A very good, enjoyable, and beautifully illustrated rhyming picture book recounting the life of St Patrick, based on his Apology and some of the laterA very good, enjoyable, and beautifully illustrated rhyming picture book recounting the life of St Patrick, based on his Apology and some of the later legends. This is only the second of Ned Bustard’s kids’ books that I’ve read, but I thought this one was superior to Saint Valentine the Kindhearted—which I liked quite a lot!—with better poetry and illustrations. Since the poem is written in the voice of St Patrick himself, there’s also a clearer line between fact and legend in this one, with St Patrick mentioning how much the Irish liked to tell “tales both big and small” about him, which is a fun way to introduce driving out the snakes or turning a man into a fox or baptizing the giant under the Giant’s Causeway without insisting on them. And though Bustard can only squeeze so much of St Patrick’s life story into the narration, there are allusions to many other parts of his life tucked away in the illustrations if you know what to look for.
Very good short biography of Poe. Compared to Paul Collins’s Edgar Allan Poe: The Fever Called Living, another short biography that I recently read, AVery good short biography of Poe. Compared to Paul Collins’s Edgar Allan Poe: The Fever Called Living, another short biography that I recently read, Ackroyd’s Poe: A Life Cut Short benefits by being slightly longer, giving less literary-critical attention to Poe’s works but allowing more space for Poe’s recurrent problems with alcohol and his sad personal life, most especially his confusing and sometimes incoherent attempts to remarry following his wife’s death.
Like Collins, Ackroyd is sympathetic and uses sources and anecdotes judiciously, but leaves more room for doubt and ambiguity in what we can know for certain about some of the more obscure events in Poe’s life, like the time in the summer before he died when he arrived in Philadelphia claiming to have been arrested (he hadn’t), that men on the train into town were plotting to kill him (there was no evidence for this), and that in prison he had witnessed men dismembering his beloved mother-in-law (she was still alive and well in New York and would outlive him by twenty years). What’s going on here? Ackroyd is cautious about any conclusions to be reached.
The one problem I had with Ackroyd’s book was his willingness to psychoanalyze Poe’s work, especially since Ackroyd otherwise takes pains to point out how carefully calculated and crafted Poe’s poems and stories were. But this is a relatively minor problem.
Highly recommended for those looking for a good short life of Poe....more
Raffel is one of the only translators to attempt rendering the Nibelungenlied’s unusual verse in English verseAn old favorite. Read it if you haven’t.
Raffel is one of the only translators to attempt rendering the Nibelungenlied’s unusual verse in English verse, and his is easily the best such translation. There are more accurate prose translations but they lose a little something in the conversion to paragraphs. Hatto’s and Whobrey’s are the two prose translations I’m most familiar with. I’d still recommend Raffel to get a sense of the rhythm and structure of the original.
This is my second time through Raffel, the first since I first got the paperback as a poor college graduate waiting on my acceptance letter from Clemson in early 2008. Memories, man. ...more
The clearest and most approachable edition of Aristotle's Poetics I've come across. Freeman does his best to break up the work visually, with chapter The clearest and most approachable edition of Aristotle's Poetics I've come across. Freeman does his best to break up the work visually, with chapter headings and bullet lists and some small glosses worked into the text itself, and his succinct clarifying endnotes and short introduction provide just enough context for the newcomer to understand the main body of the work. ...more
Very good prose translation of the Nibelungenlied that also includes the Klage—a 4,000-line sequel that is included in all the complete manuscripts ofVery good prose translation of the Nibelungenlied that also includes the Klage—a 4,000-line sequel that is included in all the complete manuscripts of the Nibelungenlied—as well as a good twenty or thirty pages of manuscript variants for the main work. These variants come mostly from one later complete manuscript (the C manuscript), whose author (referred to as “the redactor”) added lots of interpolations and emendations, often to interesting effect.
This was my first time reading the Klage, and I’m glad Whobrey included it here as the manuscript tradition clearly indicates it was meant to be packaged with the longer—and better—Nibelungenlied. The Klage (meaning “lament” in the sense of overwhelming ritual grief; the Old Testament book of Lamentations is called the Klagelieder in German Bibles) details the aftermath of the showdown in King Etzel’s lands at the end of the Nibelungenlied, with the “wall” of bodies untangled and sorted and prepared for burial and word of the slaughter delivered to widows and orphans all over southern Germany and the Rhineland. Though some stretches are just recaps of the longer epic, it has profoundly moving scenes and offers some resolution to the plot of the Nibelungenlied, which ends abruptly.
Of course the main draw in this volume is the Nibelungenlied itself, which doesn’t disappoint. Definitely check this edition out if you’re looking for a readable recent edition of the poem with a good bit of scholarly apparatus and some interesting appendices....more
A collection I’ve returned to again and again over the years. (Amazon informs me that I ordered this at the beginning of 2007!) Good translations, andA collection I’ve returned to again and again over the years. (Amazon informs me that I ordered this at the beginning of 2007!) Good translations, and a good variety of selections from the corpus of Anglo-Saxon literature, including the Exeter Book riddles, The Wanderer, The Seafarer, Brunanburh, The Dream of the Rood, and some small excerpts from Beowulf. If I could improve the anthology at all, I’d include more religious poetry (seriously—the Anglo-Saxon Genesis is like John Milton after six months in the gym). Alexander’s notes and introductions to each selection are excellent. ...more
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