The Complete Poetical Works of James Whitcomb Riley

Twas struck with words as ne'r b'fore, those gentle flowed from a poet of yore. Each letter 'round our hearts was wrapt, melodies of beauty lovely tapt. Who'd er'er thunk that a pokety ole' man, could know our thoughts and understan. There ain't any we'd recomand as highly, as Indyanna's James Whitcomb Riley.

Folksy Hoosier James Whitcomb Riley (1849 - 1916) is America's premier poet of the sentimental. The Complete Poetical Works Of James Whitcomb Riley brings together over 1,000 touching, humorous, easy to read, and intelligent but non - intellectual poems, many filled with longing for irretrievable childhood innocence, freedom, and joy. Today's readers will find the volume a genuine time capsule into the past; these poems will evoke not only the reader's own memories of childhood, but also a simpler and perhaps more innocent and joyous America. The ambitions and expectations expressed by the speakers, narrators, and characters in the poems are humble, the horizons of their world near. One of the secrets of Riley's backward - glancing poems is that his reflections are only partially regretful; the joys of the past are equaled by the child - like joy still present in the adult poet's heart. Dozens of the pieces included here are suitable for reading to and sharing with children. Titles 'The Swimming Hole,' 'The Noble Old Elm,' 'Company Manners,' 'When Mother Combed My Hair,' 'Us Farmers In The Country' 'My First Spectacles,' 'Blooms In May,' 'Two Sonnets To The June - Bug,' 'The Land Of Used - To - Be,' and 'Our Boyhood Haunts' offer a good indication of the book's content. There are numerous nature poems and celebrations of the seasons, summer meadows of "clover to the knee," August moons, lazy rivers, "the twitter of the bluebird and the wren," and, in one of Riley's most famous, the frost "on the punkin." There are tributes to William McKinley and Abraham Lincoln, to Tennyson, Robert Burns, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Joel Chandler Harris. Famous characters 'Little Orphant Annie' and 'The Raggedy Man' are here; Puck makes an appearance "under a low crescent moon" in a poem of his own, as do Pan, Santa Claus, pixies, and goblins in others. Odes to boyhood best friends abound. People lived on closer terms with death in Riley's time, and, appropriately, a number of the poems address the subject, all of which express either blissful faith in the afterlife or sadness for the living left behind. Riley was endlessly inventive within the limited sphere of his talent, or, perhaps, within the limitations he purposefully set upon it. Oddly, there are relatively few poems celebrating romantic love and marriage. Riley, who never married, apparently held the adult world and women in particular in no little suspicion. In his poetry, eligible women are generally kept at what Riley must have felt was a safe distance, though there are numerous tributes to mothers, aunts, sisters, and little girls - even stepmothers are embraced lovingly. But when Riley wrote about single women and imagined wives, his poetic vision generally darkened.In 'The Werewife,' the volume's 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci,' Riley portrays the speaker's "fluttering, moth - winged soul" helplessly caught and mesmerized by his wife, a white - skinned, red - cheeked seductress who is also a murder

when i was little, we wore out a copy of riley's poems and stories making my father read them to us. especially "the happy cripple" and "the bear story". riley is great.

You don't have to be a farmer, a Hoosier or a senior citizen longing for the days gone by to enjoy James Whitcomb Riley's poems! My mother (a born and bred Okie) loved his Farm Rhymes and Child Rhymes and I have her old, cracking books, as well as this complete volume which I bought myself several years ago. There is a poem in the book for every day and every occasion. Read what he writes about the rain, about summer, about the house of someone he loved, about marriage, about death, about children, about slamming screen doors, about parents and politicians and more! They're wonderful and accessible by anyone -- this isn't high-fallutin' poetry that might not make much sense. JWR's words inspired me to own a meadow with a tree to lie under, a creek to wade in and long grass to blow with the approach of a storm. I'm reading selected poems to my 8 year old son now, who enjoys them very much -- and then we write our own!

Riley's simple homespun tales.. his inflection of the local Hoosier dialect of the era and the unique way he has of creating a treasurery of pictures in your mind.. gives the reader a real feeling of stepping back in time and exploring the memories of the heart. Being a Hoosier farmer myself this author captures the emotions of the soul and releases them in the childlike purity of his script. I see now why my mother loved the works of James Whitcomb Riley. I'm just sorry it took me so long.