Customer Reviews

Thomas Hardy: The Complete Poems

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Hardy had a life-long fascination with the paradox of memory: how people, events, and even isolated feelings can be buried by time and later resurrected in the fullness of emotional memory. His central aesthetic principle is that of `the exhumed emotion,' which one can wryly interpret as a graveyard variant of Wordsworth's "emotion recollected in tranquillity." But for Hardy, it was a mysterious capability, like his comment that "I am cut out by nature for a ghost-seer." Hardy's aesthetic of the "grotesque" frequently features past lovers as ghosts or elusive phantoms.

In "She, to Him III" he muses on the "souls of Now" who would disjoint / The mind from memory, making Life all aim, / And nothing left for Love to look upon." In this brief phrase, from the start of his career, can be found four of the major themes of his entire life and work: the present ("Now"), memory (past), Life, and Love, all in tension with one another.

The volume contains innumerable poems of unrequited love, regretted love, guilty love, repentant love, etc. etc. One of the great English poets of the 20th century. Ranks with Yeats and above Heaney.

Considering how depressing Hardy's novels can be, his poems are curiously uplifting, full of descriptive power and a love of rural England. Among his classics are "The Darkling Thrush", "Channel Firing" (great World War I poem), and "The Oxen" (beautiful Christmas poem about nostalgia and faith).

Like his novels, the poems illustrate Hardy's capturing of the past and his sense of something greater than us shaping our lives and our feelings. These are apparent in "Last Words to a Dumb Friend", his lament for his deceased cat. In this, the very home where the cat lived seems to resonate with the cat once he has passed to "the Dim" (i.e., beyond Death):

"And this house, which scarcely took
Impress from his little look,
By his faring to the Dim (NOTE: faring = travelling)
Grows all eloquent of him."

Hardy's novels evoke dark moods and frequently feature innocent victims of others tragic flaws. Strangely his poetry is a mixture of light and dark but leaning heavily on the light as his focus on memory of loves lost and other themes can be uplifting rather than grim. I've always found it fascinating that a novelist as richly talented as Hardy would turn from fiction and concentrate only on poetry in his later years. His novels are among my very favorites and I read them repeatedly. For me, having this collection of his poems is icing on the cake even though I am not a frequent reader of poetry. Thomas Hardy was a literary genius and these poems are infused with his artistic integrity.

Perfect! What more needs to be said? This collection was delicious and is a treasure for any Hardy fan. Enjoy every bite!!

The book was in excellent condition and arrived as promptly as one could expect. As of this date I really haven't had a bad experience with any of my book orders. Thanks so much.