Collected Poems [Paperback]

John Betjeman (Author), Andrew Motion (Introduction)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0374126534 | ISBN-13: 978-0374126537 | Publication Date: November 28, 2006 | Edition: 1st

Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.
--from "Slough"

When the beloved English poet John Betjeman's Collected Poems first appeared in 1958, it made publishing history, and has now sold more than two million copies to a steadily expanding readership. Betjeman is almost unique among poets in that his work appeals equally strongly to those who love poetry and to those who rarely read it. This volume, the first American edition of the Collected Poems, incorporates all the poems that Betjeman published after the original Collected Poems and includes a new foreword by Britain's poet laureate, Andrew Motion.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A neat comic sense, an unfeigned comfort with 19th-century manners and forms, and a good eye for English milieus made Betjeman (1906–1984) both a great craftsman of light verse and the most popular British poet of his day. His first U.K. Collected Poems, in 1958, sold millions of copies. Newly available in the United States alongside A.N. Wilson's new biography, this big book can show Americans what so many Britons cherish: ballads and love poems devoted to strapping, tennis-playing young women; a fondness for Cornwall's seaside; devotion to traditional England, along with an amused contempt for the middle-class ways that might destroy it (the ways in which he, and his readers, actually live). Betjeman and his sympathetic characters, from King Edward VIII to a "husband down at the depot with car in car-park," hike along "stony lanes and back at six to tea," celebrate Christmas, admire South London's churches and denounce the "Inexpensive Progress" which plans to "Leave no village standing./ Which could provide a landing/ For aeroplanes to roar." Though Philip Larkin called Betjeman (poet laureate from 1972 on) his favorite contemporary poet, "Betj" provides nothing like Larkin's memorable depths; his enviable skill, however, might entice Anglophiles, or devotees of light verse, to queue up. (Dec.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"John Betjeman has succeeded better than most of his contemporaries in narrowing the gulf between poetry and the public. In his own province of feeling he has established a personal regency over all contemporary taste." --The Times (London)

"He is in the best sense a committed writer, whose poems spring from what he really feels about real life, and as a result he brings back to poetry a sense of dramatic urgency it had all but lost." --Philip Larkin

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 528 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (November 28, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374126534
• ISBN-13: 978-0374126537
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #452,651 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's Betjeman, enough said., December 18, 2010

By 

Josef K (NYC) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Collected Poems (Paperback)

What can I say, it's John Betjeman... He's great!

I especially love his poem, 'Slough' (rhymes with cow) -- imagine that he wrote this poem as war with Germany loomed on the horizon and England was soon to be bombed unmercifully. Opening stanza:

Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow
-- Swarm over, Death!


Betjeman is so easy going that the radical or even impudent aspect of some of his ideas passes under your guard and strikes like a knife when it catches up to you. He's undoubtedly one of the best poets of the 20th Century. The intensely local aspect of a lot of his poetry is opaque to an international audience, but there is still plenty that is deep and universal here.

4 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A very English poet, August 30, 2005

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: John Betjeman Collected Poems (Paperback)

I tried very hard to build up some enthusiasm for this collection. Betjeman has long been one of the most loved and popular of English poets. But I found the light verse too light, and the precise description of English landscape uncorrelated with some higher moral and spiritual vision as for instance in Wordsworth.
Not my cup of tea, but this does not mean that it is not a good brew for those who enjoy an intelligent rhyming perceptiveness, a humorous at times wistfully imaginative view of the world.
Because my review is I think gives a poor description of Betjeman's poem I will bring an example , so that the reader of this review will at last have a ' feel' of what the work is.

14 November 1973

Hundreds of birds in the air
And millions of leaves on the pavement,
And Westminster bells ringing on
To palace and people outside-
And for all the words,' I will'
To love's most willing enslavement,
All of our people rejoice
With venturous bridegroom and bride.

Trumpets blare at the entrance,
Multitudes crane and sway
Glow, white lily in London,
You are high in our hearts today!