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Poems Dead and Undead
In time for a one-of-a-kind hardcover collection of poems from ancient times to the present about ghosts, zombies, and vampires. EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY POCKET POETS.
This selection of poems from across the ages brings to life a staggering array of zombies, ghosts, vampires, and devils. Our culture's current obsession with zombies and vampires is only the latest form of a fascination with crossing the boundary between the living and the dead that has haunted humans since we first began writing. The poetic evidence gathered here ranges from ancient Egyptian inscriptions and the Mesopotamian epic Gilgamesh to the Greek bard Homer, and from Shakespeare and Milton and Keats to Emily Dickinson and Edgar Allan Poe. Here too are terrifying apparitions from a host of more recent poets, from T. S. Eliot and Sylvia Plath to Rita Dove and Billy Collins, from Allen Ginsberg and H. P. Lovecraft to Mick Jagger and Shel Silverstein. The result is a delightfully entertaining volume of spine-tingling poems for fans of horror and poetry both.
This selection of poems from across the ages brings to life a staggering array of zombies, ghosts, vampires, and devils. Our culture's current obsession with zombies and vampires is only the latest form of a fascination with crossing the boundary between the living and the dead that has haunted humans since we first began writing. The poetic evidence gathered here ranges from ancient Egyptian inscriptions and the Mesopotamian epic Gilgamesh to the Greek bard Homer, and from Shakespeare and Milton and Keats to Emily Dickinson and Edgar Allan Poe. Here too are terrifying apparitions from a host of more recent poets, from T. S. Eliot and Sylvia Plath to Rita Dove and Billy Collins, from Allen Ginsberg and H. P. Lovecraft to Mick Jagger and Shel Silverstein. The result is a delightfully entertaining volume of spine-tingling poems for fans of horror and poetry both.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published September 4, 2014
8 people are currently reading
293 people want to read
About the author
Tony Barnstone
29 books47 followersTony Barnstone is the Albert Upton Professor of English at Whittier College and has a Masters in English and Creative Writing and Ph.D. in English Literature from UC Berkeley. His books of poems include Tongue of War: From Pearl Harbor to Nagasaki (BKMK Press, 2009, winner of the John Ciardi Prize in Poetry), The Golem of Los Angeles (Red Hen Press, 2008, winner, Benjamin Saltman Award); Sad Jazz: Sonnets (Sheep Meadow Press, 2005); and Impure: Poems by Tony Barnstone (University Press of Florida, 1998), in addition to the chapbook Naked Magic (Main Street Rag). He is also a distinguished translator of Chinese poetry and literary prose and an editor of literary textbooks. His books in these areas include Chinese Erotic Poetry (Everyman, 2007); The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry (Anchor, 2005); Out of the Howling Storm: The New Chinese Poetry (Wesleyan, 1993); Laughing Lost in the Mountains: Poems of Wang Wei (UP of New England, 1991); The Art of Writing: Teachings of the Chinese Masters (Shambhala, 1996); and the textbooks Literatures of Asia Africa and Latin America, Literatures of Asia, and Literatures of the Middle East (all from Prentice Hall Publishers). Among his awards are a fellowship from the NEA, a fellowship from the California Arts Council, a Pushcart Prize in Poetry, and 1st place in in the 2008 Strokestown International Poetry Prize.
He is the recipient of many national poetry prizes and of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council. Born in Middletown, Connecticut, and raised in Bloomington, Indiana, Barnstone has lived in Greece, Spain, Kenya and China. His website is:
http://www.barnstone.com
He is the recipient of many national poetry prizes and of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council. Born in Middletown, Connecticut, and raised in Bloomington, Indiana, Barnstone has lived in Greece, Spain, Kenya and China. His website is:
http://www.barnstone.com
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
March 25, 2015
Long before Lovecraft developed a secular cult by describing a world where nature's gear-wheels fell off, or Stephen King got rich translating Jungian fears into supernatural terrors, humans looked into the darkness and knew fear. That which we cannot predict or control has always terrified us, and somehow, that terror has always been... well... fun. So versifiers, from ancient bards to modern professor-poets, have long buttered their bread telling spooky stories with the lights off.
With the highly commercialized veneer surrounding horror literature today, themes of terror and unlife seem far removed from schoolbook poetry. But death, the ultimate unpredictable force, has always lingered in poetry, often as an active force--even more so before humans discovered penicillin. Compilers Barnstone and Mitchell-Foust find examples of blood-chilling dread throughout poetic history, including Egyptian funerary texts, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and this bleak prize-winner from Fitzgerald's translation of Homer's "Odyssey":
Thus to assuage the nations of the dead
I pledged these rites, then slashed the lamb and ewe,
letting their black blood stream into the well pit.
Now the souls gathered, stirring out of Erebus,
brides and young men, and men grown old in pain,
and tender girls whose hearts were new to grief;
many were there, too, torn by brazen lanceheads,
battle-slain, bearing still their bloody gear.
From every side they came and sought the pit
with rustling cries; and I grew sick with fear.
Horror in these poems generally arises when death's sudden implacability collides with human illusions of control. Whether that means literal death, as in Homer, or more metaphorical death, horror inevitably arises because we hoard power reserved exclusively for God, Nature, or whatever. Many poems herein have religious meaning; Shakespeare and T.S. Eliot call for God, one piously, another desperately. But other poets, like Goethe and Baudelaire, invert religious meaning, creating mindscapes where despair becomes downright transcendent.
Some classic poets included herein are renowned for utilizing horrifying themes. French Décadents like Baudelaire and Rimbaud frequently described death, monsters, and shambling unlife in their works, while Poe and Christina Rossetti are known for little else (unfair though that is). That undergraduate staple, Yeats' "The Second Coming," deservedly gets included here. But some poets, often sanitized and squeaky-clean for high school textbooks, demonstrate surprising horror traits when de-bowdlerized, like this, from Lord Byron's "Manfred":
From thy false tears I did distil
An essence which hath strength to kill;
From thy own heart I then did wring
The black blood in its blackest spring;
From thy own smile I snatch'd the snake,
For there it coil'd as in a brake;
From thy own lip I drew the charm
which gave all these their chiefest harm;
In proving every poison known,
I found the strongest was thine own.
Somehow, despite having studied poetry myself, I didn't anticipate these themes extending into living times. Besides a few dedicated genre poets like Bruce Boston, I didn't know anybody still wrote that way, not when most poets teach college courses and winsomely court the tenure committee. Therefore, most surprising of all, nearly half this collection derives from poets currently, or recently, living. One doesn't think "horror" when teachers and other eminences name Rita Dove, Billy Collins, or Ciarán Carson. Maybe we should.
These contemporary poets, however, simply feel different from their classical precursors. Modern horror poetry, like modern poetry generally, deals less in universal truths and broad archetypes; it favors greater intimacy. That is, it would rather bare the poet's soul than describe humanity generally. Yet despite this intimacy, these poems are surprisingly humane and inclusive. George Bernard Shaw said only the deeply personal is ever truly universal. That certainly conveys in poems like Bryan Dietrich's "Zombies":
Beside a tombstone
you make your final stand. Stealing the arm, shoulder
and all, from one who may have been your father, you fend
them off for a while, waving his limb before you
the way you would a dowsing rod, a hand of glory.
Living, you tire. Fighting, you fall. Past lovers
get to you first, their mouths glorious, their gums hot.
What teeth they have to rip rivulets down your shins.
With our medicine, science, and technology, we today delude ourselves that we've established control. We exclude chance and mortality from our decisions, screaming YOLO while simultaneously stockpiling our retirement accounts, believing we're eternal. But poetry, itself innately anti-modern, obstinately reminds us our illusions fool only ourselves. This collection, a mere sampling of poems designed to cause fear, channels a world our spirits cannot forget.
With the highly commercialized veneer surrounding horror literature today, themes of terror and unlife seem far removed from schoolbook poetry. But death, the ultimate unpredictable force, has always lingered in poetry, often as an active force--even more so before humans discovered penicillin. Compilers Barnstone and Mitchell-Foust find examples of blood-chilling dread throughout poetic history, including Egyptian funerary texts, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and this bleak prize-winner from Fitzgerald's translation of Homer's "Odyssey":
Thus to assuage the nations of the dead
I pledged these rites, then slashed the lamb and ewe,
letting their black blood stream into the well pit.
Now the souls gathered, stirring out of Erebus,
brides and young men, and men grown old in pain,
and tender girls whose hearts were new to grief;
many were there, too, torn by brazen lanceheads,
battle-slain, bearing still their bloody gear.
From every side they came and sought the pit
with rustling cries; and I grew sick with fear.
Horror in these poems generally arises when death's sudden implacability collides with human illusions of control. Whether that means literal death, as in Homer, or more metaphorical death, horror inevitably arises because we hoard power reserved exclusively for God, Nature, or whatever. Many poems herein have religious meaning; Shakespeare and T.S. Eliot call for God, one piously, another desperately. But other poets, like Goethe and Baudelaire, invert religious meaning, creating mindscapes where despair becomes downright transcendent.
Some classic poets included herein are renowned for utilizing horrifying themes. French Décadents like Baudelaire and Rimbaud frequently described death, monsters, and shambling unlife in their works, while Poe and Christina Rossetti are known for little else (unfair though that is). That undergraduate staple, Yeats' "The Second Coming," deservedly gets included here. But some poets, often sanitized and squeaky-clean for high school textbooks, demonstrate surprising horror traits when de-bowdlerized, like this, from Lord Byron's "Manfred":
From thy false tears I did distil
An essence which hath strength to kill;
From thy own heart I then did wring
The black blood in its blackest spring;
From thy own smile I snatch'd the snake,
For there it coil'd as in a brake;
From thy own lip I drew the charm
which gave all these their chiefest harm;
In proving every poison known,
I found the strongest was thine own.
Somehow, despite having studied poetry myself, I didn't anticipate these themes extending into living times. Besides a few dedicated genre poets like Bruce Boston, I didn't know anybody still wrote that way, not when most poets teach college courses and winsomely court the tenure committee. Therefore, most surprising of all, nearly half this collection derives from poets currently, or recently, living. One doesn't think "horror" when teachers and other eminences name Rita Dove, Billy Collins, or Ciarán Carson. Maybe we should.
These contemporary poets, however, simply feel different from their classical precursors. Modern horror poetry, like modern poetry generally, deals less in universal truths and broad archetypes; it favors greater intimacy. That is, it would rather bare the poet's soul than describe humanity generally. Yet despite this intimacy, these poems are surprisingly humane and inclusive. George Bernard Shaw said only the deeply personal is ever truly universal. That certainly conveys in poems like Bryan Dietrich's "Zombies":
Beside a tombstone
you make your final stand. Stealing the arm, shoulder
and all, from one who may have been your father, you fend
them off for a while, waving his limb before you
the way you would a dowsing rod, a hand of glory.
Living, you tire. Fighting, you fall. Past lovers
get to you first, their mouths glorious, their gums hot.
What teeth they have to rip rivulets down your shins.
With our medicine, science, and technology, we today delude ourselves that we've established control. We exclude chance and mortality from our decisions, screaming YOLO while simultaneously stockpiling our retirement accounts, believing we're eternal. But poetry, itself innately anti-modern, obstinately reminds us our illusions fool only ourselves. This collection, a mere sampling of poems designed to cause fear, channels a world our spirits cannot forget.
May 22, 2016
An anthology of themed poetry "Dead and Undead" has a handful of headliners including; some of my favorite poets I've come across over the years.
Robert Pinsky, Yusef Komunyakaa, Charles Simic, Allen Ginsberg.
New favorites I found....
Henry Israeli, Bryan Dietrich, William Wordsworth, Ciran Carson, William Stobb, Stephen Dobyns
Nice collection, pocket style.
Robert Pinsky, Yusef Komunyakaa, Charles Simic, Allen Ginsberg.
New favorites I found....
Henry Israeli, Bryan Dietrich, William Wordsworth, Ciran Carson, William Stobb, Stephen Dobyns
Nice collection, pocket style.
July 8, 2015
Another wonderful installment in this series (once you see that a book is a Barnstone production you know it will be high-quality).
November 6, 2014
I wrote this review for my library's blog Read @ MPL.
Are you looking for a book to prolong that creepy Halloween spirit? Look no further than a recent addition to the Everyman’s Pocket Poets series: Poems Dead and Undead. This collection includes poems from ancient epics to contemporary poets, and the subjects range from ghosts, death, monsters, haunted houses, and vampires (among so many other creepy things!). There are even two poems by Tim Seibles about Blade; which, despite my prior experience with their subject, are quite poignant and subtle. People have been writing poems about the dead and undead for centuries, and the editors selected poems ranging from the darkly comedic to the genuinely heartbreaking. As a species we’ve been dealing with the subject of death (and, I suppose, undeath – if that’s even a word) for nearly as long as we’ve been alive. This selection beautifully captures that perpetual inquiry in a tome that is charming and special.
If you read this one and it barely satisfies your thirst for Halloween poetry, try another book from the same series: Poems Bewitched and Haunted!
Are you looking for a book to prolong that creepy Halloween spirit? Look no further than a recent addition to the Everyman’s Pocket Poets series: Poems Dead and Undead. This collection includes poems from ancient epics to contemporary poets, and the subjects range from ghosts, death, monsters, haunted houses, and vampires (among so many other creepy things!). There are even two poems by Tim Seibles about Blade; which, despite my prior experience with their subject, are quite poignant and subtle. People have been writing poems about the dead and undead for centuries, and the editors selected poems ranging from the darkly comedic to the genuinely heartbreaking. As a species we’ve been dealing with the subject of death (and, I suppose, undeath – if that’s even a word) for nearly as long as we’ve been alive. This selection beautifully captures that perpetual inquiry in a tome that is charming and special.
If you read this one and it barely satisfies your thirst for Halloween poetry, try another book from the same series: Poems Bewitched and Haunted!
January 3, 2015
Devils, Gods, Angels, Death
(pg. 149-245)
The Gardener - Stephen Dobyns
"Oh, great was the sin of my spirit,
And great is the reach of its doom;
Not the pity of Heaven can cheer it,
Nor can respite be found in the tomb:
Down the aeons come beating the wings of unmerciful gloom" from Nemesis by H.P. Lovecraft
"Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving!" from Howl, Part II by Allen Ginsberg
The Devil's Walk - Robert Southey
"and at the stars,
Which are the brain of Heaven, he lol I'd, and sank." from Lucifer in Starlight
Deus Ex Machina - Jennifer Clement
Flute Playing the Death of This be (from A Midsummer Night's Dream) - William Shakespeare
"Soon are eyes tired with sunshine; soon the ears
Weary of utterance, seeing all is said;
Soon, racked by hopes and fears,
The all-pondering, all-contriving head,
Weary with all things, wearies of the years;
And our sad spirits turn toward the dead And the tired child, the body, longs for bed." from Death, To the Dead for Evermore - Robert Louis Stevenson
"In Sixth Heaven, angels of wrath and silence greet you. Cherubs and arranging dance; gazelles with dappled faces flank the throne; light strikes the trembling heart. You are alone.
You'll see a god of the fire trailing stars, then climb to see the chariot throne, and still survive unharmed. Through blinding flame, through water, you'll enter seven heavens and fall, whole." from Instructions for a Journey - Grace Schulman
Isis Unveiled
"The Indian café and the occult bookstore and the dreamy skeptic I was are inside me still, and so is the night" from Isis Unveiled - Edward Hirsch
(pg. 149-245)
The Gardener - Stephen Dobyns
"Oh, great was the sin of my spirit,
And great is the reach of its doom;
Not the pity of Heaven can cheer it,
Nor can respite be found in the tomb:
Down the aeons come beating the wings of unmerciful gloom" from Nemesis by H.P. Lovecraft
"Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving!" from Howl, Part II by Allen Ginsberg
The Devil's Walk - Robert Southey
"and at the stars,
Which are the brain of Heaven, he lol I'd, and sank." from Lucifer in Starlight
Deus Ex Machina - Jennifer Clement
Flute Playing the Death of This be (from A Midsummer Night's Dream) - William Shakespeare
"Soon are eyes tired with sunshine; soon the ears
Weary of utterance, seeing all is said;
Soon, racked by hopes and fears,
The all-pondering, all-contriving head,
Weary with all things, wearies of the years;
And our sad spirits turn toward the dead And the tired child, the body, longs for bed." from Death, To the Dead for Evermore - Robert Louis Stevenson
"In Sixth Heaven, angels of wrath and silence greet you. Cherubs and arranging dance; gazelles with dappled faces flank the throne; light strikes the trembling heart. You are alone.
You'll see a god of the fire trailing stars, then climb to see the chariot throne, and still survive unharmed. Through blinding flame, through water, you'll enter seven heavens and fall, whole." from Instructions for a Journey - Grace Schulman
Isis Unveiled
"The Indian café and the occult bookstore and the dreamy skeptic I was are inside me still, and so is the night" from Isis Unveiled - Edward Hirsch
July 11, 2015
Poems Dead and Undead is an anthology of horror poetry meant to fit into one’s pocket or handbag. It is chock-full of great horror poems, ranging from the ancient past to present day. The anthology is broken into three sections: “The Corporeal Undead;” “The Incorporeal Undead;” and “Devils, Gods, Angels and Death.” What is intriguing about these poems for readers of speculative poetry is that very few, if any, speculative poets are found between these pages. The anthology is mostly, if not completely, filled with poets of a more academic or canoned nature. Because of this, the anthology provides a more rich and well-crafted experience for the reader.
Read more here: http://sfpoetry.com/sl/reviews/14revi...
Read more here: http://sfpoetry.com/sl/reviews/14revi...
July 21, 2016
As I was reading this I started marking the pages of poems that I enjoyed so that in the future rereads I can easily hit my personal faves. By the end of the book I had marked a surprisingly large number of pages. Biggest surprise for me was "Nemesis" by H.P. Lovecraft; I'm a fan of his weird tales, but had no idea he dabbled in poetry too.
November 1, 2017
Who knew there were so many poems about zombies, vampires, ghosts and the like?! There are some real gems in this collection and I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. Definitely recommend to those who like their poetry a little darker.
February 12, 2019
I might have lost a bit of interest in poetry, I'm not sure why. This books was alright for me. The better ones are those about angels and demons.
October 4, 2020
I thought it was a good book but could have found some better poems
November 5, 2020
Some of these are fun and even a bit spooky. Others were only tangentially related at best. Others still were boring. This was more of a mixed bag than the other books I've read in this series.
April 7, 2023
Lots of meh. Some good ones. Worth checking out just for a translation of a pyramid inscription from a few thousand years ago that was deeply disturbing.
December 6, 2018
In brief: A reasonably collection about death, dead people and corpses, various types of undead and spirits, as well as gods, demons, and angels.
Thoughts: I didn’t like this as much as I liked Killer Verse from this series. The poems in here are about on par, I think, with a pleasing variety of styles and themes and cultures. (Though very few poems from outside the Western world and quite a lot of English literary canon types.) However, the variation between the poems didn’t seem as wide and apart from a handful that evoked a sort of melancholy or eeriness, I didn’t feel a lot of emotion reading them.
Favourites include “Der Totentanz“, “All Hallows Eve“, “The Death of Dracula”, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”, “Goodbye to a Poltergeist”, “Gas-Lamp Ghost”, “The Wood of Suicides”, “The Whale”, and “Isis Unveiled.”
I’m not sure what else I can say about this. It’s well curated apart from the global diversity issue and the editors have done some interesting things pairing poems on the same subject or even versions of the same poem side by side. Enjoyable, even with my usual problem of having to reread poems to figure out what’s going on, and worth picking up if you’re curious, but it’s not a whole lot more than that. Killer Verse was a lot more mentally and emotionally challenging.
Warnings: Death, murder, sexual assault. One poem about the Holocaust. Possible romantically mistranslated Ancient Egyptian. Several poems that appears to simultaneously romanticize Indigenous Americans and portray them as horrifically pagan. One poem referencing the AIDS epidemic.
7/10
Thoughts: I didn’t like this as much as I liked Killer Verse from this series. The poems in here are about on par, I think, with a pleasing variety of styles and themes and cultures. (Though very few poems from outside the Western world and quite a lot of English literary canon types.) However, the variation between the poems didn’t seem as wide and apart from a handful that evoked a sort of melancholy or eeriness, I didn’t feel a lot of emotion reading them.
Favourites include “Der Totentanz“, “All Hallows Eve“, “The Death of Dracula”, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”, “Goodbye to a Poltergeist”, “Gas-Lamp Ghost”, “The Wood of Suicides”, “The Whale”, and “Isis Unveiled.”
I’m not sure what else I can say about this. It’s well curated apart from the global diversity issue and the editors have done some interesting things pairing poems on the same subject or even versions of the same poem side by side. Enjoyable, even with my usual problem of having to reread poems to figure out what’s going on, and worth picking up if you’re curious, but it’s not a whole lot more than that. Killer Verse was a lot more mentally and emotionally challenging.
Warnings: Death, murder, sexual assault. One poem about the Holocaust. Possible romantically mistranslated Ancient Egyptian. Several poems that appears to simultaneously romanticize Indigenous Americans and portray them as horrifically pagan. One poem referencing the AIDS epidemic.
7/10
November 2, 2021
Happy belated (or should I say posthumous?) Halloween. I got this book for the holiday, to help put me in the spirit, and elicit that eerie, gothic feel that autumn always brings. "Poems Dead and Undead," mostly does the job it sets out to do, collecting a series of pieces on all things macabre.
There are zombies and vampires and succubae. Real life horrors like the Shoah or Hiroshima are also given their due. Some of the pieces are lighter in tone, self-aware, campy, and influenced by cult movies, while others are extracts lifted from world religion's most prized tracts. We've got a pretty good range of eras represented as well, with everything from Naropa Institute type beatniks to ancient kings weighing in on the horrors of life and death.
My personal favorites were the classics: Baudelaire's unrepentant paeans to sensory pleasure and indulging the joys of the moment even if it means eternal damnation; Milton's eloquent Lucifer with his convincing, saddening plaidoyer about man being responsible for his own downfall; Shakespeare's iambic pentameters in which witches hovering around cauldrons elucidate the ingredients of their secret recipes.
It's all here, and it's all good. Does Everyman have a Thanksgiving anthology? Recommended.
There are zombies and vampires and succubae. Real life horrors like the Shoah or Hiroshima are also given their due. Some of the pieces are lighter in tone, self-aware, campy, and influenced by cult movies, while others are extracts lifted from world religion's most prized tracts. We've got a pretty good range of eras represented as well, with everything from Naropa Institute type beatniks to ancient kings weighing in on the horrors of life and death.
My personal favorites were the classics: Baudelaire's unrepentant paeans to sensory pleasure and indulging the joys of the moment even if it means eternal damnation; Milton's eloquent Lucifer with his convincing, saddening plaidoyer about man being responsible for his own downfall; Shakespeare's iambic pentameters in which witches hovering around cauldrons elucidate the ingredients of their secret recipes.
It's all here, and it's all good. Does Everyman have a Thanksgiving anthology? Recommended.
July 6, 2019
What an amazing collection of delightfully spooky poems.
On a cold and rainy night, sit in an armchair by the fire with some warm tea and get your spooky cravings filled by this well-curated book of nightmarish wonders.
I liked it so much I bought extra copies to give as gifts.
On a cold and rainy night, sit in an armchair by the fire with some warm tea and get your spooky cravings filled by this well-curated book of nightmarish wonders.
I liked it so much I bought extra copies to give as gifts.
June 24, 2022
Ranging from The Epic of Gilgamesh to Shel Silverstein, this little volume presents odes to zombies, demons, ghosts, monsters and other malevolent supernatural beings. Great fun for those in the mood for creepy poetry.
February 3, 2019
4.5 stars. Some poems were better suited to the collection than others, but all around this was enjoyable.
September 10, 2020
A lovely little book, not as creepy as I had hoped, but I'm glad it's in my collection!
Read
December 1, 2021plan to finish next spooky season
January 17, 2017
First of all, let me say that I love these Everyman Library Pocket poetry books. I've read and loved the"Beat Poets" (which was fantastic), the "Rilke" and the "Bronte" ones and, in general, I liked all of them. This particular collection, though, is edited in a manner that didn't let me enjoy it as much as I wanted to. The various poems of this anthology are divided thematically (i.e. the corporeal undead, the incorporeal undead and so on) rather than chronologically. As a result, the reader will find himself reading romantic poetry in one page and beatnik in the next, alongside with egyptian tablets and psalms. Furthermore, even though I cannot speak for the rest of the translations, the Baudelaire ones, at least, were awful. There are fantastic Baudelaire translations in English that manage to convey the meaning without loosing the form (Jacques Leclercq's are some of the very best); the ones in this book are seriously lacking. Overall, not my favourite poetry collection, though there are some really good poems in there.
November 5, 2014
These are not great poems (mostly) but perfect for the season. Tremendously enjoyable.
January 17, 2016
Really 3.5 stars. Took a while to get to some interesting poems.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews