Byron: Selected Poetry

I thought this edition would have shorter poems as opposed to excerps from Don Juan and The Cantos.I should have been in touch with seller. Book is in fine condition and was delivered quickly.

The most misunderstood poet of all time. Critics have libeled him "the satanic poet" - unfortunately. Sure, Byron was full of the seven deadlies - particularly lust - but he lived life like there was no afterlife. He took Pascal's Wager in the square of "don't believe/God doesn't exist." We won't know till we get there ourselves whether he was right. Byron believed, contrary to Shelley, that desire is ineradicable, that human nature is not perfectable. It was this very desire that animated history for Byron. Note that Pound and Jung echoed this idea in the 20th Century. Byron was Freudian before Freud was ever born. Another crime of criticism is that Byron was (and still is) deprecated as a poor poet technically -he is said by some to have had no talent for poetry. In my opinion, his detractors such as TS Eliot condemned Byron merely because of his "satanic" belief system - a belief in egoism, and, again, lust. But egoism and humanism are common enough in our day and age. Some people might simply shrug at Eliot's rabidity. What's he getting so excited about? This edition, I think, is beautiful, though I'd prefer hardcover if it were available. The only precaution I have is the size of the print: minuscule. I'd suggest an eye exam before reading from this book. Maybe keep a magnifying glass handy, or wear powerful reading glasses. Otherwise, just enjoy the poetry and don't worry about obscure allusions. I think this book can be savored without annotation by editors who only direct you what to see. We don't need people to tell us what to read or what not to read. Let us do our own editorializing.

In his day Byron was the rage of Europe. He was the romantic hero, wild, impulsive, able to indulge his lusts and loves to the end, revolutionary, tormented and tormenting, confined to no law but that of his own impulse and nature. And also a tremendously powerful and skilled writer in many different forms. His fluency and strength enabled him to produce the novel-like longer poems, "Don Juan" and "The Prisoner of Chillon" which outside the academic world are not much read today. Perhaps what readers today most know are some of the beautiful shorter lyrics in this anthology, "She walks in Beauty like the night" being the most famous of them. __________ NOD32 1.1084 (20050430) Information __________ This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system. http://www.nod32.com

This is a great collection of thirty of Byron's short poems, arranged in chronological order. Everyone should own at least one collection of Byron's work, and at this price, why not make this the one?

This is a great collection of mostly short poems by one of the greatest poets in memory. beginning with "Damaetas" and ending with "On this Day I complete my Thirty-sixth year" these 30 poems, in chronological order, represent a great portion of Byron's work, including portions of Childe Herold's Pilgramage, hebrew melodies, don juan, and manfred. great as an introduction to byron.