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The Best Poems of the English Language: From Chaucer Through Robert Frost
Binding: Paperback
Author: Harold Bloom
Release Date: 2007-08-07
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Features:
Average Rating: 4.5
Total Customer Reviews: 7
List Price: $19.99
Our Price: $13.59
Sales Rank: 19842
Product Description
This comprehensive anthology attempts to give the common reader possession of six centuries of great British and American poetry. The book features a large introductory essay by Harold Bloom called "The Art of Reading Poetry," which presents his critical reflections of more than half a century devoted to the reading, teaching, and writing about the literary achievement he loves most. In the case of all major poets in the language, this volume offers either the entire range of what is most valuable in their work, or vital selections that illuminate each figure's contribution. There are also headnotes by Harold Bloom to every poet in the volume as well as to the most important individual poems. Much more than any other anthology ever gathered, this book provides readers who desire the pleasures of a sublime art with very nearly everything they need in a single volume. It also is regarded as his final meditation upon all those who have formed his mind.
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Users Product Reviews: |
Product Review Summary: A Commentary Bloom's collection here is an excellent start for new poet scholars. He offers more than just an edited collection of poetry. Here he meticulously and intelligently shares his opinion on each and every poem he's handpicked for his collection. The title suggests it is the ultimate collection of poetry for a shelf with no other poetry. However, if you are looking for such a singular text, this is not the right book for you. Bloom at times allows his personal opinions to get in the way of including traditional poems associated with the greatest poetry of all time. If you are interested in the study of poetry, Bloom's collection is an excellent one. However, if you are in search of a compilation of poetry to complete your library, you would be better off with Norton's.
Product Review Summary: Nice Collection Of course this is "My favorite poems" collection by Professor Bloom. I was disappointed to not find Whittier in here, but after learning Mr. Bloom considers Whitman the greatest America poet it does not surprise me. He could have at least printed "Snowbound".
Space given to Longfellow was very short - far too short for my taste, anyway. I think a selection from "Evangeline" or "The Song of Hiawatha" would have been appropriate.
I do think he gave a nice bit of space to Dickinson.
Overall, this collection is very nice and definitely a keeper. My suggestion is to read this as an introduction to poetry and the buy a book of your favorites to get a broader view.
I also think the introductions and annotations given by prof. Bloom are very nice.
Product Review Summary: The Best Poems . . . I'm not a real big poetry fan, but I did enjoy reading many poems in this volume. I'm not sure how some of these works were included while other better known poems by the contributors were excluded, but the end result is still a good survey of English language poetry.
The book is chronological beginning with Geoffrey Chaucer and ending with the 20th Century poets. Each poet has an introductory section that details the highlights of his/her life and some of their political or social views that defined their work.
This is a good single volume collection of poems and I think most people with an interest in poetry will find it satisfactory.
Product Review Summary: A delight to read anytime Harold Bloom has done an outstanding job of compiling a group of the greatest poets through centuries of work. His written passages that precede the author's works are great insight, even if you do not fully agree with them.
I also enjoy the fact that he put in Chaucer and others' original works, not whatever he felt would read easiest. Bloom allows you to witness the creativity and brilliance of the author's work, without too much of his own personal influence.
Product Review Summary: A wonderful collection of poetry For one reason or another, I have been recently reading (and reviewing) poetry collections--from Romantics on. And a review by one of my Amazon friends led me to purchase and enjoy this collection. The author, Harold Bloom, is an eminent scholar, the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. He is a MacArthur Prize Fellow and author of numerous volumes. In his Introduction, he observes that (Page xxvii) "My chronological limits are set by Geoffrey Chaucer, born around 1343, and Hart Crane, born in 1899." There is a useful introductory essay, "The Art of Reading Poetry," that would be of interest to those who take poetry seriously. As Bloom says (Page 29): "The art of reading poetry is an authentic training in the augmentation of consciousness, perhaps the most authentic of healthy modes."
But it is the poetry that is at the center of this fat volume (the last poem, by Hart Crane, ends on page 959; I don't know about the reader, but I like big collections of poetry!
In high school, we read Chaucer, and I still remember the first few lines (repeated in this work) of "The Canterbury Tales."
"Whan that Aprill with his shoures sote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour."
Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love":
"Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods or steepy mountain yields."
There is a healthy collection of Shakespeare, but since I recently reviewed a volume of his sonnets, no need for overkill here. But the selections do represent Shakespeare's art nicely.
Then there is Richard Lovelace's "To Althea, from Prison," with the well known final stanza:
"Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage. . . ."
And so many more. . . . Thomas Gray's "Elegy written in a country churchyard" or William Blake's "The Tyger" (I still recall and thrill at the following lines:
"Tyger, tyger, burning bright.
In the forest of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?") to the Romantics' poetry (represented by poets such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lord Byron, Shelley, and Keats). Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Lord Tenneyson, the Rossettis, William Butler Yeats, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, and so on.
In short, a cornucopia of poetry in the English language tradition. If that is a genre that you enjoy, running from Chaucer to crane, then this volume should suit you nicely.
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