The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien

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The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien
The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien (vol 1 cover).jpg
Cover of Volume I
Editors Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond
Authors J. R. R. Tolkien
LanguageEnglish
Publisher HarperCollins, William Morrow
Publication date
12 September 2024 (UK)
17 September 2024 (US)
Pages1620
ISBN 978-0063422711

The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien is a 2024 book of poetry of the English philologist, poet, and author J. R. R. Tolkien, edited by Tolkien scholars, wife and husband Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond. Its three volumes contain some 900 versions of 195 poems, among them around 70 previously unpublished.

Contents

Reviewers have echoed the editors' remark that readers too easily skip over the poems, finding them a distraction, when actually the poems contribute substantially and in multiple ways to the reader's understanding of character and mood. Holly Ordway finds the poems valuable, delightful, and moving. John R. Holmes, while enjoying many philological details, objects to the substantial amount of repetition in the book with overlapping drafts and lengthy scholarly presentation. Christian Kriticos further notes the habit of the Tolkien Estate to release snippets of new material alongside substantial amounts that had already been published.

Background

In 2016, Christopher Tolkien, who had edited his father's prose manuscripts, invited two Tolkien scholars, wife and husband Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond, to work with his father's poetry. Though J. R. R. Tolkien wrote poems starting from childhood, his poetry was less successful than the prose in his books The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (which both contained poems embedded in the text). The first poem in the collection is from 1910, addressed to Tolkien's future wife Edith Bratt. Christopher Tolkien shared drafts of poetry, and received several edited poems as an outline of the suggested collection. He died in 2020; the book was approved for publication by HarperCollins and by the Tolkien Estate trustees. Besides previously shared drafts, editors worked with Tolkien's manuscripts from the Bodleian Library of Oxford, Marquette University, and at the University of Leeds. [1]

Contents

Tolkien's Collected Poems is organised chronologically, with complete sets of drafts, but only samples of several works, including some still unpublished like Tolkien's verse translation of part of Beowulf. Tolkien's Collected Poems.svg
Tolkien's Collected Poems is organised chronologically, with complete sets of drafts, but only samples of several works, including some still unpublished like Tolkien's verse translation of part of Beowulf .

The editors note that the book is the "collected poems", not "complete poems" of Tolkien. Three volumes contain more than 1500 pages, and the editors decided not to include all of around hundred poems from better known The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but only a selection. Long poems that were published separately are included as excerpts ( The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún , The Fall of Arthur , and The Lays of Beleriand ), as well as his poetic translations of Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight . Some poems that were written in other languages than English are not included, though the collection contain several poems in Old and Middle English, Latin, Gothic, Quenya, and Sindarin. All poems from the 1936 collection, Songs for the Philologists , are included. [1] Poems are shown in different versions, gathered from Tolkien's manuscripts, and have commentaries by the editors. The collection is structured chronologically. [2]

The book contains 195 entries; 73 of them were previously unpublished. Many poems appear in multiple versions, showing their evolution; one poem has 22 different versions. Overall, there are almost 700 poem versions in the volumes. [3]

The appendices contain further poems, namely short limericks and clerihews; Latin adages; the Old English Bealuwérig; and Tolkien's poem lists and word lists. There is a glossary, a bibliography, and an index. The book is illustrated with a full-colour frontispiece, and six monochrome plates.

Reception

Raising the poems' profile

The Christian commentator and Tolkien scholar Holly Ordway echoes the editors' comment that "Many who enjoy [Tolkien's] stories of Middle-earth pass over their poems very quickly or avoid them altogether, either in haste to get on with the prose narrative or because they dislike poetry in general, or think they do. It is their loss." [4] She notes that the short 1962 collection The Adventures of Tom Bombadil was the only earlier stand-alone volume of Tolkien's verse, and that the linking of his verse with a Middle-earth character "may have made it less likely for readers to consider his poetry on its own merits." [4] The Collected Poems is in her view "an astonishment of riches", most of the poems "brand new" even to scholars like herself. [4] She finds it "easy to dip in and read just the poems, if one wishes," and describes the 55-page introduction in Volume 1 "highly informative". [4]

Quality of the poetry

Ordway writes that the publication is a major literary event, its poems "moving, delightful, and compelling in themselves, and also valuable for insight into Tolkien's personal and creative growth." [4] The collection shows that despite all the scholarship devoted to Tolkien, "his genius has not yet been fully explored". [4]

Reviewing the work for Los Angeles Review of Books , Christian Kriticos writes that beside the impatient readers noted by the editors, others "come to realize that the poems are the heart of the novel." [5] Among their functions are showing the character of each race of Middle-earth beings; lending depth with "mysterious names and places"; and indicating hidden traits of the protagonists. [5] Kriticos finds the poems' diversity "quite astonishing", their tone ranging from "ponderously serious to the excessively childish". [5] He comments that this is matched by the range of verse forms that Tolkien employs, from medieval octosyllabic couplets and Longfellow's trochaic tetrameters to Gilbert and Sullivan's "Modern Major-General's Song" in his poem "Errantry". [5] He writes that poems like "Scatha the Worm" (a dragon) "must be acknowledged as a rare and valuable treasure." [5] Kriticos concludes that while the editors note that Tolkien's poetry has been criticised, and they explicitly "make no claim to greatness for Tolkien as a poet", the world is, all the same, interested in his poems. He states that since Tolkien did write The Lord of the Rings, that context colours the meaning of his poetry: like all artistic works, they do not exist in isolation. The poems offer fresh insight into the man, even if, like the "godlike figures of his legendarium", his creative genius cannot be fully comprehended. [5]

Dalya Alberge, for The Observer , notes how Tolkien's war poems are "metaphorical works that are concerned with life, loss, faith and friendship rather than trenches and battles." [6] She notes that Scull was specially touched by "The Empty Chapel", about a soldier who hears drums and marching boots. She comments, too, on oddities like "Monday Morning" about the perils of getting up and skidding on the soap; or Bealuwérig, its title an Old English echo of Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky". She concludes with the editors' view that the poems are "integral to the stories", "help to drive their plots and contribute to character and mood." [6]

Tolkien's work, including his poetry, has been said to embody a dynamic of disenchantment and re-enchantment. Painting Lena dances with the knight, John Bauer, 1915 Lena och riddaren dansa (Lena dances with the knight) by John Bauer 1915.jpg
Tolkien's work, including his poetry, has been said to embody a dynamic of disenchantment and re-enchantment. Painting Lena dances with the knight, John Bauer, 1915

The Conversation writes that the poetry is part of the Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger's [8] dynamic or dialectic of disenchantment, as seen in "The Sea-Bell", combined with and opposed by re-enchantment, as seen in "the elven-realm of Lothlórien". [7] [7]

The Tolkien Collector's Guide states that the three volumes are "packed full of new material and brilliant commentary." The review's four pseudonymous editors each recommend a couple of their favourite poems in the collection, including "#69 Iúmonna Gold Galdre Bewunden - The Hoard", "Appendix IV. Word Lists" (literally, words and phrases in literature that Tolkien specially liked), "#90 Pearl" (the medieval poem that he translated), and "#185 The Complaint of Mîm the Dwarf". [9]

Tolkien's biographer John Garth writes in The Times Literary Supplement that, as The Silmarillion 's creation myth indicates, the world of Middle-earth is shaped by "heavenly music"; his fiction is shaped both by his moral values and by "the music of language". [10] Garth writes that this musicality, and use of older verse forms, allowed Tolkien "at his inventive best" to write poetry "as if for an intricate, delightful dance." [10] Viewing the question of how Tolkien could achieve this from the point of view of biography, Garth notes that he read classical poetry by Virgil and Homer when at school, and was made to translate poetry from both Latin and Greek. He was attracted to writing poetry by its technical difficulty, which suited "his perfectionism ... [and] his ear for sound." [10] Further, even his earliest poetry was "written to enchant". [10]

Readership

Paolo Pizzimento, reviewing the book for the Associazione Italiana Studi Tolkieniani, wrote that it had long been awaited by scholars and Tolkien fans. It was however, in his view, neither a normal poetry collection consisting solely of finished texts, intended for the general public; nor exactly a critical edition, seeking to define the original or best form of the author's works, intended for scholars. Instead, it was an odd hybrid, making it hard to see what the book's intended readership might be. In addition, Pizzimento writes, the handling of multiple versions was distinctly repetitive. It would in his view have been better to reduce the repetition and to have devoted more of the available space to Tolkien's longer poems. [11]

Presentation

John R. Holmes, in Journal of Tolkien Research , summarises his 40-page review, which even has a section on the glossary, by concluding that the book "is not reader-friendly." [12] Among his reasons is the fact that the first lines of the poems are not indexed, "nor is there a separate first-line index, which used to be standard in poetry collections, and is sorely missed." [12] He sees that as one of many instances of a poor "editorial philosophy". [12] Another reason is the way each of the entries is labelled: instead of having a heading at the top of every two-page spread like 'The Horns of Ylmir (1912–1917)', there's just 'Item 13', in his view hardly helpful for navigation. [12]

Holmes writes that "the text is just too indiscriminate. It sprawls." [12] Holmes comments that more efficient methods for dealing with multiple versions are well known to editors of everything from Shakespeare to William Blake's poetry, for instance. He comments that "even as the Baggins side of the reviewer complains about the needless multiplication of texts, the Tookish side rejoices at the access to variants (which, of course, a more streamlined text would still give us)." [12] Holmes is, in short, fascinated by the many philological details and insights into Tolkien's mind that the text provides, and infuriated by the cluttered, repetitive presentation of the mass of drafts. [12] Henry Oliver in Prospect comments that a poem like "Moonshine", "hardly Tolkien's best work", [13] takes up five pages with three versions and scholarly notes, making for an unrewarding read. Far better, in Oliver's view, is the treatment of "For W.H.A." (the poet W. H. Auden) which is covered in three pages "with a translation and brisk note" and no repetition. [13]

Holmes wonders, too, at the method of selection among many comparable items: The Hobbit is represented by only 8 out of 24 poems that it contains, and he wonders why it should have been necessary to omit any of them, and why the chosen poems are described so imprecisely, rather than analysed in terms of the placement of stresses and Tolkien's willingness in a poem like Chip the Glasses and Crack the Plates! to write "counter to the iambic 'norm' of English verse". [12]

Kriticos objects to the way that the Tolkien Estate "recycles" Tolkien's published writings, releasing "small snippets of new material", padded out with previously-released content. [5] Cooper agrees, remarking the productivity of the Tolkien industry, with a steady stream of reissues and reframings "of already-published work". [2] In his view, no book review is needed, given the many years of scholarly attention, as the poems are certainly part of the Tolkien canon even if they were not of "such interest and truly splendid quality." Cooper therefore reviews the editor's choices, not the poems. He agrees with their decision to do their best to use a chronological order, despite the impossibility of dating some of the work. He praises the "exceptional and extensive" introduction, [2] and finds the textual apparatus "as thorough as could be wished", and up to Christopher Tolkien's editorial standards. [2] He admires, too, the bibliography which should, he hopes, support Tolkien scholars in studying "Tolkien's poetics." [2] He has praise, too, for the production quality of the books and their bindings. [2]

Impact

The Tolkien scholar Sara Brown has launched a lecture/discussion course "The Poetic Corpus of J.R.R. Tolkien: Tolkien's Collected Poems (The Years 1910–1967 in Three Volumes)" for January 2025 at Signum University. [14]

Related Research Articles

<i>The History of Middle-earth</i> Book series on Tolkiens legendarium edited by Christopher Tolkien

The History of Middle-earth is a 12-volume series of books published between 1983 and 1996 by George Allen & Unwin in the UK and by Houghton Mifflin in the US. They collect and analyse much of J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, compiled and edited by his son Christopher Tolkien. The series shows the development over time of Tolkien's conception of Middle-earth as a fictional place with its own peoples, languages, and history, from his earliest notions of "a mythology for England" through to the development of the stories that make up The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings. It is not a "history of Middle-earth" in the sense of being a chronicle of events in Middle-earth written from an in-universe perspective; it is instead an out-of-universe history of Tolkien's creative process. In 2000, the twelve volumes were republished in three limited edition omnibus volumes.

<i>The Adventures of Tom Bombadil</i> 1962 poetry collection by J. R. R. Tolkien

The Adventures of Tom Bombadil is a 1962 collection of poetry by J. R. R. Tolkien. The book contains 16 poems, two of which feature Tom Bombadil, a character encountered by Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings. The rest of the poems are an assortment of bestiary verse and fairy tale rhyme. Three of the poems appear in The Lord of the Rings as well. The book is part of Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium.

<i>The Road Goes Ever On</i> 1967 song cycle and book

The Road Goes Ever On is a song cycle first published in 1967 as a book of sheet music and as an audio recording. The music was written by Donald Swann, and the words are taken from poems in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth writings, especially The Lord of the Rings. The title of the song cycle is taken from "The Road Goes Ever On", the first song in the collection. The songs are designed to fit together when played in sequence. The ninth song "Lúthien Tinúviel" was added in an appendix rather than in the main sequence. Swann performed the cycle for Tolkien, who approved of the music except for the Quenya song "Namárië"; he suggested it should be in the style of a Gregorian chant, which he hummed; Swann used that melody for the song.

<i>J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator</i> Book by Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull

J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator is a collection of paintings and drawings by J. R. R. Tolkien for his stories, published posthumously in 1995. The book was edited by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull. It won the 1996 Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies. The nature and importance of Tolkien's artwork is discussed.

"Errantry" is a three-page poem by J.R.R. Tolkien, first published in The Oxford Magazine in 1933. It was included in revised and extended form in Tolkien's 1962 collection of short poems, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. Donald Swann set the poem to music in his 1967 song cycle, The Road Goes Ever On.

<i>The Tolkien Reader</i> 1966 anthology of works by J. R. R. Tolkien

The Tolkien Reader is an anthology of works by J. R. R. Tolkien. It includes a variety of short stories, poems, a play and some non-fiction. It compiles material previously published as three separate shorter books, together with one additional piece and introductory material. It was published in 1966 by Ballantine Books in the USA.

Wayne Gordon Hammond is an American scholar known for his research and writings on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. Together with his wife Christina Scull, a fellow Tolkien scholar, they have jointly won Mythopoeic Scholarship Awards for Inklings Studies five times.

Christina Scull is a British researcher and writer best known for her books about the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, in collaboration with her husband Wayne G. Hammond who is also a Tolkien scholar. They have jointly won Mythopoeic Scholarship Awards for Inklings Studies five times.

<i>Tolkiens Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth</i> 2000 collection of scholarly essays edited by Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter

Tolkien's Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth is a collection of scholarly essays edited by Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter on the 12 volumes of The History of Middle-earth, relating to J. R. R. Tolkien's fiction and compiled and edited by his son, Christopher. It was published by Greenwood Press in 2000. That series comprises a substantial part of "Tolkien's legendarium", the body of Tolkien's mythopoeic writing that forms the background to his The Lord of the Rings and which Christopher Tolkien summarized in his construction of The Silmarillion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. R. R. Tolkien bibliography</span>

This is a list of all the published works of the English writer and philologist J. R. R. Tolkien. Tolkien's works were published before and after his death.

<i>The Lord of the Rings: A Readers Companion</i>

The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion (2005) is a nonfiction book by the scholars Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull. It is an annotated reference to J. R. R. Tolkien's heroic romance, The Lord of the Rings.

<i>The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide</i> 2006 book of Tolkien scholarship

The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide is a 2006 reference book by the husband and wife team of Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond. It provides a detailed chronology of Tolkien's life in volume 1, and a reader's guide in volume 2. The second edition in 2017 revised and extended the work, the reader's guide being divided into two volumes.

<i>The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien</i> Non-fiction book

The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien is a selection of the philologist and fantasy author J. R. R. Tolkien's letters. It was published in 1981, edited by Tolkien's biographer Humphrey Carpenter, who was assisted by Christopher Tolkien. The selection, from a large mass of materials, contains 354 letters. These were written between October 1914, when Tolkien was an undergraduate at Oxford, and 29 August 1973, four days before his death. The letters are of interest both for what they show of Tolkien's life and for his interpretations of his Middle-earth writings.

<i>Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth</i> Book by Catherine Mcilwaine

Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth is a 2018 art book exploring images of the artwork, illustrations, maps, letters and manuscripts of J. R. R. Tolkien. The book was written by Catherine McIlwaine, Tolkien archivist at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It was timed to coincide with an exhibition of the same name, also curated by McIlwaine.

<i>Poems and Songs of Middle Earth</i> 1967 studio album by J. R. R. Tolkien and Donald Swann

Poems and Songs of Middle Earth is a studio album of spoken-word poetry by the English author J. R. R. Tolkien and art songs composed by the English musician Donald Swann. On the first half of the album, Tolkien recites seven poems from or related to his fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings (1954–55). The second half is a performance of Swann's song cycle The Road Goes Ever On, which sets selections from Tolkien's verse to music. The vocalist William Elvin sings The Road Goes Ever On to Swann's piano accompaniment. Caedmon Records issued the album on 18 October 1967 in the United States, and then on 28 March 1968 in the United Kingdom. Its release coincided with the publication of The Road Goes Ever On as a book of sheet music with commentary and illustration by Tolkien.

The poetry in The Lord of the Rings consists of the poems and songs written by J. R. R. Tolkien, interspersed with the prose of his high fantasy novel of Middle-earth, The Lord of the Rings. The book contains over 60 pieces of verse of many kinds; some poems related to the book were published separately. Seven of Tolkien's songs, all but one from The Lord of the Rings, were made into a song-cycle, The Road Goes Ever On, set to music by Donald Swann. All the poems in The Lord of the Rings were set to music and published on CDs by The Tolkien Ensemble.

The Song of Eärendil is the longest poem in The Lord of the Rings. In the fiction, it is sung and composed by the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins in the Elvish sanctuary of Rivendell. It tells how the mariner Eärendil tries to sail to a place of paradise, and acquires a Silmaril, a prized sun-jewel. Eventually he and his ship are set in the heavens to sail forever as the light of the Morning Star.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tolkien's artwork</span> Artwork by J. R. R. Tolkien

Tolkien's artwork was a key element of his creativity from the time when he began to write fiction. A professional philologist, J. R. R. Tolkien prepared a wide variety of materials to support his fiction, including illustrations for his Middle-earth fantasy books, facsimile artefacts, more or less "picturesque" maps, calligraphy, and sketches and paintings from life. Some of his artworks combined several of these elements.

Tolkien's poetry is extremely varied, including both the poems and songs of Middle-earth, and other verses written throughout his life. J. R. R. Tolkien embedded over 60 poems in the text of The Lord of the Rings; there are others in The Hobbit and The Adventures of Tom Bombadil; and many more in his Middle-earth legendarium and other manuscripts which remained unpublished in his lifetime, some of book length. Some 240 poems, depending on how they are counted, are in his Collected Poems, but that total excludes many of the poems embedded in his novels. Some are translations; others imitate different styles of medieval verse, including the elegiac, while others again are humorous or nonsensical. He stated that the poems embedded in his novels all had a dramatic purpose, supporting the narrative. The poems are variously in modern English, Old English, Gothic, and Tolkien's constructed languages, especially his Elvish languages, Quenya and Sindarin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tolkien and antiquarianism</span> J. R. R. Tolkiens literary approach

J. R. R. Tolkien included many elements in his Middle-earth writings, especially The Lord of the Rings, other than narrative text. These include artwork, calligraphy, chronologies, family trees, heraldry, languages, maps, poetry, proverbs, scripts, glossaries, prologues, and annotations. Much of this material is collected in the many appendices. Scholars have stated that the use of these elements places Tolkien in the tradition of English antiquarianism.

References

  1. 1 2 Hammond, Wayne G.; Scull, Christina (12 March 2024). "Tolkien's Collected Poems". Too Many Books and Never Enough. Retrieved 27 November 2024.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Cooper, Shawn Phillip (11 October 2024). "Worlds of Delight: The Poetry of J.R.R. Tolkien". The European Conservative. Retrieved 27 November 2024.
  3. 1 2 Bratman, David (October 2024). "Some statistical thoughts about The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien". The Tolkien Society.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Ordway, Holly (30 September 2024). "A First Look at 'The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien'". Word on Fire. Retrieved 27 November 2024.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Kriticos, Christian (16 October 2024). "The Poetic Origins of Middle-earth". Los Angeles Review of Books . Retrieved 27 November 2024.
  6. 1 2 Alberge, Dalya (24 August 2024). "Beyond Bilbo: JRR Tolkien's long-lost poetry to be published". The Observer . Retrieved 27 November 2024.
  7. 1 2 3 Emanuel, Tom (10 September 2024). "First publication of J.R.R. Tolkien's collected poems offers new insights into the Lord of the Rings author's personality". The Conversation. Retrieved 27 November 2024.
  8. ↑ Flieger, Verlyn (2019). "The Arch and the Keystone". Mythlore . 38 (1). Article 3.
  9. ↑ Edmonds, Jeremy (11 September 2024). "TCG Review - The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien edited by Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond". Tolkien Collector's Guide. Retrieved 27 November 2024.
  10. 1 2 3 4 Garth, John. "The Collected Poems of J. R. R. Tolkien: Book review". The Times Literary Supplement . Retrieved 27 November 2024.
  11. ↑ Pizzimento, Paolo (5 December 2024). "I Collected Poems di Tolkien: la recensione" [Tolkien's Collected Poems: Review] (in Italian). Associazione Italiana Studi Tolkieniani. Retrieved 8 January 2025.
  12. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Holmes, John R. (2024). "[Review:] The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien (2024), edited by Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond". Journal of Tolkien Research . 20 (1). Article 8.
  13. 1 2 Oliver, Henry (3 December 2024). "Tolkien the Timekeeper". Prospect. Retrieved 9 January 2025.
  14. ↑ Brown, Sara. "The Poetic Corpus of J.R.R. Tolkien: Tolkien's Collected Poems (The Years 1910–1967 in Three Volumes)". Signum University . Retrieved 9 January 2025.
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