Collection of poetry containing a rich variety of styles.
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About the Author
Walter Hooper was born in Reidsville, North Carolina. He first met C.S Lewis in 1963 and following Lewis’s death he assisted Owen Barfield in managing Lewis’s literary estate. Now a trustee of the Lewis estate. Hooper is regarded as one of the world’s leading authorities on the life and works of C.S. Lewis. He has edited and written introductions for dozens of Lewis’s religious books. A former Anglican priest, he is now a Catholic and has lived in Oxford since 1964.
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First Sentence
I am so coarse, the things the poets see Are obstinately invisible to me. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
I am so coarse, the things the poets see Are obstinately invisible to me. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
By Lex
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The challenge is with the selection. Because the editorial process seems to have been to preserve as much of Lewis's unpublished poetry, not much is filtered so there are differences in quality with the poems. But there's little doubt that Lewis, particularly later on, wrote some very strong, powerful poetry. The earlier work, Spirits in Bondage and Dymer (not included in this collection) aren't great, but several of his later individual short poems are wonderful.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.4 out of 5 stars
9 reviews
35 of 35 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
C.S. Lewis, the poet: Great Work from a master writer!
30 Sep 2000
By Jeffery K. Matheus
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
Many readers, even some of C.S. Lewis' biggest fans, don't realise that Lewis wrote poetry. In fact, Lewis once said that poetry was his favorite literary form. Well, as it turns out Mr. Lewis was an excellent poet, full of style, emotion, and above-all, imagination! The poems in this collection show C.S. Lewis to be a true master of rhyme and meter, and he is also quite masterful in his uses of imagery, sound, and metaphor. There are also some fine non-rhyming pieces here, but it is really his excellent sense of rhyme that sticks out in your head long after you put the book away. Much of the work here (though not all) is of a spiritual nature, and Lewis expresses his faith in Christ quite openly, but never crosses the line into the type of overt "preachiness" that taints much of Christian-oriented poetry. Poems such as "As the Ruin Falls" (which was later turned into a song by Christian musician Phil Keaggy), "Reason", "Pan's Purge", "Deadly Sins", "Pattern", and "Love As Warm as Tears" rate right alongside some of the finest spiritual rhymes ever written, and for fans of Lewis' popular Narnia stories, there is even an imaginative piece called "Narnian Suite". If you are a fan of C.S. Lewis, or just a fan of classic-style poetry, then please crack open this fine book and enjoy!
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Collected Poetry of C.S. Lewis
23 Jun 1998
By David Graham
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
Thomas Howard, writing about this book in a review, remarked, "This is the best - the glorious best - of Lewis." I wouldn't go quite that far in my praise of this book, but it does indeed have a number of poems that speak to the heart. Lewis's technique is outstanding, but technique does not guarantee great poetry, and some of Lewis's poems soar loftily while others fall flat. Most poems are short enough to fit on one or two pages, making this book a nice item to dabble in for a few minutes at lunch, before bedtime, or just lounging around the house. Some of my favorites were his Narnia Suite (a "March for Strings, Kettledrums, and Sixty-three dwarfs"!), Evolutionary Hymn (a satire that will make you chuckle), Love's As Warm As Tears (that I found moving), and The Apologist's Evening Prayer (a candid plea for mercy from someone who regularly spoke on God's behalf). If you already enjoy reading C.S. Lewis, then buy this book. If you haven't read anything by Lewis, you might want to start some place else (like The Chronicles of Narnia, The Weight of Glory, or God in the Dock) before turning to his poetry.
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thy bookshelf is naked until...
17 July 2002
By Cipriano
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
...this is on it! I have read and re-read this thing, and will continue to do so! My usual reaction to reading anything that Lewis committed to paper is something like... "Now there's something worth remembering for the rest of my life." His poems are no exception.
This compilation is superb in that it spans all of the short verse that Lewis wrote from the age of sixteen until his death at age sixty-five.
He was profoundly disillusioned with the direction of the "modern" poetry of his day. He lamented the incoherence and lack of structure that was taking place (his poem "A Confession" addresses these feelings), and he greatly favored a return to a metrically disciplined, rhyming style.
That's what we get here in Lewis's Poems. Over one hundred lightning flashes bursting with intelligent layers of meaning, yet remaining accessible to the average reader. These poems are healthy, they embrace life, they respect death, they exalt nature, they are wide-eyed at night and squinting at the brilliance of noonday. Using subject matter as diverse as salamanders to meteorites, these poems impart truth because they come from the mind of someone who believed in objective truth. As he said, "Great subjects do not make great poems; usually, indeed, the reverse."
And elsewhere "'Look in thy heart and write' is good counsel for poets; but when a poet looks in his heart he finds many things there besides the actual. That is why, and how, he is a poet."
If I started listing my personal favorites I'd exceed amazon's 1,000 word limit! Suffice it to say that perhaps the greatest thing about Lewis's Poems is that once you've read them you're left with a sense that the author thinks highly of the reader!
This compilation is superb in that it spans all of the short verse that Lewis wrote from the age of sixteen until his death at age sixty-five.
He was profoundly disillusioned with the direction of the "modern" poetry of his day. He lamented the incoherence and lack of structure that was taking place (his poem "A Confession" addresses these feelings), and he greatly favored a return to a metrically disciplined, rhyming style.
That's what we get here in Lewis's Poems. Over one hundred lightning flashes bursting with intelligent layers of meaning, yet remaining accessible to the average reader. These poems are healthy, they embrace life, they respect death, they exalt nature, they are wide-eyed at night and squinting at the brilliance of noonday. Using subject matter as diverse as salamanders to meteorites, these poems impart truth because they come from the mind of someone who believed in objective truth. As he said, "Great subjects do not make great poems; usually, indeed, the reverse."
And elsewhere "'Look in thy heart and write' is good counsel for poets; but when a poet looks in his heart he finds many things there besides the actual. That is why, and how, he is a poet."
If I started listing my personal favorites I'd exceed amazon's 1,000 word limit! Suffice it to say that perhaps the greatest thing about Lewis's Poems is that once you've read them you're left with a sense that the author thinks highly of the reader!
"It seems to me appropriate, almost inevitable, that when that great Imagination which in the beginning, for Its own delight and for the delight of men and angels and (in their proper mode) of beasts, had invented and formed the whole world of Nature, submitted to express Itself in human speech, that speech should sometimes be poetry. For poetry too is a little incarnation, giving body to what had been before invisible and inaudible."
- from Lewis's "Reflections On The Psalms" -
What makes Lewis so great?
Well, for starters... he thinks that words like Imagination, Nature, and Itself, are proper nouns that deserve capitals!
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4.4 out of 5 stars
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