{"id":35754,"date":"2026-10-08T12:46:19","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T17:46:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=35754"},"modified":"2026-10-06T11:46:45","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T16:46:45","slug":"book-report-poems-by-mary-baker-eddy-1918","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/08\/book-report-poems-by-mary-baker-eddy-1918\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: Poems<\/em> by Mary Baker Eddy (1918)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BookWell, I found this book on my stacks four years later<\/a>; I said when I bought this book with a couple others:<\/p>\n

At any rate, it should give me a couple of handy collections of poetry to read out back in the evening. If I can find them again easily once I move them off of my desk and into the stacks of the Nogglestead library, where books just disappear.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, one of the other two books was Milk and Honey<\/a><\/em>, which I read later that year. The other was 100 Bill Harvey Poems<\/em> which I held in my very hand a couple of days ago when trying to pick a collection of poems to read while watching a football game.<\/p>\n

I’d brought this book down from my bedroom reading chair because I’d been working on it for a while, but it was not really good browsing material. For one, it’s a loving edition of poems published posthumously by the founder of the Christian Science movement. This book is a former library edition, but its stamps are illegible and its checkout pocket has been removed; one presumes it was in a Christian Science Reading Room (I think there’s still one in Springfield; I’ll have to look to see if it’s still there when I go down Glenstone again). But it’s got gilded pages and drop capitals on each poem, and they’re…. Well, they’re mid-18th century poems harkening back to older forms. She’s imitating older styles, and she uses “ye” incorrectly.<\/p>\n

I mean, it’s a cut above most of the 20th century grandmother poetry that I read and surely above Milk and Honey<\/em> because of its decent rhythm and poetic sensibility. But I won’t remember anything of it once I put this book on the shelf. I didn’t flag anything, and I don’t remember any lines making me think they were especially well done. I mean, Riley and Dunbar are almost contemporaneous, and their vernacular poems are fun and their serious poems are markedly better.<\/p>\n

Ah, well. In 100 years, nobody will be reading my poetry from 1990, so who am I to judge?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, I found this book on my stacks four years later; I said when I bought this book with a couple others: At any rate, it should give me a couple of handy collections of poetry to read out back in the evening. If I can find them again easily once I move them off […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35754"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35755,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35754\/revisions\/35755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}