frumiousb

I never felt my soul assaulted so--
unless memory err-- as in that war
between my ignorance and desire to know.
(Canto XX, 145-147)

I next to never start a review by discussing the edition. So just to prove that there's a first time for everything, I'll start this review by talking about the edition.

I read the Modern Library hardcover from 1996 and it was wonderously fine to read. The small hardback format made it durable and portable. The notes were put after each Canto, instead of being strung together at the end-- very handy and I wish more books that require a lot of notes would follow its example. I don't read Italian, so I can't speak to the Ciardi translation's accuracy. I will say that it read very well. It was very clean, and flowed like poetry.

I should have read Purgatorio earlier. When I was in college and reading The Divine Comedy we were really only required to read Inferno, and I'm ashamed to say that I stopped there.

The thing that I most remember about Inferno are the vivid images of suffering-- the sense of doom. I liked Purgatorio better, I think. Even as a modern reader, I found myself measuring my own behaviour against the standards that Dante suggested in the poem. It was easier to identify with this book-- more thought-provoking about the nature of sin, humanity, and God. Dante breaks Purgatory into people who either love too much or not enough-- with the immoderate lovers closer to heaven. There is a lot to think about here. A lot to like besides the historical value or the poem's place in the canon.

Recommended.

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The stars are dead. The animals will not look.
We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and
History to the defeated
May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.
(pg. 100, from “Spain”, WH Auden)

I have a long-standing interest in the Spanish Civil War and particularly in the way that writers and artists from the rest of Europe embraced the anti-fascist struggle. I picked this book up as part of that interest.

The book is divided into the following loose thematic sections:
The Map of Pain
Junker Angels in the Sky
He Is Dead and Gone
The Crime Was in Granada
Prisoner
Ballads of Heroes
Romanceros
The Internationals
Unheroic Notes
Insensible at such a Time
That Fighting was a Long Way Off
Photogenic War
Talking Bronco
But Some Remember Spain

The division was an interesting conceit, but particularly given how many of the poets repeated throughout the collection I think that I would have preferred to have it organized by writer-- perhaps with a brief biographical note associated with each. I was thanking my stars for Wikipedia as a tool to quickly look up all of these authors.

I knew many of the writers in the collection whose work was the strongest: Auden, Spender, etc. It was nice to discover several poets who I either didn't know or who I only knew by name. Particularly: John Cornford, Tom Wintringham, and H.B. Mallalieu.

The book also includes letters and essays from Spain. Good, but again I probably would have liked a different organizational principle.

Valentine Cunningham's introduction was useful, and I would recommend reading it before dipping into the collection.

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"Basho, on the other hand, was conscious of being an artist, and saw the conceptual, whatever its application, as the enemy of art." pg. 17

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Just before I went to graduate school, I lived in West Philly with poet and roommate Stacy Szymaszek. (I stalk her through her poetry online these days, google her and you can do the same. You really should, her writing is about the only thing that makes me regret having given up writing poetry.) She gave me this book way back then-- I suspect she had gotten sick of it. I have held onto it all these years without having really done more than glance through the pages.

I don't know about you, but I actually have quite a difficult time reading poetry anthologies. I particularly have a hard time when I do not really know the work or period in question. For the last year or so, I had hauled this book out of boxes and had it sitting on my shelves. I did this under the assumption that I would eventually get around to reading the book, or at least parts of it. I figured that I would at least leaf through it, or something.

Anyhow, I got sick of seeing it sitting there and mocking me for never having read any of its poets when I finally decided that a good use of a Sunday was just taking it off the shelf and reading the darn thing.

Reading a poetry anthology is kind of a daunting task. However, Germaine Greer (introduction and editor) seems to have assembled this collection with a mind to the idea that it would be read. Each author is introduced with as much biographical detail as is available, and the text is clear and well-written, even to the casual reader.

(How do you read poetry anthologies? Do you just skim through them, or dive right in and give them a good thorough read?)

I found a lot to love about this anthology. I had never really expected it to be a dead baby book, but that is what it turned out to be (at least for me). So many women from that time had suffered dreadful losses in pregnancy (one writer having been pregnant 16 times with only one living child) that a lot of the poetry was about working through that kind of loss. I found it surprisingly moving, and nearly relentlessly interesting.

Greer selects from both the famous (Anne Bradstreet, Aphra Behn) and the obscure. My particular favorite new finds included: Mary Carey, Ephelia, Lady Grizel Baillie, Sarah Fyge and Mary Pix.

Not often that I expect to be so bored with a book, and am instead so pleasantly interested. Definitely recommended.

( notes and poems )