Jones Very: The Complete Poems

by Jones Very, Helen R. Deese (Editor)

This complete scholarly edition of the poems of Jones Very (1813-80) provides the requisite materials for a major reappraisal of his work and standing among the significant figures of American Transcendentalism. Collecting 862 poems, the volume makes available for the first time all of Very's known poems, including much previously unpublished or uncollected material.

Very, a New England Transcendentalist and a protégé of Ralph Waldo Emerson, is one of the underrated American poets of the nineteenth century. Though he attracted a select audience in his day, serious study of Very's work in this century has been hampered by the lack of a complete, convenient, and reliable edition of his poetry. Perhaps even more discouraging to readers of older collections of Very's poems has been the puzzling variance in the style and quality of the verse. This edition, in which the poems are dated and chronologically arranged, reveals the three stages of Very's poetic development, out of which the distinctive genius of the second period clearly emerges. Written under the influence of a powerful psychological/spiritual experience, the ecstatic utterances of this period are by turns breathless in their intensity and tranquil in their serene contentment.

This complete edition presents a critical, unmodernized, clear-text version of each poem, reflecting as nearly as possible the author's final intention. A textual introduction outlines editorial procedures and problems, and a general introduction places Very among his contemporaries, discusses the mystical experience that transformed his life and poetry, reviews the major related criticism, and assesses his poetic achievements. Historical notes and a full textual apparatus complete the edition.

Genres: Poetry

968 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1993

Reviews

[John]

I read a few of his poems in an anthology. They are awesome. I hope to read more, maybe even all of them, or at least all the ones when he was having his intense visions...

[David Weller · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating Christian poet of 19th-C New England. Most of his poems have a profound element in them; please see my blog The Wisdom of Jones Very at http://thewisdomofjonesvery.blogspot.....

[Richard Epstein · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yvor Winters saved Jones Very from complete obscurity, but no one understands why. A completely obscure poet myself, I am pleased Very was rescued, but not Very pleased. He was, after all, not a Very good poet. This is the fellow who wrote,

I gazed upon thy face--and beating life,
Once stilled its sleepless pulses in my breast
And every thought whose being was a strife
Each in its silent chamber sank to rest

and

Finding not health nor strength in aught beside;
How often vainly sought in things below,
Whether in sunny clime, or sacred stream,
Or plant of wondrous powers of which we dream!

which are examples of the sort of thing which made 20th-century poetry, not only possible, but necessary.