Reviews for Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems to Read Aloud

The average rating for Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems to Read Aloud based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-09-09 00:00:00 Clinton Stoller Among our Poets Laureate, who has done--and continues to do--more to bring poetry to people, and people to poetry, than Robert Pinsky?  Author of eight collections of verse himself, translator of the INFERNO (a national bestseller), essayist, editor, and critic, not only of poetry but of America itself, Pinsky has just issued a new anthology of poems to read aloud, ESSENTIAL PLEASURES. Accompanied by a CD on which Pinsky reads a brief selection, including Keats and the single heartbreaking poem left behind by Chidiock Tichbourne, this book brings home the message behind much he has written earlier, including THE SOUNDS OF POETRY: what's on the page is primarily an aural and oral art, fully enjoyed when we're willing to use our ears as well as our eyes. Pinsky divides the book through seven modes of poems, preceding each selection with a succinct and helpful essay on what's to come. Starting "Short Lines, Frequent Rhymes," he moves to "Ballads, Repetitions, Refrains," where the reader will find one of the earliest, best known, and most beloved poems in the language, the anonymously written "Western Wind." There's a section of love poems, of course, and the book ends with "Parodies, Ripostes, Jokes, and Insults," including C. D Wright's "Personals," which opens "Some nights I sleep with my dress on. My teeth / are small and even . . . Since 1971 or before, I have hunted a bench / where I could eat my piemento cheese in peace." ESSENTIAL PLEASURES is a delight to keep at any bedside, on any desk, or in any lunchbox. For an interview with Pinsky about anthology and more, published in the NEW YORKER, here's an "essential" link: With Pinsky's help, his publisher, Norton, celebrated National Poetry Month in 2009 on a website called "Poems Out Loud" ( yes, the link is still active.  Pinsky blogged on the site each day, and an mp3 accompanied each post; additionally, the site contains many essays and mp3's by Norton poets.  (Also check out Knopf's, www.randomhouse.com/knopf/poetry and the Academy of American Poets' www.poets.org to sign up for their continuing "Poem-A-Day features."). Furthermore, April 2009 saw the publication of THOUSANDS OF BROADWAYS (University of Chicago Press), a collection of Pinsky's essays about the often-troubled heart and soul of America from which the inspiration for so many of his own poems has come. (originally published in BOOKPAGE, April 2009)

Review # 2 was written on 2009-02-18 00:00:00 Kimberly Bernard Super read! Lots of great poems! I found some old ones and discovered new ones. Some of my favorite include: When You're Lying Awake with a Dismal Headache by W.S. Gilbert Columbus by Ogden Nash The House that Jack Built by Anonymous Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll When I Was Fair & Young by Queen Elizabeth I Concord Hymn by Ralph Waldo Emerson Battle Hymn of the Republic by Julia Ward Howe My Last Duchess by Robert Browning Home Burial by Robert Frost Tributaries by Louise Gluck Frederick Douglass by Robert Hayden Paul Revere's Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley The Lost Pilot by James Tate Casey at the Bat by Ernest Lawrence Thayer The Tyger aka Tyger! Tyger! Burning Bright by William Blake To Brooklyn Bridge by Hart Crane Ode to a Grecian Urn and Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats Chemo Side Effects: Memory by Elise Partridge There's also a CD included, but I didn't listen to it. I prefer to read my poetry aloud and not listen to it.