A Little History of Poetry by John Carey

It all started with A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson. Then, when I was eleven, discovering the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe. By fourteen I was borrowing every poetry book on the school library shelves, spending my scanty allowance to buy the poets I really liked.

I was drawn to some poets and ignored others. I knew little about the lives of the poets I was reading or the social and historical context of the poems.

My education included survey Lit courses, a Modern Poetry class, and an honors class on Milton. I was so ignorant that when my Modern Poetry professor asked me about Ezra Pound's antisemitism and alliance with Fascism it was the first I had heard of it. (My school history classes never seemed to make it past the Civil War.)

My high school World Lit class covered the entire Western Canon. We received mimeographed handouts (yes, I am THAT OLD). We learned about philosophers and economic and scientific thinkers and writers and poets. I went to the library to read from the original works. The brief excerpts piqued my curiosity and I needed to know more.

I tell this story for a reason. John Carey's A Little HIstory of Poetry reminded me of that World Lit Survey class. Carey ploughs through the entire history of poetry in the Western world, starting with Gilgamesh and ending with Mary Oliver and Les Murray.

I was quite familiar with my favorites, but I had given little attention a great many others. It was interesting to fill that gap in my knowledge.

Some poets are mentioned by name or with a few lines, but those Carey deems more important (or perhaps, with more interesting or scandalous lives) get pages.

This treatment has its limitations but also its uses as an introduction. Like my survey course did, readers may be inspired to read further.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

A Little History of Poetry
by John Carey
Publication Date: April 21, 2020
Yale University Press
Hardcover Price: $25.00
ISBN: 9780300232226

from the publisher:

John Carey tells the stories behind the world’s greatest poems, from the oldest surviving one written nearly four thousand years ago to those being written today. Carey looks at poets whose works shape our views of the world, such as Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Whitman, and Yeats. He also looks at more recent poets, like Derek Walcott, Marianne Moore, and Maya Angelou, who have started to question what makes a poem "great" in the first place. This little history shines a light on the richness and variation of the world’s poems—and the elusive quality that makes them all the more enticing.

Cold Warriors: Writers Who Waged the Literary Cold Wary by Duncan White

Duncan White's Cold Warriors is an engrossing history of the writers who wielded their pen for political ends and how their governments promoted or silenced them during the Cold War. 

The war was a conflict of ideas and books were used as weapons to attack political ideologies by writers on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Some authors were spies while others unknowingly worked for CIA-funded publications. Writers resistant to government policy and programs were silenced, punished, imprisoned or killed. 

Dense with information, the book has the impetus of a thriller filled with shocking twists and multilayered characters. The story begins with the Spanish Civil War and the disenchantment of George Orwell, spurring him to write his greatest novels. White follows the Cold Was to the end of the Berlin Wall, Glasnost, and the Prague Spring with stories like that of the Czech playwright Vaclav Havel who was found guilty of subversion and imprisoned yet became president.

I grew up seeing these writer's names on the bookshelves at the stores where I spent my allowance on paperbacks. I had no idea of their political stance or that some were spies!

• George Orwell, whose Animal Farm I bought and read as a teen 
• Arthur Koestler, whose Darkness at Noon I had erringly thought was a science fiction book 
• Boris Pasternak, whose Dr. Zhivago I read after seeing the movie
•  Alexander Solzhenitsyn's books were published when I was a young adult and at one time I owned all his books in hardcover 
• Graham Greene I thought was a Catholic Writer.
• Mary McCarthy's The Group was a best seller
•  Stephen Spender, who signed my copy of his book of selected poems at a poetry reading
• John le Carre, pen name of David Cornwall, an M16 spy whose fictionalized spy-talk became adopted in real life

Plus

• Andrei Sinyavsky
• Richard Wright
• Ernest Hemingway 
• Gioconda Belli
• Vaclav Havel,
• Joan Didion
• Isaac Babel
• Howard Fast
• Lillian Hellman 
• Mikhail Sholokhov

Duncan concludes that the battle between Communism and Capitalism has morphed into a war between forms of democracy and authoritarianism and populist nationalism. 

Today's writers still resist and condemn and create bring visions of the kind of country and world we must become to flourish and, very possibly, to survive. One lesson I learned from this book is that regardless of how I personally feel about a writer's ideas, the rights of freedom of speech and a free press is precious and integral to the preservation of a free society.

quilt by Nancy A. Bekofske

I was given access to a free egalley by the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Cold Warriors
by Duncan White
Custom House
On Sale: 08/27/2019
List Price: 32.50 USD
ISBN: 9780062449818
ISBN 10: 0062449818

William Stoner and the Battle for the Inner Life by Steve Almond

"Literature exists to help people know themselves," Steve Almond tells us early in his new book William Stoner and the Battle for the Inner Life. Almond delves into John William's novel Stoner and explores how he connected to the character of William Stoner and how the novel impacted his life.  

Steve Almond read Stoner a dozen times, grappling with its messages and why it brings him back time after time. He offers us a Stoner who shows the "devotion to the inner life," a lost art in a culture fixated on wealth and consumerism and entertainment.

I have read Stoner twice. I picked up an ebook on sale because I liked the cover art, a painting by John Singer Sargent. I got the 'Stoner' bug and was soon touting it, part of its rediscovery by readers.

Stoner is the story of a man whose hardscrabble farmer father sends him to university to study agriculture. Stoner is baffled by literature and is moved to understand. His professor understands that Stoner has fallen in love with literature and is destined to become a teacher. The story follows his career, his unhappy marriage, alienation from his daughter, his love affair, and departmental battles. And then--he dies of cancer. In the end, Stoner forgives his wife and himself and accepts that his choices were the only ones he could have made.

The novel breaks the rules for a best-seller, and Williams knew it when he wrote it. From the old-fashioned narration and the lack of page-turning action to the focus on a sad character whose choices bring him pain. And yet...we are carried away by the story. It is about the choices we make and don't make, how we marry for lust and are ruined by lovelessness, how sticking to our values can destroy our careers.

Almond becomes deeply personal, sharing his own decisions and failures and history and how William Stoner reflected his life back to him, helping him to understand himself and better himself.

Almond probes Stoner's wife, making her a more fully realized character for readers. Almond's wife would like to hear Edith's side of the story, how sexual abuse and the lack of choice for women in 1928 caged her into a life she did not want. Edith gives up their newborn daughter to Stoner's care; later, jealous, she reclaims the child and alienates her from her father. The child suffers but Stoner cannot see any choice but to allow it. The girl is broken by this and it destroys her.

Stoner's squabbles with the English department head, Lomax, shows "the difficulty of standing up for yourself in the world, the price you pay when you fail to do so, and the price you pay when you succeed." Stoner wants to uphold the "intellectual purity of the academy" but feuding with the powerful can't result in victory.

Was Stoner a masochist? Growing up on a farm, was he so used to being the victim of uncontrollable forces that he sought out failure? On his death bed, Stoner's daughter remarks, "things haven't been easy for you, have they?" to which he replies, "I suppose I didn't want them to be."

Almond looks at the theme of class in Stoner. Marrying Edith, a pampered girl from the upper classes and embracing a career as a teacher brings Stoner far up the ladder from the manual labor and subsistence life on his family farm. Almond writes that Stoner "show us what happens when the poor farm boy actually gets the rich girl, which is that he winds up in hell."

During WWI, Stoner's two best friends at university go to war while he is talked out of it by his professor. Stoner is perfectly happy in his cell, searching literature for truth and beauty.

There are moments of joy in Stoner's life, particularly when he falls in love with Katherine, a young instructor. Sharing the intellectual life leads to carnal love until Lomax holds the affair over Stoner's head to threaten his career. The interlude allows reflections on love. Stoner must choose between human love and the love of teaching.

It is teaching that Stoner loves the most, the idealized vision of preserving and passing on the heritage of literature. Over and over he chooses teaching--instead of enlisting, instead of divorce, instead of a good relationship with his boss. Literature is his first love and Stoner never abandons her.

On his death bed, Stoner asks if his life had value or if he was a failure. Williams wrote that Stoner "had dreamed of a kind of integrity, of a kind of purity that was entire; he had found compromise and the assaulting diversion of triviality." In a flash of insight, Stoner realizes that failure didn't matter. "He was himself, and he knew what he had been." And that is the beauty of the novel. It is enough to be oneself. To stay true to who one is. Nothing else matters in the end. In the battle for the inner life, Stoner had won.

Throughout the book, Almond connects his subject to contemporary American politics, concluding that "Americans are conflict junkies" and when politicians don't fight back we lose interest. "Going high" as Stoner did may win the battle but it loses the fight.

Almond's book was enjoyable for the insights into John William's "perfect novel" and also for a deep understanding of how a novel can impact a reader.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

William Stoner and the Battle for the Inner Life
Steve Almond
IG Bookmarked Series
ISBN: 978-1632460875
Publication: June 18, 2019
14.95 paperback

Click on these links to learn more about John Williams and Stoner
The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel
 Stoner and rereading Stoner
Augustus
Nothing But the Night

The Making of Jane Austen: The Creation of a Cultural Icon

Her novels were published anonymously when novels were still considered suspect, thought to arouse women's passions. She was presented as a spinster leading an uneventful life, with little knowledge of the world. The Victorians were not impressed by her and Charlotte Bronte detested her novels.

How did Jane Austen become the influential celebrity so important that the Bank of England will celebrate her 200th birthday by printing her image on 10-pound notes and the Royal Mint will portray her on a coin?

The Royal Mint described the novelist in its official statement as “a revolutionary romantic,” adding:“The Jane Austen 2017 £2 coin celebrates one of the best-loved authors in the world, 200 years after her death.

Jane died in 1817 after publishing four books; two more books were published posthumously. Her family idealized Jane as a pious maiden aunt.

Fast forward a hundred years and Suffragettes put Jane Austen on banners and feminists turned her into a role model.

Jump another hundred years and we have Jane Austen coloring books and fan fiction.

Pride and Prejudice Paper Dolls from Dover Publications

In The Making of Jane Austen scholar Devoney Looser traces how Austen was 'made' through her illustrators, the dramatization and adaptation of her novels in plays, movies, and television, the political employment of Austen, and finally through how her novels were used in education.

I became a Janite in 1978 in an honors class at Temple University. Guided by Professor Toby Olshin our small class read all of Austen's novels, juvenilia. letters, and the novels that influenced her. We came to understand Austen's social, material, and political world. Before taking this course no teacher had ever required me to read Austen and she had no popular culture representation.

Jane Austen Action Figure

I appreciated reading this book and enjoyed its approach showing how Austen became a culture heroine. I especially enjoyed learning about her early illustrators and how their choices impacted readers understanding. New to me was Austen's use in politics, a fascinating study.

Sense and Sensibility, 1913 Little, Brown and Company edition
copyright 1898 by Robert Brothers.
Illustration by Edmund H. Garrett

I have several sets of Austen's complete works, including a 1913 edition from Little, Brown, and Company. Illustrations by Edmund H. Garrett show period fashions for Austen's time. Many Victorian illustrators, and even the Laurence Olivier/Greer Garson movie version, put the characters in mid-19th c dress.

Sense and Sensibility,
1910 Little, Brown and Company edition
copyright 1898 by Robert Brothers.
Illustration by Edmund H. Garrett

Looser calls illustrator Hugh Thomson 'the Colin Firth of Austen-inspired book illustration." The Thomson edition ' is often called "Cranfordized," referring to the commercially successful novel Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell which Thomson also illustrated.

The Illustrated Pride and Prejudice Companion
illustrations by Hugh Thomson
Dover Publications

Detail from Pride and Prejudice Story Book Quilt
by Nancy A. Bekofske
I adopted a Hugh Thomson illustration from Emma
for Darcy's proposal 

Hugh Thomson illustration from Emma

Thomson picked up on the humor in Austen's novels and usually had the characters in social settings.

One of his competitors was Charles Brock. I adapted several Brock illustrations for my Pride and Prejudice Story Book Quilt.

Detail from Pride and Prejudice Story Book Quilt
by Nancy A. Bekofske.
She's tolerable... adapted from an illustration by Charles E Brock

Detail Pride and Prejudice Story Book by Nancy A. Bekofske.
Mr. Collins introduces himself to Darcy.
Based on an illustration by Charles E. Brock.

Charles Brock illustration

The Making of Jane Austen is a fascinating study. I would not recommend the book to the casual reader who wants entertainment over intelligent content. The Appendix includes Further Reading suggestions. The Notes and Bibliography are extensive.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Pride and Prejudice Story Book Quilt by Nancy A Bekofske

The Making of Jane Austen
by Devoney Looser
Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication Date: June 25, 2017
Hardcover | 304 pages |
$29.95 USD, £22.00 GBP
ISBN 9781421422824, 1421422824

Regency Redwork, based on Pride and Prejudice
by Nancy A. Bekofske