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Students will love this directory's one-stop access to current biographies of scholars.
Dictionary of American Scholars provides a comprehensive perspective on the American scholarly community. This reference guide takes the guesswork out research American scholars. ... Read more

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rom one of the most brilliant and widely read of all American poets, a generous selection of lyrics, dramatic monologues, and narrative poems--all of them steeped in the wayward and isolated beauty of Frost's native New England. Includes his classics "Mending Wall, " "Birches, " and "The Road Not Taken, " as well as poems less famous but equally great. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

famous poem left out...
A great gift item or petite pocket book for travel. Perplexing that "Nothing Gold Can Stay" was left out...

Wonderful collection
I am a huge Robert Frost fan, and having this book lets me take time in my busy schedule to visit his world.I especially enjoyed the broad collection contained in this series.It was, well, wonderful. ... Read more

Product Description
"This garland of Christmas poems contains not only the ones you would insist on finding here ("A Visit from St. Nicholas," "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming," and "The Twelve Days of Christmas" among them) but such equally enchanting though lesser-known Yuletide treasures as Emily Dickinson's "The Savior must have been a docile Gentleman," Anthony Hecht's "Christmas Is Coming," Rudyard Kipling's "Christmas in India," Langston Hughes's "Shepherd's Song at Christmas," Robert Graves's "The Christmas Robin," and happy surprises like Phyllis McGinley's "Office Party," Dorothy Parker's "The Maid-Servant at the Inn," and Philip Larkin's "New Year Poem.""--BOOK JACKET. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Excellent collection of Christmas poems
This thoughtful selection is deeply satisfying and inspired me to read additional poetry by some of the authors herein.I think any sensible reader will find this collection both reassuring and provocative.There is something here for every Christmas mood; and doesn't Christmas create a lot of moods?I particularly enjoyed the section about the aftermath of Christmas.

Non-sentimental Poems for Both a Holiday and a Holy Day:
Here is an exquisite anthology, 4 1/2" x 6 1/2", small enough to fit into one's purse or pocket -- to peruse while standing in line at the p.o., at a store counter, etc. Besides Clement Moore's classic "A Visit from St. Nicholas" and familiar carols, here are "Christmas at Sea" by Robert Lewis Stevenson, "The Annunciation" by Elizabeth Jennings, and "Christmas in Biafra" by Chinua Achebe. Also read poems by J.D. McClatchy, Dorothy Parker, Emily Dickinson and other classic or contemporary poets in these 254 pages. Highly recommended.

Delightful
This is a warm-yet not sentimental-collection of poems which explores many sides of Christmas.It is beautifully typeset and bound and perfect for carrying on one's person for a moment of thoughtful beauty. I wish itincluded W.H. Auden's entire "For the Time Being" but there wereseveral and wonderful surprising inclusions. ... Read more

Amazon.com Review
If the first three decades of the 20th century mark the real birth ofAmerican poetry, then the following three might be considered a long andsometimes contentious adolescence. Not that there's anything juvenile aboutthe work of Hart Crane, Elizabeth Bishop, Langston Hughes, or TheodoreRoethke--quite the opposite. But after the fireworks of early modernism,there's a sense of American poetry finally coming into its own,multifarious identity. And the editors of American Poetry: The TwentiethCentury, Volume Two: E.E. Cummings to May Swenson--i.e., the same Gangof Five that compiled the stellar first volume--have done veryhandsomely by the era.

Again there are generous servings of the indisputable giants, from Hughesto Roethke to the underrated Louise Bogan. Perhaps the editors have beentoo generous with Cummings's lowercase frolics, but there is ahistorical argument to be made in his favor: who else gave modernism such ahuman (not to say antic) face? Hart Crane certainly gets his due, withnearly 40 pages devoted to the linguistic spans of "The Bridge," andElizabeth Bishop's section alone is worth the price of admission--indeed,I'd push cash on the barrelhead simply to read the exquisite conclusion to"Over 2000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance":

…Why couldn't we have seen
this old Nativity while we were at it?
--the dark ajar, the rocks breaking with light,
an undisturbed, unbreathing flame,
colorless, sparkless, freely fed on straw,
and, lulled within, a family with pets,
--and looked and looked our infant sight away.

Customer Reviews (9)

Big, But Not Big Enough
I think the two volumes published thus far are only half of what's expected, but I'm not sure, as these were put into print five years ago, as far as I can tell. There is plenty to enjoy here, and some to rightfully forget. There's also plenty missing. (Attempts at political correctness can be so tedious and obvious.) For instance, on the enjoyment side, Marianne Moore's The Steeple-Jack is a wonder of construction, as is Robert Frost's obsessively worked out "Familiar with the Night." But such anthologies as this are always questioned as to the method of selection, the poets disregarded, and the poems picked. Why, for instance, was Marianne Moore's Octopus overlooked? Where are W. H. Auden, Robert Lowell, Adrienne Rich, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Allen Ginsburg, and James Merrill, among so many others? Are they still to come? I hope so. And I just don't care for Gertrude Stein. Her work is unreadable and does nothing at all for me. I don't know why so much space is always allotted to her in so many anthologies. Yes, I get the point. No, I don't need 37 pages of this point. It seems her importance only lies in who she knew and how she lived, not in any actual talent she had.

If the Library of America is coming out with any more volumes to round out the twentieth century, they are taking their sweet time about it. I really can't wait that long. In the meantime, a new American anthology is due out from Oxford in 2006, edited by David Lehman. I've had a sneak peek, and it's inclusive and won't disappoint.

"My hand in yours, Walt Whitman --so--"
This volume is the second of a projected four volume anthology of Twentieth Century American Poetry in the Library of America series.American poetry richly deserves this extensive treatment, and this series may serve to introduce America's poets to a growing number of readers.

This volume begins with E.E.Cummings (born 1894) and concludes with May Swenson (born 1913) The volume has almost an embarrassment of riches.By my count there are 122 separate poets included.The book includes a brief biography of each writer included which is invaluable for reading the book.

As with any anthology of this nature,the selection is a compromise between inclusiveness and quality.Readers may quarrel with the relative weight given to various poets in terms of number of pages, and with the inclusion or exclusion of writers. (I was disappointed that a poet I admire, Horace Gregory, gets only two pages, for example).Overall, it is a wonderful volume and includes some greatpoetry.

There are favorites and familiar names here and names that will be familiar to few.A joy of a book such as this is to see favorites and to learn about poets one hasn't read before.

A major feature of this volume is its emphasis on diversity -- much more so than in volume 1 or in the Library of America's 19th century poetry anthologies.There are many Jewish poets (including Reznikoff, a favorite ofmine, Zukofsky, Alter Brody, Rose Drachler, George Oppen, Karl Shapiro, and others) and even more African-American Poets (Lanston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Richard Wright, Waring Cuney, Sterling Brown, Arna Bontemps, Robert Hayden and many more.)There are also selections from blues and popular songs which to me is overdone.

Of the poets unknown to me, I enjoyed particularly Lorine Niedecker, Laura Riding, and Janet Lewis-- women are well represented in this volume.

I have taken the title of this review from the Cape Hatteras section of "The Bridge" by Hart Crane.(page 229)Crane has more pages devoted to him than any other writer in the volume and deservedly so."The Bridge" and "Voyages" are presented complete together with some of the shorter poems.This tragic, tormented and gifted writer tried in The Bridge to present a vision of America mystical in character, celebratory of the merican experience, and inclusive in its diversity.The poem is a worthy successor to the poetry of Whitman who is celebrated in it.The title of the review,I think, captures both Crane's poem as well as the goal of the volume as a whole in capturing something of the diversity of experience reflected in 20th Century American Verse.

"What thou lovest well is thy true heritage"
Although not widely read and appreciated, American poetry underwent a renaissance in the Twentieth Century. At some point, readers will look back at our Twentieth Century poetry as a benchmark of literature and a guide to the thoughts, feelings, and events of our difficult century.

In this, the first of four projected volumes covering the Twentieth Century, the Library of America gives access to a treausre of reading, moving, elevating, and disturbing.The book consists of readings from 85 (by my count) poets.The poets, are arranged chronologically by the poet's birthday.The earliest writer in the volume is Henry Adams (born 1838) and the concluding writer is Dorothy Parker (born 1893).Some writers that flourished later in life, such as Wallace Stevens, thus appear in the volume before works of their peers, such as Pound and Elliot, who became famous earlier.

For me, the major poets in the volume are (not surprising choices here), Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, W.C. Williams, Ezra Pound, T.S. Elliot, Marianne Moore.They are represented by generous selections,including Elliot's Waste Land, Steven's Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction, and several Pound Canto's given in their entirety.

It is the mark of a great literary period that there are many writers almost equally meriting attention together with the great names. There are many outstanding writers here, some known, some unknown.To name only a few, I would includeE.A Robinson, James Weldon Johnson, Adelaide Crapsey, Vachel Lindsay, Sara Teasdale, H.D. Robinson Jeffers, John Crowe Ransom, Conrad Aiken, Samuel Greenberg.It would be easy to go on.

There are different ways to read an anthology such as this.One way is to browse reading poems as they catch the reader's eye.Another way is to read favorite poems the reader already knows.

I would suggest making the effort to read the volume through from cover to cover.Before beginning the paricular poet, I would suggest reading the biographical summary at the end of the volume.These are short but excellent and illuminate the authors and the poetry.The notes are sparse, but foreign terms in Pound and Elliot's poetry are translated, and we have selections from Elliot's and Marianne Moore's own notes.

By reading the volume through,one gets a sense of continuity and context.Then, the reader can devote attention to individual poems.Some twentieth century works, such as those by Pound, Elliott,Moore Stevens are notoriously difficult.Read the works through,if you are coming to them for the first time, and return to them later.

I was familiar with many of the poems in the book before reading the anthology but much was new to me.I learned a great deal.My favorite poet remains Wallace Stevens, partly because he comibined the life of a man of affairs, as an attorney and insurance executive, with deep art.This remains an ideal for me. It is true as well for W.C. Williams, although I am less fond of his poetry.

The title to this review is taken from "Libretto" by Ezra Pound,
(page 371).It is the best single sentence summation I can think of for the contents of this volume.

Is everybody happy?
The real job of the anthologist is not, of course, to assemble anthologies but to anger and annoy readers. Only census takers have more doors slammed in their innocent faces. That said, a few words in defense of thisexcellent volume. Yes, there's plenty of second-tier or third-tier versehere, and those in search of pure poetry (no rocks, no soda, shaken notstirred) should probably save their pennies and buy the LOA volumes devotedto Frost, Stevens, etc etc. But a book like this one does give a splendidsense of cultural context. Sometimes the giants loom only larger whenthey're stuck in a line-up with their diminutive peers. And some of thoselesser lights are actually quite talented, too. So unless you're trulyfixated on iambic quality control, you should find much to love, and evenmore to like, in the capacious and paper-thin pages of APTTCV1.

Great Familiar Faces, But You May Find New ONes To Love!
Charles Erskine Scott Wood's "The Poet in theDesert"---"I have come to the lean and stricken land//Whichfears not God, that I may meet my soul..." Wow, now there's a place to start a survey of a century's poetry (or almost, since Volume 2 doesn't go all the way through to 1999 in poetic samplings.)Only this isn't a desert. It's a feast. : )

A new poet for me was Frances Desmond (excerpts from "Chippewa Music") and I wish there were more than 2 pages of her brief, subtle, lovely poems that made me think of Japanese haiku. A poet worth seeking out for lovely moments of reading like "it will resound finely//the sky//when I come making a noise".

Who is generously represented? Frost, WAllace Stevens, W.C. Williams, Pound, H.D, Marianne Moore, Millay. T.S.Eliot!-- 14 poems and 50+ pages for his works.

There were other new names for me (I guess I"m not as widely read poetically as I would like. As someone who appreciates spirituality in poetry, finding Anna H. Branch was a treat--"Ye stolid, homely, visible things//Above you all brood glorious wings" and "It took me ten days//To read the Bible through--//Then I saw what I saw,//And I knew what I knew."

The unfortunately named Adelaide Crapsey nevertheless has poems of sober beauty and lyrical melancholy---"Keep thou//Thy tearless watch//All night but when the blue dawn//Breathes on the silver moon, then weep!//Then weep!" Glad to meet her at last.

For those who enjoy odd little pleasures, there are forty pages of poetry by that singular personage: Gertrude Stein."I have tried earnestly to express//Just what I guess will not distress//Nor even oppress or yet caress" --or how about?-- "What do you think of watches.//Collect lobsters//And sweetbreads//and a melon,//and salad,"

I'd rather collect poetry....to read while I eat that lobster and melon.

An enjoyable and varied collection for any American reader. It was rather more fun than Volume 2, but then, when you have Ezra and Gertrude and Wallace S. and VachelL. and T.S. and H.D., you are bound to have a ripping time.

*Mir* END ... Read more

Product Description
Here are Masters's dramatic monologues written in free verse about a fictional Midwestern town called Spoon River.The dead, "sleeping on the hill" in their village cemetery, awaken to tell the truth about their lives, toppling the myth of the moral superiority of small-town life. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Spoon River Anthology
A true classic of American literature, Edgar Lee Masters paints the characters in sparse, direct language, with sardonic humor and irony. Each vignette captures the essence of the person that was his subject in just 2 or 3 paragraphs. I say "was" since they are all residents of a graveyard in a small midwestern town in 1915. Some were victims of jealousy, others were shot by the sheriff: many came to untimely deaths. Masters' genius is also evident in the timeless interconnections between characters. A most worthy addition to any bookshelf.

Dramatic Reading Poetry
Let me take issue with one review: this is not at all difficult, not if the reader reads the free verse, first-person poetry aloud. I have used these poems for decades now in my writing classes.
Each poem is a first-person narrative, spoken from the grave. And, no, it is not morbid. Not at all. Mabel Osbourne speaks about how the geranium someone has planted over her has been left to die since no one has watered it. And that, she says, is what happened to her in Spoon River (a fictional Illinois town). She is pathetic. And then there is the most wonderful final line utter by Margaret Fuller Slack, the novelist whose deathw was very ironic. And speaking of her, many of the charcters in this anthology--there are over 200 speakers--are actual historical personages including Anne Rutledge.
One of the aspects I love is the juxtaposition of characters, i.e., husbands and wives telling their stories which show very different points of view toward their failed marriages. And in Spoon River there are many failed marriages even though almost no one was able to divorce.
Edgar Lee Masters has some very defined, progressive views about society. And that is what makes these dramatic poems so relevant today.
This is material that more English teachers should be using. It makes poetry so available to students. And it is well worth buying this just to find out what that last line is in "Margaret Fuller Slack."

Get the historical context
This is a difficult book, but its worth taking the time to navigate it. I strongly believe this is not a book to read in a conventional way; if you try to read it from cover to cover, most probably you will lose interest. There are a couple of good ways to approach this book; (a) research on the internet and read the monologues that you can get most background for, once you get the hang of the stories you can go ahead and read the rest by yourself. (b) You can try to follow a specific character throughout the book and figure out who talks about him/her, and what people does this character addresses. (c) Finally, (my favorite method) chose some monologues randomly and read them out-loud, better yet, ask someone to read them to you. These monologues where meant to be outspoken and a lot of them you will understand better if you hear them. You will appreciate how detailed they are; even on the way the author uses punctuation.
It is a true piece of art.

Spoon River Anthology
A wonderful set of monologues written from the perspectives of the deceased citizens of Spoon River.

Voices of Humanity
I was turned on to this book after hearing the Richard Buckner release The Hill in which the musician uses the Spoon River Anthology as the basis for his conceptual music. After listening to that disc, I was compelled to read the actual work by Edgar Lee Masters. What I found was a book that was written in 1915, but that brings to life the voices of humanity louder than anything I've read in recent years. This book is more poetry than prose, but the stories of the residents of Spoon River that are collected within the pages are stories that are not soon forgotten.

This book has moved me more than anything else I've read in recent years, and I highly recommend that others read this outstanding work of art.
... Read more

Product Description
A handsome, authoritative edition of twenty-one classic stories from James's latest and greatest period includes "The Turn of the Screw," "The Figure in the Carpet," and "The Altar of the Dead." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

The Short Stories of Henry James: Worth the Effort
The short stories of Henry James are a microcosm of his novels: bafflingly complex, syntactically convoluted, and thematically multi-layered.He wrote more than 100 between 1864 and 1910, of which perhaps a few dozen are much read today. Complicating any discussion of his short prose is to define "short." Many of his short stories are long enough to qualify as novellas but regardless of the length, any fiction of Henry James promises to take the reader into the world of the microverse, a highly stylized and internalized arena where action counts less than thought and "how" far more than "what." For those who come to his short fiction after having read, say THE GOLDEN BOWL or THE AMBASSADORS, such readers have learned patience, secure in the knowledge that the inner workings of the mind are surely more interesting than the slam-bang world of reality.

There are a few themes that James uses often both in his short and long fiction.He likes to place cultured and intelligent protagonists in an alien environment just to watch them squirm on a foreign alter, or what is more sinister, to maintain them in a familiar ground, only to change the laws of physics or rationality--and then watch them squirm. He employs the doppelganger, or double of the protagonist, one who might be his present or future version, or again more sinister, one who might be a spectral reincarnation. Many of James' heroes fear marriage and must battle an encrusted society that demands it.James was also fascinated with innocence, especially in children and child-like adults. In such stories, the world exists only to corrupt such innocence. Finally, James rarely used one theme in isolation. He much preferred to onion his stories with overlapping themes, all of which are centered on James' rich and allusive prose style, allowing him to meld the complexity of content with the complexity of style.I have chosen a few of his short prose fiction as examples of the quintessential Henry James.

In "The Aspern Papers," James writes of a narrator who must balance the need to obtain art (the papers of the deceased American poet Aspern) while maintaining his ethics while so doing.The narrator travels to Venice for these papers only to discover that their current owners are quite unwilling to give them up. He promises to marry one of them in return for their delivery to him, thinking all the while they are too naïve to see through his scheme. In the end, he tries to steal them, only to learn that they have burned them, one page at a time.James' narrator is one of a long series of such who speak of integrity more than show it.

In "The Jolly Corner," James uses the "double" of the protagonist to point out how one man's life could have been had things been different. Spencer Brydon, an American expatriate returns to America, only to meet his ghostly alter ego, one who Brydon might have become had he stayed at home. Perhaps James had in mind Lambert Strether of THE AMBASSADORS, who is also the model of what the alter ego might have been: a money-grubbing capitalist with no one to tell him "Live!"

James uses "The Pupil" to depict the loss of childhood innocence. The caddish and grifting transplanted American Moreen family hires fellow American Pemberton to tutor their son. They refuse to pay him agreed on wages, all the while exhorting him with the nobility of his task.They offer him custody of their son, which he understandably refuses, but the boy is crushed since he favors Pemberton over his parents.

Art versus life come into conflict in "The Real Thing."The narrator is hired by a couple, punningly named the Monarchs, to paint them as exemplars of the "real thing" of nobility.It is his realization that the reality of their claim does not allow him to create the illusion of a second-rate knock off. He is unwilling to further society's need to measure a life by glorifying its phony aspect.

In these stories and in Henry James' others, he presents the reader with a subjective examination of the inner workings of the mind. For those readers who wish to enter such a microverse, they will find that James' admittedly baffling style will be seen as more as a part of that journey than an impediment.

Misleading Information
Why is Amazon listing this book, Henry James:Complete Stories 1892-98 as available new? I ordered it in February and never received it.Amazon notified me frequently of continuing delays and, then, a few weeks ago cancelled the order, the book being unavailable. This is one of two volumes of James's stories which Amazon lists but has been unable to provide. I've written the same review for the other one.

I have since ordered a used copy and received it without delay!

The stories, of course, all five volumes are perfection, delight, wondrous!The edition is beautiful:print is very small and on thin paper but still easy to read.The hardback bindings hold the pages together securely yet allow the reader to hold the book open without a lot of effort. The little ribbon marker is a nice touch.

Little Gems from The Master
Henry James (1843-1916) was nicknamed The Master by admiring fellow-authors towards the end of his life.He is truly a noble, gifted, psychological author depicting a by-gone era but including timelessinsights about human beings and their general and mental situations in hiswritings.He is a master of lengthy prose (too lengthy for some!) TheseLibrary of America editions of James's writings are wonderful,high-quality, unabridged books with expert editing (notes) at the back ofthe volume.They have a knack for selecting the best editions of theauthor's writings where more than one version was published in the author'slifetime. The short stories of this volume are from the mature period butbefore James'final developed style of fictional writing.There are alarge number of stories including manywonderful gems such as "OwenWingrave," "The Coxon Fund" and "In the Cage."Tobe fair, most of the stories were written quickly for magazines, and a few("Glasses" comes to mind) just aren't good stories at all, in myopinion.However, most of the stories do succeed quite well. "OwenWingrave" (criticized by Bernard Shaw as being too deterministic andneglecting free will) is actually a penetrating tale about militaryculture, military values, and the role of the military in thenineteenth-century world. "The Coxon Fund" is about a brilliantlecturer supported by the fund but whose life and the lives of hissupporters are full of pitfalls outside of the Fund's influence.The storyshows how the successes andfailures of the Fund(and the Lecturer) havesubtle and not-so-subtle ramifications for each of the characters. With"In the Cage", the author steps outside of his accustomedhigher-class and higher-educated mix of characters to present the plight ofa penetrating lower-class telegram processor and her insights on life andher suitor.I found it a nice rendition of late-nineteenth century London.I encourage readers to explore this and other Library of America editionsof James' writings. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Poetry, published by Modern Poetry Association on January 1, 1998. The length of the article is 923 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Digital.(poem)
Author: John Hollander
Publication: Poetry (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 1998
Publisher: Modern Poetry Association
Volume: v171Issue: n3Page: p204(4)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Product Description
This book an EXACT reproduction of the original book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR?d book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more