Poetry

Advantages: cheers you up
Disadvantages: you're left wanting more

After watching the programmes on television, telling us of tales of love and more recently Christmas poems, I wasn't surprised to find a whole stack of books edited by Daisy Goodwin on the shops shelves. But this is a good thing. This is a woman who understands and has been to places that we have all visited and some that we would rather not remember, and in this book there is a poem for every occasion. Ones that let us grieve and mourn, such a ...
...infamous Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep to poems that make us realise that maybe life isn't as bad as it seems like Streemin by Roger McGough and Loss by Wendy Cope. This book has it covered with poems that make you laugh and cry, and even a section called "Don't let the B******s Grind You Down." It holds within its small binding a cornucopia of poems some that you may know, others you may not, but with each section is an explanation and an insight, ... Read review

Advantages: good diverse selection
Disadvantages: a few really terrible poems!

I am really, really annoyed as I wrote this entire opinion and then deleted it so have to write it all again!! Okay... I chose this book when I won a prize at school for something (being brilliant probably, lol) a couple of years ago. I've never really been huge on owning books - I own a perfectly good library card - but I like poems and felt maybe I could do with some help getting through the day and night so I thought this would be a good choice. ...
...modern life'. If you believed its editor, Daisy Goodwin, youd think it was full of ready-made miracle cures to magically solve all your everyday problems. Get real, surely none of us are that naïve, but what this book does provide is a selection of poems old and new for every occasion, featuring famous poets and introducing not-so-famous ones. The book is divided into sections for each part of the day you need to tackle: there is 'GETTING OUT OF ... Read review

Advantages: Poetry of Coleridge, Essay by Hughes
Disadvantages: Only 160 pages

...died in July 1834. A Choice of Coleridge’s Verse edited and Introduced by Ted Hughes was published by Faber and Faber on March 18th 1996 and is available from most good book shops for £7.99. There are two reasons why this book is so special, the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the introductory essay written by Ted Hughes. Hughes entitled his essay, 'The Snake in the Oak'. Ted Hughes held a belief in the presence of an inner force behind ...
...suggests that Coleridge was fighting a losing battle between a 'Christian Self' and the 'unleavened Self '. Hughes states that it was whilst Coleridge was in this 'unleavened Self' that his three visionary poems, 'Kubla Khan', 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner', and 'Christabel' were written. Hughes dramatically presents Coleridge's career as a self-torturing flight from the possibility of a psychic wholeness, a state which he could only achieve by ... Read review

Advantages: lyrical, spiritual, honest poetry
Disadvantages: couldn't make sense of a few; use of parenthesis

...while reading, but more of a philosophical interlude as we prepare for sleeping, a soft welcoming into the night, a great delicious sighing about moonbeams, flowers, sandpipers, London, holy places, gods, dreams, unrequited love, loneliness and passion. It may strike you as odd that though I enjoy writing poetry, I don't usually read it, nor have I studied or analyzed it. Poetry, especially contemporary work, defies being defined and presumptuously ...
...could (and will) reread A Chorus Of Voices in a week or year and suddenly what I didn't understand the first time, and there are many poems, will leap out at me with exciting meaning. Still I'll try to share my impressions and favorite images of the poetry that Kurt wrote in the late 1990s for the defunct Themestream.com, some previously published in The Thirteen Apostles and poetry journals in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. There are ... Read review

Advantages: Easy to read, great for kids.
Disadvantages: if you dislike cats.

This book of poetry is upon which 'Cats, The musical' is based upon. The rythmical reading of Shimbleshanks: the Railway cat is just beautiful and i would suggest any parents with children interested in cats or pets should but this, it'll keep them entertained night after night and they will probably start joining in with funny lines and the clap of the 'train' rhyme. Even if you haven't seen Cats you'll still enjoy this book. If you and children ... Read review