Customer Reviews

Longfellow: Selected Poems (Penguin Classics)

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When I was producing a video biography of Longfellow for Macmillan/McGraw-Hill in 1992, I needed a one-volume selection of Longfellow's poetry, and this book did the job very nicely. It includes Longfellow's best-known poems as well as two others that were never published during the poet's lifetime but must be classed with his finest work. The introduction by Lawrence Buell provides a useful biographical sketch and a thoughtful discussion of why Longfellow--the most famous American of his time--is not more widely read today. Buell's observations may get you thinking about this schoolbook poet in a different way.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Selected Poems

Book Review

By Richard Edward Noble

I decided to reacquaint myself with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow because of a remark I read in another book. It was commented in this other reading that Henry in his day was America's most read and beloved poet and eventually supported himself on his poetry.

I truly admire any poet who has been able to make a living writing poetry. I only know of a few: Robert Service, Rod Mckuen, Rudyard Kipling, possibly Ogden Nash, John Milton - most poets had a day job. They have traditionally been school teachers or college professors, ministers and preachers.

Walt Whitman is a typical sad story of a struggling poet - so too is Edgar Allen Poe. So when I read someone who actually made a living at that art, I am curious to say the least. All else said to the contrary they must have had something.

I sent for this nice little volume. The book itself is very nice with one of those little "strings" to mark the pages - like in a bible.

I've read the entire book aloud. I enjoy reading poetry aloud. I read my poetry aloud at bed time. My wife takes out her hearing aids and is snoring while I'm inflecting and projecting to my heart's content.
This is a wonderful collection with lots of old favorites ... Paul Revere's Ride, Song of Hiawatha, The Courtship of Miles Standish, The Village Blacksmith and The Wreck of the Hesperus. But since I never sat down before and read a whole volume of Longfellow there were many that I had never read or heard. The Children's Hour is famous but I had never read it before - also The Cross of Snow - two very beautiful poems.

The fact that Longfellow was so popular back in 1888 leads me to think that Americans, on the average, must have been much more intelligent than those mulling around us today. It is a complement to the population of that era that they chose to make this man comfortable in his old age by purchasing his lovely poetry with their hard earned pennies, nickels and dimes.

Longfellow was an historian. Much of his writing is historical. He is also clearly a classical poet - writing in the tradition of Dante, Milton, Edmund Spenser and the like. His poetry is excellent. It sings. Get this volume and read it out loud to yourself (or to someone else, for that matter. It is wonderful. You don't have to understand every line - just listen to it.

He also seemed to be a very nice man - one whose life I intend to explore more deeply.

Richard Edward Noble - The Hobo Philosopher - Author of:
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"The Eastpointer" Selections from award winning column.

Longellow is the poet of the American public school. 'Evangeline' 'The Courtship of Miles Standish' 'Paul Revere's Ride' ' The Village Blacksmith' ' 'A Psalm of life' and others. His reputation in the nineteenth century was great and overwhelming. Yet his reputation in the realm of poetry today is not with those artists of the canon, Tennyson and Browning in England, and Whitman and Dickinson in the United States. Perhaps it is because his poems are taken to be not inventive enough linguistically. Perhaps it is because the very thing many have praised him for his musicality seems today to be less than the irregular music of a Hopkins or Dylan Thomas.
In any case in Longfellow one will find sound solid lines, a certain moral stance , a kind of American integrity. For someone like myself reading Longfellow is a nostalgic trip and a new perspective on what I read so long ago. He has much to give even if it is not quite at the highest poetic level.

Longfellow appears to be one of those poets afflicted with a severe case of schoolcurriculumnitis. My regrets!

You know the disease - in the upper echelons of high school you are fed a safe selection of poems and novellas (actual novels of course being too unwieldy for the teacher) and then asked to analyse the living daylights outta 'em. Needless to say you are put off these cursed authors for life.

Coming from a different language, no one ever tried to poison the Longfellow well for me so I find this late-romantic poetry quite enjoyable. 'Evangeline' was a bit too saccharine but 'The Courtship of Miles Standish' was moving, as was 'John Endicott'.

Annoying as always are my friends over at Penguin who, after all these years, still manage to put out a book that looks aged before even being read. After perusing it it is it ripe for a stoop sale. I know it's cheap but can't you do better? Pretty please?

I love this book it is something that men and women would enjoy. I have tons of information on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow because our house is a remake of his he lived from 1807-1882. If I were you I would buy it I am the biggest fan of his I have every single book of poems,songs,and more on him in paperback and hardcover. Buy it!

I wanted a book of Longfellow poems and this is the best compact miscellany on the market