Customer Reviews

Favorite Poems (Dover Thrift Editions)

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Affliction of Margaret; Anecdote for Fathers; Character of the Happy Warrior; Composed upon Westminster Bridge; Elegiac Stanzas; Expostulation and Reply; Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg; Idiot Boy; In London; Inside of King's College Chapel, Cambridge; I Travelled Among Unknown Men; I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud; Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey; Lines Written in Early Spring; London, 1802; Lucy Gray; Mutability; My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold; November 1806; Nuns Fret Not; Nutting; Ode Intimations of Immortality; Ode to Duty; On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic; Pet-Lamb; Resolution and Independence; Scorn Not the Sonnet; She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways; She Was a Phantom Delight; Simon Lee; Slumber Did My Spirit Seal; Solitary Reaper; Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known; Thought of a Briton on the Subjugation of Switzerland; Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower; To Sleep; To Toussaint L'Ouverture; We Are Seven; World is Too Much With Us.

The remarkable English Romantic Poets - William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Keats - remain among the favorite poets in the English language. This litte Dover edition, titled Favorite Poems, is a good introduction to much of Wordsworth's greatest poetry.

Wordworth's poetry is quite accessible to the modern reader. There is no need for extensive familiarity with Greek and Roman mythology, nor for knowledge of archaic poetic terms. Footnotes and a glossary are not required.

I have read these 39 poems comprising the Dover collection three or four times over the last few years. With each reading I find Wordsworth's questioning of man's relationship to nature and "what man has made of man" to be as relevant today as it was two centuries ago.

My favorites in this collection include:

Composed Upon Westminister Bridge Sept. 3, 1802 - Elegiac Stanzas - I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud - In London, September 1802 - Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey - Lines Written in Early Spring - London, 1802 - Mutability - My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold - Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent's Narrow Room - Nutting - Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood - On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic - Resolution and Independence - Scorn Not the Sonnet - She Dwelt Along the Untrodden Ways - The World is Too Much with Us, Late and Soon.

The other poems in this collection are:

The Affliction of Margaret - Anecdote for Fathers - Character of the Happy Warrior - Expostulation and Reply - Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg - I Traveled Among Unknown Men - The Idiot Boy - Inside of King's College Chapel, Cambridge - Lucy Gray - November 1806 - Ode to Duty - The Pet Lamb - She Was a Phantom of Delight - A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal - The Solitary Reaper - Strange Fits of Passion I Have Known - Thought of a Briton on the Subjugation of Switzerland - Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower - To Sleep - To Toussaint L'Ouverture - We Are Seven.

For the reader looking for a more extensive collection of Wordsworth's poetry, explanatory notes, and some poetic criticism, I recommend the hardbound Everyman's Library "Selected Poems", edited by Damian Davies. ISBN 1-85715-245-X

This is not an edition for scholars, nor for the reader who wishes to know the great body of Wordsworth's poetry. It contains most of the great poems so frequently anthologized, including the two longer Odes, the Intimations Ode, and Tintern Abbey. It also includes much of the most memorable shorter work.
Wordsworth is one of my favorite poets. His simple clear language, his quiet reflectiveness, his direct and arresting descriptions of nature, his deeply moral relation to life, his sublime metaphysical reflectiveness, his tranquility, his presentation of recollecting self at the heart of his work, his philosophical sublimity and clarity, his sympathetic relation to ' common people' his nobility of utterance, his capacity for creating great and memorable lines are all evidenced here.

Plenty of literary works to refer to. Great index. Great book for thrift shopping.

I am always interested in reading poetry, I have loved it since childhood. However I do not find the wonder many attribute to Wordsworth and some of the other past poetic icons professors and/or instructors at many colleges and universities attempt to push down their students throats.

Yes, I grew up with English teachers rambling off a list of names they felt were the great poets of the past (lists I am sure they were given, fed, or forced to accept, by their professors and instructors who themselves were force to accept too. I have always wondered who it was that originally decided that these few poets and their poetry were any better than anyone elses. I find the common man or women in society can spill forth just as majestic and just as meaningful lines of poetry as any of these so called greats.

To date I still wonder who those mysterious deciders of what is or is not good poetry are, and why they missed the mark so badly.

Don't get me wrong I enjoy reading anyones poems and I try my best to find something in every poem that inspires my soul or makes me think. I have done so in the poems of this book as well. But I do not find the greatness that some seem to find or are told they should find, in all of these works. A few of them are just tedious nonthinness.

As a matter of fact I can pick up a copy of the American Poetry Anthology published by Robert Nelson every year or so, that has page after page, after page of average everyday citizen's poems in them and find works that far surpass the works (as far as touching my very soul with meaning and insight) found in this book of Wordsworth.

And I hardly think anyone trying to make the case that only a sophisticate (here place the word elitist if it suits you) can find the greatness of the works here presented. That is an valid argument and would be quite egotistical and condensending now wouldn't it?

I in fact liked this book, but it did not move me like Frost and many others have. I have found in my life hundreds of poems and dozens of poets who relay their artistic prowess far better than Wrodsworth ever did. now I know why the book is priced as it is. Interesting but not awe inspiring.

I was never much of a reader of poetry, until I discovered poetry on audio cassette. Hearing it spoken gives life to the written word. It's like watching and listening to Shakespeare rather than reading it ... the rhythm of the words come alive! It's how great poetry is meant to be appreciated.