Best Loved Poems of the American People
by Hazel Felleman
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Book Summary Information
Author: Hazel FellemanIntroduction: Edward Frank Allen
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1936-10-01
ISBN: 0385000197
Number of pages: 670
Publisher: Doubleday
Book Reviews of Best Loved Poems of the American People
Book Review: Versifier's delight!
Summary: 4 Stars
There's a distinct nineteenth century feel to this wide-ranging collection of mostly American verse, as though perhaps one might encounter the book by the bedside of Huck Finn's benefactor, the Widow Douglas. Ah, but it's really not that old. First published in 1936 and dedicated to the memory of Adolph S. Ochs, long-time publisher of the New York Times, by editor Hazel Felleman, this is a collection for Everyman. The fact that it's still in print is tribute to Felleman's good sense of what people like. No known species of poetry is shunned. Verse, ditty and doggerel stand side by side with Shelley and Keats (but no Shakespeare!). There are rousing Sousa stanzas and homey hymn-like lines respecting home and hearth, flag and country, and tributes to the dog. There are also epigrams and epithets and limericks and songs sung blue. Felleman arranges the contents by subject matter, beginning with "Love and Friendship" followed by "Inspiration" through "Patriotism and War," "Memory and Grief," etc., ending with "Nature," "Animals," and "Various Themes." There's a slew of poems by "Unknown," some of them doing a mighty justice to anonymity, e.g., "Get a Transfer" ("If you are on the Gloomy Line/ Get a transfer/If you're inclined to fret and pine/Get a transfer...") There are "answers" to popular poems, and burlesques and parodies aplenty. Here you'll find, if you've been looking (and even if you haven't), "Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines" and "Animal Fair" ("The birds and the bees were there!"), and Joyce Kilmer's much, much maligned "Trees" ("...only God can make a tree"), but also Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade," and Poe's "The Raven," and Keats's "La Belle Dame sans Merci" and William Wordsworth's "Daffodils."
Did I mention there's no Shakespeare? One wonders why. Also no William Blake. However there is a poem entitled "A Woman's Answer to the Vampire" by Felicia Blake after Kipling's "The Vampire" ("A fool there was and he made his prayer/(Even as you and I!)/To a rag and bone and hank of hair...,"etc., answered with "A fool there was, and she lowered her pride,/(Even as you and I)/To a bunch of conceit in a masculine hide"). Naturally there is no T. S. Eliot, but there is an Ebenezer Elliott who wrote, "When Wilt Thou Save the People?" ("O, God of mercy, when?"), and strangely no Ogden Nash, who might seem at home here--but perhaps there was a copyright problem. His "answer" to Joyce Kilmer goes, "I think that I shall never see/A billboard lovely as a tree./Indeed, unless the billboards fall/I'll never see a tree at all."
Lest you think I am slyly making fun of this book, let me tell you, I love Kipling's "If," and if it weren't for that unfortunate last line, I think it would be close to a great poem. I also love poems like Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride," (included) and Henry Clay Work's "The Ship that Never Returned," which inspired a take off tune by the Kingston Trio in the fifties, "Did he ever return?/No he never returned/His fate is still unlearned/He rides beneath the streets of Boston/He's the man who never returned." I also love stuff like Robert Herrick's "To the Virgins" and Alan Seeger's romantic, "I Have a Rendezvous with Death." And where else can you find a poem by Abraham Lincoln? Or a religious ditty innocently titled, "No Sects in Heaven" (Huh?) Or one called "To a Fat Lady Seen from the Train ("O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,/Missing so much and so much?") And I positively delight in Robert W. Service (three printed here, including "The Spell of the Yukon," but alas no "The Cremation of Sam McGee," although there's a nice take off by Edward E. Paramore, Jr. called, "The Ballad of Yukon Jake"). There is even a poem reputed to have been dictated to a spiritual medium by the dead Edgar Alan Poe called "Streets of Baltimore" rendered in the rhythms of "The Raven." (Sorry about that.) "Quoth the raven: Nevermore!" becoming (gulp) "thro' the streets of Baltimore!"
Furthermore I love "Poems that Tell a Story"! Although Browning's "My Last Duchess" didn't make the cut, there is here the truly delightful "The Enchanted Shirt" by John Hay, a tale about a king who needed to sleep a night in the shirt of a happy man. And of course there's "Casey at the Bat" followed by "Casey's Revenge" and "Casey--Twenty Years Later." (Some purists might point out that with first base open, the correct strategy was to give Casey an intentional pass; but I ask you, where's the fun in that?)
I could go on, but I think the picture's getting clear. This collection really is a revelation of the American psyche as seen by a newspaper person seventy years ago. (Felleman was for fifteen years the editor of the Queries and Answers page of The New York Times Book Review.) As such this should be required reading for historians and sociologists alike.
Summary of Best Loved Poems of the American People
More than 1,500,000 copies in print! Over 575 traditional favorites to be read and reread. Categorized by theme, and indexed by author and first line, this is a collection that will be treasured.Poetry Books
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