Product Description

In a gloriously exuberant anthology, Wendy Cope sets out to prove that misery doesn't have all the best lines. What makes us happy? In her introduction the editor says of the subject-matter of these poems: 'A lot of them are about love - of lovers, spouses, children. There are also poems about places, the beauty of the natural world and the changing seasons, about company and solitude, about music, books, food and drink, and the pleasure of taking a shower. And there are some religious poems.' Among the more surprising items are the Chinese Po Chu-l on the advantages of baldness, the eighteenth-century John Dyer on the kindly behaviour of his ox, and an unusually cheerful Thomas Hardy enjoying the sight of seven women laughing as they stagger, arm in arm, down an icy hill, Catullus, Chaucer, Clare, Dickinson, Betjeman and Larkin are among the contributors who help to demonstrate that people who believe that 'happiness writes white' have got it wrong.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20886 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10-08
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 154 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Most poets agree that happiness is harder to put into words than sorrow; while sadness lends gravitas, joy can risk sentimentality and mawkishness. Seeking to prove this need not be the case, popular poet Wendy Cope assembled poems over 10 years that made her smile, putting a "H" in the margin next to them. The result is Heaven on Earth: 101 Happy Poems, a wonderfully disparate collection that is guaranteed to chase away the blues. While love is a common theme, Cope allows it to roam free and gloriously wild. There is the unrivalled 17th century "To My Dear and Loving Husband" by Anne Bradstreet, as well as the self-loving "Poems of Solitary Delights" by Tachibena Akemi:

What a delight it is
When a guest you cannot stand
Arrives, then says to you
'I'm afraid I can't stay long....

Nina Cassian's "Intimacy" will convince you that a cuppa of "pure, burning amber" is all you need. There is nervy anticipation of the gay lover in Thom Gunn and Walt Whitman's entries:

We savour the approaching delight
of things we know yet are fresh always.
Sweet things. Sweet Things.

The daily routine of conjugality is also covered, like Sainsburys and cheese and onion rolls, made divine by UA Fanthorpe in "7301"--the number of days she's counted with her lover. While you might expect a happy poem from Carol Ann Duffy, who writes about her sleeping daughter, it's a surprise to discover an exuberant Sylvia Plath in "You're", written for her baby:

Jumpy as a Mexican bean.
Right, like a well-done sum.
A clean slate, with your own face on.

There's plenty of non-filial pleasure in drunkenness, rotundity, dancing, music, contemplation and the wonder of rain too. Les Murray excels in his love poem to his "Shower": "this good blast of trance / arriving as shock...". Eighth-century poet, Po Chui-i learns to celebrate his baldness, while Elaine Feinstein finds "Getting Older" much less terrifying than she imagined. This is a volume that is, as Larkin says in "For Sidney Bechet", "an enormous yes ... scattering long-haired grief and scored pity". It "bashes out praises", to as Czeslaw Milosz argues, "glorify things just because they are". Cherry Smyth

About the Author
Wendy Cope was born in Erith, Kent Her most recent collection of poems, If I Don't Know, was published this year. In 1987 she received a Cholmondeley Award for poetry, and in 1995 the American Academy of Arts and Letters Michael Braude Award for light verse.

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Customer Reviews

Happy poems are no laughing matter
I love this anthology! It does what it says on the tin; it's a collection of poems about happy things: moments, memories and moods mostly. Surprisingly, there's very few comic poems. Instead, it's a rather moving collection, mostly focussed on "kissing the joy as it flies", and there's almost a pleasant ache induced by sharing some of these moments.

The choice of poets is wide ranging and goes from Chaucer to Derek Walcott. Some of the entries are predictable and easily found elswhere (eg "sumer is icumen in" and "Jenny Kiss'd Me"), but it's always comforting to read these old favourites again. There was enough that was new to me in here to merit the purchase. Look out for "Red Boots On" by Kit Wright, "Faure's Second Piano Quartet" by James Schuyler and "Ice on the Highway" by Thomas Hardy, which I thought were delightful poems that are not found in every anthology.

Slightly self-indulgent and more contemplative than happy
Wendy Cope's own poems are are an endless source of comfort and laughter, so she is well qualified to choose happy poems. But her '101 Happy Poems' make up an uneven and somewhat unimaginative selection. Though her own work is so fresh and modern, Cope brings in a surprising number of old stalwarts - My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is, Glory be to God for Dappled Things - although there are also lesser-known voices. The pleasures of eating, drinking, slipping on the ice, even of going bald are covered. Yet many of the poems are not strikingly happy. Cope's definition of 'happy' is blurred, and strays into 'contemplative' - for instance, Robert Frost's Mowing, Wordsworth's Daffodils or Keat's On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer. If you want to be re-acquainted with these, then buy this anthology. The cover, by the way, is awful. Surely Faber can do better than to ape the Harper Collins '101 poems' series which are much more daring and enjoyable.

Great poems
A lovely collection, you can return to it day after day and carry on enjoying them ater multiple readings.