Best of
Poetry

1929

Letters to a Young Poet


Rainer Maria Rilke - 1929
    The older artist, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926), replied to the novice in this series of letters—an amazing archive of remarkable insights into the ideas behind Rilke's greatest poetry. The ten letters reproduced here were written during an important stage in Rilke's artistic development, and they contain many of the themes that later appeared in his best works. The poet himself afterwards stated that his letters contained part of his creative genius, making this volume essential reading for scholars, poetry lovers, and anyone with an interest in Rilke, German poetry, or the creative impulse.

The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose


John Donne - 1929
    Here are such well-known songs and sonnets as "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," "The Extasie," and "A Nocturnall Upon S. Lucies Day," along with the love elegies "Jealosie," "His Parting From Her," and "To His Mistris Going to Bed." Presented as well are Donne's satires, epigrams, verse letters, and holy sonnets, along with his most ambitious and important poems, the Anniversaries. In addition, there is a generous sampling of Donne's prose, including many of his private letters; Ignatius His Conclave, a satiric onslaught on the Jesuits; excerpts from Biathanatos, his celebrated defense of suicide; and his most famous sermons, concluding with the final "Death's Duell." "We have only to read [Donne]," wrote Virginia Woolf, "to submit to the sound of that passionate and penetrating voice, and his figure rises again across the waste of the years more erect, more imperious, more inscrutable than any of his time."

The Bedbug and Selected Poetry


Vladimir Mayakovsky - 1929
    Splendid translations of the poems, with the Russian on a facing page, and a fresh, colloquial version of Mayakovsky's dramatic masterpiece, The Bedbug.

Silver Pennies: A Collection of Modern Poems for Boys and Girls


Blanche Jennings Thompson - 1929
    Nesbit, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Vachel Lindsay, James Stephens, W.B. Yeats, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Emily Dickinson.

Mediaeval Latin Lyrics


Helen Waddell - 1929
    Some indeed are among the loveliest in any literature; and Miss Waddell has not dulled their brightness. She has come to them not merely with scholarship and literary tact, but with a soul attuned to the thought and feeling and the very idiom of another day. She has the most important of the translator's qualifications - a perfect empathy with her material.'" "Through the marvellous empathy this reviewer unerringly describes, she unlocked some of the secrets and literary achievements of the Middle Ages for the scholar and the general reader alike. The vagantes, to whom the reviewer refers, are also the subject of her earlier book, The Wandering Scholars (1927) which similarly won golden opinions. These two books and her novel Peter Abelard (1933) made her the most famous medievalist of her generation." And this was no passion fashion. Helen Waddell's books, particularly this one, have informed and inspired generations of medievalists. Mediaeval Latin Lyrics is an authoritative and delightful guide to a period of European civilization and literature, when Latin was still a vibrant means of communication throughout the western world.

Love, Poetry


Paul Éluard - 1929
    This bilingual edition translates Eluard's Love, Poetry (L'amour la poesie, 1929) for the first time into English. This popular work cemented Eluard's reputation internationally as one of France's greatest 20th century poets. Never out of print in France, this is it's debut in the English language.

The Jade Mountain: A Chinese Anthology, Being Three Hundred Poems Of The T'ang Dynasty, 618-906


Kiang Kang-Hu - 1929
    

Dear Judas, And Other Poems


Robinson Jeffers - 1929
    

The Sugar-Plum Tree and Other Verses: Includes a Read-and-Listen CD


Eugene Field - 1929
    Journey to the enchanted garden of Shut-Eye Town to discover "The Sugar-Plum Tree" and sail away in a wooden shoe into a sea of dew with "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod." Fern Bisel Peat’s Art Deco–style illustrations are a delightful complement to Eugene Field's verses, and an accompanying CD includes readings of all eight poems.