Ralph Waldo Emerson: Collected Poems & Translations (Loa #70)

by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Ralph Waldo; Bloom Paul (editor) Emerson

Book Overview

Emerson's incomparable brilliance as a prose writer has often overshadowed his remarkable gifts as a poet. Gathering both published and unpublished work, this Library of America edition makes available for the first time to general readers the full range of Emerson's poetry, including many poems left in manuscript at his death that have hitherto been available only in drastically edited versions or specialized scholarly texts. Displacing all previous...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0940450283
• ISBN13: 9780940450288
• Release Date: August 1994
• Publisher: Library of America
• Length: 640 Pages
• Weight: 1.33 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.3" x 8.1"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

The poetry of mind is only sometimes soulful

The aphoristic, enigmatic, cryptic, verse of Emerson is collected here in its entirety. Much comes from his notebooks and journals. Emerson was criticized among others by Mathew Arnold for lacking ' the soul' of the poet. And it is true that the music of his verse is often a rough, awkward, intellectual one. And that what is memorable in it comes as a line here or there which could well come from his essays. Nonetheless there are memorable lines and a few poems which enter the heart and mind, perhaps because once read in childhood anthology they remain as part of one's inner landscape. For me Emerson as a poet is primarily isolated like the most memorable Emerson of all, " By the rude bridge/ that arched the flood/ their flag the April breeze unfurled /Here once the embattled farmers stood and fired' "The shot heard round the world". In another sense Emerson appreciated Poetry and was the patron , and capable of recognizing the great value of , arguably, the ur- American poet, Whitman. Reading the poetry is often a quite complicated intellectual exercise. But it is also one which yields new ideas, though perhaps those ideas are not felt as deeply as poetry should make us feel.