Customer Reviews (8)

Just some words about the garbage that a seemingly muslim might have delivered below
Unlike the gentleman who decided to not to dignify this reviewer's (the one who talked about how the poet was not reborn as a crow even though he should have been :-)) comments with counter remarks, let me do that. Even though I come from a very civilized upbringing, living abroad in the U.S. literally has transformed my communication to a level where I can actually talk to the "low-lives" or "choto-lok" like the one who simply wanted to express his hatred of himself (assuming it was a male, if a female or of unknown gender, please read with whatever pronoun you might find appropriate).

Yes, it is his hatred of himself. I think that thing posted two remarks with one star. I will comment on that assumption. First, there is no Hindu nationalism you moron. There might be some fundamentalists but Hindus are not nationalistic or at least like the way you sheiks or muslims are. Why am I assuming you are musolli? Because nobody from any other religion or group in this world actually will go about try to write the things that you wrote, yes, not even some white extremist group will do so.

The reviewer talked about Anglo-Hindu love affair. Well it is true. Why do you think the Anglos feel comfortable being in a love affair with the Hindus? You got it...we are equal, equal in the very process of thinking. You might not know your history. The holy books in Hinduism refer to civilized, high caste Hindus as Aryas which when used as an adjective refers to Aryan and then it became a noun when the word was in the process of being exploited. The word was exploited by some extremists in the past but it simply refers to a civilized person who has good "manners". If you speak Bengali and you are not a Hindu, then rest assured that your ancestors were. Nobody in the Indian subcontinent is a true Muslim, they are converts or outsiders who moved to India. Yes, it sounds like your ancestors might have been a "choto-lok" or "low-life".

It's funny in a sense. Whenever I try to find peace, I read Jibanananda and when I was trying to find peace here today, trying to read reviews of this book, I come across this idiot.

You know there is a thing called evolution and like the Neanderthals just vanished from the face of this earth, some subset of the mankind might follow the path. Yes, these abominations are technically human as I don't think differentiation of their genome has come to a point where reproduction with "normal" population is not possible. But it might be, sometime in the future. Just remember this, the world does not have a problem with the Anglos or the Hindus right now. Just sit down and think about why someone in the European or American literary world does not even bother to translate or write about non-Hindu literature in South-Asia. You things are things of the past. Wake up and smell the reality.

And oh yeah, hatred of the reviewer himself is so obvious. For anybody who does not know the history of Bengali literature, it flourished via the Hindus. Yes, there are some Muslim writers in Bangladesh and even in India now, but they too admit that they are heavily influenced by the Hindus who actually built the literary language in some sense. This thing I think knows that and this is why he simply can't stand the fact that nor he or any of his children or grandchildren will be able to produce such work of art as simply he does not have the genes to do so. No matter how much someone hates the Hindus, there simply isn't a way to not read Bengali literature written by Hindus, because mostly that's all there is.

I liked to believe that it's just a difference of religion which is forced upon us and is not real and all the people are the same. Over the years I have realized, it is a very optimistic idea and in the field or in harsh reality it is not a true remark. This decision was come upon by myself through the process of induction from observation.

I should mention Abdul Mannan Syed who is a upper caste Muslim (yes Muslims do have a caste system), and he dedicated many years of his life trying to bring Jibanananda to the Bengalis. And not all Muslims are bad or stupid or idiotic, but then again, most of them are. This statement is based on years and years of experience and believe me if you will. I can name almost all the Muslim writers and people who actually gave something to the literary world of Bengal and guess what they are Upper Caste muslims. The conclusion? The Muslim converts are always the low-lives, the "choto-lokera" across the sub-continent and in the world. That doesn't make it logical or appropriate to go get rid of them like many have done in the past. That is absurd and nasty. Just let them die out due to their lack of intelligence, because they will. A sort of de-facto segregation. They can't live peacefully with sects amongst themselves, how can you expect them to live peacefully with other groups?

A rare sincerity to give it the stature of a model
Some people attain a height by sheer merit. But that even love's labour can help one claim a position of true significance has amply been demonstrated by what happened to this book! Seely's book is now known to almost all Jibanananda admirers a large number of whom are, to tell you the truth, not very enthusiastic about English texts. The book can act like a model as to how one should start a literary acquaintance from the scratches. It has succeeded in presenting an able perspective to Jibanananda's work in terms of ageographic, ecological, political, mythological background. The use of the folk lores, seasonal motiffs, motiffs to transcend the cultural unfamiliarities have been remarkably identified and presented. In my opinion, the translations (for most of the oft-heard poems of the poet) are quite of satisfactory standard. Bengalis lamented among themselves the relative obscurity their achievements have often been destined to and this book gave them some satisfaction and slight expectation that Jibabanananda will be appreciated by international readers if not as much as he deserved to be. The hard work that has gone into its writing and the heart-work that it has possibly achieved will reward Seely with a name not unknown to the readers of Bengali poetry. It is pity that a person of his reputation has to oblige funding authorities for the chair at Chicago University, at present being graced by him.

Jibanananda Das - The Poet of the Invisible
"A Poet Apart" is a scholarly written book by Clinton B. Seely on Jibanananda Das, the most influential poet of Bengal after Rabindranath Tagore. Poet Jibanananda, in the book by Prof. Seely, is manifested uniquely in an historical time. Prof. Seely has rightly brought forth geography, politics, myth, metaphysics, literature etc. of Bengal, in the historical sense, as the basis for the formation of the essential matrix in which the poetry of Jibanananda formed, evolved, and completed itstransmutation from the visible to the invisible. Prof. Seely has done a superb literary work in bringing the life and poetry of Jibanananda Das to the English speaking readers, writers, and scholars.

Pre BJP Literary Hindu Nationalism
ThereviewerfromDallas,Texas, likes thisworkbyClintonSeelybecausehesees hisBengali-Hindu-Self-imagereflectedback at himby his Anglo American Master at theUniversityofChicago. Such Bengali-Hindu literarytasteonlyremindsthepeopleofBabington Macaulay'sIntellectual-Poison-Treecarried along by theBengaliHindusall the way fromCalcutta, IndiatoDallas,Texas. TosuchBengali Hindusobsessedby CulturalNationalism,IrecommendDavidLudden's Masterpiece : "MakingIndiaHindu".

An amazing mix of scholarship, insight, and creativity
"A Poet Apart" by Professor Seely is an amazing work where research scholarship, intelligence, multicultural insights gained only from experience, and poetic creativity have wonderfully blended in.

ProfessorSeely has lived in Bangladesh (particularly in Barisal, where Jibananandawas born and raised), deeply entrenched himself in a mix of the localpeople, their language, culture, natural surroundings (important tounderstand the Dhansiri, Hijal, Kirtankhola references), ethnicity, andsocio-political tradition, studied the poet's work thoroughly, and produceda phenomenal work on the poet in this book.

The translations ofJibanananda's uniquely Bengali coinages are simply astounding. I literallyfelt the same milieu and complexities of the poet through thetranslations.

But a translation of Jibanananda's work is not the onlygift you receive from this book - it is the hermeneutic effort that goesinto 'fusion of cultural horizons", beyond objectivity and relativity,that astounds the reader.

Early on in the book, Seely goes into a chapterof Bengal's history, geography, people, and cultural archetype which is socarefully, respectfully, and accurately knit that it instantly establishescredibility.

The rest is for the reader to read and enjoy.

I insistthat you read this book. ... Read more

Product Description
Tracing the career of Rainer Maria Rilke, a definitive biography combines detailed interpretations of his life with an intimate reading of his verse and prose and shows how he grew from an ambitious versifier into a great poet.Amazon.com Review
Combining empathetic insight into the poet's life withintimate understanding of the poet's work, exhaustive research with astoryteller's flair, Freedman creates portraits of the young Rilkeliving out the poetic imagination, an older Rilke realizing hiscalling as one of the century's greatest poeticvisionaries,culminating in such works as the Duino Elegies andLettersto a Young Poet. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Fascinating Biography
Thia is an insightful account of Rilke's life. I felt that I knew Prague from the description alone.

a postcard of a church
Some biographers get inside the spiritual life of their subjects and are able to capture its intimate movements in such a way that the life takes on a magical coherence and wholeness. Others, less sympathetically endowed, are content to record external circumstances and events, with perhaps some brief overtures toward explaining inner motives and passions. One would think a poet of Rilke's fierce inwardness demands primarily the former form of biography - and he does - but the latter form also offers some interesting insights, especially for readers who might be unfamiliar with the milieu he lived and worked in. This biography is very much in the latter camp. Freedman's prose suffers from frequent bouts of groaningly bad academese ("His words adumbrate the divine tension between Word and World" - yuck!), but his narrative does give the imaginative reader some purchase on the shaping forces behind many of Rilke's most powerful works. The last few hundred pages are something of a slog since you know that felicitous insights into Rilke's inner life (and there are some) will be consistently overwhelmed by a rather distant-sounding reportage of his travels, housing troubles, and publishing concerns. For a poet whose mission was to transform external vicissitude into internal truth... the effect is something like viewing a postcard of a church. Rilke was notorious for flooding his lovers with passion before withdrawing from their intimacy, and in a way Freedman, who never really seems to get under Rilke's skin (although it it is clear he would like to), takes his place among those spurned souls.

messy
This is a sprawling, lazy account. It was moderately useful as a complement to Donald Prater's far more concentrated 'A ringing glass', but if I hadn't read that book first I wouldn't have formed much of a picture of Rilke's life. There are a few interesting stories found here which don'tappear in the other book, but on the whole it is totally inferior.

Life of a Poet:An Engaging Biography
Freedman does an outstanding job of chronicling the life of Rilke without an over-analytical style that so often plagues other artistic biographies.I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and highly recommend it to anyoneinterested in Rilke, the most important German-language poet since Goethe.

Extraordinary tale of an extraordinary man
This biography sensitively and thoroughly investigates the life of Rilke.We follow not only his life's events, but his intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and poetic development, all of which are closely intertwined.Freedman himself writes the tale so well--it is a pleasure to read!Thebook features plenty of photographs of Rilke, his family and friends. Rilke was a complicated and troubled man, but the wonder is seeing how outof such human frailties arose a transcendent body of work. ... Read more

Product Description
This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishings Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the worlds literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

Product Description
Covering 46 poets from more than two centuries of African American literary history, this biocritical dictionary is an important contribution to any reference collection. The poets are situated within their historical and literary context, and for each a brief biographical sketch is given, with information on the poet's personal history, education, influences, and accomplishments. Each entry examines the poet's work as a whole, with a discussion of selected important poems and their recurrent themes. Students and interested readers will gain a good appreciation for the stylistic features and artistic contributions made by these African American poets. For further research, each essay concludes with a list of the poet's published book-length works, anthologies where their poetry appears, and information on reference resources. ... Read more

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Becoming a Poet traces the evolution of Elizabeth Bishop's poetic career through her friendships with other poets, notably Marianne Moore and Robert Lowell. Published in 1989 following critic David Kalstone's death, with the help of a number of his friends and colleagues, it was greeted with uniformly enthusiastic praise. Hailed at that time as "one of the most sensitive appreciations of Elizabeth Bishop's genius ever composed" and "a first-rate piece of criticism" and "a masterpiece of understanding about friendship and about poetry," it has been largely unavailable in recent years.
... Read more

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This first volume of what will be a full-scale biography presents Ezra Pound as a very determined and energetic young genius--at 15 he told his father "I want to write before I die the greatest poems that have ever been written"--setting out to make his way both as a poet and as a force for civilization in England and America in the years before, during and just after World War I.
In this lively narrative A. David Moody weaves a story of Pound's early life and loves, his education in America, and his years in London, where he trained himself to become a great poet-learning from W. B.Yeats, Ford Madox Hueffer, and others-and exhorting his contemporaries to abandon Victorian sentimentality and "make it new." Pound was at the center of everything, forming his own Imagiste group, joining with Wyndham Lewis in his Vorticism, championing the work of James Joyce, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, and T. S. Eliot, and constantly on the lookout for new talent as International Editor for Harriet Monroe's Poetry magazine. Moody traces Pound's evolution as a poet from the derivative idealism and aestheticism of his precocious youth to his Cathay," based on the transliterations of the Sineologist Ernest Fenollosa, to the stunningly original Homage to Sextus Propertius and Hugh Selwyn Mauberley. By 1920 Pound was established as a force for revolution in poetry and in his critical writing as a brilliant iconoclast who argued against stifling conventions and the economic injustice of the capitalist system.
Ezra Pound: Poet gives us illuminating readings of the major early works and a unforgettable portrait of Pound himself-by turns brilliant, combative, selfless, ambitious-and always fascinating. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Ezra Pound: Poet by A. David Moody / An American Poet's Review by Carolyn Grassi
EZRA POUND: POET
A Portrait of the Man & His Work
Volume I The Young Genius 1885-1920
by A. David Moody
Oxford University Press, 2007

As an admirer of A. David Moody's outstanding book, T.S. Eliot: Poet, I eagerly picked up his Ezra Pound: Poet, Volume l. Once again, Moody is a masterful guide-- this time illuminating in detail the evolution of the young Pound as poet of the famed "Cantos." A fascinating pleasurable read for sure thanks to Moody's fine prose and brilliant insights. We travel, as it were, into Pound's intensely self-confident readings and studies of poetry in his Pennsylvania college years. Learn how Pound thought of himself as a future inventor of a new kind of poetry via Pound's uniquely self-directed study, or apprenticeship to the works of the troubadours, Browning, Yeats, Homer, Sextus Propertius, Confucius, Li Po, Rihaku, Calvalcanti and primarily of Dante. Also, Moody situates Pound in the places influencing his future writings-- his American origins, his times in Paris and southern France and primarily, in this Volume I, Pound's years in England. For in London Pound's experiments in poetry, his drawing on currents from the above mentioned writers, will help create such movements in poetry itself, as Imagisime and Vorticism.

Moody presents Pound, the eclectic conversationalist, colorfully dressed figure, the boundlessly generous friend on behalf of other writers (Yeats, Joyce, Eliot). He is seen as constantly appealing to patrons, as John Quinn of New York, for financial support for other artists. Bluntly outspoken, as well, Pound confronts any writer, publisher or critic, he considered out-of-date obstacles to the emerging new poetry. His conviction that the arts will transform the world was unswerving. For Pound, the arts, and especially poetry were intimately woven into the fabric of everything else of value-- history, economics, music, painting, publications, politics, education, etc.

Towards the end of Moody's Volume I, he shows us the shape and content of Pound's great work to come: "The Cantos." This is a key section, where Moody reveals Pound's path as clearly revolutionary for his own work and for modern poetry itself. And though we have only the first seven cantos (in this Volume I), not yet fully developed by Pound at that stage, Moody whets our appetite for the future "Cantos" (and for Pound: Poet Volume II).

At the completion of Moody's clear and wide-ranging account of Pound's development as a young poet we stand, as if impatiently watching Ezra and Dorothy pack their bags for the move from London to Italy--future home for the creation of Pound's "Cantos." "On with it!"-- we cheer poet and critic.
A final comment-- this is a "must read" for any Pound scholar or aficionado. And for those, as myself, who have stumbled over Pound's poetry and often given up; now we have Moody's sensitive and intelligent guidance into that mysterious complex world of Pound's poetry. I think A. David Moody's Ezra Pound: Poet is the best possible happening for Pound's poetry, since it first appeared.

The Latest Pound Biography
Ezra Pound: Poet I: The Young Genius 1885-1920
If you want the fullest account of Pound's life to date, start with this volume. It is the first of two volumes and will when complete be more detailed than any biography of the poet so far.If you want to understand why Ezra Pound deserves a biography of this magnitude, read Pound.Almost all his works in poetry and prose are in print, a third of a century after his death.Few writers can claim such longevity. Pound is here to stay, because for all his faults he was a great poet--a highly eccentric and controversial personality, as this biography shows, but a great poet nevertheless. ... Read more

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The first extensive literary biography of one of the most popular late 19th-century American women poets. ... Read more

Product Description
This book is only part of De Quincey's prolific writings, which taken together form his autobiography. The frankness with which he wrote about Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge and their lives at Grasmere provoked a storm on publication. ... Read more

Product Description
The relationship between writing and living is explored in this collection of letters, poems, photographs, and reminiscences from people who knew Lorine Niedecker personally. Niedecker's acclaimed poems are distinguished by a fierce style that earned her work comparison to that of Emily Dickinson and William Carlos Williams. Revelations about her roles as the daughter of a Wisconsin carp fisherman and as a hospital cleaning woman offer insight into how Niedecker became a quintessential poet of place. Critical questions are discussed about the creative process reflected in Niedecker's writings, including What can we achieve through writing? How are we affected by where we live? and Who inspires us? ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A Gentle Introduction To A Fine Poet
When I first moved to Milwaukee in 1980, Lorine Niedecker and her work was a sort of glorious secret kept between the very few "in the know."This select group consisted of Karl Gartung of Woodland Pattern Book Center, the critic Karl Young, Morgan Gibson (Japan), Cid Corman (Japan), Ian Hamilton Finlay (U.k.), Basil Bunting (U.K.), and a very few others who had known Lorine and her writing.One fine day in early spring Karl Gartung took me up to see the famous cabin on Blackhawk Lake, the misspelled tombstone of gray granite.We visited Gail Roub in Fort Atkinson, a kind man, and heard him tell of rescuing Lorine's pictures and manuscripts left behind in the abandoned cabin at flood time after her death.It all came home to me that here was a woman passionately convinced of the importance of poetry in a world that largely passed her by.Living, in the main, by herself, surrounded by lush nature--frog croaks and mosquito bites and the lazy gulp of flies by the lake fish--she daily sat at a small table and worked hard to find the right word for the right place at the right time.No, she does not have the verbal gifts and dazzlingly unexpected insights into science and religion and fear and love and loss that Emily Dickinson had.Lorine Niedecker's gifts were of a far different, homelier kind.Where Emily Dickinson blazes, Lorine Niedecker glows; where Emily Dickson takes the breath, Lorine Niedecker affirms the bedrock certainty--the aptness--of the form she chooses to express her thought.In 1980 only a few of Lorine's publications were available--I picked up a rare Lorine Niedecker special issue of Truck Magazine from the 1970's and felt lucky to have it.Now, since the publication of Jenny Penberthy's edition of Niedecker's complete works, and the editions of letters--especially those to Louis Zukofsky, an academic industry has begun. Among the spate of ensuing theses, monographs, anthologies, translations and miscellaneous publications, John Lehman's America's greatest Unknown Poet is one of the finest introductions to the poetry and the life of Lorine Niedecker that I know.As well as providing context for the work, Lehman gently leads the reader past the central tragedy of Lorine's life: her relationship with the great second generation modernist poet Louis Zukofsky, who comes across in all accounts as a bit of a heavy.Lehman also provides a good anthology of Niedecker's best work, as well as a cogent discussion of her theory of art: her practice of condensing language in poetry.Lehman gives any potential student of Lorine's poetry the kinds of tools that they would need to consider both the strengths and weaknesses of the work, and to write knowledgeably about it.In short, Lehman side-steps the layers of interpretation of various critical stances that have begun to accumulate about the image of this modest worker with words and opts to keep the discussion simple--free of the encrustations of jargon that are now hardening, loop on loop and band on band, around the sincere writing of a rather remarkable person who made her living by cooking and scrubbing floors in a small town in central Wisconsin, but who still managed to create some of the most compelling poetry of 20th century America.Highly recommended.

Lorine Niedecker: an Emily Dickenson for the 21st Century
John Lehman's book illuminates Lorine for you: her life, her friends, her loves, her work... I'd never heard of Lorine Niedecker.I knew Pound, Joyce, Eliot, Ginsberg, Woolf, Plath, Williams, etc. But no Niedecker.

Niedecker: five line poems that shine. Not a word wasted. Less is more. The poems: funny, sad, filled with birds, trees, Thomas Jefferson, and water near by. She can illuminate life with five lines.Life's bits of knowledge learned from the Great Depression or as a cleaning woman in a hospital or historical research...

Some family and friends didn't even know she wrote.Now we all know. So thanks to John Lehman for shouting in the desert about America's Greatest Unknown Poet: Lorine Niedecker. Read Niedecker: Collected Works.

Wonderful Woman Writer
Her work is great and her life interesting. This is a terrific book for anyone interested in writing and it also shows how all of us need to come to terms with our lives. Poems, letters, interviews, photographs. Good for book groups (or schools) with a built-in discussion guide. It's very affordable too. ... Read more

Product Description
A surprise-filled biography of the radical young poet whose fiery intellect revolutionized English poetry, The Hidden Wordsworth breaks through the carefully crafted but frequently misleading accounts of his youth that William Wordsworth created in his later years. In this enthralling narrative, the great Romantic poet emerges as a man of action during his youth and early manhood, when, in Wordsworth's own words, "Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive, / But to be young was very heaven!" Kenneth Johnston explores Wordsworth's links with radical British reformists, French revolutionary leaders, and journalists, and, astonishingly, reveals Wordsworth as an agent for the British "Secret Service" on the Continent and at home. Deeply intertwined with his politics, Wordsworth's emotional life has until now been even more deeply buried. Johnston illuminates and freshly interprets Wordsworth's relations with his sister, Dorothy, with his French mistress, Annette Vallon, and with his sister-in-law, Sara Hutchinson. At the same time, The Hidden Wordsworth explores the poet's intense and often destructive relations with a cluster of young writers, leading up to his friendship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one of the most productive, if highly fraught, collaborations in literary history. Based on new research in government archives in England and France, school and university records, and intimate letters, The Hidden Wordsworth is a warts-and-all account of a young poet who lived a life even Byron would have envied.Amazon.com Review
William Wordsworth's version of his youth in ThePrelude, an epic-length poem "on the growth of my own mind," iscertainly well known, but what does it really tell us about the poet'syouth and early adulthood? Kenneth R. Johnston, who has devoted muchof his academic career to the romantic poets, particularly Wordsworth,sifts through the other available evidence and demonstrates that thepoet suppressed as much, perhaps more, of his personal history as herevealed in the deliberate crafting of his literary identity.

The most fascinating material for some readers will be Johnston's(ably supported) hypotheses about several periods during the 1790swhen Wordsworth's presence cannot be fully accounted for. For nearlyhalf of 1793, for example, the poet is supposed to be "quietly sittingdown" in Wales, but there's good reason to suspect that he is actuallyin Paris, re-establishing contact with his French mistress, AnnetteVallon. Then, six years later, he and his sister disappear in southernGermany for over a month--and the secret account books of the homesecretary, who controlled funds for the secret service, show a paymentmade out to a "Wordsworth" shortly afterwards.

Was one of the founders of English romanticism actually a British spy?Admittedly, we may never know for sure. But Johnston's account is veryconvincingly constructed; it fits what can be known without requiringgreat leaps of imagination. As such, it forces us to re-evaluateeverything we've ever believed about Wordsworth and hispoems. Fortunately, Johnston is as capable a literary critic as he isbiographer. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Nothing Under Cover!
I've read Wordsworth my whole life, and my hunched posture, bland disposition, and general resentment of other people's successes are testament to what happens when one gives oneself- like a prom queen- to the WORDSWORTHer. Johnstone does admirable work here, giving us the dirt on the man and the truth about his years in Hollywood. Who knew that Wordsworth was a spy, or that he was the basis of the famous spy vrs spy strip? Johnson's fine research helped me appreciate that strip much more than i had.

Fabulous read!- The Hidden Salami of the Poet
Excellent book! I liked the textual innuendo here, that our most bucolic and turgid of romantic poets was indeed a spy, mostly in the house of love, macking on Dorothea, his sister later of Oz fame, as well as many French Aristocrats and poetesses. This book displays brilliant research and impressive critical girth. The tale of Johnson provides a rich and yeasty reading of Wordsworth's "Prelude" as a love poem to Coleridge, what Johnson calls the foreplay to romanticism itself. Read this book for the rich critical ideas and the saucy details about how, where, and how often the poet hides himself. ... Read more

Product Description
This is a memoir of the author's childhood in America.Amazon.com Review
"There was a war on against colored people," June Jordan recalls her father telling her. "I had to become a soldier." Jordan's fierce, funny, lyrical memoir of her first 12 years reveals the seeds of her adult poetry in her childhood experiences: the magical sounds of words in the nursery rhymes her mother crooned, the awareness nearly from birth of the bitter complexities of family relations. Jordan's father (depicted in a brilliantly nuanced portrait) was a proud Jamaican immigrant who encouraged his daughter to read and took her to museums and to Carnegie Hall, but also called her "damn black devil child" and beat her for the slightest misstep. He moved his family from a Harlem housing project to their own home in Brooklyn, enrolled June at a white boarding school, and fought savagely with his wife, who argued, "The child is a Black girl ... you gwine to make her afraid to be sheself!" Jordan reproduces the rhythms of West Indian speech as vividly as she captures African American culture of the 1930s and '40s in a poignant autobiography that, for all its racial particularity, tells an all-American story of the charged emotional legacy bequeathed by parents striving to give their children a better life. --Wendy Smith ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

I really liked this book.
I will be interested to read some of this authors poetry. Her memoir read like a free verse poem--or a prose. The author had a very smooth way of writing and I was left with wanting to read more about her life. Once I could sit down and read it..I read it completely. I will begin my search for the author and what else she has written right now. Happy reading!:)

This is a woman I'd like to know.
I don't read autobiographies because they're usually self-serving. I wait until someone with distance does justice to a life.

Soldier, though, is the exception to my rule. June Jordan is able to look back over what seems a chaotic and sometimes cold, cruel childhood, and put it into the context of her life.

The style is many times lyrical and poetic. The words draw you in and keep you reading. The story works back and forth between what's actually happening to June, the child, and what she's thinking about as it unfolds. It's quite different from most autobiographies.

While I understand her father's quest to make sure his child is never a victim, his methods seem too brutal for words. It was a different time, and reality for an African-American is different, too, but reading about it is grueling.

I did have a problem with the fact that June's memories seem much too clear. I may be missing the point, but I don't know anyone who can remember her childhood with such clarity and from the age of six months. Perhaps this is literacy license. If so, fine. The problem, then, is mine.

No matter, this book is a fabulous read. I whipped through it in two hours.

A childhood testimony of courage and perserverance
June Jordan, African American Studies professor at UC Berkeley, haswritten a moving testament to her chaotic, challenging, and bittersweetchildhood.This memoir written in a poetic manner is reminiscent of SandraCisneros' "House on Mango Street".The daughter of West Indianimmigrants who revered education andhard work, she endured almost dailyverbal assaults on her gender and physical abuse from her father.He wason one hand a supporter of Marcus Garvey and on the other hand felt theneed to put down the American black at every turn.Her mother was asubmissive, silent woman who realized that her daughter was her husband'sson.Jordan's memories of the people who made an impact on her life andcharacter, her Nanny, her Uncle Teddy, her camp friend, Jodi along withtales of childhood death-defying accidents, academic excellence, and firstcrushes are just bits and parts that serve to make this memoir a compellingread.

Charming and Powerful
Sure to be a classic. A wonderfully charming and moving series of memories, observations, and poetic passages about a childhood at turns sweet, innocent, and difficult. Sometimes children make the most clear-eyedand wise observers, and it is the rare adult, such as June Jordan, who canrecapture and communicate the experience of childhood in both its wonderand bewilderment. Although the elements of Jordan's childhood are specific- 19302/1940s, brusque, occaisionally-violent immigrant father, Harlem andBrooklyn neighborhoods, racial and social inequity - the themes areuniversal. Wonderful!

Excellent, simply excellent.
Over the past 40 years civil rights has come a long way and progress has been made in areas that makes life easier. But imagine if you had to struggle with poor education, terrible living conditions, and evensegregation. Now imagine trying to get ahead in a world and society thatwas making all this an impossible task.

June Jordan takes you on a twelveyear journey through the eyes of one person who life was given thesecircumstances and somehow managed to succeed and become one of the mostsuccessful people, her own. June Jordan tells a story through words andpoems that has you stopping and thinking throughout the entire 260pages.

The book is one of the first I have read that makes a clearrepresentation of how a child caught up in turmoil can block out what theysee and find something good in the life they have been given. Jordan'sability to capture the reader makes this book one of the most impressive Ihave read so far this year.

After reading this book and seeing how thetough and often overbearing father along with the serine and religiousmother were at odds, I gained a deeper understating of how difficult itmust have been for any African American to try to make and succeed in thewhite man's world.

Jordan has written several other books and has wona number of prestigious awards over the years. I found this book enjoyableand easy to read. Take time out and follow through the 12 years with achild who I found dealt with the same things I did as a child, only Jordanhad them magnified. An excellent book! ... Read more

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This work provides a look at Pope's relationship with the leading garden makers of his time. Forever planning and plotting for his own grotto and for his modest five acres in Twickenham, his ideas were also sought at many of the great estates. His importance to Lord Burlington at Chiswick, Henrietta Howard at Marble Hill, and, above all, to William Kent, the great designer is made abundantly clear. The author sets out to throw new light on her subject and show why Pope has been, and remains, so crucial to our landscape. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Too ambitious, insufficiently organized
Reading Peter Hawkins' "Dante: a Brief History" helps to clarify the problem with this book. The author tries both a) to write an intellectual biography of Dante and b)to offer a detailed precis of the Commedy. But she deals with these subjects concurrently, so that if you bought the book to read about the Comedy you end up slogging through endless(not literally, but it feels so) pages of biography, and story of the intellectual genesis of Vita Nuova and the two great, unfinished Latin essays Dante abandoned to write the Comedy. I felt great guilt fast-forwarding through this part, but that did not ultimately deter me. And once she gets going with the Comedy, she feels the need to stop between cantica and update us as to the events in Dante's life. Hawkins is much more sparing on biographical detail (which he restricts to a single chapter) and his comments on the Comedy (which appear in a separate chapter) and he from there offers two more essays and that's that. Dr. Reynolds' is presentation is more sprawling, detailed and less well-organized. But it is a good book. I even like her theory about the identity of the "Greyhound" in the first canto of the Inferno. While I admit that there are better books available on the subject, I can not fathom giving it only one star, nor can I give it five.

The unprincipled intellect
We read Dante to feed our souls.Barbara Reynolds biography completely missed this point.

Her conclusions are weird and unsupported.It causes me to wonder at her affiliation with Dorothy Sayers: Sadly, it appears that nothing of Dorothy's passionate intellect rubbed off on her.

Much better works on Dante include the Dante Papers Trilogy: Introductory Papers on Dante (vol. 1), Further Papers on Dante (vol. 2), The Poetry of Search and the Poetry of Statement (vol. 3).Also worthy of mention is The Figure of Beatrice by Charles Williams.

Not Surprising, just sad!
One wonders if Ms. Reynolds was enjoying an afternoon on the grass herself when she came upon her theory. Or was it simply an effort to get some publicity for a book that in no way measures up to the competition. Perhaps there was consideration of calling it "Dante's Trip: What a Comedy" to broaden readership.

In any case, with all the great works about the Divine Comedy, including Joseph Gallagher's "Modern Reader's Guide" and Eric Auerbach's "Dante, Poet of the Secular World," and biographies such as Paget Toynbee's "Dante Aligieri: His Life and Works," I recommend that you avoid Ms. Reynolds attempt at originality.

I understand that Academics live under the rule "Publish or Perish" but one encounters sufficient sensationalism in our modern inferno, must we project our own shallowness into the past?

It is sad that many of us are unable to imagine a time when gifted people could experience a spiritual journey and exercise their imagination without chemical support.

Amazing portrait of an amazing man
I fell in love with Dante when I first read 'The Divine Comedy' and 'La Vita Nuova' when I was 24 years old, and reading this wonderful biography made me love and respect him even more.Ms. Reynolds is dealing with a subject that many people would probably consider rather scholarly and academic, yet the writing is never boring.She manages to make it all interesting and relevant instead of the stuff of a stuffy academic treatise that doesn't engage the reader.And since she's one of the world's most renowned Dante scholars, she really knows her stuff.This book has everything one ever wanted to know, and then some, about Dante, his writings, and his times.

Given the era in which Dante lived, this can't be as detailed and in-depth as the biography of a more modern figure on a subject such as his day-to-day personal life or even some more basic subjects such as his relationship with his wife and children, but the information we do have on Dante's life is fascinating.Ms. Reynolds is able to cover in depth such subjects as the political and religious situation in Italy and the Holy Roman Empire (in an era long before separation and church of state, these two things were deeply intertwined), his bitterness and sadness over his exile from Florence, his relationship with Beatrice, his various benefactors, his early education, and, of course, his writing.Among the works covered are 'Il Convivio' ('The Banquet'), 'La Vita Nuova,' 'Monarchia,' and 'De Vulgari Eloquentia' ('On the Art of Writing in the Vernacular').The major focus of the book, however, is on his masterpiece 'The Divine Comedy,' all three parts of it.As someone who read the work on my own, without a teacher or some sort of commentary, it gave me a whole new understanding of so many things in it.One can't really fully understand the work, even if one likes it, without an in-depth understanding of Dante as a person, the times he lived in, the public figures he knew and knew of, the understanding of theology at the time, the works of literature he was familiar with, and all of the stories from mythology, history, and religion which would have needed no explanations in his era but which often don't ring a bell with the average modern reader.

Overall, this is a thorough tome on the man who arguably is considered the next-greatest writer of all time, after Shakespeare, and his writings.Ms. Reynolds really makes both Dante and his writing come alive and transcend their long-ago era, becoming relevant to all time.

Author fails in proving her point
The author'e premise is that Dante used marijuana ( !!?), and that led him to write his most esteemed works.

Obviously this is wild and unfounded speculation and makes the author look unprofessional and unschooled. She fails miserably in her "proof"of that fallacious and malicious speculation.

Fans of Dante,the world's greatest poet ever , will want to steer clear of this pile of nonsense, and the author , Barbara Renalds, should attend a school where Dante is taught properly!

Have a great day. ... Read more

Product Description
When Volume I of Nicholas Boyle's biography of Goethe appeared, it received an avalanche of praise on both sides of the Atlantic. George Steiner, in The New Yorker, called it "the best biography of Goethe in English." Doris Lessing, in The Independent, called it "biography at its best." And The New York Times Book Review hailed it as "a remarkable achievement," adding "there is nothing comparable to this study in any language." Now comes the second volume of this definitive portrait, published on the 250th anniversary of Goethe's birth.Here Nicholas Boyle chronicles the most eventful and crowded years of Goethe's life: the period of the French Revolution--which turned Goethe's life upside down--and of the philosophical revolution in Germany which ushered in the periods of Idealism and Romanticism. It was also a period dominated by two intense personal relationships--with Schiller, Weimar's other great poet, philosopher, and dramatist, and with Christiana Vulpius, the mother of his son. Boyle paints vivid portraits of Goethe's harrowing experiences of the Revolutionary wars, of the explosion of new ideas in philosophy and literature which for ten years made Jena the intellectual capital of Europe, and of the upheavals sparked by Napoleon which destroyed the Holy Roman Empire.Boyle captures both the large-scale events that swept Europe and the personal dramas of this exciting time. And he offers brilliant new analyses of Goethe's works of the period, most notably Wilhelm Meister, The Natural Daughter, and Faust. Indeed, this volume is a major work of historical and literary scholarship, and an important biography of one of the giants of Western culture. ... Read more

Product Description
In 1967, George Seferis decided the time had finally come to publish at least a portion of his journals.As he was preparing his manuscript for the printer, however, the political climate in Greece became increasingly unpropitious for such an undertaking.Soon he did not feel free to publish in his own country, and in those ominous days there were even some fears for the safety of his unpublished manuscripts. Shortly before his death on September 20, 1971, he entrusted a copy of the journal to his friend Athan Anagnostopoulos with the request that he translate it, publish it, and that Walter Kaiser write theintroduction for American readers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A very thoughtful translation
Having read this in the original Greek, I can say that the translation is true to the original in language and sentiment.Seferis is a nobel-prize winning author whom non-Greek speakers often overlook.This excellent English translation of the poet's personal journal gives not only insight into the writer, but into a turbelent social period in modern Greek history. ... Read more

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Portrays the life of this multi-faceted African-American poet, author, and educator. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The Title Says It All
This biography on Maya Angelou shows how various trials and accomplishments have shaped her life.What has it shaped her into?More than a poet.Maya is more than a poet and yet human, down to earth.Maya has a very diverse background and diverse accomplishments that many students would be able to relate to.The obstacles she has faced include prejudice, sexual abuse, teenage pregnancy, and failed marriages.She is an accomplished writer, poet, playwright, activist, and performer.More Than a Poet moves chronologically throughout her life, showing important events that have made her an influential figure in today's society.

We would recommend this book because of its in-depth and realistic perspective on Angelou's life.We feel that the true-to-life depiction of Angelou's life and accomplishments would bring readers young and old to connect with Angelou as a human being.We would use the book in the sixth grade classroom as it has some mature content (well-handled) and its use of language would be well suited to the sixth grade reader.Perhaps the most effective use of this book would be in a biographical unit, including the study of victories in the face of hardships.

More than a poet
My review of this book is it was a good book and it showed me how one afican american woman in the united state can do so much with her life and. I will like to see more that she show words that will make you fell themand think about what she is saying this book showed me alot of things andshow me what I can do things in life even though the bad times and the goodtimes. ... Read more

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Michael Garfield Smith was an internationally distinguished anthropologist. He wasalso a poet of merit, but few people knew that or really understood the conflicts, personal andprofessional, that made him, in the opinion of many who knew him, appear arrogant and unapproachable.This account tries to show the whole man, and it is to date the only biography of M. G. Smith.

"A Man Divided" is a brief account of M. G. Smith the man, "the talented, hardworking Jamaican andhow he made his way, rather than of the academic performance of Professor M. G. Smith theinternationally distinguished anthropologist". Preface ... Read more

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In 1946 French film critic Nino Frank, having just seen The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, Laura, and Murder, My Sweet linked them all with the term "film noir." No one working on these projects knew they were making film noirs; Frank invented a label that connected them after the fact, and it is because of his label that the genre became famous. Imaginary Biographies: Misreading the Lives of the Poets aims to do for poetry what Frank did for film: to gather together previously unrelated works in order to better understand and appreciate them as a new, unrecognized literary genre.

In Imaginary Biographies Geoff Klock argues that the bizarre portrayal of historical writers in post-Enlightenment English poetry constitutes a genre, a battleground for two central conflicts: the confrontation of the self-sufficient Romantic imagination with the brute fact of external precursors (in the nineteenth century); and the participation in, and simultaneous deflation of, Romantic idealism (in the twentieth). In William Blake's Milton, the author of Paradise Lost returns to earth to redeem his female half, confront Satan and herald the apocalypse. Percy Bysshe Shelley's Jean-Jacques Rousseau has been physically deformed and mentally ruined by a hellish chariot in The Triumph of Life. Algernon Charles Swinburne, in his Anactoria, hijacks the ancient Greek poetess Sappho and turns her into his anti-Christian Sadistic lesbian vampire cannibal Muse. In The Changing Light at Sandover James Merrill contacts W.H. Auden and William Butler Yeats with a Ouija board and discovers their part in an insane cosmic hierarchy. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey abandoned their youthful plans to establish a utopian community in America; Paul Muldoon's Madoc imagines they went through with it and describes the ensuing disaster. John Ashbery's Sleepers Awake gages the work of Miguel de Cervantes, James Joyce and Homer in terms of how much they slept while writing. In TV Men Anne Carson portrays Thucydides, Sappho, and Antonin Artaud anachronistically preparing, or being prepared for, television adaptations.

Klock makes the audacious and fascinating case that the imaginary biography is in continuity with literary criticism. He concentrates on how one poet misreads another by explicitly naming the earlier poet in the latter poem. This "misreading" forms a new genre, creating a new kind of character and a new kind of poem. The result is a dazzling work of literary scholarship that will stimulate debate for years to come. ... Read more