Death Has Lost Its Charm for Me

by Ray Bradbury

A book of poems with photographs of cats, signed by Ray Bradbury

Genres: Poetry

Hardcover

Published June 24, 1987

About the author

Ray Douglas Bradbury was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of genres, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, and realistic fiction.

Bradbury is best known for his novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and his short-story collections The Martian Chronicles (1950), The Illustrated Man (1951), and The October Country (1955). Other notable works include the coming of age novel Dandelion Wine (1957), the dark fantasy Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) and the fictionalized memoir Green Shadows, White Whale (1992). He also wrote and consulted on screenplays and television scripts, including Moby Dick and It Came from Outer Space. Many of his works were adapted into television and film productions as well as comic books. Bradbury also wrote poetry which has been published in several collections, such as They Have Not Seen the Stars (2001).

The New York Times called Bradbury "An author whose fanciful imagination, poetic prose, and mature understanding of human character have won him an international reputation" and "the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream".

Reviews

[Eleanor Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

The poems were pretty hit or miss. Also, you can definitely tell that they were written in a different time. I'll be reading quite a bit more from Ray Bradbury this summer so we'll see how I feel overall. It's so short though I think it'd be hard to regret the read.

[Eduardo Vardheren · Rating 4 out of 5]

En este poemario se nota ya una repetición de temas y el manejo de la poesía que había alcanzado Bradbury, aunque debo confesar que tiene un poema que me hizo alzar la ceja.

[Mark Oppenlander · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a slender collection of Ray Bradbury's poetry, distributed by a small specialty press in California. I enjoyed this more than some of the longer Bradbury poetry collections, perhaps in part because its brevity did not lead me to boredom. I find Bradbury somewhat uneven as a poet, but the percentage of high quality pieces in this grouping seems to be higher than in the previous volumes I have consumed.

Bradbury is at his best here when he is either meditating on his personal family life ("For Leonard Bradbury" or "No More Cameras") or, as in his short stories, when he siezes upon a particulary compelling metaphor and teases the implications out all the way to the end ("Boys are Spooked Because They're Horses" or "My Cat Has Swallowed a Bumblebee.")

There are misses as well as hits in this book though, and the pictures of cats didn't really add anything to the experience for me.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a small, beautifully presented book of poetry by Ray Bradbury. There are approximately 3 excellent poems here. I can't give it 5 stars, because Bradbury, who is a master of the short story, is not a world-class poet.