The Faber Book of Beasts

This is a lovely book full of poems about animals. I was a little disappointed that The Walrus and The Carpenter from Through The Looking Glass wasn’t in it. But that’s only one of many.

Good book

Book 3 of 3 I had ordered for my Open University course and like the other books, arrived promptly, well packaged and excellent condition.

Lines have to be drawn in anthologies, as Paul Muldoon is quick to mention in his introduction. Through the poems he has chosen, his erudition and knowledge are beyond doubt, but I still can't help being just a little disappointed with the lines drawn, the poems missing - a very personal disappointment though it may be.The great and good of canonical English-language poetry are lined up (very occasionally some in translation) from Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Lovelace, Clare, Swift, Pope, Wordsworth, Keats, Coleridge, Dickinson, Kipling, Frost, Yeats, Eliot, Auden, Moore, Bishop, Hughes and Plath. Of course, there are one or two surprises too!Delights include Gerard Manley Hopkins' "The Windhover"; Elizabeth Bishop's "The Moose" and D H Lawrence's "Bat"... but no doubt everyone will have their own favourites accounted for here. There are also interspersed rhymes from childhood like "Baa Baa Black Sheep" and "Cock Robin" alongside chunks from Whitman's "Song of Myself" or Browning's "The Pied Piper". The alphabetical ordering offers the reader quite an eclectic mix of time and style, as well as some interesting thematic juxtapositions.Why only four stars then, which seems a little mean? I just wish Muldoon had been a little more daring and selected some more modern poems from the last 50 years or so; poems not yet tried and tested as the majority of this anthology are... and I can't help feeling his refusal to accept work in translation (with certain exceptions) frustrating.Still, there's so much to admire here in this poetry that "brings out the best in us" as Muldoon observes, that no reader will leave this anthology unmoved.From Thom Gunn: Considering The SnailThe snail pushes through a greennight, for the grass is heavywith water and meets overthe bright path he makes, where rainhas darkened the earth's dark. Hemoves in a wood of desire...

EducationA uni course

If, like me, you have bedside books that aren’t page turners keeping you awake, I recommend this highly. You can open it at random, or choose your poet. I am not a literary critic. Some of the poets included are not, in my opinion, worthy of the name. But the greats all seem to be there. And if you want bedtime reading for a child, then it’s for you.

Interesting collection. Brought for study.

Bought for an Open University course that I was doing, it was listed as essential reading for the OU AA100 'The Arts Past and Present'course. It provided all the information that I needed and was not too expensive - just make sure that if you're buying books for higher education that you buy exactly the right edition (as listed on your course details) or you may not have the same information as everyone else on your course.