How Does a Poem Mean? Review

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(More customer reviews)John Ciardi's How Does a Poem Mean? is an intriguing, unorthodox, and surprisingly effective introduction to poetry. He argues that the question: "What Does a Poem Mean?" is too often a self-destroying approach that results in paraphrasing and misses the point of poetry. A poem is to be experienced, not simply interpreted. Unlike prose, a poem is primarily a performance.
How does a poem build itself into a form out of images, ideas, and rhythms? How do these elements become the meaning? How are they inseparable from the meaning? John Ciardi's remarkable textbook answers these questions, makes enjoyable reading, and is a five star introduction to poetry.
This text, published by Houghton Mifflin, was adopted by many colleges in the 1960s and 1970s. Inexpensive, used, soft cover copies are still fairly easy to find.
The eight chapters are titled How Does a Poem Mean?, A Burble Through the Tulgey Wood, By Rippling Pools, The Words of Poetry, The Sympathetic Contract, The Image and the Poem, The Poem in Motion, and The Poem in Countermotion.
I encountered many familiar poems as well as others new to me. Among the latter, I list several to illustrate the wide range of Ciardi's selections (and to remind me to return to these poets): The Listeners (Walter De la Mare), Mr. Flood's Party (Edwin Arlington Robinson), The Death of a Hired Hand (Robert Frost), Burning Love Letters (Howard Moss), Snake (D. H. Lawrence), Blue Girls (John Crowe Ransom), Medusa (Louise Bogan), A Subterranean City (Thomas Lovell Beddoes), and What the Sonnet Is (Eugene Lee Hamilton).
Also, I especially enjoyed three closely related poems: Departmental (Frost), Heaven (Rupert Brooke), and A Deep Discussion (Richard Moore).
Like most collections of poetry, How Does a Poem Mean? is best enjoyed if read in a leisurely fashion over several months. The overall time commitment may be substantial, but John Ciardi's fascinating text will reward your efforts. Take your time. Enjoy yourself. Remember, poetry is to be experienced, not simply analyzed. Cheers.

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Mrs Eckdorf in O'Neills Hotel Review

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(More customer reviews)The first Trevor book that made one realize that Trevor was more than merely a brilliant funny man. Which is not to say that the book isn't full of laughs--it is. But it's much else besides. Of all his books this is probably one of his richest in terms of character, moral insight, etc. At any rate, certainly a pivotal book for the most artful storyteller now working.

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What was the tragedy that turned O'Neill's hotel from a plush establishment into a dingy house of disrepute? Ivy Eckdorf is determined to find out. A professional photographer, she has come to Dublin convinced that a tragic and beautiful tale lies behind the facade of this crumbling hotel.

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Miss or Mrs? / The Haunted Hotel / The Guilty River Review

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(More customer reviews)I suppose I should look embarrassed to be reviewing Victorian sensationalist novels, but. . .I'm not. I love them and I'm not ashamed to admit. I enjoy nearly every British Victorian author I can find--with the notable exception of Dickens (*gag*) and Emily Bronte (who was NOT the best Bronte writer by a long-shot)--and Collins is one of my true favorites. From the supernatural to the just plain mean, from true love to deadly love, from. . .well, from any hackneyed plot device to any other hackneyed plot device, you can find it in Collins, and well written, too! (Of course, one must remember that many of the trite plot devices were not so well-used when he penned them.)
These three novellas give an excellent example of the varied nature of his stories. Miss or Mrs? is a story of true love, unrequited love, greed, dark deeds, and clandestine marriage featuring one of the most insipid heroines I've seen yet. And still I enjoyed it.
The Haunted Hotel is a truly estimable work of fiction. In it Collins combines the supernatural with a truly interesting mystery and a rather sweet love story subplot. He pits human goodness against human evil with a heroine that is almost as strong and brave as she is good. One must remember the times, though, and not expect her to NOT faint away from time to time. This was my second reading of this novella and I liked it even better this time. It's truly complex and twisty and quite enjoyable.
With The Guilty River, Collins leaves the supernatural dangers and shows his readers what can happen to someone suddenly and cripplingly handicapped. . . If that someone is willing to give in to his immoral side, that is. Like the other three, love is a prominent theme, featuring another dangerous triangle of lovers.
The Haunted Hotel is by far the best of the three, but the others are still enjoyable enough to those who like Victorian literature. If one is reading them and expecting them to be comparable with modern books--DON'T. Collins, as with all Victorian writers, must be read in the spirit it was written to be fully enjoyed.
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The three novellas gathered here--Miss or Mrs? (1871), The Haunted Hotel (1878), and The Guilty River (1886)--demonstrate Collins's ability to construct a gripping situation and create an atmosphere of mystery and menace. Fast-paced and psychologically absorbing, all proceed through a series of dramatic scenes to a climax that in one case at least is literally explosive. These stories, varied in setting and tone, demonstrate Collins's plot-making skill at its most succinct and intricate.Featuring excellent critical apparatus, this edition also includes Collins's original prefaces.

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Hotel Bemelmans Review

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(More customer reviews)Potential purchasers of Bemelman's lovely "Hotel Bemelmans" should know that as far as I can tell all the Hotel Bemelmans books advertised on Amazon is a shortened edition of the original Hotel Bemelmans published in 1946 by Viking Press. The books advertised here were published in 2000 by Overlook Press and contain 24 stories. The Viking Press edition has 36 stories. I learned this the hard way having purchased 3 copies of the shortened Overlook Press book. Some wonderful stories have been left out. e.g. Art at the Splendide. I have the original and am looking to buy some more.

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If there is such a thing as a comfort food book, Bemelmans stories are it. His evocative tales of a grand hotel life have a reporter's eye for sensory detail, yet he always manages to bathe his world and it's lovable characters in the mood for a fairytale. Meet the girl-hungry hotel Magician, Kalakobe the African cook, Mr Sigsag, Monsieur Victor, Mespoulet, and an unforgettable cast of down but not yet out hotel employees. This book offers a feast of food writing. And once you've read one Bemelmans tale, you fall in love and want to read the lot.

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The Hotel Majestic (Penguin Mysteries) Review

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(More customer reviews)Georges Simenon was the author of over 100 Inspector Maigret mystery stories. They were immensely popular in the 1930s through the 1960s. Inspector Maigret stories also appeared in film and TV version. Simenon also authored dozens of books described as "romans durs", `hard stories' that had a darker tone than his Maigret novels. Simenon seems to have fallen under the radar in recent decades but in recent years he seems to have been rediscovered by a new generation of mystery/detective story fans. Penguin Books has begun to reissue some of those Maigret mysteries and the New York Review of Books Press has reissued some of his `hard stories', dark novels that did not feature Inspector Maigret. Penguin's latest Inspector Maigret Mystery reissue, "The Hotel Majestic" is as good a place to start for anyone wishing to discover (or re-discover) Simenon.
As with most police procedurals, the Hotel Majestic begins with a dead body. Mrs. Clark, a guest traveling with her wealthy American husband, their child and a governess, has been found murdered and stuffed into an empty locker in the basement of the Hotel Majestic. Maigret arrives to begin the investigation. His investigation quickly draws him into two parallel words: the world upstairs of champagne and caviar and the world downstairs filled with hotel employees eking out a living. Maigret's investigation begins with an examination into how and why these two different worlds collided in this brief but deadly incident. From there he proceeds to interview everyone and anyone who might have information about the crime of the victim. Maigret is no Sherlock Holmes. For Maigret, crimes are to be solved by a process of accumulating as much information as possible and then analyzing that information based on his past experience. Maigret plays hunches to be sure but Maigret's chief weapon is perseverance and determination. Consequently, the reader is presented with information about the crime and the protagonists in real time along with Maigret. As I read these stories I find myself absorbing these bits of information and trying to weigh them against the information previously disclosed. This served to keep me engaged throughout the book and caused me to keep turning page after page until the `final curtain'.
Simenon has a keen ear for dialogue and character development. Maigret is not a character that is revealed to the reader immediately. Simenon doesn't set about to provide you with a character map to Maigret's personality in any one book. Rather, he grows on you over time. He has an innate disdain for higher authority that is appealing. Simenon's settings and other characters also add a dash to his Maigret mysteries. These are not parlor room mysteries where the reader has to determine which upper-class member of the gentry (or the butler) committed murder most foul in the library. Simenon's stories have the feel of grit and the demimonde about them that adds a bit of spice to the `formula'. In Hotel Majestic, Simenon's description of the hard-streets and dark bars of Paris and the people that inhabit them all seem quite fully realized to me.
All in all, I find Simenon's Maigret mysteries to be consistently entertaining. They may not be as dark or foreboding as the novels released by New York Review of Books - but it you like well-written, taut, police procedurals you will like Georges Simenon's Hotel Majestic. Recommended. L. Fleisig


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Penguin delivers two more vintage Inspector Maigret novels by the legendary mystery authorIn The Hotel Majestic, Maigret investigates the murder of Mrs. Clark, the wife of a wealthy American industrialist, whose strangled body is found in the basement of an upscale hotel near the Champs-Élysées. Maigret's inquiries take him from the endless corridors of the Hotel Majestic to the countryside of the Bois de Boulogne and sun-drenched Cannes, into a world of prostitution, drug addiction, and blackmail.

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Up in the Old Hotel Review

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(More customer reviews)Joseph Mitchell may be the best writer ever to have worked on the 'New Yorker' staff (the other contenders would include Edmund Wilson and A. J. Liebling). Every story in this long book is worth reading, and re-reading; the later pieces, from 'The Bottom of the Harbour' and especially 'Joe Gould's Secret' are tours-de-force of reporting. Mitchell invests his characters with so much life that they take on almost mythical proportions, without ever sacrificing their humanity. Although Mitchell often chose to write about people on the margins of society -- a homeless beggar like Joe Gould, a bearded lady, the hard-drinking Hugh Flood -- he never did so in a patronising manner. He admires these people not because of their struggles or hard lives, but despite them: he sees them, and makes us see them, as fellow human beings, not social welfare cases. Mitchell freely admits that listening to Joe Gould was a strain, and that Gould could be, like people who own houses and property and know where their next meal is coming from, selfish and mean-spirited; far from making Gould unattractive, this serves to make him come alive - homeless people don't become plaster saints, and it's silly to pretend otherwise. A key component in these stories is Mitchell's own persona, which is much like his prose style: quiet, unassertive, but immensely attractive. It is a great pity that, for whatever reason, Mitchell fell silent for the last thirty years of his life; but any sadness can be assuaged by dipping back into 'Up in the Old Hotel', where Mitchell's brilliant handling of detail and character -- and his shapely way with the structure of a profile, always dovetailing to a perfect close -- can be sampled time and again.

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