Reviews for Enlightened verses

The average rating for Enlightened verses based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-05-19 00:00:00 Mark Washburn Note, Nov. 7, 2017: I've just edited this to correct a typo, which my friend Jean helpfully caught for me! Poetry is a literary form I haven't read nearly as much of as I have of fiction; the latter is really my favorite, so I tend to neglect other types of literature for it. But I can enjoy and appreciate poetry, especially of the more traditional, structured sort (which, of course, describes all the selections here); and this anthology, intended as a high school or freshman college textbook, was the first real book of serious poetry I read, back in junior high school, and helped to shape my taste in that area. (Of course, I read the original 1902 edition, not the Ayer reprint.) Since, after 40+ years, I'd forgotten some exact titles and poet's names, I recently got a copy through interlibrary loan to refer to and refresh my memory for this review. But I was struck by how much of it had stayed with me! (Below, I noted that I read the book once; but in the years that I owned it, on into the 1970s, I went back and reread individual poems from time to time.) The chronological scope of the collection is indicated in the title: it begins with four selections from the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales and a few medieval folk ballads (all in the original middle English), and finishes with Kipling's 1901 classic "Recessional." In between, the editors provide poems (or selections from long poems) from most of the pre-20th century giants of British poetry, including Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Byron, Tennyson, and Browning, and not a few minor ones, such as Robert Herrick, Thomas Campbell, Lord Macaulay, and George Walter Thornbury. In all, 134 selections are included, and 51 named poets are represented. Parrott and Long (who were colleagues at Princeton Univ.) prefaced the collection with a ten-page "Outline Sketch" of the history of English poetry, which was instructive to a beginner; they also provide short biographical-critical sketches of most of the poets featured, and nearly 100 pages of helpful explanatory endnotes on the individual poems. (Anything by John Donne is regrettably omitted, and the editors' history unfairly dismisses him and the entire metaphysical school in two deprecatory sentences. Women poets are also under-represented, Elizabeth Barrett Browning being the only one included.) Given my liking for fiction, I most enjoyed the poems that tell stories. The ballads were fascinating, even with the archaic language (which may even have enhanced their appeal!); I especially liked "Kinmont Willie" and "Thomas the Rymer." (My enjoyment of the latter, decades later, formed the background for my appreciation of Ellen Kushner's excellent fantasy novel, Thomas the Rhymer, which very closely follows the plot of the ballad.) For the same reason, I also particularly appreciated Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (here just titled "The Ancient Mariner"), Browning's story poems, Tennyson's "The Revenge: A Ballad of the Fleet," Macaulay's "the Battle of Naseby," Cowper's "Boadicea," and Thornbury's "The Three Troopers," among others. But I liked poems of other types as well; my favorites also included "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," "Recessional," Burns' "For A' That and A' That," and Lovelace's "Going to the Wars." Of course, there were also poems here that I didn't like; I never cared much for the overblown sentimentality of Shelley and Byron, for instance (and still don't), and John Dryden's attacks on his poetic competitors, such as Thomas Shadwell, struck me as mean-spirited and tasteless --and I'm not yet fully persuaded that they're not. (No doubt, there are also quite a few poems that I'd value more now than I did then, from reading them with a more mature taste and knowledge.) All in all, I think any novice in the reading of poetry would find this a fine introduction; and it's a collection that would please any more seasoned lover of traditional poetry, as well. When I listed it on my shelves last year, I slapped a three-star rating on it. But after re- reading and skimming some of it again, and thinking about how much it influenced my view of poetry and how powerfully some of these lines have stayed with me across the years, I decided it well deserved its fourth star!

Review # 2 was written on 2011-07-22 00:00:00 Belinda Bracey I am frozen in this moment.[…] This moment must wait 50 years for the right word. Perhaps he had said it; perhaps in the frost of our mingled breath, the word was written. […] One would dance with him for what he might say. * The perfection of the fiery moment can not be sustained — or can it? * I don’t pretend to understand. We have gone through some Hell together, separately. * It is not easy to readjust, for it is only in retrospect that we dare face the enormity of the situation.