Yo, ho, ho and a bottle of rum - I'll be back when its finished!
Yo, ho, ho and a bottle of rum - I'll be back when its finished!
Member since:24.08.2003
Reviews:93
Members who trust:73
Through today’s highly efficient media, and indeed with the good people of ciao, we are often seeing polls of one kind or another, Top 5 Christmas films, Top 10 songs of all time. At the turn of the millennium a poll was undergone to find the top 100 pieces of music of all time, and aside from a token appearance by Mozart, Bach and Beethoven the words ‘of all time’ my as well have been replaced with ‘in the last 50 years, and I very much doubt that half of the voters were aware that the great Mozart’s most famous piece of music is, arguably, Twinkle, Twinkle little star. So in these ever changing times it is refreshing to know that the Nations favourite poems have no such modernist prejudice as they range fairly over the past 500 years and every one deserves to be there.
This book was first published in 1996, following a nationwide poll that you may recall was featured on BBC2 for a while to find our favourite poems and is a wonderful collection. There is something about poetry, we have some wonderful writers of it here on ciao but in the hands of a truly skilful writer (and I’m not saying that any one of you isn’t) words can move us, intrigue us and keep us hooked in to the very end, for example the words of number 41 in the poll Samuel Taylor Coleridge
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.
If that isn’t an opening to make you wanting to know what happened next I don’t know what is.
The forward in the book is written by Griff Rhys Jones, who from memory was one of the public faces of the poll at the time. It includes a poem that was a very popular at the time but did not qualify for the poll as it was discovered too late, an anonymous poem that was left in an envelope for his parents by Steven Cummins a soldier killed on active service in Northern Ireland, that starts:
Do not stand at my grave and weep; I am not there, I do not sleep.
What did surprise me about this collection is the wide variety of poems that came up, If you open a poll like this to the nation, you may expect short famous poems all the way through. Which there are to an extent, but you still have great chunks of epics like ‘the song of Hiawatha’ by Longfellow (one of my absolute favourites), a section by Wordsworth from ‘The Prelude’, and of course Robert Burns is not to be left out with his ‘Tam o Shanter’
Any collection is incomplete without the old favourites in and being public voted this is no different so raise your glasses to ‘Half a League, Half a League, Half a League onwards’ ‘MaCavitie’s a mystery cat, he’s called the hidden paw’, ‘I wondered lonely as a cloud’, ‘Tyger, Tyger burning bright’ and of course the ever adapted ‘If’ in its original form.
The comic poems in the book were obviously coming in thick and fast as they have produced a second book called ‘The Nations favourite comic poems’ which includes such classics as ‘The Lion and Albert’ and some entries by Pam Ayres, who, and I’m sorry if I offend anyone here, justifiably didn’t make the top 100.
The Nation’s Favourite poems, is a great collection for any lover of poetry, there was one omission that surprised me, particularly as the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit were popular even before the films, there are no entries by the great Mr Tolkein.
It is currently available on Amazon at £5.59 and honestly any mum who likes poetry would love to get this in their Christmas stocking, unfortunately mine had it a couple of years ago so I need to think of something else.
I have also requested a category to be added to ciao in the top 10 members picks for our favourite poems, so if anyone is interested leave a message and I’ll let you know if it gets added.
The title of my review is a line from one of the poems in the book which has been featured in a film, does anyone recognise it (without resorting to the internet?)
Thank you for reading.
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i've heard so many great things about this book, poetry is wonderful and i though your review made this sound like a book that may be enjoyed by all, including someone who might be new to it.
carsula 17.04.2005 16:13
Hi brilliant book.Some of the poems make me want to cry! An excellent book and a super review. Liz
Nov 26th, 2004
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