Rupert Brooke: The Complete Poems

Rating:
Summary: Brooke is phenomenal!
Review: I first picked up this book in my local library when I was in high school at the tail-end of the 1980s. It totally changed my life. I knew I was a poet/writer from an early age, but reading Rupert Brooke's work really inspired me to dig deeper within myself and be a better writer. With the exception of Dylan Thomas and William Blake, Brooke was the one writer I admired above all others. I have carried this book around with me for the past13 years, and whenever I need inspiration I read his poems. Although I don't find all of them to my taste, there are some that stand out above all others, most notably "The Call", "The Voice", "Success" and "Ambarvalia" - some of these are incredible mystic poems that inspired a lot of my simliar work. I would advise anyone interested in the war era poets, or just darn good poetry, to look this one up. It's awesome.

Rating:
Summary: a poet... that is "for ever England".
Review: I happened upon the poetry of Rupert Brooke in an old old (truly ancient) used bookstore in a serene corner of Vancouver Island... something about this aged, sepia-colored, hardcover beauty of a book made me feel it had been abandoned by someone else and left there especially for me to find. The rest of the day I was on the beach with it, and each new page further convinced me that I had stumbled upon greatness. Each phrase carried a thoughtful hush along with it, and I felt that to breathe was an interruption. Time and time again I have been brought back to the poetry of Brooke, and this collection has become one of my treasures. Someone abandoned it for me to find, and yet it has become something I would run back into a burning house to retrieve.

These are brief poems about love and longing, doubts, serenity, nature and goodness, frivolity, victory and jealousy, and stirring wartime sonnets that express a noble idealism in the face of death. These latter are grouped under the author's title of "1914" and are his most well-known series, perhaps not only because of their perfection, but also because of their prophetic nature. Brooke lived a brief but eventful life (1887-1915). With the outbreak of World War I he was commissioned in England's Royal Navy, and took part in a disastrous expedition at Antwerp which ended in retreat. At the age of 27, he died from blood-poisoning on board a French hospital ship off the coast of Skyros, Greece. He was buried at night, by torchlight, in an olive grove about a mile inland. Reportedly, if you go there you will find a little wooden cross with just his name and the date of his birth and his death marked on it in black. The fifth poem (entitled The Soldier) in Brooke's sonnet sequence begins... "If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England."

Rating:
Summary: Essential!!
Review: This book changed my life. Brooke is one of the most gifted writers I have ever read, not to mention my favorite. You will be hard pressed to find anything closer to eloquent, raw emotion on paper. "Love," "Jealousy," and "Success" are particularly notable. I would be happy to discuss more with anyone: e-mail [e-mail]