Poems and Selected Letters (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe)

Book Description

Veronica Franco (whose life is featured in the motion picture Dangerous Beauty) was a sixteenth-century Venetian beauty, poet, and protofeminist. This collection captures the frank eroticism and impressive eloquence that set her apart from the chaste, silent woman prescribed by Renaissance gender ideology.

As an "honored courtesan", Franco made her living by arranging to have sexual relations, for a high fee, with the elite of Venice and the many travelers—merchants, ambassadors, even kings—who passed through the city. Courtesans needed to be beautiful, sophisticated in their dress and manners, and elegant, cultivated conversationalists. Exempt from many of the social and educational restrictions placed on women of the Venetian patrician class, Franco used her position to recast "virtue" as "intellectual integrity," offering wit and refinement in return for patronage and a place in public life.

Franco became a writer by allying herself with distinguished men at the center of her city's culture, particularly in the informal meetings of a literary salon at the home of Domenico Venier, the oldest member of a noble family and a former Venetian senator. Through Venier's protection and her own determination, Franco published work in which she defended her fellow courtesans, speaking out against their mistreatment by men and criticizing the subordination of women in general. Venier also provided literary counsel when she responded to insulting attacks written by the male Venetian poet Maffio Venier.

Franco's insight into the power conflicts between men and women and her awareness of the threat she posed to her male contemporaries make her life and work pertinent today.

Customer Reviews:

Dangerously addictive poetry........2007-04-03

I had wanted to get my hands on a book of Veronica Franco's poetry ever since I read THE HONEST COURTESAN. When I discovered that this was available, I snapped it up in a heartbeat. The poetry itself is a decadent pleasure, much like eating cheesecake in a bubble bath, but what makes it even better is the layout. One page has the poem in the original Italian, with the translation on the page opposite. This makes it very easy to compare and study them. The writings provide an interesting look into the mind and personality of the woman who inspired DANGEROUS BEAUTY.

I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in poetry, 16th century Venice, or just wants a fun book to pass back and forth with friends while waiting for the feast to be served.

interesting and informative.......2005-09-01

It's like a very good college textbook. But it isn't boring

Untitled.......2000-12-14

Though some of the letters included in this book are quite hard to get through without having a coffee break, the poems are absolutely fascinating. They are filled with passion and mystery. The majority of poems to or from lovers of Veronica Franco in this book are unknown, which leaves the beauty of being able to make up your own mind. This title doesn't focus so much on her life so if your after history of Veronica then another title might be more suitable. Otherwise this is well worth the buy.

Sweet Fruit of Poetry.......2000-02-29

Veronica Franco had an unbelieveable ability to write-beautifully translated and expressed in Poems and Selected Letters (Other Voice in Early Modern Europe). Margaret F. Rosenthal put this book together with careful thinking, allowing it's readers to skip to different poems and letters easily. I am not reviewing Ms. Rosenthal as much as I am Veronica Franco in her writing. The poetry is revolved around her daily events, none out of the ordinary. My particular favorite being Capitulo 13-A Challenge To A Lover Who Has Offended Her. Excellent for those interested in this portion of history, a Courtesan's life, and one who loves poetry. Very beautiful! I rated it 4 out of 5 stars-it only lacks the one star because it take a working brain to relate the poetry to what it actually means. But once done, it is well worth the time. :)

Delightful reading.......1999-10-04

The book is romantic and charming. I enjoyed it because it was written by a prostitute and she explained her life as a human being. Whereas most books treat prostitutes as abtract objects being studied by an out of touch intellectual. I was delighted at the content and found it to be enjoyable reading. However, the interpretation of the poetry to English forces it to loose its rhyme and the poems seem weak on depth. If you are reading it for quality poetry, you would be best off reading other classics. The poems simply give a window into this facisnating woman's life. They are not artfully written poems, they are just amazing because they were written in a time period when women were not supposed to be educated.

Hart Crane Complete Poems and Selected Letters (Library of America)

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I didn't have time to make it shorter
A brilliant lyric poet who died far too young
A Poetry of Vision -- A Life of Excess

Hart Crane Complete Poems and Selected Letters (Library of America)
Hart Crane
Manufacturer: Library of America
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1931082995
Release Date: 2006-09-21

Book Description

No American poet has so swiftly and decisively transformed the course of poetry as Hart Crane. In his haunted, brief life, Crane fashioned a distinctively modern idiom that fused the ornate rhetoric of the Elizabethans, the ecstatic enigmas of Rimbaud, and the prophetic utterances and cosmic sympathy of Whitman, in a quest for wholeness and healing in what he called "the broken world." White Buildings, perhaps the greatest debut volume in American poetry since Leaves of Grass, is but an exquisite prelude to Crane's masterpiece The Bridge, his magnificent evocation of America from Columbus to the Jazz Age that countered the pessimism of Eliot's The Waste Land and became a crucial influence on poets whose impact continues to this day.

This edition is the largest collection of Crane's writings ever published. Gathered here are the complete poems and published prose, along with a generous selection of Crane's letters, several of which have never before been published. In his letters Crane elucidates his aims as an artist and provides fascinating glosses on his poetry. His voluminous correspondence also offers an intriguing glimpse into his complicated personality, as well as his tempestuous relationships with family, lovers, and writers such as Allen Tate, Waldo Frank, Yvor Winters, Jean Toomer, Marianne Moore, E. E. Cummings, William Carlos Williams, and Katherine Anne Porter. Several letters included here are published for the first time.

This landmark 850-page volume features a detailed and freshly-researched chronology of Crane's life by editor Langdon Hammer, chair of the English Department at Yale University and a biographer of Crane, as well as extensive explanatory notes, and over fifty biographical sketches of Crane's correspondents.

Customer Reviews:

I didn't have time to make it shorter.......2006-11-29

As an American boy growing up in Normandy, I would sit for hours, homesick, on the cliffs overlooking the Channel, thinking that if the fog ever lifted I could see Manhattan. And I would recite from WHITE BUILDINGS for hours, crying out to the fates that had separated me from my homeland, as Hart Crane had bubbled his way to the bottom of a purple sea some miles away I assumed. "As bells off San Salvador/ Salute the crocus lustres of the stars,/ In these poinsettia meadows of her tides,--/ Adagios of islands, O my prodigal,/ Complete the dark confession her veins spell." I hardly knew what I was saying, but some charms really do work and it wasn't long before I was repatriated, mouth first. I hope it's not heretical to suggest that Hart Crane's letters, while never less than interesting and often amusing, aren't that superb, and the book seems padded out in consequence to fit the desired "heft" of Library of America volumes. The Board might as well get used to the notion that not all poets have written thousands of pages, and for every Whitman you get a Hart Crane, who just didn't write very much. Does he deserve a place on the shelf with his 144 pages of poetry? Maybe there are some packing issues I don't understand, but otherwise, sure, throw in four hundred pages of Crane's letters.

Though nothing could really top the exquisite if critical presentation that the late Thomas Parkinson gave to his edition of the Crane-Yvor Winters correspondence, Langdon Hammer is able, through the sheer gift of size, to expand upon what we've had and complicate our hitherto too perfect picture of Crane. Crane's letters to Slater Brown and Wilbur Underwood are the liveliest, perhaps, but women also animate him and a recent biography that excoriated Crane for his misogyny seems sadly off the mark. However some biographers will do anything to create a scandal. One might profitably read through these letters to find out what Crane recommends in the way of early American modernism, his peers, because in general his taste is pretty good (and his dismissals of overrated trash are classics of vinegary invective). Of course he can sometimes gild the lily when praising, say, Harry Crosby's poems in a letter to his putative patron.

The index may be the single most useful feature of the poems + letters arrangement, for the index will help us find what Crane had to say about X or Y of his poems as he was writing them. He wrote, for example, a wonderfully impassioned letter to Otto Kahn, the industrial magnate who financed the writing of THE BRIDGE, outlining the different sections he had already finished and those still in the pipeline. Kahn also helped to finance the Metropolitan Opera, and Crane asks Kahn's help in finding employment there as a copywriter. He had the personality of a basso profundo; I wonder if the opera world would have changed if Hart Crane had been more in it.

A brilliant lyric poet who died far too young.......2006-10-20

Hart Crane is one of those powerful poetic voices that is its own style and immensely attractive. As others have noted, he was modern for his time, clearly American, and yet full of the great poetic traditions of the English language. His influences are identified directly in his works. He talks to Walt Whitman and discusses Emily Dickinson, Chaplin, Poe, and others. His early death was a great loss to English letters and the American voice in the 20th Century.

This wonderful volume from the Library of America (remember to thank them with your purchases and donations - they are non-profit after all) is more than eight-hundred pages, but only a few more than one-hundred of them contain all of Crane's poetry (including fragments). A few more have some essays and prose. The rest are filled with more than four hundred letters that Crane wrote to his parents, his friends, his literary associates, and others. The letters help us put Crane's work into a richer context, allow us to see some of the published works in earlier states, and make us ache and wonder what might have been if he hadn't jumped off the deck of the "Orizaba" into the Caribbean in 1932.

To provide just one tiny sample that amazed me from "Cape Hatteras" in "The Bridge" (Crane's great work) [the ellipsis in the second line is in the poem]:

Stars scribble on our eyes the frosty sagas,
The gleaming cantos of unvanquished space . . .
O sinewy silver biplane, nudging the wind's withers!
There, from Kill Devils Hill at Kitty Hawk
Two brothers in their twinship left the dune;
Warping the gale, the Wright windwrestlers veered
Capeward, then blading the wind's flank, banked and spun
What ciphers risen from prophetic script,
What marathons new-set between the stars!
The soul, by naphtha fledged into new reaches
Already knows the closer clasp of Mars, --
New latitudes, unknotting, soon give place
To what fierce schedules, rife of doom apace!

We can hear his lyric voice, see his fresh images, and his ability to form the words into powerful energy. This is the result of great talent married to hard work and a special sensitivity to the language. Harold Bloom call's Crane "our Pindar". Now, I think there is more to this image than the linking of two lyric poets. Most of Pindar's poetry is lost to us. One set of odes is complete, and the others survive as fragments. Even though Pindar died old and Crane died young, we wonder about what we might have had from both if Pindar's work had found a way to survive and Crane had found a way to live.

Some say that it was the oppression society put on Crane because of his homosexuality (bi-sexuality?). However, almost all the homosexuals in Crane's time did not commit suicide, and a fair percentage of the people that did commit suicide were heterosexual. The poet grew up in a chaotic family. Yes, his father became a successful businessman with his syrup factory (he also invented and sold the rights to Life Saver candies for a pittance), but Crane's mother and father fought constantly and melodramatically. So much so that Crane dropped out before finishing high school and moved away to New York. The poet's own emotional life was harsh and prone to self-destructive behavior including alcoholism. After 1927 his drinking became much worse. When you combine the home life that formed his emotional responses with his parents divorcing, his father dying suddenly, his mother's neediness, his failure to produce much work during his year in Mexico on a Guggenheim fellowship, the affair with Peggy Baird Cowley (the soon to be ex-wife of a friend), his discovery that the inheritance from his maternal grandmother that had been held in trust for him was gone because of a loan his father guaranteed with it, along with being beaten up aboard ship for making a pass at one of the crew and then getting seriously drunk, well, stepping off the boat into the sea in front of witnesses while exclaiming, "Good-bye, everybody!" isn't as big a leap as one might at first suppose.

But what a loss to us all.

This is a fine volume. The editor has provided biographical material for the people mentioned in the letters, notes on sources, notes for the text (including a fine foreword), and an especially helpful chronology of Crane's too brief life.

Hart Crane is a poet I did not know anything about until I had read Harold Bloom's introduction to his "American Religious Poems". Then I knew I had to get this volume and learn more about this important and brilliant poet. You might want to get to know his work and his life, as well.

A Poetry of Vision -- A Life of Excess.......2006-10-17

"Who asks for me, the Shelley of my age,
must lay his heart out for my bed and board."

In a short, tumultous life, Hart Crane (1899 -- 1932) wrote two of the greatest books of 20th Century American poetry: White Buildings (1926) and the Bridge (1930) as well as some splendid individual poems. His poetry is collected in this outstanding volume of the Library of America, edited by Langdon Hammer of Yale University.

Of the 850 pages of this book, only 144 are devoted to Crane's poetry. Most of the remainder of the text consists of 14 short essays by Crane and of 412 letters from his extensive correspondence written between 1910 and his suicide in 1932. These letters, together with Professor Hammer's notes and biographical sketches of Crane's correspondents, offer the reader a good portrait of Crane's troubled life, and they read with more immediacy and poignancy than any biography.

Crane dropped out of high school and left an unhappy home in Cleveland at the age of 17 to try to make his way as a poet in New York. Many of the letters in this collection detail Crane's stormy relationship with his parents, his father Clarence ("C.A.") Crane, a wealthy chocolate manufacturer, and his mother Grace Hart Crane. Crane was also close to his maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Belden Hart. In the "Quaker Hill" section of The Bridge, Crane said that the he had to "Shoulder the curse of sundered parentage". His difficult, shifting relationship with his family is amply chronicled in these letters.

But this collection includes much more than correspondence with a broken family. They offer insight into Crane's poetic ambitions and into the composition of The Bridge and of the shorter poems. They offer a view of New York City, seen through Crane's eyes, and of his literary friends and contemporaries, including Allen Tate, Waldo Frank, Yvor Winters, Malcolm Cowley, Peggy Cowley, Crane's patron Otto Kahn, and many others. The letters give the reader a portrait of a complex, troubled person who from late adolescence lived life hard and on the edge. Crane was promiscuous with a lengthy series of mostly homosexual affairs together with longer-term relationships with men and women. Crane's most intense male relationship was with a sailor named Emil Opffer (none of his letters to Opffer survive) and, just before his death, he had a passionate heterosexual relationship in Mexico with Peggy Cowley, as she was divorcing Malcolm Cowley. From his mid-20s Crane had deep problems with alcoholism which greatly hindered his ability to write. He was perpetually short of money and cadged and borrowed extensively from his friends and family. He fought constantly and was jailed several times. In a fit of depression -- when his life superficially seemed to be looking up he committed suicide by jumping off a ship, the Orizaba, en route from Cuba to New York City.

Read as a whole, this collection of Crane's correspondence and poetry raises difficult and probably unanswerable questions about the relationship between Crane's life and his work. Crane's excesses and passions in fact are an important component of his poetry. But while the life was a failure, Crane was a poet of romantic vision. Crane struggled for years to complete "The Bridge", a work which remains controversial and not unqualifiedly successful. In this poem, Crane took the Brooklyn Bridge as a symbol and tried to create a myth, in the machine age, that would unite America's past with its future and also give meaning to his own life. (Much of The Bride is autobiographical.) The Bridge is a work of difficult optimism as Crane traces America back to the voyages of Columbus and the days of Pocahontas with Walt Whitman and Edgar Allan Poe as guides. The poems ends on a note of affirmation and hope, as The Bridge becomes a path to transcendence and to the overcoming of materialism and lifeless routine through love and brotherhood.

Crane's short poems are higly concentrated and difficult. The poems I find most rewarding in "White Buildings" include "Voyages" a six-poem sequence detailing an intense love affair and "For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen" which is a predecessor of "The Bridge." The shorter poems include "At Mellvile's Tomb", the subject of an exchange with Harriet Monroe included in this collection, and "Chaplinesque."

One of Crane's masterpieces is his final poem "The Broken Tower" which describes how "I entered the broken world/To trace the visionary company of love, its voice/An instant in the wind." The Broken Tower ends on a note on the redemptive power of love while, soon after completing the poem, Hart Crane would commit suicide.

This is a volume that will bring Hart Crane to his readers. The letters chronicle a sad life cut short by excess. But Hart Crane's poetry, brief in amount though it is, has stayed with and inspired me for many years. Hart Crane holds a high place in America's literary heritage. He deserves his place in the Library of America.

The quotation at the beginning of this review is from Robert Lowell's sonnet "Words for Hart Crane" in his collection "Life Studies".

Robin Friedman

Complete Poems and Selected Letters of John Keats (Modern Library Classics)

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Excellent For College Study or Independent Reading

Complete Poems and Selected Letters of John Keats (Modern Library Classics)
John Keats
Manufacturer: Modern Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0375756698
Release Date: 2001-02-13

Book Description

'I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death,' John Keats soberly prophesied in 1818 as he started writing the blankverse epic Hyperion. Today he endures as the archetypal Romantic genius who explored the limits of the imagination and celebrated the pleasures of the senses but suffered a tragic early death. Edmund Wilson counted him as 'one of the half dozen greatest English writers,' and T. S. Eliot has paid tribute to the Shakespearean quality of Keats's greatness. Indeed, his work has survived better than that of any of his contemporaries the devaluation of Romantic poetry that began early in this century. This Modern Library edition contains all of Keats's magnificent verse: 'Lamia,' 'Isabella,' and 'The Eve of St. Agnes'; his sonnets and odes; the allegorical romance Endymion; and the five-act poetic tragedy Otho the Great. Presented as well are the famous posthumous and fugitive poems, including the fragmentary 'The Eve of Saint Mark' and the great 'La Belle Dame sans Merci,' perhaps the most distinguished literary ballad in the language. 'No one else in English poetry, save Shakespeare, has in expression quite the fascinating felicity of Keats, his perception of loveliness,' said Matthew Arnold. 'In the faculty of naturalistic interpretation, in what we call natural magic, he ranks with Shakespeare.'

Customer Reviews:

Excellent For College Study or Independent Reading.......2002-03-18

In his short life John Keats created some of the finest poetry in the English language. I have read his shorter poems and odes many times, not for study, but simply for enjoyment. I am not a Keats expert, but I can now easily recognize quotations from Keat's odes, sonnets, and other poems. I especially like "The Eve of St. Agnes", a story of romance and danger in a medieval setting that illustrates Keats' remarkable command of language.

Keats is not difficult, but footnotes help with archaic words and references to more obscure Greek mythology. I prefer to read Keats unaided, then read the footnotes (best if tucked away in an appendix), and then return and read the poem again. For longer poems I jump to footnotes more quickly.

Initially, the inexpensive Dover edition "Lyric Poems", was exactly what I needed. Later, as I tackled longer poetry like "Endymion", I migrated to more complete collections with commentary and footnotes.

Keats" works are widely available in hardcover and paperback. Which collection is best for college study or independent reading? I have two favorites, one by Penguin Classics and the other by Modern Library. Both are available in softcovers.

The first is "The Complete Poems" by Penguin Classics, edited by John Bernard and a standard choice for college classes. I have the second edition, 1977. Barnard's extensive footnotes and commentary are quite good and offset his somewhat brief introduction. Additionally, the appendix discusses textual variations in Keats' manuscripts and has a useful guide to Greek mythology names. The third edition, 1988, adds 20 pages of selected letters, Keats' notes on Milton's Paradise Lost, and his notes on a Shakespearean actor.

The second choice (my favorite) is the newly published "Complete Poems and Selected Letters of John Keats", Modern Library 2001 edition (not the earlier 1994 hardcover version). Apparently as a direct challenge to Penguin Classics, this edition offers a longer introduction (22 pages) by Edward Hirsch and excellent footnotes (not too many, nor too few) by John Pollock. Also, as the title implies, it has selected letters by Keats, some 25 pages in total. Somewhat hidden in the appendix is commentary by six well-known literary critics such as T. S. Eliot, Mathew Arnold, and Keats' biographer Walter Jackson Bate. Lastly, the font is larger and more crisp in the Modern Library version (but is still quite acceptable in the Penguin edition).

Book Description

An epistolary exchange that highlights two singular intellects, their disparate approaches to literature and their mutual admiration.

This volume features selections from the New Directions founder's correspondence with Guy Davenport, the polymath artist and author of The Geography of the Imagination. More than simply detailing an author/publisher relationship, these letters depict two fine minds educating and supporting each other in the service of literature.

Customer Reviews:

Selected Letters of Guy Davenport and James Laughlin.......2007-01-26

A pure pleasure. If you admire Davenport's work you'll enjoy this. The editor says that it was Laughlin's wishes that his side of the correspondence in this series be kept to a minimum, but there's still enough to interest a fan of Laughlin's work as well. And give Norton, the publisher, credit for not balking at including Davenport's characterization of those who supply the "idiotic footnotes" for Norton poetry anthologies as "entertainingly illiterate." I'm comparatively illiterate myself, in the standard set by these two writers. But--surely the "Passage to India" Davenport refers to on page 115 is not the Forster novel footnoted, but Whitman's poem? But you won't read this for the footnotes anyway.
Not a lot of literary gossip--you may sometimes wonder what the editorial elipses after, say, Gary Snyder is mentioned might be keeping from you.

Selected Poems & Letters of Emily Dickinson

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A Mystery

Selected Poems & Letters of Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Manufacturer: Anchor
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 038509423X
Release Date: 1959-08-03

Book Description

This Anchor edition includes both poems and letters, as well as the only contemporary description of Emily Dickinson, and is designed for readers who want the best poems and most interesting letters in convenient form. An excellent introduction to the work of a poet whose originality of thought remains unsurpassed in American poetry.

Customer Reviews:

A Mystery.......2000-03-17

I have come to believe that Emily Dickinson is the greatest writer America has produced. Unfortunately, the poet remained in anonymity and so went without constructive criticism. Her poems, while splendid, were not of the depth of Whitman nor the pleasure of Longfellow. They did not "live" like Poe's. But they lived; only heavier in breath. So it is not her poetry that we look at to find America's greatest writer, it is these wonderful letters. At thirteen her imagery is as complicated as Mailer or Morrison might ever be. And in our age of television, no genius will surpass these imaginings. To read Emily is to fall in love with her. Certainly misunderstood. Unapreciated. My copy of this books is weathered like a Baptist preachers Bible. It is my favorite book of all time. Emily is my favorite writer. Not everyone I recomend this book too enjoys it as much as I, but please try. You may find something special.

Selected Letters of Philip Larkin, 1940-1985

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Selected Letters of Philip Larkin, 1940-1985
Philip Larkin
Manufacturer: Faber & Faber
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 057117048X

Book Description

In addition to his acknowledged position as one of Britain's most important poets of the post-World War II era, Philip Larkin was unquestionably one of the last great letter writers. There are over seven hundred letters in this impressive collection, dating from Larkin's late teens until close to his death at the age of sixty-three in 1985. Early letters to school friends, including the writer Kingsley Amis, form a portrait of the young artist, full of jazz, literature, and obscenities. Later correspondents include the novelist Barbara Pym (whose fictional portraits of genteel English country life Larkin so admired), Robert Conquest, Andrew Motion, and Julian Barnes. In his Introduction, Anthony Thwaite writes: "What is remarkable, for all the masks he put on, is how consistently Larkin emerges, whoever he is writing to . . . [The letters] are an informal record of the lonely, gregarious . . . intolerant, compassionate, eloquent, foul-mouthed, harsh and humorous Philip Larkin, who was not only one of the finest poets of our time but also a compulsive and entertaining letter-writer."

16 Pages of Black-and-White Photographs Index

Book Description

His reputation has never settled, seeing as many reversals after his death as during his life. Though read and enjoyed ny many, fewer admire him openly. This volume includes all of his poetry and his most important essays.

Complete Poems and Selected Letters of Michelangelo

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Artistic words
fascinating indeed
Paint and Poiltics

Complete Poems and Selected Letters of Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0691003246

Customer Reviews:

Artistic words.......2005-08-05

For many years, I belonged to a reading group who explored different angles of diversity in literature; Michelangelo's poetry was one of the books we used, as it gave us the opportunity to explore different aspects at the same time. How would someone whose creative genius in some media (painting, sculpture, architecture) made him an immortal in history translate onto the written page? Would Michelangelo's sexual orientation, always a topic of debate based upon various images in paint and stone, as well as personal stories and correspondence, be more observable, or more obscured by his poetry?

Gilbert presents a very good volume of Michelangelo's poetry - coupled with selected letters, this gives a good insight into the spirit of Michelangelo beyond the visual artistic productions. The poems are translated into verse form, not a choppy word-for-word translation, and there are notes that are helpful without being distracting.

Gilbert begins with a brief biographical essay, exploring Michelangelo's artistry and relationships - so far as his poetry is concerned, he was not widely published in his lifetime, but did have some poems circulated, and sought the critical analysis and advice of other respected literary figures of the day. Michelangelo's poetry was known well enough to become the subject of composition (Bartolommeo Tromboncino set one poem to music) and general reference (Benedetto Varchi, when lecturing on artistic theory, used Michelangelo's poetry as examples).

Michelangelo's grand-nephew, in publishing the poems in 1623, changed phrases and pronouns to make the poems conform to standard conventions - men would not be writing love poems to men, etc., and this change continued into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries unquestioned. This, however, is not a major theme in this volume.

With regard to the quality of the poems, Michelangelo's literary output was less admired for its aesthetic and technical value as much as for the ideas contained therein. Even here, Michelangelo's ideas were fairly conventional, common among the educated literati, and rarely giving profound insight. Even so, his poetry was artful, technically interesting if not brilliant, and full of emotion as Michelangelo was known to be.

The poetry here is full of passion; the early ones full of the kind of love and passion of a young lover; the later ones looking for a spiritual value and perfection unattainable in this world even with the chisel or brush or Michelangelo. He incorporates a kind of Neoplatonic admiration of the ideal over the physical, and has a sort of pessimism even in the height of passion. He often looks upon the body as frail, fragile, a 'temporary wrapper for the soul' - this contrasts dramatically against his visual art, particularly sculpture, where the powerful bodies (most often male) were Michelangelo's 'signature'.

Michelangelo did not study Latin, so classical references are less here than more common contemporary influences. There are many magnificent lines and phrases here; I found my highlighter coming out numerous times throughout the poetry, and certain images remaining for a long time. This is interesting reading, all the more so given the other creations of Michelangelo - this book gives new insight into the mind of the great artist.

fascinating indeed.......2001-11-21

For anyone interested in the full life of Michelangelo this is a must read. The editor is quite helpful without being overbearing in his attempt to put the material into a context. There is a short but very nice biography at the beginning which helps the reader understand the flow of the artist's life. The selection of his personal letters helps us see Michelangelo as a person, a person with substantial family and business difficulties which constantly tried to divert his attention. His poetry is delightful and revealing. A valuable text for anyone interested in his life, art, or era.

Paint and Poiltics.......1999-09-06

"It is better to remain silent than to fall from the heights"

Book Description

The life and work of a major American poet described in his own words.

"There is something about the very form and occasion of a letter--the possibility it offers, the chance to be as open and tentative and uncertain as one likes and also the chance to formulate certain ideas, very precisely--if one is lucky in one's thoughts," wrote James Wright, one of the great lyric poets of the last century, in a letter to a friend. The Great Conversation is a compelling collection that captures the exhilarating and moving correspondence between Wright and his many friends. In letters to fellow poets Donald Hall, Theodore Roethke, Galway Kinnell, James Dickey, Mary Oliver, and Robert Bly, Wright explored subjects from his creative process to his struggles with depression and illness.

A bright thread of wit, gallantry, and passion for describing his travels and his beloved natural world runs through these letters, which begin in 1946 in Martin's Ferry, Ohio, the hometown he would memorialize in verse, and end in New York City, where he lived for the last fourteen years of his life. Selected Letters is no less than an epistolary chronicle of a significant part of the midcentury American poetry renaissance, as well as the clearest biographical picture now available of a major American poet.

Customer Reviews:

Labor of Love.......2006-10-31

This volume is full of beautiful letters by a poet whom loved poetry as much as his own dear life. I can't recommend this book enough for everyone who is a fan of Wright, but also to aspiring writers for it contains a wealth of instruction. His letters to Robert Bly are particularly interesting. Of all the "letters of" books I have read, this is by far the best.

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