This immortal play is an allegory: a tale which illustrates us on some superior truth, employing symbols. Basil is the king of Poland, who hides his son Sigmund (Freud?, just kidding)in a tower, for fear that an oracle may come true. Once, he takes him out to see what kind of man he is, and discovers Sigmund is arrogant and authoritarian. Then he puts him back in his cell and manages to convince him that everything was just a dream. After that, civil war begins, and Sigmund is out to fight, a totally different man from what he was.

"Life is a dream" is a play about the utter unreliability of our senses. Of course, we have to use them to figure out some reality in which we can live. But we have no idea of who we are and where we come from, much less what will happen after death. We also don't know what death is. It is also a case in favor of peace and solidarity. Why spend our brief and dream-like time on Earth being mean and dirty?: let's all be friendly and good, and this will be a good dream and not a nightmare.

Despite its philosophical subject, the play is quick-paced and funny. The plot to make Sigmund believe everything was a dream is hilarious, and it is easy to see why it's a classic. Read it.

Accessable modern poetry; depressing, surreal, with alot of sach-religious overtones.

It's telling of the miserable state and status of the Portuguese -- "a brilliance lacking luster" -- that only an enlightened few are privileged to know (posthumously) that Pessoa ranks among the greatest writers of recent centuries. (Yes.) Become one of the privileged few to enter Pessoa's universe, and make sure it's initially through the translations of Honig and Brown.

Do yourselves a favour and read the unforgettable poems of the century's least acknowledged, but greatest, poet.

did you find your duende

This is the one book which I believe all artists should read - I have the challenge of teaching my classmates to understand how to find Duende soon so I know this is a great resource.

Lorca's essay, "the Play and Theory of the Duende", should be required reading for artists in any field. A life-changing concept, rendered beautifully in poetic prose.

Sometimes, people have to read one of these 6 plays in Spanish class. It is very difficult to comprehend. This really helped me understand the story fully. The stories in here are very well translated, and I recommend this book to anyone who has to read one of the six plays in Spanish class.

This book is an excellent compilation of six plays translated by Edwin Honig and published between 1961 and 1993. In the translations there is a sense of the need to retain the poetic character of the plays while presenting them in a language easily understood by a modern audience. The plays included are: Secret Vengance for Secret Insult, Devotion to the Cross, The Mayor of Zalamea, The Phantom Lady, Life is a Dream, and The Crown of Absalom. All of the plays follow the theme of the Spanish Code of Honor and what psychological complexities it creates, particularly as the characters are torn by love versus the need to maintain one's honor. It is not hard to see that in our own culture there are traces of the patterns of thinking so brilliantly elaborated in these plays. The language is vivid and the action is propelled by the words, while the poetic moments give us insight into the thinking of the characters. While there are many wonderful moments to mention in each of the plays, overall we must be grateful to Honig for his bringing for our enjoyment some of the less common plays. To appreciate some of the skilfull contributions of Honig to this effect, one should compare a few phrases first in the Spanish and then in several translations:

At the beginning of the Mayor of Zalamea: SPANISH: ¡Cuerpo de Cristo con quien Desta suerte hace marchar De un lugar a otro lugar Sin dar un refresco!

HONIG:I say, damn his bloody hide for forcing us to march this way from town to town without a break!

FITZGERALD: Confound, say I, these forced marches from place to place, without halt or bait; what say you friends?

In the greatest psychological and philosophical play by Calderon: Life is a Dream:

SPANISH:¡Ay mísero de mí! ¡Ay infelice! Apurar, cielos, pretendo, ya que me tratáis asi, qué delito cometí contra vosotros naciendo aunque si nací, ya entiendo qué delito he cometido: bastante causa ha tenido vuestra justicia y rigor, pues el delito mayor del hombre es haber nacido.

HONIG:Heavens above, I cry to you, in misery and wretchedness, what crime against you did I commit by being born, to deserve this treatment from you? - although I understand my being born is crime enough, and warrants your sternest judgement, since the greatest sin of man is his being born at all.

Coleford:Oh, wretched me! Alas, unhappy man! I strive, oh Heav'n, since I am treated so, To find out what my crime against thee was In being born; although in being born I understand just what my crime has been. Thy judgement harsh has had just origin: To have been born is mankind's greatest sin.

I know that sometimes is difficult to read in other language, but I guarantee that reading and understanding Miguel Hernandez poems is well worthy.

This would have been an excellent survey of American poets thirty years ago. But now it's a little bit dated. First, it does not contain any American poets since then. Second, it seems to have been written before the revolution in recent decades which brought some previously ignored poets of high caliber, but not white male enough to fame. For instance, Langston Hughes is clearly one of America's major poets, who had been around for decades before this book was published, but it includes nothing about him. The work that is included is clearly excellent, but there are plenty of better anthologies available now.

"The Mentor Book of Major American Poets," edited by Oscar Williams and Edwin Honig, brings together generous selections from the work of 20 writers: Edward Taylor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Stephen Crane, Robert Frost, Vachel Lindsay, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, John Crowe Ransom, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Archibald MacLeish, E.E. Cummings, Hart Crane, and W.H. Auden. These authors span the 17th to 20th centuries (the youngest was born in 1907). Many styles, forms, and themes are contained within this rich anthology.

That having been said, I must note that the book has a copyright date of 1962, and it really shows its age. It's hard to imagine someone compiling an anthology of major american poets (to 1962) today and making the omissions that Williams and Honig did: Anne Bradstreet, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, and many others.

Despite its deficiencies, this is a wonderful collection that contains a wealth of memorable pieces. A few of my favorites: Taylor's rapturous "Stupendous Love!"; Emerson's "The Snowstorm," which celebrates the "frolic architecture of the snow"; Poe's masterwork "The Raven"; Whitman's ecstatic, all-embracing "Song of Myself"; a marvelous selection of Dickinson's quirky genius; Robinson's tragic "Richard Cory"; S. Crane's haunting short poems; Lindsay's lush, musical (and very politically incorrect!) "The Congo"; Cummings' amazing sonnet beginning "when serpents bargain for the right to squirm"; and much more.

I recommend this book for anyone interested in American poetry, but caution that, because of its dated nature, it needs to be supplemented.