For For readers who want Lewis's shorter poems, religious and secular; not the place to meet him first.
Should I read this?
For the general reader
3 of 5worth your time
For the researcher
3 of 5worth your time
Difficulty
2 of 5moderate
Walter Hooper's posthumous gathering of Lewis's shorter poems, many first printed in periodicals, some under pseudonyms; later absorbed into the Collected Poems.
How it proceeds
Philosophic3 of 5
Scriptural2 of 5
Experiential4 of 5
Sociological1 of 5
Historical1 of 5
Independent intensities, 0–5 — what the work is made of, not how good it is.
The first collection of Lewis's shorter poems, edited by Walter Hooper and published by Geoffrey Bles in London in 1964, the year after his death. Hooper gathered poems from periodicals, where many had appeared under pseudonyms or initials, and from manuscripts. The poems range from comic and satirical verse to religious and philosophical lyrics and meditations on myth and longing. The volume was later absorbed into The Collected Poems of C. S. Lewis (1994), which added Spirits in Bondage and other verse.
