Reviews for The Everyman book of narrative verse

The average rating for The Everyman book of narrative verse based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-12-11 00:00:00 Bryon Collier Predictably, I liked his Launcelot fragment most (from the Grail quest). The Queen of Drum, written before 1938, was notable for the takeover of a medieval kingdom by a fascist (called 'Führer' and 'Duce'), which put me in mind of TH White's Arthurian-with-added-WWII. Come to that, Lewis has scattered a few epic similes from the WWI front, in his fantasy settings. The Nameless Isle was medieval-styled in alliterative verse, however was like an exercise. Dymer, 80 of these pages, was a bit abstract-philosophical for me, but still nicely written. I'd agree with the collector of these poems that the Queen of Drum is his most obvious success, deft and felt. I wish he had practiced more narrative poetry, in fashion or not.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-03-05 00:00:00 Lonnie Saenz With poetry, it's pretty easy to not pick up on things, and when you're reading long poems in which the plot builds on itself (i.e. narrative poems) not picking up on things can cause issues for the overall experience. I had a lot of that going on with this one. I think I got the most out of "Dymer", the first poem in the collection. It was interesting to see Lewis already referring to our present worldy experience as "the shadow-lands of earth" at a stage in which he still regarded belief in a higher reality to be mere deception. I didn't quite follow all the twists and turns of the main character's philosophical development, but I was struck by the overarching clash between his desire for fulfilment ("For earth must hold / One rich thing sealed as Dymer's from of old") and an insurmountable sense of meaninglessness ("Earth is a sinking ship, a house whose wall / Is tottering while you sweep; the roof will fall").