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cameronbradley's review against another edition
4.0
Hemingway wasn't known for his poetry, but he published a few in his youth and continued to write them from time to time until his death. Many of the poems contained here are, well, "ribald" I suppose is the best word, but there are a few gems floating around as well, in particular "Paris 1922, Auteiul Auteiul", which is my personal favorite and an early example of the sparse language Hemingway would later employ in his novels. Here is a portion of it:
If you're a Hemingway junkie like me, by all means pick up Complete Poems. It's worth reading, if not for the quality of the poems, then at least to witness the early evolution of Hemingway's craft.
I have seen the favourite crash into the Bulfinch and come down in a heap kicking; while the rest of the field swooped over the jump; the white rings jointing up their stretcher and the crowd raced across the pelouze to see the horses come into the stretch.
I have see Peggy Joyce at 2 a.m. in a Dancing in the Rue Caumartin quarrelling with the shellac haired young Chilean (who had manicured fingernails blew a puff of cigarette smoke into her face, wrote something in a note book) and shot himself at 3.30 the same morning.
If you're a Hemingway junkie like me, by all means pick up Complete Poems. It's worth reading, if not for the quality of the poems, then at least to witness the early evolution of Hemingway's craft.
jfl's review against another edition
4.0
4 stars—certainly not for the overall quality of the poetry but rather for the importance of the volume. It is currently the most complete, annotated collection of Hemingway’s poetic output. And the introduction by the editor, Nicholas Gerogiannis, is a well-considered evaluation of the totality of Hemingway’s poetry.
The volume was first published in 1979. The revised edition, published in 1992, includes an additional poem plus an Afterword that adds some new observations about Hemingway as a poet as well as thoughts about the additional poem.
Hemingway wrote the bulk of his poetry between 1918 and 1925. The overall quality is uneven, more revealing of his personality than of his literary creativity.
The volume was first published in 1979. The revised edition, published in 1992, includes an additional poem plus an Afterword that adds some new observations about Hemingway as a poet as well as thoughts about the additional poem.
Hemingway wrote the bulk of his poetry between 1918 and 1925. The overall quality is uneven, more revealing of his personality than of his literary creativity.
jakekilroy's review against another edition
3.0
Hemingway's one hell of a novelist, but I can't say he's one hell of a poet. There's poetry in and to his works of fiction. They're beautiful, just gorgeous tales of love and loneliness. His complete collection of poems starts off with dopey rhymes, like they were for kids sports magazines at the time. It's hard to believe the same man who barreled through life would rhyme so many obvious words. But a decade or two after the Great War settled in him, sometime around the second one that conquered the world's attention, he really had something devastating to say. His war poems are heartbreaking and inspiring. Some of them rile me up, and some of them make me shutter. He uses phrases like "fuck-all" and "black-ass," so he does finally come around to being ahead of his time. But there's just too many moments of, "Come on, Hemingway." Shit, though, when he writes a good poem, it's seriously flooring. It ruptures my understanding of poetry. There's just too few in the pages.
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