Poets in a Landscape

by Gilbert Highet

Book Overview

Gilbert Highet was a legendary teacher at Columbia University, admired both for his scholarship and his charisma as a lecturer. Poets in a Landscape is his delightful exploration of Latin literature... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1590173384
• ISBN13: 9781590173381
• Release Date: March 2010
• Publisher: New York Review of Books
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Helpful Hint on book's photos.

Reviewer # 3 mentions the lack of photographs in some editions. I own the Akadine Press, 1996 edition (see # 2 under "all editions") and can verify that this edition does include the black and white photos of landscapes, buildings, etc. - 48 photos total.

Great way to learn about Latin poets

Short (25-40 page) biographies mixed in with photographs, poems and reflections on the parts of Italy the poets are most associated. Highet makes both the poets and poems come alive and made me want to book my tickets to Italy ASAP. Great book.

An Encomium

Makes me appreciate even more why all of those years of conjugating irregular verbs were worthwhile as was that traipsing around the Mediterrarean countryside.

Fine introduction to the Roman poets

Engrossing account of author's visits to various sites around Italy connected with the poems of the greatest poets of ancient Rome: Virgil, Horace, Catullus, Propertius, Ovid, Juvenal and Tibullus. Highet visited the sites before Italy became swamped by modern tourism; his writing and translations of the best of the bests' poetry is extremely absorbing, often evocative, and always helpful to understanding what the poets were trying to say. This is a great book to read alongside your Penguin or Oxford classics and/or while reading/teaching yourself Latin, and would make a great companion on a trip to Italy. The only sad thing about this otherwise handsome Prion edition is it does not include the many fine black and white photographs included in most older editions since the book was published in 1957.