Product Description

The Scottish poet Robert Burns has been idolised and eulogised. He has been sainted, painted, tarted up and toasted. He is famous as the author of "Auld Lang Syne", and he has long since become the patron saint of the heart-sore and the hung-over. But what about the poems? Beneath the cult of Burns' "Nights" and patriotic yawps, there is the work itself, among the purest and most truthful created in any age.This is a Burns collection like no other: a reader's edition, made for the pleasure of reading. Novelist and Scottish essayist Andrew O'Hagan comes into company with the poet who has mattered most to him in his writing life. He selects the poems for the reader, and converses with the work, offering fragments and distilled commentary of his own.The effect is explosive, giving us Robert Burns at his very best - a political Burns, a poet who can name hypocrisy and intolerance, and point directly to the human heart.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #141057 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-24
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 222 pages

Review
'People who find it hard to get into Robert Burns have the answer to their prayers with this book. Here are The Greatest Poems presented in a way that Burns himself would have enjoyed -- letting the poems chime and rhyme with the debates that surround us in the world today. Somebody clever once said that poetry helps you to live your life, and here is Burns at his most helpful, in conversation with a Scottish writer who loves him, Andrew O'Hagan. I think the book will change a lot of people's attitude to poetry.' Ewan McGregor'The way Burns sounded, his choice of words, his rhymes and metaphors, all that collapsed the distance I expected to feel between myself and the schoolbook poetry I encountered first at Anahorish ElementarySchool. He did not fail the Muse or us or himself as one of poetry's chosen instruments.' Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney
He did not fail the Muse or us or himself as one of poetry's
chosen instruments.

The Good Book Guide
'O'Hagan...demonstrate[s] Burns' sure grasp of the human heart.'

Customer Reviews

A Poet for All Seasons
As a child growing up in Canada I read Robert Burns in an edition whose pages were thick with glosses, which, while they managed to translate what was for me a new language, also managed to obscure the poetry of it all. Here, in Canongate's elegant new edition of Burns' work, Andrew O'Hagan expels all the clutter from the page and lets the language stand on its own: luminous and lusty, brawny and graceful. The insightful introductions to the poems weave the personal with the scholarly, the modern world with the world of Burns, and poetry with life. And for all of us language-lovers there is a delicious glossary at the back of the book, full of words like aizle (ember), skellpie-limmer (a hussy), and thraw (twist).

Like a box of chocolates...
I picked up this beautifully-produced book with a Scottish friend in mind, and we both liked the way Andrew O'Hagan links the greatest Burns poems with contemporary news / talking-head quotes and personal stories. It makes you realise how roving and exotic for the times Burns' life was. But the poems also speak for themselves, and the book introduced me to a few I'd overlooked before. Great idea to set up the two writers!

Ach aye, pal!
With Burns night tomorrow, the Lazarou household is preparing the haggis, neeps and tatties and practicing our Burns apace. My daughter handed me a copy of this wonderful book. I was vaguely aware of Andrew O Hagan before I opened it but was really taken aback by just how insightful and personal his reflections are. It's one for the Burns specialists and ex-pat enthusiasts alike!