, this reader still finds it utterly fresh and its meaning and relevance ever more personal and touching. No 20th Century poet was as astounding as Merrill at his flashiest, and very few are as sincerely moving.

Customer Reviews:

Gain Insight Into Favorite Authors.......2007-01-27

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

Going Calling on the Authors of Our American Classics.......2005-08-03

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

-- Lowell Forte, Cupertino CA

All About Writing Space With Wonderful Photographs.......2005-02-22

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

Space and Writing.......2004-12-09

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

Melodies Unheard: Essays on the Mysteries of Poetry (Johns Hopkins: Poetry and Fiction)

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Essays Unsurpassed
Solving poetry's mystery by exploring others' craft

Melodies Unheard: Essays on the Mysteries of Poetry (Johns Hopkins: Poetry and Fiction)
Anthony Hecht , and J.D. McClatchy
Manufacturer: The Johns Hopkins University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Criticism | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Qualifying Textbooks - Spring 2007 | Stores | Books
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ASIN: 0801882664

Book Description

The fruit of a lifetime's reading and thinking about literature, its delights and its responsibilities, this book by acclaimed poet and critic Anthony Hecht explores the mysteries of poetry, offering profound insight into poetic form, meter, rhyme, and meaning. Ranging from Renaissance to contemporary poets, Hecht considers the work of Shakespeare, Sidney, and Noel; Housman, Hopkins, Eliot, and Auden; Frost, Bishop, and Wilbur; Amichai, Simic, and Heaney. Stepping back from individual poets, Hecht muses on rhyme and on meter, and also discusses St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians and Melville's Moby-Dick. Uniting these diverse subjects is Hecht's preoccupation with the careful deployment of words, the richness and versatility of language and of those who use it well.

Elegantly written, deeply informed, and intellectually playful, Melodies Unheard confirms Anthony Hecht's reputation as one of our most original and imaginative thinkers on the literary arts.

Customer Reviews:

Essays Unsurpassed.......2003-11-16

This compilation of essays by perhaps the finest, most elegant poet writing on either side of the Atlantic has its faults. The first one to catch the eye is that the first two essays on the Sonnet repeat each other, word for word, in several places. But taking the work, which covers many subjects in addition to the "Melodies Unheard," which is saved for the last, as a whole, one can not help be struck by Hecht's depth of insight and urbanity of expression on each subject: from Sidney, to Elizabeth Bishop, to Moby Dick. It is simply impossible for a poetic mind to come away unmoved or without perspective shifted from the depths so adroitly explored here. My favourite example (And I suspect Hecht's as well, since it's the only chapter in the book on which he lavishes a full page reproduction of a Bosch painting in illustration of a part of a poem. Indeed, there are no other props of this sort in the entire collection.) is his explication of Elizabeth Bishop's poem "The Man-Moth." I never thought very much of Ms. Bishop's poetry before reading this explication, so deep and fecund of insight. - But herein lies a sort of paradox inherent to most all these essays-I now appreciate "The Man-Moth" exceedingly but am even more overwhelmed by rereading Hecht's poetic explication of the poem. The same is true of Hecht on Moby Dick. I suppose this is a great compliment. But one wonders whether Ms. Bishop would have thought so. In any event, though disagreeing with Hecht in regard to a couple of minor nuances here and there, I would say to the already very select group considering the purchase of this book that it's well worth it. Maybe, if Bishop is a favourite poet of yours or Melville a favourite author, too well worth it. As Hecht avers in the last essay, "...our experience of poetry is no simple business." - Nor is our experience of Hecht.

Solving poetry's mystery by exploring others' craft.......2003-05-22

REVIEWED BY HENRY TAYLOR ...

Anthony Hecht, one of the very few finest poets of the past 50 years, is also one of the most learned, wide-ranging, perceptive, and engaging critics. Now 80, he has gathered in this new collection, "Melodies Unheard," 18 essays, most of them done in the past five years in response to invitations and assignments of various kinds, from centenary observances to pieces for The New York Review of Books.
As to his subtitle, he remarks in his Introduction, "What, I have asked myself, is the critic trying to do? And there are plenty of answers. But perhaps we might begin with the urge governing Poe's Auguste Dupin: to solve a mystery. Not infrequently this means discovering that there was a mystery to be solved in the first place, because no one had noticed any need for scrutiny."
Though he does not say so explicitly, Mr. Hecht appears also to be concerned with "mystery" in the sense of skill, craft, or art; this older usage appeared often in the indentures of apprentices, bound for a period to learn the mysteries of , say, tailoring. Near the end of his Introduction, he says, "No poet examines someone else's poem, especially a major poem or a large body of poetry, without hoping to learn something from such scrutiny; and, moreover, to learn something he can put to his own personal use."
It is an inspiring and humbling object lesson for any serious reader to behold the thoroughness with which Mr. Hecht opens his powers of perception to the variety of texts he encountered in the course of writing these pieces. He has his preferences, to be sure; he understands that meter and rhyme have been integral to poetry for centuries, and that to dispense with them is to incur serious risks. It must be noted, however, that he is no knee-jerk enemy of free verse; one of the best pieces here is a penetrating and highly favorable consideration of Charles Simic, whose unmetrical surrealism Mr. Hecht praises for its resonance and responsibility.
Collections of separate critical pieces can sometimes seem too miscellaneous, whatever the brilliance or persuasiveness on display in the individual essays. Mr. Hecht has addressed this matter with unusual thoughtfulness and diligence, and the result is a solid book rather than an assemblage of book parts.
First, his Introduction takes up some points not dealt with to his satisfaction in the essays. For example, early in an essay chiefly concerned with the opening of T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," Mr. Hecht mentions "the bedeviling topic of Eliot's anti-Semitism, which I must leave for another time." He makes short work of William Empson's attempt to make Eliot out as a decent fellow of his time who had no problem with some of his time's notions, and just slightly longer work of Eliot's own claim that he was not an anti-Semite and never had been.
Anti-Semitism arises again in a discussion of St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians; Mr. Hecht's treatment of it is notable for its patient use of a remarkable amount of Biblical knowledge, and for its tact with personal reminiscences of direct encounters with wounding prejudice.
Second, the book concludes with an essay called "The Music of Formsþ" which appears to have been written for the collection; it is not mentioned in the acknowledgments of editors and lecture venues. It is here that Mr. Hecht is most clearly distressed at what seems to him the shrinking audience for such delicacies of technique as he explores in the rest of the book. For years, he tells us, it was his habit, following some exposition of metrical terminology and example, to ask his undergraduate students to locate for him the place where the dialogue of Romeo and Juliet shifts from prose into verse. It didn't last:
"After a certain number of years I gave up asking my classes this question, which obviously embarrassed them and discouraged me, for it became transparently clear that the overwhelming majority of my students were quite simply deaf to almost all metrical considerations and that my introductory lecture on the topic was purposeless and wasteful. And I reluctantly concluded that there are many who are not so much mystified by meter as completely oblivious to it."
One who has repeatedly urged students to observe line-ends when quoting poetry in critical papers can but agree with this assessment. However, it seems always to have been the case that those to whom matters of precision and beauty of language are matters of great importance - of life and death, as we sayþ - are greatly outnumbered by those to whom such matters are of no importance. Mr. Hecht strikes a firm balance between taking pessimistic notice of this situation, and considering that Milton's "fit audience though few" is entirely deserving of the best effort he can muster.
Thus Mr. Hecht proceeds, with grace, urbanity, good humor, and vast erudition, to consider certain literary works from the past eight centuries, and to shed light on their techniques and on a few instances of obscurity.
Among the poets treated are Shakespeare, Philip Sidney, A.E. Housman, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Robert Frost, W.H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Richard Wilbur, and Yehuda Amichai. There are also essays on aspects of "Moby-Dick," and on the prose of Seamus Heaney. The approaches range from close explication of text to sweeping historical surveys. Throughout, the style and manner are those of a deeply knowledgeable and polished conversationalist, grateful to be in the presence of the works he understands so well. Care for poetry and its traditions has seldom been so memorably exemplified.

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