Customer Reviews

The Rattle Bag: An Anthology of Poetry

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This collection is a masterpiece, and its companion volume the School Bag is every bit as good. While the collection includes many classics, the various obsessions of the editors have led them to uncover works that you are unlikely to have read before.

I return to this anthology again and again.

In short: I have always loved this book, and I return to it often. The editors have assembled a wondrous array of world poems that , IMHO, succeed in meeting the goal of the text: To in some way present the joy of poetry to young people. I happen to be a non-poet in my 50's and The Rattle Bag is an ongoing source of joy in my life, because it is a thoughtful and vibrant collection.

In long[er]: Mssrs. Hughes and Heaney are who they are, and the collection here certainly makes some sort of statement about their own views of poetry as it might be encountered by young people. This collection reminds me of Harry Smith's Folkways Anthology of Folk Music... each individual piece is valid in its own way, but the collection adds up to more than the sum of its parts. On the other side: the editors chose to present the poems in order, sorted alphabetically by title, which tends to minimize any sense of editorializing. In the end, it's the kind of anthology that can be opened to any page and enjoyed for any length of time, and it'll move anybody regardless of age.

This is a collection of poetry in which the poems are arranged alphabetically according to title, thus the reader jumps around from century to century, poet to poet, with no connection. This is an interesting way to organize a poetry anthology, but not necessarily a satisfying way. In addition, while I found wonderful poems by Thomas Hardy ("Heredity" and "Transformations," for example, neither of which I was familiar with), I felt that many of the poems chosen were not that poet's greatest writing. The Walt Whitman choices seemed weak to me, as did many others. Somehow the Shakespeare songs from plays seemed startlingly incomplete . . . as did this anthology.

I'd hoped for an eclectic selection of late 20th century poetry like Garrion Keeler's Good Poems. I found many poems I already had in other anthologies in this collection. But more than that, the poetry just didn't move me--too masculine perhaps. I wonder.