Recommended Poetry Books

As a follow-up to last week's post on the importance of poetry, I'm linking to some of my favorite poetry books. 

I always say that the best poetry primer for someone who has no clue where to start is Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses. The poems are light and lyrical without being too sing-song-y. Even as an adult, I continue to delight in them and have put quite a few to memory. (I've linked to the Kindle Free version, but there are many beautifully illustrated hard copies to choose from when buying one for your personal library.) I extol the glories of one his poems in this post.

I created a list of poetry books especially for children here. A decade after I wrote that post, I discovered the lovely Sing a Song of Seasons, which for a modern book has an amazingly small amount of tripe. (I reviewed it here).

Of course, poetry must be read aloud for you to be able to appreciate its cadences so I highly recommend this audio recording of 81 Famous Poems. (Reviewed here.) Sadly, no corresponding book is available, but there is a similar book of classic poetry, Best-Loved Poems, that I reviewed here.

Finally, if you already love poetry and are ready for something a bit meatier, I highly recommend these two books of devotional poetry: Poems of Faith (Dover publications, not the Helen Steiner Rice title) and The Oxford Book of Christian Verse -1940. (Don't pay any attention to the Amazon price; I found it at a used book store for $5.) Of the two, Poems of Faith is a bit easier, but the OBCV is one of the most treasured books in my entire library. 

Let me know if you've enjoyed any of these or if you have a favorite book of poetry that is not mentioned here.

Blessings,

Why Poetry by Matthew Zapruder

I love poetry, and am always interested in how and why it can leave us speechless with astonishment. Anna Quindlen once wrote, People who are knowledgeable about poetry sometimes discuss it in that knowing, rather hateful way in which oenophiles talk about wine: robust, delicate, muscular. This has nothing to do with how most of us experience it, the heart coming around the corner and unexpectedly running into the mind.

When I saw Zapruder’s book on Kindle Unlimited, I was eager to see what he had to contribute to the discussion. I was delighted with his opening sally that Poetry isn’t in any danger, and never has been. And I’m quite sure there will be poetry as long as there are people who can speak, and probably even after. [And this delightful jab:] Probably even robots will write it, just as soon as they get souls.

The central question of the book is how poetry creates a heightened sense of awareness (what Zapruder calls “a poetic state of mind.”) It happens through the form of the poem, which guides the mind of a reader. It happens through leaps of association. And it happens as the poem explores and activates and plays with the nature of language itself.

He contends that there is no such thing as poetic language. The words used in poetry are every day words, but their energy comes primarily from the reanimation and reactivation of the language we recognize and know. In poetry, we see how language can be made deliberately strange, how it becomes “difficult” in order to jar us awake. One of the ways that poetry reanimates language is in its use of unexpected associations or metaphors. (Like when Emily Dickinson calls a snake a “whip-lash” or when Richard Crashaw writes that “Graves are beds now for the weary.”)

He also insists that poetry is not a secret code, and that it is not written to be deliberately elusive or obscure. (I would agree up to a point since I find most modern poetry to be purposefully vague. Ironically, the second half of the book is filled with examples of modern poems, which Zapruder painstakingly explains because otherwise they make no sense.)

In general, says, Zapruder, poetry requires no special knowledge, only attention. The meaning of the poem resides on the page, and is available to an attentive reader. Paying attention is essential and this close reading of the text is essential not only for literary enjoyment, but he would add, it’s necessary for survival in this modern world. The more we are colonized by our devices and the “information” and “experiences” that they supposedly deliver, the more we need a true experience of unmonetized attention.

The first half of the book was helpful and insightful; he detours off a few times to decry the evils of climate change, terrorism, inequality, environmental issues, etc. which didn’t seem to have anything to do with the topic. And, as I wrote above, the second half had many examples of difficult poetry that, instead of encouraging people to read it, would scare them off permanently. Still, I enjoyed gaining insights into how poetry makes its impact, and look forward to continuing my journey toward understanding it better.

Blessings,

Reading Goals for 2024

My tentative goals for 2024 are these ten titles:

The Inklings and King Arthur, Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, Pickwick Papers or Oliver Twist, Bodies from the Library #1 (vintage detective stories), Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry, Time for Poetry by Arbuthnot, The Literary Lives of the Inklings, On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness by Andrew Peterson and, for my theology class, Pentecost and Santification in the Writings of John Wesley and Charles Wesley by Laurence Wood (a former professor of mine). 

Since I read about 80 books a year, the rest will come from "grazing" on my Kindle, my Hoopla account, and my Audible library. 

I have several series that I need to finish: Ngaio Marsh mysteries (I'm up to book 9), Jan Karon's Mitford series (book 7), and Narnia (book 4). I may dip into some of the books being covered by the Literary Life Podcast. Looking forward to discovering a few new favorites along the way!

May your new year be replete with good food, good books, good company, and God's blessing.

Blessings,

What I Read and Watched in September 2023

I enjoyed everything that I read this month. Overture to Death by Ngaio Marsh (#8 in the series) was delightful, and I enjoyed A Child's Anthology of Poetry (edited by Elizabeth H. Sword, a thrift store find for 99 cents) as my bedtime book. C.S. Lewis' Surprised by Joy (another 99 cent purchase) was my hands down favorite. Because of it, I downloaded (and paid way too much for) Volume 1 of his letters. The book I almost didn't finish was Stories of King Arthur and His Knights by U. Waldo Cutler, but it took a turn for the better in the last half. I finished a Bible study called God's Blueprint for Bible Prophecy, which was a deep dive into the book of Daniel. Not an easy study, but worth the effort. I appreciated Madeleine L'Engle's views on faith and art in her book, Walking on Water.

We didn't have much time for movie viewing this month. After I finished Cutler's version of the Arthurian legends, I watched Camelot (1982 HBO available through my Hoopla app). I remember hating the 1967 movie when I saw it 40 years ago, but now that I am familiar with the stories, I could appreciate the nuances in the HBO version. The lyrics by Lerner and Loewe were absolutely brilliant. Dan and I enjoyed A Puzzle to Die For (Hallmark Mystery, also via Hoopla). Dare I admit that when we had a short span of time for visual amusement we watched a few episodes of Petticoat Junction? Not having a TV in our present living situation has certainly enhanced my reading life!  

Blessings,

Poetry 101 - From A Railway Carriage by Robert Louis Stevenson

I have been a huge poetry fan ever since my fourth grade teacher introduced us to haikus, cinquains and limericks. Later it was an integral part of our family's bedtime routine to read one or two poems before the stories. I've read many a poetry anthology over the last five and a half decades, but I always return to the lovely, lyrical simplicity of Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses.

Recently I memorized "From a Railway Carriage" (included below) and was stunned to discover, as I repeated it daily, how masterfully Stevenson had composed each rhythm and sound. When you say the opening lines, you can hear the "ch, ch, ch" sound of the train. And the whole rhythm of the poem replicates its steady chugging. 

What I love most is how Stevenson juxtaposes the speed with which the train is going (which makes the countryside appear to be moving swiftly by) and the actual speed of the items the train is passing. He does this beautifully in the penultimate line: Here is a cart runaway in the road, lumping along with man and load. Just brilliant! 

If you aren't yet a poetry fan, I strongly suggest reading (or better yet, listening) to A Child's Garden of Verses. You might just change your mind about how "boring" it is. 

Faster than fairies, faster than witches,

Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;

And charging along like troops in a battle

All through the meadows the horses and cattle;

All of the sights of the hill and plain

Fly as thick as driving rain;

And ever again, in the wink of an eye,

Painted stations whistle by.

Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,

All by himself and gathering brambles.

Here is a tramp who stands and gazes;

And here is the green for stringing the daisies!

Here is a cart run away in the road

Lumping along with man and load;

And here is a mill, and there is a river:

Each a glimpse and gone forever!

Blessings,

The One Year Book of Poetry by Philip Comfort

What normally passes for Christian poetry is often syrupy and singsong-y, but The One Year Book of Poetry is a wonderful exception. Its editors have done an excellent job of compiling devotional poems with hardly a touch of saccharine, and their  choices reflect a wonderful variety of styles from various centuries and Christian traditions. The well-known metaphysical poets are included such as John Donne and George Herbert, but there were many new-to-me poets such as Richard Crashaw and Thomas Traherne. The real strength of this book is its poetry for Advent and Lent, which greatly enhanced my thinking and praying during those seasons.

Each daily reading is two pages. One one side is the poem and the other side is a helpful explanation. Some longer poems are broken up into several readings, which is a painless way to learn to appreciate more complex poetry. This approach, however, is what bothered me this time through. Since I'd read this book twice before, I thought I would try to forgo the explanations and just enjoy the poetry. But I quickly noticed that most of the readings could not be understood without additional help. I'm not against helpful commentary, but I realized that this particular book is not an appropriate recommendation for someone who is looking for an introduction to meatier poetry. It requires too much effort.

Earlier this year I read two other poetry compilations: Six Centuries of Great Poetry and Great Poems of the English Language (1936, OoP). Even though I did not understand all the nuances of every poem, I was able to appreciate the rich language and beautiful imagery of most of them without additional commentary. For me, this is the best way to learn to love poetry.

Do you have a poetry book that you love and can recommend? 

Blessings,

Anthony Esolen on the Importance of Memorizing Poetry

Although I am not a Catholic, I am a fan of Anthony Esolen's insightful articles in Crisis Magazine. I recently discovered his more lighthearted weekly newsletter “Word and Song,” which is dedicated to the promotion and preservation of truth, goodness and beauty. Three times a week he writes out his thoughts on various poems, songs or movies. 

He began a recent post with this verse from Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat:

A book of VERSES underneath the bough,

A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and thou

Beside me singing in the wilderness –

That wilderness were paradise enow!

He then goes on to elaborate on the meaning of the word “verses” and how poetry and song have been an integral part of previous civilizations because they were the best way to hide the stories & poetry & truths in one’s heart. He regrets that our present generation “no longer has the VERSES in our soul.”

He adds, “People nowadays often scoff at this sort of thing, calling it “rote memorization,” but that misses the heart of the matter entirely.  You can’t really “own” a song unless you hear it sung and you can sing it yourself, and poetry is essentially song.  When you commit a poem to heart, when you get the VERSES within you, you must engage your imagination; you see and hear things that make the VERSES fully present; you exert your voice, and you hear your voice; your body moves, and the movements have meaning; all kinds of memories, actions, emotions, thoughts, and feelings come into play and involve themselves with the poem.” (from Oct 24, 2022)

I highly recommend this brief and delightful newsletter.  

Blessings

Quotes on Poetry

People who are knowledgeable about poetry sometimes discuss it in that knowing, rather hateful way in which oenophiles talk about wine: robust, delicate, muscular. This has nothing to do with how most of us experience it, the heart coming around the corner and unexpectedly running into the mind. - Anna Quindlen

Most entertainment dulls our senses. Poetry sharpens them. - Joseph Pearce

Do you have a favorite poet? I like the metaphysical poems of John Donne and Richard Crashaw, but admit that it takes effort to understand them. For sheer joy of serendipitous language, I love Emily Dickinson. And Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verse never ceases to bring a smile to my heart.

Blessings,

Modern British Poetry by Louis Untermeyer

Edited by Louis Untermeyer and printed in 1920, Modern British Poetry highlights the poets of the early Georgian era (1910-1920). Half of them have been forgotten. Others, like John Masefield, Rudyard Kipling, Walter de la Mare, G.K. Chesterton, Thomas Hardy, and Robert Louis Stevenson have endured. And no anthology of “modern” poets would be complete without the WWI poems of Siegfried Sassoon and Rupert Brooke who eloquently decried the brutality of war.

In general, the Georgian poets wrote in reaction to the sentimentality of the Victorian era and its “rhymed sermons.” Much of their poetry is realistic and fatalistic. William Ernest Henley’s Invictus makes sense coming out of this time period of societal renunciation of a Higher Power and man’s subsequent dependence on himself. I am amazed that in the midst of such pessimism and cynicism that poets like Stevenson, de la Mare and Davies were able to find their voices.  

Untermeyer gives an introduction to each poet and one or two samples of his poetry. Some of his descriptions were less than flattering. On Alfred Noyes, he wrote, “Unfortunately, Noyes has not developed his gifts as deeply as his admirers have hoped. His poetry, extremely straightforward and rhythmical, has often degenerated into cheap sentimentalities and cheaper tirades; it has frequently attempted to express programs and profundities far beyond Noye’s power.” He describes D.H. Lawrence poetry as rife with “a febrile morbidity to an exalted and almost frenzied mysticism.” (!)

Most amusing of all, he predicts that Chesterton will be remembered for his poetry rather than his prose.

This was a free-for-kindle title which led me down a rabbit trail to many other obscure gems. I added about a dozen books to my TBR list!

Blessings,

The Value of Nonsense Poetry

Many people have a hard time finding the point of poetry, much less poetry that boasts of its nonsensical content, but poetry is the literature of compacted significance. Where the novelist uses a whole plot to unfold a few different ideas, the poet can bring whole traditions of thought into a few lines because of his freedom to assume that every poetic choice has great significance, only limited by the history of language and the reader’s imagination. Therefore, a poet takes great pains to find the perfect word and the perfect place for that word in the poem.

But, unlike the standard poet, the nonsense poet's style is much less laborious. His process is free and easy because, as a writer of nonsense, he reserves the right to assume readers don't fully comprehend every aspect of his meaning. Out of the inability to articulate an exact interpretation, we have the freedom to confidently assert truths about its objective meaning. Readers, then - especially young ones seeing it for the first time - get lost in wonderment at the ambiguous, foreign loveliness of the words and their success at communicating a story of good winning over evil through courage, perseverance, and skill.

So is that really the whole point? Just surprise at the nonsense of the words? Well, yes. We use the word “wonder” when we do not know something and would like to know it—a simple quotidian example. To expand it, wonder is the action of the mind, soul, and body when it encounters something it does not and cannot comprehend. It is a suspension of rational thought, a moment—brief or long—when we behold something of great beauty or horror, and through that encounter, grasp at truth. Wonder leads us to the eternal. 

From an article by Amanda Gehrke at The Federalist. Read full post here.

Blessings,

What I Read and Watched in October

I usually have three or four books going at the same time, but for the second half of October, I had six, which made it impossible to finish anything. Earlier in the month I read The Day of Small Things and Jane's Parlor by O. Douglas, which I did not enjoy as much as the first book in the series (The Proper Place). I got these quite cheaply for my Kindle and am not sure why there are no longer links to them at Amazon. (The best Douglas novel, Penny Plain, by the way, is always free.) I read Helen Keller's The Story of My Life while listening along on YouTube. Thomas Ramundo's The Prayer Life You've Always Wanted was simple, but encouraging. 

The books I'm presently reading at a snail's pace are: (1) Dante's Inferno, (2) Six Centuries of Great Poetry, (3) Mansfield Park (audiobook), (4) C.S. Lewis' Letters (Vol II), (5) Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome, and (6) Christian Faith in the Old Testament by Cockerill. 

We watched Blue Miracle with Dennis Quaid (2021) and Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thompson (1995). For some odd reason I love stories of unrequited love and enjoyed suffering along with Colonel Brandon! Come to think of it, that may be why I love most of Jane Austen's novels. Anyone else suffer from that malady?

Blessings,

Victober Book Plans

Kate Howe is a delightful Booktuber whose channel has great reviews of mysteries, fairy tale retellings, and classic literature. Every October she hosts a reading challenge of her favorite genre, Victorian literature. Since my last few months of reading have been heavy on theology, I'm looking forward to joining her for some lighter books.

First, I'll be doing the read-along of Jane Eyre. (My 12th time to read it.) In addition I've combed through my Kindle to see if I have any books from that era that I might tackle. Here are the top contenders:

A Dish of Orts - Essays by George MacDonald

Scenes of Clerical Life by George Eliot (three of her early novellas)

Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell (or Gaskell's bio of Charlotte Brontë)

Apologia Pro Vita Sua - Spiritual autobiography of Cardinal John Henry Newman (or his novel Loss and Gain)

I'd like to explore at least two of these Victorian poets: Francis Thompson (GK Chesteron was a fan), Thomas Hood, John Clare, Mathilde Blind (who wrote poems in protest of Darwin's view of man), William Ernest Henley, Jean Ingelow or Algernon Charles Swinburne.

I'm also considering a book of love letters between Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Should be fun!

The link to Kate's introductory video is here. 

Blessings,

Like Sorrow or a Tune: Poems by Eleanor Farjeon

When my sons  were little, I often read them a poem or two before their bedtime stories. Eleanor Farjeon was one poet who always seemed to know how to please them with her gentle rhymes and playful wit. Though Farjeon (1881-1965) is known in England as a prolific writer of poems, stories and plays, she is most known in the U.S. for penning the words to the hymn, "Morning Has Broken." And although Goodreads lists 99 of her books, my Michigan library had access to just one of them.

Like Sorrow or a Tune is a compilation of her poems written for children and adults. It contains quite a bit of biographical information and a smattering of her lesser-known poetry.

Sometimes she reminds me of Emily Dickinson with her compact profundity: Words and the body have always been much pain to me, little fetters and drags on immensities.

But other rhymes are beautiful in their simplicity:

When the heat of the summer made drowsy the land,
A dragonfly came and sat on my hand,
With its blue jointed body and wings like spun glass, 
It lit on my fingers as though they were grass.

If you enjoy good children's poetry, I hope you can find Farjeon in your local library. I don't recommend this particular book as the best place to start because it seemed like an odd assortment, but it does give a bit of insight into her adult poetry.

The title of the book comes from one of her most famous poems for children:

The night will never stay,
The night will still go by, 
Though with a million stars
You pin it to the sky, 
Though you bind it to the blowing wind
And buckle it to the moon,
The night will slip away,
Like sorrow or a tune.

Blessings,

Sing a Song of Seasons by Fiona Waters

Most modern poetry for children is twaddle, so I was delighted to find an exception in Fiona Water's collection, Sing a Song of Seasons: A Nature Poem for Every Day of the Year. Not only has Waters chosen fine poems filled with rich language, she chose an illustrator who captured the whimsy and wonder of the natural world. (I am troubled by the garish, cartoony figures in most children's books.)

Sing a Song of Seasons offers 365 bite-sized poems that coincide nicely with each season of the year. Several well-known poets are included such as Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Cristina Rossetti, but most are more modern. The choices are child-friendly without being too silly which shows a surprising respect for young readers. I am very hard to please when it comes to poetry, yet there were very few poems in this collection that fell completely flat. Most had gentle alliteration, beautiful imagery, and rich vocabulary. The entry for February 18:

The round full moon, 
So clear and white, 
How brightly she shines
On a winter night! 
Slowly she rises, 
Higher and higher, 
With a cold clear light, 
Like ice on fire.

Some entries will cause the reader to wonder at their meaning, but in a positive way. Take the July 19th poem for example:

I wish I was 
a dragonfly
hallelujah
in sungleam.

This would be a lovely, painless way to introduce your children or grandchildren to beautiful language. The books ends appropriately with a non-nature poem that emphasizes the pleasure of having poetry swimming around in your brain: Keep a poem in your pocket and a picture in your head and you'll never feel lonely at night when you're in bed.

Highly recommended!

Blessings,

Collected Poems by Mervyn Peake

I stumbled upon this book by accident and what a fortuitous fall! I had only recently heard of Mervyn Peake because C.S. Lewis mentioned him in On Stories. Out of curiosity I checked out his Collected Poems and was rewarded with surprising riches.

Peake (1911-1968) was born to missionary parents in China but when he was eleven, the family returned to England. Christian imagery is occasionally woven into his poems. He wrote about love, nature and the horrors of war. He is much better known as an artist and novelist than as a poet. This book has 230 of his poems (80 of them never before published).

One of his repeated themes is the lavish wealth of creation. He describes the colors of spring as minted coins in this excerpt from “Colored Money” -

How can I spend this coinage when it floods
So ceaselessly between the lids,
And gluts my vaults with bright
Shillings of sharp delight
Whose every penny
Is colored money?
Storm, harvest, flood or snow,
Over the generous country I go
And gather helplessly
New wealth from all I see

In another poem he describes a budding tree in springtime: The green hesitation of the leaf was prophecy for richness. He succeeds in writing poems that are hauntingly beautiful and deeply meaningful yet accessible without a PhD in literature. That doesn’t mean I understood every one of them (some were only fragments that he never finished), but I reveled in the lush imagery and sumptuous language of each one. Even the war poems weren’t nearly as full of bitterness as the poetry of some other poets such as A.E. Houseman and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

I’ll close with the first half of his poem called “Autumn”

The lit mosaic of the wood
Stayed me at the turn of the road
To stare
At autumn standing there
In Joseph’s coat; a tree
Golden, and bright, and free
For head; his feet In the rich earth were set.
The wind
Was tugging blind
At the fierce rainbow rags, the tattered turban,
Under a fitful sun.

A feast for poetry lovers!

Blessings,

The One Year Book of Poetry by Philip Comfort

I've raved about this book on and off through the years, but have never actually reviewed it here. I'll share a few thoughts now that I've read it through for the third time.

The One Year Book of Poetry contains some of the best devotional poetry written in the last 500 years. Although I read a lot of poetry, this book introduced me to many new authors who are now favorites. Along with the better known John Donne, George Herbert and Christina Rossetti, there are poems by Francis Quarles, Edward Taylor and Robert Herrick (metaphysical poets from the 1600's).

There's very little fluff here. In fact, some of the poems are too theologically dense for the average reader (even with Daniel Comfort's explanations on the opposite page of each entry.) Although I love rich, gorgeous language, and depth of meaning, I'm a poetry pragmatist at heart. If I can't understand it without significant outside help, I am not inclined to love it. Even if only half of these poems got a thumbs up from me, those 180 deepened my love for beautifully written poetry that expresses life's joys and sorrows in the midst of earnest hope in a faithful God.

Henry Vaughan's (1621-1695) "Easter Hymn" has this marvelous beginning:

Another overwhelmingly beautiful poem is Edward Taylor's "Stupendous love! All Saints' Astonishment!" which is about the power of Christ's blood to cleanse us. He compares the blood to wine and writes,

My soul had caught an ague, and like hell
Her thirst did burn: she to each spring did fly,
But this bright blazing love did spring a well
Of aqua vitae in the Deity,
Which on the top of heaven's high hill outburst
And down came running thence t'allay my thirst.

How shall I praise thee then? My blottings jar
And wrack my rhymes to pieces in thy praise.
Thou breath'st thy vein still in my porringer ,
To lay my thirst, and fainting spirits raise.
Thou makes glory's chiefest grape to bleed
Into my cup: And this is drink indeed.

(ague = fever fit, porringer = small bowl, aqua vitae = liquor)

This is a book to be read and savored slowly and prayerfully.

Blessings,

On Poetry in General by William Hazlitt

Happy Poetry Month! Many Writers have tried to define that elusive something that we call poetry and writer and literary critic William Hazlitt (1778-1830) was no exception. To Hazlitt poems cannot merely describe an object or a feeling; their words have to heighten the imagination.

He laments the "advances" in civilization (scientific knowledge, modernization, etc.) that are unfavorable to poetry because they cause more indifference and less awe. Society, by degrees, is constructed into a machine that carries us safely and insipidly from one end of life to the other, in a very prose style. . . It is to overcome the flats and sharps of prose that poetry was invented.

Hazlitt says that poetry lifts the spirit above the earth and draws the soul out of itself with indescribable longings. Because of that definition he cites Pilgrim's Progress and Robinson Crusoe as great poetic works. The great poetry in the world, according to him, is found in Homer, the Bible, and Dante. (Beautiful language that elevates the mind is essential, but obviously to him, rhyming is not.)

 "On Poetry" was one of several essays gathered together by Jacob Zeitlin in 1913 and is fifteen pages long. I found a free online copy here. If you don't already love poetry, this article is probably too dry to change your mind, but I appreciated Hazlitt's insights.

Blessings,

Poetry of Alexander Pope - Vol 1

Thackeray called Alexander Pope (1688-1744) the greatest literary artist that England had ever seen. When I heard Professor John Sutherland say  that, "Pope is the greatest poet of the 18th century from whom elegant language flowed as easily as conversation," I figured it was time for me to become better acquainted with him. 

I was familiar with a few of his famous lines such as Behold the child, by nature's kindly law, Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw, and A little learning is a dangerous thing, drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring, but had not read any of his complete works.

I was pleased to discover a depth and richness of his poetry. Even if you don't agree with everything he writes, he's worth the effort. Many of his poems are quite long and are sometimes hard to follow, but the beauty of language kept me going.

I loved the extensive "Essay on Man," but several passages stood out to me as worthy of reading and re-reading. In epistle three, he writes uniquely about sexuality and procreation:

Each sex desires alike, 'till two are one.
Nor ends the pleasure with the fierce embrace,
They love themselves, a third time, in their race!

Who knew you could write about this topic so succinctly and beautifully (and chastely)?

If you'd like a lengthy introduction to Pope's work, Volume one is available free for Kindle. The Essay on Man is available by itself. And a smaller book of poetry is here. I liked him so much that I ordered a hard cover copy of his poems to dip into again this coming year.

(Though well-known for his satire, this volume of poetry seemed more religious and philosophical in nature. I checked out Volume One from my library (digitally) and it has a different amount of pages from the Volume One at Amazon. So I'm not even sure it's the same book.)

Blessings,

Best-Loved Poems by John Boyes

I'm always intrigued by any poetry compilation called "Best-loved." Best-loved by whom? Boyes writes that he made an effort in his book to choose poems which are best-known rather than his personal favorites. But I would beg to differ since I was unfamiliar with more than HALF of these poems.

Nevertheless, he has done an exceptional job of gathering together exceptionally beautiful poetry. I didn't enjoy all the selections equally, but there is a general elegance of language in his choices that makes the book a delight. (Walt Whitman's poems were a constant exception to this.)

Boyes separates the poems by category (Nature, Death, Love, Travel, Humor, etc.) My least favorite category was "Irreverence and Satire" precisely because its biting tone took away from potential loveliness. I was befuddled by the inclusion of George Herbert's The Pulley in this section since it is ironic, rather than satirical. I was pleasantly surprised by his section of poems about faith since they are often excluded from modern anthologies. Another treat was his inclusion of "Twas the Night before Christmas," which may not be great literature, but it certainly falls under the heading of "well-loved."

There is very little fluff here. Amidst classic sonnets by Shakespeare and family favorites like "From a Railway Carriage," you'll find many new poets to enjoy. At 600 pages, this is a book to read slowly, savoring a few poems a day.

Blessings,

The Oxford Book of Christian Verse by Lord David Cecil

If I had two lives, I would have a separate blog highlighting classic poetry. (In 2013 I even had a contest to choose a name for a poetry section of this blog that never materialized.) The thing about good poetry books is that they take a long time to read and savor. So they don't lend themselves to my book-a-week book blog format. Maybe there is a poem-a-week in my imaginary future...

I've been reading the The Oxford Book of Christian Verse for over a year and have enjoyed the rich theology and beautiful language. My copy was printed in 1941 so it mercifully avoids any modern rubbish. (Not all modern poets are bad, but that's a subject for another post.) It starts with Chaucer, works through 600 years, and ends with T.S. Eliot.

I underlined many a delightful turn of phrase (George Herbert calling prayer "the soul in paraphrase" and John Milton calling the Magi "star-led wizards" for example). Andrew Marvell describes how affliction turns us back to God by writing that we are "shipwrecked into health again."

I loved the astounding economy of language used by Richard Crashaw as he described Christ's birth:

Welcome, all wonders in one sight!
Eternity shut in a span.
Summer in winter. Day in night.
Heaven in earth, and God in man.
Great little one! whose all-embracing birth
Lifts earth to heaven, stoops heav'n to earth.

Christian poetry tends to be sentimental and this anthology was collected with the distinct purpose of avoiding such fluff, which means that it must be read slowly and carefully. Occasionally I had to visit an online poetry site to clarify an author's meaning.

This is a lovely book, but it cannot be appreciated by those who want a "quick poetry fix." These devotional selections are meant to make you pause, think, and even pray. As such, they can't be read in a hurry.

Blessings,