Customer Reviews

The Complete Poems of William Empson

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This book shows how far from our time Empson is--a collection in which the annotations are 3 times the number of pages of the poems---how overscholarly!, we might judge, how nicer to be more spontaneous, direct.

But if you don't mind being challenged in your norms, try a poet whose lines take you on the adventurous ride of one of the most complex minds you can encounter in poetry.

Representative is "Dissatisfaction with Methaphysics," which begins with the floating corpse of Mahomet, tells how it lies on earth's elliptic orbit surrounded by "epicycles" (Ptolemaic, the notes tell us), then how we may descend from Adam & Eve's incest. The lengthy annotations certainly don't wrap up all the meanings, but give further associations to ideas of Empson and others which, in turn, may stimulate the reader to have another go at the poem's fascinations. I would not have picked up, without the notes, the subtle variations of the poem's apparently conventional form. And I'm still not sure what it all means.

If you've had the pleasure of hearing Empson recite, on a recording, one of his villanelles, you'll have an additional appreciation.

I got this because I read a William Empson poem in a collection of science writing. I thought the piece was intelligent and deep and mystical. Also I thought it sounded fantastic that a 500 page book would consist of 400 pages commenting and explaining the first 100. Well, it is less funny or fabulous or brash than you'd think. Many of the notes are simply apologies for the poems being failures and needing explanation- fair enough. If its so good why doesn't it speak for itself? But after the first few letters and apologies I just could not care and the detailed notes explaining that a line borrows from this or that obscure thing I also do not care about, did not draw my attentions. I tried to read the actual poems but they are just embaressingly bad. Other than being weird, and requiring "puzzle interest" to solve, one finds they are not enjoyable, musical, spiritual, interesting, or meaningful. Also 12 syllable words do not fit well into sonnets, so I cannot even say they are technically composed well, though others would. They are somewhere between tedious and painful. I'd skip it with exclamation marks, unless all this just makes you wonder: well how bad could a famous poet really be? And learning that he stopped writing for all of middle age because he felt the distractions of life would make any poems he tried stink was interesting, but I just told you that. I give it 2 stars because it stimulated me enough to write a review and get annoyed, rather than put me to sleep.