Collected Poems

by John Betjeman

Hardcover, 1971

Status

Available

Call number

821.912

Genres

All Topics

Fiction

Collection

Your library

Publication

Houghton Mifflin (1971), Edition: Enl. ed, Hardcover, 366 pages

Description

Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough To get it ready for the plough. The cabbages are coming now; The earth exhales. --from "Slough" When the beloved English poet John Betjeman's Collected Poems first appeared in 1958, it made publishing history, and has now sold more than two million copies to a steadily expanding readership. Betjeman is almost unique among poets in that his work appeals equally strongly to those who love poetry and to those who rarely read it. This volume, the first American edition of the Collected Poems, incorporates all the poems that Betjeman published after the original Collected Poems and includes a new foreword by Britain's poet laureate, Andrew Motion.

User reviews

LibraryThing member Salmondaze

Ahhhhh, Sir John Betjeman. He's the kind of person you read if Prince Harry just ain't fucking British enough for ya. Take the tram up Tottenham-of-Berfordshire and come to the land of Hobbiton and The Shire. Much of this book is too esoteric for Americans to "get" but I imagine if you're British

and you're not at home this stuff will make you nostalgic. The best of this collection is quite great and contrary to what Christopher Hitchens says of the British laureate-ship and the downhill tendencies exhibited after earning of it, I didn't see a dive in quality. In fact, I had given up on this book for a long time before I reached the material to which Hitchens would've referred. It was his calling himself a "poet and a hack" that made me really come back. It takes a big man to admit to hack tendencies, I think, and as far as poets go he may never reach the heights of whatsay your Tennyson but that could be a deficiency of aim rather than actual talent.

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LibraryThing member John5918

I've always liked the rhythm and pace of Betjeman's poems ever since we studied him at school all those decades ago.

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