The Secret Reader: 501 Sonnets [Paperback]

Willis Barnstone (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 15, 1996

Willis Barnstone offers an amazing sonnet sequence on his double life -- and distinguished career -- as a scholar and an artist.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Barnstone is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at Indiana University and a scholar, translator and poet who has written more than 40 books. Suggesting here that formalistic poems "dance in chains" they try to slip, he tests sonnet structures as he uses them. Thoughts are closed mid-line, unusual end-rhymes occur and some of these 501 offerings seem good short poems rather than pure sonnets. Arranged in five groups (History I-V), the poems constitute a "public history and private biography," as Barnstone notes in the introductory material. The personal poems are among its best: of father and brother, two suicides; mother, daughter; places he's lived. His range of knowledge informs powerful social, religious and political commentary as he writes about philosophers, poets (especially but not solely Hispanic and Chinese), death from AIDS, Tibet, a Stone Age mummy found in a glacier and, of course, himself ("Do I hurt? No. I'll be/ a will-less barn stone cool and on my own"). This prodigous effort offers rewards to grazers and those who read the sonnets in order.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Publisher

5 1/2 x 9 1/4 trim. 6 drawings. LC 95-17105

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Product Details

• Paperback: 440 pages
• Publisher: UPNE; 1st edition (January 15, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0874516609
• ISBN-13: 978-0874516609
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,982,835 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Drifting on a Strange River of Milk, May 3, 2004

By 

Boz Hubris "thecultofbob" (Detroitish) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Secret Reader: 501 Sonnets (Paperback)

I often read in the bathtub, especially poetry, and with Barnstone sometimes the sudden urge to push him and his book down into the shallow water and drown it out overcome me. But then I realize that he is just a poet and is probably suffering his own distasteful form of ennui as I am. But he is a good student and probably punches a clock every morning before his organic toast and orange juice and rolls up his sleeve to do some gritty hard labor at the typewriter. After all, he's produced 501 sonnets here in what 55 minutes? Don't get me wrong, he is one of the better modern writers of the sonnet, I just don't buy his 69 year old angst. This coupled with the fact that he bungles so many good starts with half-thought pearls that go to soft matter in a spance of ten syllables and more often than not sticks in stilted endings that don't properly body the "carriage of rhythm", that I feel nauseated and throw the book down to the floor. I just think he writes for volume like Bukowski did or Berryman in his later before-suicide-tomes and that it somewhat hurts the work in that anything goes and nothing is spared. As a result there are many shining points, but mostly of zarconia rather than diamond light. That said, I just as eagerly pick it back up the next slosh and go-around in the tub hoping for some sparkling moment and sometimes find it, albeit not to the grandeur of say Berryman or droll Cummings, but I find them nonetheless.

"Why can't I sleep? My body's fine. I'm not
especially neurotic. Sad? Okay,
I'm down. Suddenly a strange river of hot
milk flowing between continents! The way
it curves on the horizon--five gold ships
and dolphins in the air--makes Yahweh warm
from a pig's navel to the stars. My lips
taste currants from a blue volcanic farm
and gossip with Seleucids bartering kings.
I get up itchy, wild, sipping hot milk.
Was I acting out a dream? Was I asleep?
Can I forget the melancholy leap
between towers, dangling from a single silk
thread? Months hum by. No sleep. The terror sings."

He's a bit of Richard Brautigan or the common-rung Beat but with a grandfatherly look and no hippy broads on the cover of his two-tone multi-syllabic billboard, but more a modern structurally and aesthetic-wise in that he never goes grossly overboard in showing that he is ultimately human and imperfect. Pick up the book. Hell it's under $3 and if you don't enjoy it with as much disdain as myself you can always join the cadre of million-dollar sellers on Amazon and become a dealer too.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent poetry, June 6, 2000

By 

Hart Wilson (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Secret Reader: 501 Sonnets (Paperback)

Willis Barnstone is like an Allen Ginsberg or Lawrence Ferlinghetti for the 90's. The content of many of the poems contained in this book is similar to the great beat poets of the 40's and 50's. While the poetry rarely contains the anger found in Ginsberg's poems, the language occasionally lapses into crudity. Therefore, it may not appeal to all readers, but for those who want a down-to-earth picture of life presented in, of all things, sonnets, this book is definitely worth your time.