The Oxford Book of English Verse (Hardcover)

by Christopher Ricks (Editor) "Sumer is icumen in- Lhude sing, cuccu!..." (more)
Key Phrases: runne softly, goblin men, tossed the dog, Braid Claith, Lord Randal, Danny Deever (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Let's get one thing straight. Christopher Ricks's 1999 version of The Oxford Book of English Verse contains some of the finest poetry the world has ever seen. Judiciously selected and beautifully produced, this anthology will reward both poetry virgins and over-versed roués with its canny, sometimes inspired conjoining of the familiar and the obscure. (It's also the first edition to let dramatic verse through the gate, meaning that some of the Bard's greatest lines have now made the cut.) From the medieval "Sumer is icumen in" through Seamus Heaney's "The Pitchfork," Ricks selects 822 poems from more than 200 writers. Not surprisingly, Shakespeare comes out on top. But Wyatt, Sidney, Jonson, Milton, Pope, Blake, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Hardy also make strong showings, as do such under-anthologized females as Mary Robinson, Jane Taylor, and Frances Cornford. In addition, the editor includes an assortment of mnemonically irresistible nursery rhymes.

Anyone who cares about literature in the English language will want this on their shelf. Yet some of those same devotees may have serious reservations about what Ricks has done with this literary institution. When Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch wrote his preface to the first Oxford Book of English Verse in October 1900, his agenda was quite clear. He had

tried to range over the whole field of English Verse from the beginning, or from the Thirteenth Century to this closing year of the Nineteenth, and to choose the best. Nor have I sought in these Islands only, but wheresoever the Muse has followed the tongue which among living tongues she most delights to honour. To bring home and render so great a spoil compendiously has been my capital difficulty.

The metaphors of imperial colonialism spoke confusedly as the Muse followed the English tongue throughout the world and the anthologist brought back the rewards it wrought and wreaked. A century later, the project of "English verse" has lost its imperial certainty, and Ricks is no longer interested in exploiting the former colonies for raw material. Instead, he states categorically that his "does not seek to be a book of Anglophone verse, of verse in the English language whatever its provenance." This leads to some anomalies. He takes American verse only through the 1770s, but is happy to include verse from the Republic of Ireland. As for the linguistic products of the pre-independence Commonwealth: "I judged reluctantly that pre-independence poetry had not achieved poetic independence (freedom from diluted fashion), had not given to the world such poetic accomplishments as would constitute a claim to the pages of an anthology of the best in English poetry." Please discuss!

Ricks's "English verse," then, is predominantly verse from England, and of a fairly senior variety at that--the juniors here are such golden codgers as Thom Gunn, Derek Walcott, and Seamus Heaney. Ricks admits that "most of us are not good at appreciating the poetry of those appreciably younger than we are." That's a shame, because it denies The Oxford Book of English Verse a role in disseminating the work of the younger generation (and we're talking under 60 here) from a diversity of backgrounds. What he has undoubtedly produced, however, is an invaluable record of the past glories of English poetry, which will continue to inspire both readers and poets--whatever their age, wherever they are. --Alan Stewart

From Publishers Weekly
First compiled in 1900, the Oxford Book has been one of the few giant poetry anthologies intended more for bedsides and train rides than for classrooms. Author of books about Keats and T.S. Eliot, and creator of The New Oxford Book of Victorian Verse, Ricks must be one of the few people on the planet both famous enough to be asked to remake this book and widely enough read to do it well. His new version (the first since 1972) starts with anonymous 13th-century lyric and ends with Seamus Heaney; in between are seven centuries' worth of poems in English from Britain and Ireland. (Poets from other countries are excludedAexcept Derek Walcott.) Ricks brings in plenty of dialect verse, excerpts from long poems and verse plays, and a few translations into English. Some choices from major poets seem eccentric: of Pope, eight excerpts, and not one complete major poem? Of Wordsworth, eight poems, one in two versions? Twentieth-century choices look either "conservative" or idiosyncratic: William Empson (4.5 pages) gets almost as much space as Yeats (5.5), Basil Bunting only a page and a half (of translations). But such anthologies stand or fall on findings from minor authors, and Ricks offers a bounty of obscure good poems, among them Richard Corbett's sharp-tongued "Farewell, rewards and fairies"; Caroline Oliphant's wrenching Scots lament; a resonant story-in-verse from the second James Thomson; a harsh condemnation of war from Rudyard Kipling; and enjoyable silliness from W.M. Praed ("I'll cultivate rural enjoyment/ And angle immensely for trout"). Ricks also includes poems famous for nonliterary reasons: "Twinkle, twinkle, little star," for example (by one Jane Taylor). Long after reviewers stop debating how Ricks chose each item, readers will keep returning to these pages to find yet another good poem they've not before seen. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 750 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (December 16, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0192141821
• ISBN-13: 978-0192141828
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.7 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #159,548 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars great of course-- but just one thing..., October 10, 2003

By	reader - See all my reviews

i own an earlier edition of the OBEV, published about 1940, and while i'm glad to see that some dramatic verse has made the cut here, i'm perplexed as to a couple of poets who have been left out this time around. . .in particular, the young yeats' contemporaries (the so-called the 'tragic' generation)--lionel johnson and ernest dowson. also, some of the anonymous scottish ballads from the 15th century

of course this book compared to practically anything else gets 5 stars, 10 stars! i just knocked one off because of my preference for the earlier edition, and so that people would notice my humble review here.
enjoy this book!

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Revised, up-to-date and we are all only a LITTLE bit dumber for it, January 5, 2006

By	L. E. Cantrell (Vancouver, British Columbia Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Don't worry ...

Unkinder souls might regard this book as a travesty of and insult to the brilliant collection originally assembled by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch under the very same name. But not I. No, this book is just fine by me, as far as it goes--not that its 822 works and 662 pages go all that far when compared to the 967 entries and 1172 pages of Quiller-Couch's 1940 edition. Easy come, easy go, say I. And Ricks even manages to cram in an extra 59 years of new material, too! Why, only the other day, I was lamenting stodgy old Quiller-Couch's inexplicable omission of such vital poetic material as "Twinkle, twinkle, little star."

I am delighted to see that Amazon's professional reviewers are fully up to the mark in emphasizing Ricks' politically correct limitation of his poetic sources to Britain--as opposed to the imperialist graspings of devious old Quiller-Couch. Why, anyone can see that for all intents and purposes crafty Q made his "Oxford Book of English Verse" a Yankee tome by ceding to such Americans as Dickinson, Emerson, Harte, Poe, Whittier and Whitman a full 12 entries and parts of no less than 18 pages! (No doubt, J. Edgar Hoover, HUAC and the CIA's nefarious predecessors were overjoyed.)

... be happy!

A FURTHER COMMENT: Normally, I'd assume that everybody would get the point I am making, but a re-read of the reviews of this book convinces me that I had better be more explicit. Run, do not walk, to your nearest, dusty, retro, low-tech, used bookshop and grasp a copy of any Quiller-Couch edition--however beaten up and dog-eared--to your bosom, there to treasure it forever. You can then put Ricks' edition to its proper use as a doorstop.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Get the older version by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, October 9, 2006

By	Mark E. Baxter "Inquirer" (Layton, UT United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

There is something magisterial about much of pre-20th century english verse, and this book contains some of the best. However, it also leaves out much of the best and is hundreds of pages shorter than the Quiller-Couch editions in spite of including new authors and dramatic verse not included in the Quiller-Couch versions. And what Ricks has done is nothing short of shameful, changing a collection of "the best" (according to Quiller-Couch) into a survey - some of which are anything but "the best".

The Quiller-Couch versions have the subtitle "1250-1918"; this version includes up to the later 20th century. Besides deleting so much of the old but fine poetry, the main problem in including recent poetry is that most of it is not very good. (There, I've said it!) Obscurity should never be confused with profundity!

All editors or anthologists have a reason for including various works. Many recent collections use ridiculous grounds for inclusion like gender, sexual perversion, skin color, year of publication, or political grounds (as if these factors have anything to do with quality!). If that's what you're looking for, then by all means buy these inferior collections chosen by chip-on-their-shoulder editors who feel nothing but disdain for their readers and feel the need to teach us lesser breeds what good taste truly is (anything they say it is can be the only objective criterion - especially if it is offensive, obscure, obscene and politically-correct). I know I'm blaming Rickman for the excesses of others, but he is a representative of their ilk.

But if you seek something else in poetry, then give the Quiller-Couch editions a whirl. And read what Quiller-Couch says about his reasons for inclusion in his collection.

He said, I "have set my heart on choosing the best". "The best is the best, though a hundred judges have declared it so; nor had it been any feat to search out and insert the second-rate merely because it happened to be recondite." (Hear!,Hear!) Commenting on the modern propensity for disparagement of anything and everything Quiller-Couch wrote, "I am at a loss what to do with a fashion of morose disparagement; of sneering at things long by catholic consent accounted beautiful... . Be it allowed that these present times are dark. Yet what are our poets of use ---what are they for --- if they cannot hearten the crew with auspices of daylight?" "The reader, turning the pages of this book, will find this note of valiancy --- of the old Roman 'virtue' mated with cheerfulness --- dominant throughout, if in many curious moods."

Now those are reasons to include works in an anthology - because they are the best, because they inspire, because they are beautiful, because they are virtuous and cheerful - even when their mood is dark! Long live Quiller-Couch! And may you truly find "auspices of daylight" shining through this verse!