Poems of Ambrose Bierce [Paperback]

Ambrose Bierce (Author), M. E. Grenander (Editor, Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 28, 1995

Ambrose Bierce is one of the most colorful figures in American literary history. A writer whose Devil's Dictionary remains the delight of misanthropes and fans of satire throughout the English-speaking world, he was also a master of the short story form. From the late 1860s through the early 1900s, he worked as a journalist, gaining wide renown in the 1890s and 1900s as a satirical columnist for William Randolph Hearst’s chain of newspapers. In 1913 Bierce traveled to Mexico and joined Pancho Villa’s army as an observer. He disappeared late that year and his fate has been a matter of dispute ever since.

The poems that Bierce wrote throughout his career are less well known than his stories, journalistic pieces, and aphoristic observations on human folly. Nevertheless, his work as a poet, as critic Donald Sidney-Fryer has argued, "clearly merits the attention of the discriminating lover and student of poetry." Varied in form and subject matter, most of his poems are (not surprisingly) satires.

This volume contains a generous selection of Bierce’s poems; they are alternately ironic, melancholy, bitter, and wickedly amusing. There are also fifteen essays and letters on poetry, poets, and such topics as "Wit and Humor" and "The Passing of Satire." Certainly there have been few authors more intimately familiar with wit and satire than the brilliant, iconoclastic Bierce. As editor M. E. Grenander makes plain in her introduction, both are abundantly present in this collection of "some of the most remarkable verse in American literary history."

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

YA?A fine collection of poems, essays, and letters by the author best known for his masterful short stories. The poems are satirical and vibrant and make a fine addition to his body of work.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Bierce (1842-1914?) defined poetry as "[a] form of expression peculiar to the Land beyond the Magazines." Whatever he may have meant by that, Bierce was himself a poet, although his poetic output is less well known than his acerbic satires, journalistic pieces, and other writings. Now Grenander, a leading Bierce scholar, has brought together a representative sampling of Bierce's poems, along with essays and letters concerning poets and poetry, including "Wit and Humor" and "The Passing of Satire." Bierce's wit is evidenced throughout, as is a vulnerability and tenderness that one rarely sees in his prose: "I fell asleep and dreamed that I/Was flung, like Vulcan, from the sky;/Like him, was lamed-another part:/His leg was crippled, and my heart./I woke in time to see my love/conceal a letter in her glove." Most of the writings brought together here are also to be found in the multivolume The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce (Gordian Pr., 1911; 1966. reprint.). Libraries owning the earlier set may not need to consider this new edition of poetry, although Grenandier's introduction brings new insight to Bierce's work.
Judy Clarence, California State Univ. Lib., Hayward
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 202 pages
• Publisher: Bison Books (December 28, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803261330
• ISBN-13: 978-0803261334
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,618,779 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

5.0 out of 5 stars Deserves wider recognition, April 20, 2011

By 

DabblerArts (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Poems of Ambrose Bierce (Paperback)

This book was a real find for me - I discovered Ambrose Bierce about the same time that I discovered Heinrich von Kleist, and remembered Nietzsche's saying that if it weren't for certain writers, we would not know that it is possible to live. But I will stick to Bierce! who is an uncompromising and utterly compelling writer and poet.

In this selection, we get some choice excerpts from the famous Devil's Dictionary, but also poems from his other, largely forgotten volumes of verse. Bierce is a classical poet; he writes in meter to public themes. What immediately impresses is the sense of a fierce moral intellect, that would scorn to evade anything but the most direct statement and communication. Bierce's themes are timely - he participated in and lived in the wake of the Civil War - and timeless - the perfidy and nobility of men (in the non-sexist sense), the self-contrariety of philosophy and religion, the irrational violence of the universe, etc. What makes him, like von Kleist, utterly modern - no, his voice hasn't dated a bit! - is the bitterness that complicates, even undermines, heroic efforts of self-will and world-recognition. Whatever that means - but I think you know what I mean! What makes this poetry so much fun is Bierce's universal satirical instinct. He makes fun of everything above and in heaven. There are many fine poems here, but one of my favorites is a deliriously demented translation of the "Dies irae," the medieval hymn that's often set to music - it's much too complicated to explain, but you'll die laughing when you read it, I promise. It's even prefaced with a dead-pan claim to historical and poetical faithfulness.

Apropos the author's voice, Walter Ong speaks of the urn that would and could still speak. That is, despite the author's much-vaunted death, Ong reminds us that nothing unites a body of work like a voice, a personality, a spirit or sensibility. Bierce's sensibility is something that has propped me up and inspired me. I must also say that the introduction to this book is excellent, and does a better job at explaining Bierce than I can.

Also, if you haven't read his stories, beyond the ubiquitous (but justly so!) "An Occurrence at Owl Creek," they are worth reading. The civil war s tories are really interesting. "Ghost and horror stories" - a cheap volume available on Amazon - is a fine introduction to his grotesques. "A bottomless grave" is a favorite - it's incredibly funny, but also incredibly tragic - the comedy and the tragedy being developed at the same time. Anyway, go read Bierce!