Rachel Baack

Summary: This novel depicts the slow, steady, inevitable movement of little-known author Kilgore Trout and mentally ill car salesman Dwayne Hoover toward a fateful meeting with one another.

The book is a study in absurdity that invites the reader to consider themes of free will, inequality, and mental health.

Summary: Years after her journey to Neverland, Wendy Darling’s life once again intersects with Peter Pan’s. This time, Peter has taken Wendy’s daughter Jane with him to his enchanted world, a world that Wendy knows is a much darker place than Peter would have anyone believe. This retelling follows two separate timelines, one that depicts the trials Wendy faced upon her return to London from Neverland and another that follows Jane’s trip to Neverland and Wendy’s pursuit of her. The book was compelling, but I was underwhelmed by the climax.

Summary: This dramatization of true events depicts the runaway social experiment conducted by a high school teacher to demonstrate to his students how it could be possible that a group of people would allow atrocities like the Holocaust to happen. Based on the novel by Todd Strasser.

Summary: This poem entreats its readers to exult in the glories of the Earth, seemingly ruined as it may be, and gently leads them to the inevitable conclusion that the Earth has an everlasting beauty that can never truly be ruined.

Summary: After Narcissus dies, the personified pool into which he often gazed at himself turns to a salt pool and makes a surprising revelation to some nymphs.

Summary: An elegy for Abraham Lincoln.

Summary: A short poem describing the movements of a cavalry.

Summary: A call to arms written the same year that the Civil War began.

Questions have been raised as to the attitude toward war that this poem is trying to suggest.

I have not read all of the works in this collection, but those that I have read are listed and rated below:

• “Come Down, O Maid” (from “The Princess”): A shepherd sings to a young lady to come down from the mountains into the valley to find love. Rating: 4/5
• “Crossing the Bar”: Tennyson uses the metaphor of “crossing the bar” to discuss his approaching death. Rating: 2/5
• “The Eagle” (fragment): The speaker describes the mighty eagle and surprises the reader with a turn of mood in the last line. Rating: 3.5/5
• “The Hesperides”: The guardians of a golden apple tree sing a song about their watch over the tree. Rating: 2.5/5
• “The Kraken”: The speaker surveys the mysterious and powerful creature of the deep. Rating: 2.5/5
• “The Lady of Shalott”: a young woman who lives alone in a castle cannot look toward Camelot under threat of a curse. Rating: 4/5
• “Locksley Hall”: The speaker laments a love who left him and contemplates the progress of society. In my personal opinion, the speaker is prejudiced and whiney. Rating: 1.5/5
• “The Lotos-Eaters”: the speaker recounts the effects of the lotus flower on the mental states of Odysseus’s men. Rating: 4/5
• “Lucretius”: Lucretius, an Epicurean philosopher, has been driven to insanity by a love potion given to him by his wife. He experiences troubling dreams and chooses to take his own life. In his final speech, he explains his dissatisfaction with life, his belief that the gods do not care about or interact with the world, and his desire to exert his will by killing himself. Rating: 3.5/5
• “Mariana”: A woman despairs over the absence of her lover. Rating: 3.5/5
• “Merlin and the Gleam”: Tennyson outlines his poetic career by comparing himself to Merlin. Rating: 1.5/5
• “Morte d’Arthur”: After being seriously wounded in battle, King Arthur calls upon the faithfulness of his last knight. Rating: 3/5
• “Saint Simeon Stylites”: Tennyson uses the voice of Simeon Stylites, an ascetic saint who sat atop a pillar for 30 years, to create a fictional discourse in which the saint alternates between professing his sinfulness and expressing his worthiness to be considered a saint while enumerating his sufferings. The poem is something of a satire. Rating: 2.5/5
• “The Splendor Falls” (from “The Princess”): The speaker calls for the bugles to blow, and he draws a connection between their echoes and the “echoes” of people in our lives. Rating: 1.5/5
• “Tears, Idle Tears” (from “The Princess”): The speaker uses powerful metaphors to express the depth of his sorrow over a loss. Rating: 4/5
• “Tithonus”: Tithonus recalls his youth, when he asked the goddess Aurora, who was in love with him, to give him eternal life. She granted his request but did not give him eternal youth, and now, an old man, he begs her to take back her gift. Rating: 3.5/5
• “Ulysses”: This poem shows a different side of Ulysses (a.k.a. Odysseus) than readers see in the Odyssey. It portrays an older Ulysses who has been stuck at home ruling for many years and is longing to experience adventure once more. Rating: 3.5/5
• “To Virgil”: Tennyson praises the ancient poet Virgil. Rating: 1.5/5
• “The Vision of Sin”: A man who lived a hedonistic lifestyle in his youth gives a bitter speech indicating the corruption of humankind and meaninglessness of much human action. Rating: 3/5

Summary: A man goes off in search of transcendence and the vague “ideal.”

Summary: In this poem, the speaker contemplates the interconnectedness of living entities in a tone that is at once reverent and a bit tongue-in-cheek.

Summary: A short poem that highlights the oneness of all things.

I have not read this entire collection. What follows are reviews for the poems from this collection that I have read:

• “Miniver Cheevy”: A short poem about a man who wastes his life wishing to have been born in a different time. Rating: 2.5/5
• “Richard Cory” (not in HC): A short poem with a shocking ending that comments on class division and the pervasiveness of unhappiness. It seems rather simplistic in its exploration of the issues it addresses. Rating: 2.5/5

Summary: Patmore’s poem praises the glory of the human body as a creation of God.

Summary: The speaker of this poem tracks the progression of the Nazi party’s targeting of different groups in German society, challenging the reader to recognize the way in which the fate of all humanity is bound together.

Myers’ poem describes Oklahoma’s less-than-grand Deep Fork River and the way in which the river’s atmosphere is one of peace that encourages an understanding of the beauty of letting go.

For the purposes of this review, I am treating this book entry as the entire multivolume set of The Collected Works of William Morris. I did not read this whole collection; what follows are instead the reviews for the works I have read from the collection:

• "The Beauty of Life": In this lecture, William Morris argues that his society no longer produces and cares about beautiful art, and he urges the creation of “art made by the people and for the people, a joy to the maker and the user.”
• “A Garden by the Sea”: The speaker of this poem longs to walk in a garden by the sea with a love that he has lost. Rating: 2/5
• “The Haystack in the Floods”: This poem chronicles an encounter between the English commander Sir Robert, his French mistress Jehane, and his small band of soldiers on one side and Godmar and a group of Frenchmen on the other side. It takes place during the Hundred Years’ War. Godmar’s men surround Sir Robert’s men as they try to escape, and he forces Jehane to make a seemingly impossible decision. Rating: 4.5/5
• “Near Avalon”: This poem describes two ships, one carrying six maidens and one carrying six knights, who carry locks of their ladies’ hair. Rating: 2.5/5
• “Riding Together”: A Crusader (the speaker of the poem) tells of his journey with his fellow Crusader and close friend to a battle that ended tragically for him. Rating: 3/5
• “Summer Dawn”: The speaker of the poem asks the listener to pray a prayer for him as the morning comes. Rating: 2.5/5