Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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86 of 92 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not The Selection, But The Process, April 7, 2004
I was a bit surprised when I first skimmed through the book, mainly from the stopping point selection at Hart Crane, born in 1899. I was looking foward to Bloom consolidating some of the 20th century for me, but it wasn't to be. After I sulked a while and started reading, I have found it to be one of, if not, his most approachable and rewarding book (and I have about thirteen of his latter books). What I found especially rereadable and delightful is his essay--"The Art of Reading Poetry," which is in the beginning 30 pages, divided in 8 sections. Bloom takes a very practical approach towards READING poetry and gives some advice that reminds me of his assumed heir: Helen Vendler. For instance HB says we should ask ourselves 4 questions when reading a poem. The first, (roughly from memory) is what does the poem mean, and is that meaning clearly attained. Next, can we deem the poem as simply good, or is it intrinsically well-crafted. And finally does this poem transcend its time or is it a period piece? There are other nuggets that I strongly believe will make their way into anthologies across America in due time, probably once the obtuse personality of Bloom fades and we are left with just his passion and wisdom for literature.
There are also introductory essays before the authors that offer us bio information, but of special interest and relevance. Just this morning I read that Willaim Blake and his wife, after a struggling marriage in the beginning, lived the rest of their life in contentment, by all accounts.
As a potential buyer, don't be scared of another technical, verbose, theoretical book. And don't think BLoom is trying to make his favorite poems your favorite poems; but see that he is using these poems to illustrate how to interpret and engulf your own favorite poems. This book is Bloom at his most genial and wise, and at times his most personal.
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42 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Some of the best..., April 5, 2004
This is a very good collection of poetry. It is not the collection I would choose were I to compile such a tome, but this is no surprise. The sense of poetry, what makes a good poem technically, emotionally, artistically is a very personal matter. What is presented here is a particular collection from one of the 'experts' of the day in the field of poetry, and an interesting survey it is.Bloom freely admits to not being 'equal' with all the poets here in terms of their introductory material -- sometimes this is because of the breadth or unique character of their poetry, or sometimes (as in the case of Shakespeare, which is rather short given his overall relationship to the English language) because there is more general accessibility, either of the texts or of outside information readily available. Bloom has used modernised texts for the poetry for the most part, save where the original text is crucial for understanding and appreciating the poetry (as is the case with Chaucer) -- in which case there are helpful notes to aid in 'translation'. Despite the title's proclamation of the poetry cycle being from Chaucer to Frost, in fact there are more than a dozen poets after Robert Frost included in the text --the poets are arranged chronologically, beginning with Chaucer and leading up to Hart Crane, who was born in 1899. Bloom did not include 'twentieth-century' poets -- in other words, any poet born in 1900 or later. Thus there are some notable figures missing at the end of the volume; there are no selections from Odgen Nash, W.H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, Dylan Thomas, or other notable contemporaries. There are also a few omissions from earlier times -- e.e. cummings, born in 1894, is not represented here (and yet John Brooks Wheelwright (who? you might ask) is), nor is Robert Graves. One might quibble here, and say that this book is a collection of 'some' of the Best Poems of the English Language, but hardly all. However, that criticism could likely be levelled against any volume daring the title 'Best Poems'. Bloom has decided tastes, developed over a decades-long career in literary pursuits that have included poetry, prose, sacred literature, modern culture and more. His introductory essay (about 30 pages of the text) gives the reader little doubt where Bloom's tastes lie, and that is ultimately the reason for the selections in the remaining 950-odd pages. Bloom also pulls no punches in the commentary-biographies introducing the poets -- for example he states 'I confess a lifelong hostility to T.S. Eliot,' as the first sentence (in capital letters, no less) to the biographical introduction to Eliot; one wonders if the inclusion of the relatively unknown Wheelwright mentioned above has as much to do with his political affinities as to do with his literary merit. Ultimately there are three strengths to this text -- first, it is a selection of some of the greatest poems in English, despite the absence of a few notables, including the absence of anything Old English or Anonymously written; second, Bloom's commentaries from lifelong experience and study make worthwhile reading whether or not one agrees with his tastes and interpretations; finally, it does trace in chronological order an interesting glimpse through well-known and sometimes overlooked poets and poems the overall development of English as a language of art, lyric expression and passion.
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33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
From a happy fan..., March 16, 2004
By A Customer
When I 'previewed' this before it came out I overestimated how much would be included. Luckily these sacrifices were made to make room for Bloom's several hundred pages of commentary on the individual poets, into which he incorporates full essays on Edmund Spenser, Andrew Marvell, Hilda Doolittle, William Carlos Williams and others. Several of these, like many essays in his previous book "Genius", are reprinted largely intact from the introductions to his vast series of critical anthologies put out by Chelsea House. The Spenser essay, written over forty years ago, is particularly brilliant and stirring. Also rewarding is the volume's Introduction, where he tackles such topics as the types of metaphor and allusion and the nature of poetic value itself.
Though this isn't quite all of "the best" even in Dr. Bloom's view it has many of the English-language poetic touchstones down to about 1930. Longer works like The Canterbury Tales, The Faerie Queene, Hamlet, King Lear, Paradise Lost, The Prelude etc. are represented with brief but powerful excerpts. Bloom caves and gives a few pieces by esteemed poets he detests (Edgar Allen Poe and Matthew Arnold and Ezra Pound) as well as some popular poems he's declared a bit overrated in the past (My Last Duchess, Crossing the Bar, [Emerson's] Days, Sunday Morning). A more substantive criticism: the selections from Donne, Swinburne and Yeats seem a little random. Were their very best works deemed too difficult for inclusion?What's important, and priceless, is what *is* included: countless powerful songs, sonnets, elegies, satires and odes; selections you couldn't improve upon from Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Hart Crane and many others; and most of the great mini-epics: Epithalamion, Adonais, The Fall of Hyperion, Goblin Market, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, The Hunting of the Snark, The Auroras of Autumn.
As expected, the most pages are given to perennial Bloom favorites like Milton, Shelley, Whitman, Tennyson and Wallace Stevens... though surely nowhere near as many as he'd wanted to give. Signs of last-minute manuscript chopping appear throughout, actually: there's about a dozen mentions by name of "included" poems nowhere to be found! But while he arranges to have his proofreader shot we should all thank Bloom for his thoughtful distillation of one of the most important artistic traditions the world has known, poetry in English.
If only someone would offer him a whole Norton Anthology volume to fill with more of the same!
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