The path to Fairview Book

I picked up this is a handsome, three-volume set for one primary reason – its format. In three hardcover volumes, it is immensely easier to read than the twenty-two-hundred-page (usually Norton) paperback tomes that are required for college freshman studying English. These awkwardly floppy, dead-heavy volumes do not call out “read me.” Rather, they are wrist-straining blobs of pulp that repel the reader and suffer the reading.

Thus the appeal of this volume. Three separate, hardcover volumes, about 400 pages each that are easy to curl up with and enjoy for a lifetime. And unlike the reference-dictionary catch-all ethos of the college anthology, this is thankfully more concise.

Alas, my poetry friends, the search may continue. For starters, the volume contains no information about poets (other than birth and death years), nor anything about the poems – not even the years they were composed or published. While mining obscure poems, the editor does not provide helpful historical or mythological context, nor any assistance with obscure/archaic words. It’s rather disappointing.

And while one can always argue about the selection, this was compiled in 1986 and it feels a bit old fashioned. There are very few women poets, for example.

Here are my reviews of each volume:

Volume I – As the volume is subtitled, this takes us from Spenser to Dryden. The editor never explains why he started with Spenser. Traditionally, “modern” anthologies start with Chaucer, which a person can struggle through with some help without a translation. So what about Chaucer, Skelton, Langland, Wyatt, Surrey, etc.? They practically invented English poetry.

I’m sure you can always quibble about what should or shouldn’t be included. However, how do you not include Raleigh’s response to the Passionate Shepherd? Or Donne’s A Valediction Forbidding Mourning? How? It also doesn’t include any women poets.

I immensely enjoyed that the editor uses the original spelling in the first quarter of the volume. It adds a mystique and provides a clearer sense of how the original poets viewed and heard the words during their lifetimes. Unfortunately, the editor stops that practice with Shakespeare, for no apparent reason.

Outside the obvious stars, the poems that stood out to me were Fulke Greville’s Chorus of Priests. (I assume from a play, but I’m not sure.) The opening lines of Thomas Campion’s Follow Your Saint are entrancing:

“Follow your saint, follow with accent sweet;
Haste you, sad notes, fall at her flying feet.” (p.186)

Jonson’s Song to Celia is also beautiful. (p. 205) And Thomas Dekker’s Golden Slumbers (p. 219) was a surprise to me as a Beatles fan. (03/20)