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Rating: 
Summary: Lyrical Companion
Review: I don't know what I'd do without this book. I stumbled on Housman more or less by accident in an anthology and just fell in love -- so much emotion so perfectly crystallized in such lovely little lyrics, beautiful regardless of what connection you make to it. I can't recommend this highly enough; somehow, despite the melancholy, Housman's verse retains a power to comfort and assure in even the most dire of situations. That, I suppose, is why it was written years ago "for those unhappy fellows, unborn and unbegot, for them to read when they're in trouble and I am not."
Rating: 
Summary: nastalgic lyrics and ballads
Review: I remember first discovering A. E. Housman in school when I read "A Shropshire Lad" and was rather impressed. My favorite of his poems is "To An Athlete Dying Young". It moved me because it has a special connection with me, since now that my athletic days are over and I'm no longer a part of any team, I understand and can identify with the athlete who is once so glorious and yet his glory can be so short-lived. David Rehak
author of "Poems From My Bleeding Heart"
Rating:
Summary: Should not be missed.
Review: Unrequited love and youthful death are the author's recurrent themes. Always forthright and devoid of the esoteric and modernistic qualities of more revered poets, Housman's work, though imbued with a pronounced melancholy, is never strident or sanctimonious. It is through the symmetry of theme that Housman achieves the solemnity which lends these justly celebrated poems their stature. I feel that any discussion of A. E. Housman's poetry should first acknowledge that he was never a poet in the same sense as Whitman, Auden or Ginsberg. he was first, and foremost, a scholar, the Chair of Latin at Cambridge and an academic legend. Thus it seems churlish for his detractors to take the rather meagre amount of poetry he produced and deride it for it's lack of thematic multiplicity. A closeted homosexual, Housman's poetry is perhaps most distinctive for it allusive qualities. One revels in the allegorical poem XVIII from Additional Poems: "Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair." Perhaps my favorite in this collection full of favorites is XXXI from More Poems...Haunting. First rate. A masterful collection.
Rating:
Summary: Should not be missed.
Review: Unrequited love and youthful death are the author's recurrent themes. Always forthright and devoid of the esoteric and modernistic qualities of more revered poets, Housman's work, though imbued with a pronounced melancholy, is never strident or sanctimonious. It is through the symmetry of theme that Housman achieves the solemnity which lends these justly celebrated poems their stature. I feel that any discussion of A. E. Housman's poetry should first acknowledge that he was never a poet in the same sense as Whitman, Auden or Ginsberg. he was first, and foremost, a scholar, the Chair of Latin at Cambridge and an academic legend. Thus it seems churlish for his detractors to take the rather meagre amount of poetry he produced and deride it for it's lack of thematic multiplicity. A closeted homosexual, Housman's poetry is perhaps most distinctive for it allusive qualities. One revels in the allegorical poem XVIII from Additional Poems: "Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair." Perhaps my favorite in this collection full of favorites is XXXI from More Poems: "Because I liked you better
Than suits a man to say,
It irked you, and I promised
To throw the thought away. To put the world between us
We parted, stiff and dry;
'Good-bye', said you, 'forget me.'
'I will, no fear' said I. If here, where clover whitens
The dead man's knoll, you pass,
And no tall flower to meet you
Starts in the trefoiled grass, Halt by the headstone naming
The heart no longer stirred,
And say the lad that loved you
Was one that kept his word." Haunting. First rate. A masterful collection.
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