Narrative Poems

This would be well worth twice the price if only for the first poem, Dymer. I have loved Lewis's prose since I was a youth, but this was my first introduction to the author as poet. If you love narrative poetry, Beowulf, Paradise Lost, paradise regained, The Song Of Roland, I believe you will love these too. If you're interested in poetry these are somewhat shorter reads than the afore mentioned epics and would make a great jumping off place.

Enjoyable read! At times beautiful, poignant, thought-provoking and even comical-- all that we can expect from Our Lewis favorites. I really enjoyed the introduction about each of the poems. It really added to my understanding and appreciation not just of these poems but of Lewis's strengths and passions in general, which sheds light on his other, more familiar works as well. I thoroughly enjoyed reading these poems.

If you are trying to read all C S Lewis works, this book is a great, relatively inexpensive choice. If you are building a long-term collection, know this paper is not designed for that purpose.

Lots of poems.

Very nice edition.

Narrative poems are distinguished because of their aim to tell a story, rather than share a few thoughts, feelings, or experiences like shorter poetry does. For my money, the best narrative poet is Longfellow, with great tales like Hiawatha, The Courtship of Miles Standish, or Evangeline; Lewis wrote four narrative poems, only one of which reached publication during his lifetime: Dymer. Dymer is long and complicated and only partially successful as a good story. Walter Hooper, who edited this volume, feels that The Queen of the Drum was Lewis's best of the four poems, while I thought it the least interesting. The two best poems of this book are Launcelot and The Nameless Isle (and not just because they - at 9 and 21 pages respectively - are by far the shortest ones in the book.) I loved the imagery Lewis invoked with these two poems, the nostalgia and almost mystical pull of these stories. If you love narrative poetry, buy this book. If you don't like narrative poetry, this book won't change your tastes.

Badly printed (text is way too small) but otherwise rather wonderful reading.