Poetry, Modern Philosophy

Publisher

Ralph Waldo Emerson's brillance as a prose writer has too long overshadowed his remarkable gifts as a poet. Collected Poems and Translations gathers both published and unpublished work - poems left in manuscript at his death and hitherto available only in drastically edited or specialized scholarly versions - to offer all readers for the first time the full range of Emerson's poetry.

 
Library Journal  
This claims to be the most comprehensive volume of Emerson's poetry ever published. Bold words, but considering both the publisher's penchant for accuracy and a compilation and textual notes by Harold Bloom and Paul Kane, one could easily believe it. The text includes all of Emerson's published works plus unpublished material gleaned from his journals and notebooks.
 

Booknews  
Ralph Waldo redivivus. How long is it since you read your Emerson: "Tax not my sloth that I/Fold my arms beside the brook;/Each cloud that floated in the sky/Writes a letter in my book." Essential for every collection. Distributed to the book trade by Penguin. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
 

Publishers Weekly  
Even those not well acquainted with the work of Emerson, New England essayist and procreative spark of the Transcendentalist movement, will find much to savor in this exhaustive, sensitive compilation. The poems chart the growth of a uniquely American sensibility, from the impressionable boy who toyed romantically with verse to the eloquent man who witnessed with ``joyful eye'' the ``genius of the whole.'' In his autobiographical laments, particularly ``Threnody,'' one sees how painfully the deaths of Emerson's first wife and first-born son affected him. Of great interest also are his gentlemanly versions of Dante. But the crowning moment of the collection comes when Emerson steeps himself in the poetry of Persian mystics. (His translations illustrate more the intense resonance he felt with the rapturous manner of the poet Hafiz, and less his mastery of poetic form.) While the voices of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Tennyson and others are periodically visible, the profound influence of the exotic saturates his every word. This welcome collection offers up poetic reiterations of Emerson's more popular essays, lyricizes Transcendentalism's celebration of the sublime in the human, and serves to re-open the case for Emerson as a poet. An introduction would have served readers well. (Aug.)