Finding My Elegy: New and Selected Poems Hardcover – September 18, 2012

this one is a matter of taste. I hope you like it!

Poetry is not for everyone, but it is a chance to walk through someone else's mind, and see Life as they do. It's almost a meditation as you read it, because you focus on the words and the mental pictures they engender. Thoughtful, insightful reading from someone who has had a rich life, and shared it.

I like this one better than Late in The Days.

I have no information to pass along. The recipient is a sci-fi fan - has read all the other books by Ursula K. LeGuin, requested this on a Christmas list . .

Most of us know Ursala Le Guin from her science fiction, such as the classic  The Left Hand of Darkness . She's always had a deft twist of worldview and an admirable ability to communicate it, but it's her command of language, I think that explains why she's usually considered among the "literary" SF writers. Even people who like "serious fiction" (whatever that is) seem to like Le Guin, though my own history with her books has been spotty.Still, I admire her greatly for many things, not the least of which is a writing style full of bring-me-up-short imagery. That's why I was happy to choose her book of collected poems from my Amazon Vine selection, with 30 of her older poems and 90 new ones. I hadn't read any of her poetry before, so it was all new to me. I don't read poetry a LOT, anymore, but my first published work was a poem (when I was all of 13 years old) and I took poetry-writing in college with  Frank Bidart  as my teacher, so I'm not a poetry heathen.And... I like Le Guin's poetry. By the nature of any collection (from short stories to poetry) some work better than others, and poetry is so much a matter of "what speaks to me right this second" that it's fairly impossible to proclaim "goodness" for anyone else. Some poems made me shrug and turn the page, where others stopped me in my tracks. Several of the poems are on topics that become more meaningful as I get older: about aging, and living alone, and appreciating nature. Some are long; others, like "Sleeping with Cats," only a few lines long.I don't think any of these are particularly SFish, which you might be wondering about; rather some of the thoughts she expresses are the backstory behind what might turn into an SFish what-if. For example, from a poem called "The Merchant of Words:" What can I tell of what occurred before my birth, that foreign, sunrise land? I cannot know it, though my isle was once a part of it. I used to watch the long, bright caravans creep down the road from fabled mountain, out to the promontory of the morning where my city stood.It's like a story with poetic writing; or a poem with a story. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference, and I've no problem with that.So: Should you buy this? If you like Le Guin's fiction, and the reason you like it is her ability to draw a picture with words, then Yes: You'll like this. I'm less certain on "Who'd like this?" for other criteria, such as avid poetry-readers. I like Finding My Elegy, in a quiet, "read a few at a time" way. Maybe you will, too.

So Ursula K. Le Guin writes poetry. If you've heard of her at all, it's for her science fiction and fantasy, or just possibly for her occasional "mainstream" work. But she also writes poetry. Has been for fifty years, in fact. And here is the culmination of that half-century's work: a "new and selected" volume, split about evenly between those culled from six previous collections (and other incidental work) and those never before published. What's revealed thereby is not a great talent (Le Guin's poetry will, I think, never be more than a curiosity alongside her masterful fiction) or a great evolution in style or content (in 2011 she is much the same poet she was in 1960). The pleasures of FINDING MY ELEGY are slenderer than that, but no less real, as are those of the poems themselves.The saving grace of this poetry, what elevates it beyond the competent, well-meaning, and disposable, is Le Guin's interest in rhyme, rhythm, and other aspects of form. These are, as far as I know, still unpopular in contemporary poetry, but for the poet of moderate talent, capable of avoiding doggerel, they can be a great boon, creating a sense of focus and purpose that mediocre free verse lacks. Le Guin is particularly good at enjambing her verse so that rhymes contribute to the flow without becoming sing-songy; in some cases you won't even notice them. Even the free verse is more varied in structure than is sometimes the case, form following function. Le Guin undeniably knows how to organize a poem. It's in substance rather than style that her verse falls a little short.Themes and motifs recur throughout both old and new poems. Attempts, not particularly successful, to capture the power of a single moment in the natural world are common, as are variations on the idea that the world is too much with us, expressed with much less power than in Wordsworth's original formulation. The concerns of modern life are trivial, true meaning is found in contemplation of animals, plants, mountains. These are all fine notions, of course, but expressed in brief poems they tend too much toward the simplistic and sentimental. On that level, though, they're certainly charming, and if many of them fade from the mind shortly after reading, well, that's often the case with even the finest poets. Le Guin isn't one of those, but she doesn't need to be; to complain that she isn't Wordsworth is a little unfair. FINDING MY ELEGY is a perfectly serviceable collection, whether for curious readers of her fiction or for those interested in her political and aesthetic concerns.

Finding my Elegy: New and Selected Poems, by Ursula K. Le Guin, is an eclectic, large collection of 147 poems written across a 50 year span. Selected from LeGuin's earlier published volumes (from 1960-2005) and including new, previously unpublished poems written from 2006-2010. Older poems are grouped by the volume titles in which they were originally published, and newer poems are grouped as "Life Sciences" and by the themes in her writing: Socio Esthetics, Botany & Zoology, Meteorology & Geography, etc.Within the collection are poems of home, motherhood & marriage, of nature, birds & animals, of soldiers & war, of song & dance, the arts. Another theme running through them is the passage of time: experiences in history, a sense of the present and a glimpse of the future. Among my favorite poems in this vast collection are: Waking: 2 poems (43), Cactus Wren (75), Invocation (85), Dance Song (86), Futurology (92), Lieder Singer (112) and Writers (113).With a collection as wide and fruitful as this, readers will undoubtedly need ample time to let both the beauty & wisdom of these poems seep into their souls. Le Guin may be most well-known for her science fiction & fantasy novels, but it is clearly poetry that keeps her heart.

Most prose writers are mediocre poets, poets seldom write good prose.