Earth Apples: Collected Poems [Paperback]

Edward Abbey (Author), David Petersen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1995

Edward Abbey continues to grow in stature as one of America's funniest and most profound twentieth-century writers. Brooding, iconoclastic, prophetic, Abbey was principally known as a prose writer, the author of such legendary works as The Monkey Wrench Gang, Desert Solitaire, and The Brave Cowboy. Although Abbey rarely published his poetry, he was, unbeknownst to his loyal and often fanatical public, a passionate producer of verse, and these seventy-one original poems - never before published in any form (although several were rejected by the leading magazines of the nation) - offer an insightful and wrenching look into the mind of this great man known to some as "Cactus Ed." To read these poems, all written between 1952 and 1989, and culled from his Journals, is to feel the ineffable, irrefutable essence of Edward Abbey. The poems frequently alternate between the joy and pain that marked his life, and all brandish his immutable character and nonconformity.

Product Details

• Paperback: 112 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr (September 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312134797
• ISBN-13: 978-0312134792
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 4.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #355,389 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Edward Abbey was born in Home, Pennsylvania, in 1927. He was educated at the University of New Mexico and the University of Edinburgh. He died at his home in Oracle, Arizona, in 1989.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good Ol' Country Apples, July 17, 2009

By 

Jason Murphy "psykomakia" (United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Earth Apples: Collected Poems (Paperback)

I can't imagine how you've found this product unless by either being already a fan of Edward Abbey or by sheer chance: it's not a collection of poetry you'd otherwise hear of. And I am no different. I bought this book on a whim from my library for a dollar, thinking I'd give just about any book of poetry a chance for a dollar.

Edward Abbey is apparently a well-known American Southwestern writer, and this is a collection of never-before and never-again-to-be published poems. He is, as he says of himself in his poem "A Simple-Minded Song of Hatred" about hating New York City, a "poor country boy" (51). And I think you have to be at least part "good ol' country boy" to really enjoy this collection. There are many many many images of hawks and aspens and birds and mountains.

There are some gems. I particularly like "May, 1952--Norway" and "Soaring Song," both love poems. The three line "Writer" is also appealing. But there aren't many poems you can really latch on to emotionally. Or intellectually, I suppose, either. But then, the editor admits in his introduction that these poems were "never, it seems, intended to be 'the thick dense intense complicated stuff'" (xii) that Edward Abbey himself said poetry was supposed to be. The editor (quite clearly a close friend of Abbey's) says these poems will endure, however, because they are just so EDWARD ABBEY!

So, yes, if you found this product through already being a fan of Abbey's, you may enjoy it. Or, perhaps, if you're a good ol' boy who loves lots of mountains and hawks and not so much the "dense intense complicated stuff," you may like it, too. Otherwise, I suggest you pass on it.

6 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I really liked this book, September 12, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Earth Apples: Collected Poems (Paperback)

When I first read this book I was in Sata Fe, New Mexico's public library looking for some other poetry book. When I cam across it I thumbed through it at first but then a few poems just grabbed me and I ended up reading the entire thing there in the public library. The poems are real. I like Edward Abbey's poetry because it is not so flowery and wordy that you lose the point, but just enuff. His metaphores and style of writting truley capture the sense of whatever momment he may be writting about.