Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful Poetry Book (Even if you aren't a Doors fan)
Review: "Wilderness" is a wonderful book of poetry no matter who wrote it. Jim Morrison was interesting to say the least, but his poems really stand on their own. The poems are beautiful, honest, and intriguing and cover a wide range of topics from women to music to America to growing-up. That being said, they offer a candid look at one of rock music's most infamous characters. Though often portrayed as a talentless drunk, the book is proof of the wonderful, sensitive artist that he really was. The style is slightly reminiscent of Beat poetry with beautiful phrases and words placed in specific ways that are visually effective. In addition to the poetry, the book also contains a two-page "self-interview" in which Jim explains kind of how he got into writing and why he loves poetry. "Listen," he says, "real poetry doesn't say anything, it just ticks off the possibilities. Opens all doors. You can walk through any one that suits you." Really, if you are even remotely interested in poetry or Jim Morrison get this book. I promise you won't regret it.
Rating:
Summary: "I am a guide to the Labyrinth"
Review: "Wilderness", fitting some what messily between "The Lords and the New Creatures" and "The American Night" as the centerpiece of Jim Morrison's eternaly unfinished poetic opus, offers us a fleeting glimpse into the best--and worst--parts of a visionary psyche. Morrison, unlike so many of the poetic idols (Shelley, Byron, Blake) he never lived long enough to equal (and perhaps transcend?) was not afraid to expose, explore and cut right down the middle any experience, line of thought, or moments of madness he had. This works to both his benefit and detriment in his poetry as it did in his short life.
More than the larger than life persona he tries to project in his early poems: ("Power)", Morrison is a conceptual and verbal magician, able to pack the weirdest and most minute philosophical observations into a few lines: "A man rakes leaves into a heap in his yard, a pile, and leans on his rake and burns them utterly/The fragrance fills the forest/children pause and heed the smell/which will become nostalgia in several years" (pg. 17). This is not all "intoxicated" poetry, not by any means. Beneath all the poetic personas Morrison adopts through these crashing, manically curious experimental dives into the extremes of consciousness, one personality emerges again and again: that of the prophet. In the tradition of Artaud and Rimbaud, Morrison as poet gives us a less polished but equally powerful diagnosis of a corrupt and diseased culture through his Berriganesque visions of hippiedom, his visionary observations of America as a nation and his place in it("What am I doing in the bullring arena?"), tributes to fallen friends ("Ode To Brian Jones While Thinking of LA"),
and the recognition of his own fate in "As I Look Back".
There is something else in this poetry behind the surreal streams of consciousness and the subtle calls to personal change, something which is so quiet and undetectable at first, and then which simply explodes in his retrospectives and self evaluations: vicious despair. One can feel the rumbling chaos of the poet's life just by reading him for any extended period of time and it is not shocking when at long last the work simply stops.
That said, this is some of the best poetry of the 60's generation, and not only that generation. Morrison had the kind of voice one finds a few times every hundred years, and the ultimate tragedy is that he never gave himself the chance to nurture it to maturity. A must, absolute must read for lovers of poetry that falls outside the pedestrian and comfortably middle class.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful Poetry Book (Even if you aren't a Doors fan)
Review: "Wilderness" is a wonderful book of poetry no matter who wrote it. Jim Morrison was interesting to say the least, but his poems really stand on their own. The poems are beautiful, honest, and intriguing and cover a wide range of topics from women to music to America to growing-up. That being said, they offer a candid look at one of rock music's most infamous characters. Though often portrayed as a talentless drunk, the book is proof of the wonderful, sensitive artist that he really was. The style is slightly reminiscent of Beat poetry with beautiful phrases and words placed in specific ways that are visually effective. In addition to the poetry, the book also contains a two-page "self-interview" in which Jim explains kind of how he got into writing and why he loves poetry. "Listen," he says, "real poetry doesn't say anything, it just ticks off the possibilities. Opens all doors. You can walk through any one that suits you." Really, if you are even remotely interested in poetry or Jim Morrison get this book. I promise you won't regret it.
Rating:
Summary: Une Enfant Savant et Voyant
Review: ... I think Morrison is very finely accomplished, marginalized, misused, and credits more serious scholarship. Nothing said in his music is not here, and better, with Wilderness: the fascination with individual existence (and sex) threatened by modern urban life and (political) death; ritual initiations into or "intimations" of the sense of free grace; experience as a series of sensations impressed in briefly intensified moments; the vulnerability of innocence and simplicity (children, animals, minorities); the enchantment of single words; reality as an accumulation of personal obsessions, might start my list. The diction, rhythm, careful measuring of textual interplays against pauses or transitions, and self-conscious modulations and inflections give his works the charm and the impression of an almost (although often vulgar) eloquence of fin-de-siecle or decadent authors played contrapuntally against the sceptical remove of English Modernists, drawing mainly from French Naturalists. Many of Morrison's poems have the effect of film-clips in an avant-garde cinema, of absorbed intellectualism reflecting self-referentially on multi-media aesthetics. His descriptive powers are best when most abstractly evocative, as in lines under "Airport" on Vietnam and post-war oppression reading "A truth too horrible to name / Only a loose puking moan / could frame its dark interiors [...] under its dull friendly terror." Or in his historical recounting of electric pop music's impact on American youth in "The Anatomy of Rock" where Morrison sets his atmosphere producing line "The climate altered like a / visible dance." Quite a few idiosyncratic interests and characteristic purposes could be discussed here. Quotes from Rimbaud and Blake, allusions to arcane physiological theories and post-modern philosophies conduce to the speculative testing of the dimensions-and-bounds-of-reality feeling pervasive of everything recorded by Morrison. His real originality resides in the sociological and anthropological ethnologies and mythologies, as well as the amorous, glamorous use of unusual words, sparse (semi-parsed)syntax, and graphically arranged composition. The piece beginning "Sirens" and the other triggered with the word "disciple" are completely unique in their Joyce-telegraphs-Mallarme style. Morrison was the first to bring me as a newly turned teen from Edgar Poe in the bookstore to Baudelaire and Rimbaud. His drunk and drug-addict legends should not obstruct his ideas from being relayed or his feelings read. Morrison introduces connections capable of leading you to the last "doors of perception" where Kafka's guards momentarily step outside, leaving you free to enter as you wish.
Rating:
Summary: I have no words to explain!
Review: After reading this book, I have come one step closer to understanding the greatest poet of all time. I know no one can feel things like Jim did but these books compiling his written works are a great stepping stone for us in that direction. Both The American Night and Wilderness are superb books and should be in every poet and Doors fan library.
Rating:
Summary: See the REAL Jim Morrison
Review: An excellent way of peering into the brain of a truely gifted human being. Wilderness shows his views on life, death, and everything that happens in between.
Rating:
Summary: A very interesting collection of poetry!
Review: As I was reading this book, I was overwhwelmed by the brilliance and mystery of the writings in the collection. I always enjoy reading poems that you have to stop and think about, something I have come to expect from the late, great Jim Morrison. The entries were nothing short of phenomenal, and I would be disappointed if the collection delivered any other assortment of writings. I am a relatively new fan of Jim Morrison's poetry, but the impact was incredible. I recommend the book to anyone looking for a challenging read and a few unfathomable, and at times, very confusing, writings, by a truly brilliant artist!
Rating:
Summary: A very interesting collection of poetry!
Review: As I was reading this book, I was overwhwelmed by the brilliance and mystery of the writings in the collection. I always enjoy reading poems that you have to stop and think about, something I have come to expect from the late, great Jim Morrison. The entries were nothing short of phenomenal, and I would be disappointed if the collection delivered any other assortment of writings. I am a relatively new fan of Jim Morrison's poetry, but the impact was incredible. I recommend the book to anyone looking for a challenging read and a few unfathomable, and at times, very confusing, writings, by a truly brilliant artist!
Rating:
Summary: lord of poetry
Review: awesome work, i also recomend approaching by donnie prescott
Rating: 
Summary: Unfinished poems from Jim's journal
Review: I don't think Jim would've wanted this particular book to have been published. Unlike his excellent Lords and New Creatures, which Jim himself published, Wilderness was published by his estate after his death. Everything in Jim's will went to his wife Pamela, but after she died it got transferred to her parents. Thus, Pamela's mom and dad get the royalties for his lost writings. Some people might think they published it just to make money, but I doubt that. Obviously some people enjoy Wilderness, despite the unpolished feel of it... which is to say the least about it. I guess the title of the book is appropriate: Lost Writings. But as I started saying earlier, I don't think Jim would've published this material until after it was completed. He was a man who wanted complete artistic control/freedom. One time he became furious when "Light My Fire" was used for a television commercial. He took his work seriously. Overall I think this book was a blow beneath the belt. It would be like taking someone's unfinished manuscript for a novel and publishing it anyway, without editing, and without it being finished. I guess, however, it serves as a nice glimpse of what Jim was working on. Actually in some parts it's quite good, but that's rare. Most of the material is untitled, short, and confusing.
|
