Best of
Poetry

1959

100 Love Sonnets


Pablo Neruda - 1959
    The subject of that love is Matilde Urrutia de Neruda, Pablo's 'beloved wife'.

The Axion Esti


Odysseas Elytis - 1959
    The Axion Esti [is] the work on which Elytis's reputation rests, and which almost certainly won him the Nobel Prize."New York Review of Books

Selected Poems


Langston Hughes - 1959
    With the publication of his first book of poems, The Weary Blues, in 1926, Langston Hughes electrified readers and launched a renaissance in black writing in America.  The poems Hughes wrote celebrated the experience of invisible men and women: of slaves who "rushed the boots of Washington"; of musicians on Lenox Avenue; of the poor and the lovesick; of losers in "the raffle of night."  They conveyed that experience in a voice that blended the spoken with the sung, that turned poetic lines into the phrases of jazz and blues, and that ripped through the curtain separating high from popular culture.  They spanned the range from the lyric to the polemic, ringing out "wonder and pain and terror-- and the marrow of the bone of life."The poems in this collection were chosen by Hughes himself shortly before his death in 1967 and represent work from his entire career, including "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," "The Weary Blues," "Still Here," "Song for a Dark Girl," "Montage of a Dream Deferred," and "Refugee in America."  It gives us a poet of extraordinary range, directness, and stylistic virtuosity.

...I Never Saw Another Butterfly...


Hana Volavková - 1959
    Fewer than one-hundred survived. In these poems and pictures drawn by the young inmates, we see the daily misery of these uprooted children, as well as their hopes and fears, their courage and optimism. 60 color illustrations.

The Golden Treasury of Poetry


Louis Untermeyer - 1959
    This is a book to grow with. In these pages are poems that will become favorites; you will never lose your taste for them. They will be part of you as long as you live. These verses - the nimble and nonsensical as well as the greatly meaningful- delighted me when I was young. They still delight me today. You will laugh at some of these poems; you will learn from others. Some of them will be exciting new experiences; some will let you see familiar things as though you had never seen them before. But all of them were meant primarily to be enjoyed. Enjoyment is the essence. Poetry is written in many moods and on many levels, each of which provides its own particular pleasure. Come along through these pages and let me show you what I mean. Let us begin at the beginning." --Louis Untermeyer.

Selected Poems and Letters


Emily Dickinson - 1959
    Includes both poems and letters of Dickinson, as well as a contemporary description of the poet in Thomas Wentworth Higginson's account of his correspondence with the poet and his visit to her in Amherst.

Silly Verse For Kids


Spike Milligan - 1959
    With his very own illustrations, this collection, which includes the famous On the Ning Nang Nong will make you laugh from the bottom of your belly - just like Spike did. The legendary and iconic figure, Spike Milligan was born at Ahmednagar in India in 1918. He received his first education in a tent in the Hyderabad Sindh desert and graduated from there, through a series of Roman Catholic schools in India and England, to the Lewisham Polytechnic. He then plunged into the world of Show Business, seduced by his first stage appearance, at the age of eight, in the nativity play of his Poona convent school. He began his career as a band musician, but became famous as a humorous scriptwriter and actor in both films and broadcasting. He was the creator, principal writer and performer of the infamous Goon Show. Spike received an honorary CBE in 1992 and Knighthood in 2000. He died in 2002. Other children's books by Spike Milligan: Bald Twit Lion; Badjelly the Witch; Dip the Puppy; Sir Nobonk and the Terrible Dreadful Awful Naughty Nasty Dragon; A Children's Treasury of Milligan: Classic Stories and Poems; The Magical World of Milligan

I Have Not Seen A Butterfly Around Here: Children's Drawings And Poems From Terezín


Anita Franková - 1959
    Based on the book "Children's drawings and poems-Terezín 1942-1944", edited by Hana Volavkovà of the State Jewish Museum in Prague in 1959, prepared for publication by Anita Frankovà and Hana Povolnà.

The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace and Other Poems


James Merrill - 1959
    

Poems from The Golden Treasury of Poetry


Louis Untermeyer - 1959
    Louis Untermeyer, the poet and anthologist, has written a commentary which gives new interest to the poems, all of which, he says, are favorites of his. A very small book at 4.5" x 7", it is illustrated with delightful, colorful pictures by Joan Walsh Anglund.

Longfellow


Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - 1959
    From the Introduction by Howard Nemerov: "My object in making this selection of Longfellow's work has been to exhibit a poet somewhat different from the one who wrote, e.g.,'A Psalm of Life,' 'Hiawatha,' 'The Wreck of the Schooner Hesperus.' Without trying to present him, in the result, as anything like a great poet (there are fewer of these than formerly though), I shall claim for some of his productions an interest other than historical, scholarly, or biographical--an interest truly poetical, and undiminished by time."