Poems That Make Grown Men Cry

July 1, 2014

Edited by the father-son team Anthony and Ben Holden, this volume collects the favorite tear-inducing poems of male celebrities--actors, writers, filmmakers, etc. The old familiars are all here, including Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz," for instance, and Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night." And these are solid poems, no doubt, as are many others (by John Keats, Christina Rossetti, Thomas Hardy, etc.) already deep inside the canon. The problem with a book like this is stated quite nicely by Patrick Marber who, when approached by the Holdens to contribute a poem, said "I'm not going to share it with anyone else!" VERDICT The poems that make us cry are the poems that make us cry. There's something sweet in that secret, a truth made clearest by the explanations that precede each poem, the "why I chose it," which only serve to further solidify the truth that what is for one man a sadness could be for another a gross sentimentality.--Stephen Morrow, Hilliard, OH

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2014
Amnesty International, sponsor of this anthology of poems chosen by men prominent in various fields, explains its involvement by noting that prisoners of conscience are often poets. Indeed, one of those poet-prisoners, the Malawian Jack Mapanje, whom Amnesty International helped, is a contributor here. Unusually, he says that his selection, Brecht's The Burning of the Books, makes him cry with laughter Don't ask me why. The other contributors report soberer tears, internal as well as overt, in reaction to the poems they selected, works that powerfully protest death or poignantly acknowledge it; that embrace despair or, with surprise, discover hope; that mourn personal loss or feel the pangs of the constant, general losses that make up all existence; that stand in awe of love or of the possibility that love is not enough. Some may consider it significant that there is not a trace of religious consolation throughout the book; Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach isn't among the selections, yet its spirit is everywhere. The selections are overwhelmingly Anglophone and twentieth-century; the selectors, mostly writers, filmmakers, and actors.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)