New Folio - Love Poems

I love those illustrations. I was waiting on this one as it was due out last year but must of been delayed. Still at £75 I will wait a bit longer.

That price...

Also a signed edition,
https://www.foliosociety.com/love-poems-signed-edition.html

>4 bacchus.: Ouch - an extra £75 for a signed label !

That's a lot of money for a book that personally does not look unique or special at all. Also I feel like the new signatures of regular editions to be quite tacky and cheap, anything for a few extra bucks I suppose - they took a page from the Easton Press model apparently.

"Twin ribbon markers" ... double the fun.

Does anyone know the point of two ribbons?

>8 RRCBS: They must have missed the "Ribbon book marks" thread. Joking aside the only point I see in two ribbons is to keep a bookmark on explanatory notes or other additional info at the back of the book - which makes no sense in this case.

>8 RRCBS: I could be just part of the design to match the spine which has the same colours interwoven.

An extra £75 for a signed bookplate seems excessive...

It has similar endpapers as the standard Moby Dick.

>8 RRCBS: Does anyone know the point of two ribbons?

One to be used by you and one to be used by your loved one. Makes perfectly sense for a book with love poems.

My rather large order arrived yesterday, so I am happy to find this title holds no interest for me. It does seem quite pricey although I like the illustrations and design.

>6 Joshbooks1: I agree that a signed bookplate for double the price seems tacky. Hopefully this will be an experiment, like the flimsy slipcases, that doesn't last long.

It's preposterous asking double the price for signatures of a poem anthology editor and a young, unknown apprentice artist who won the competition to illustrate the book. And yes, I know, the collection includes one of Dharker's own poems.

I have LECs signed by authors such as Nobel-winning Gunter Grass, Derek Walcott, Czeslaw Milosz and Isaac Bashevis Singer and other big names such as Ray Bradbury and Thornton Wilder. LEC subscribers didn't have to pay extra for their signatures, let alone signatures of artists, often famous.

I agree the signature is expensive but I do appreciate that it's optional and that the two editions are otherwise identical - makes it crystal clear on how much a signature's charged.

I like the idea of having poets from all over the world, but I then worry about the fact that many poems will be translated. That’s always a worry of mine, especially for poetry.

>17 RRCBS: it sounds like they are keeping the original language for some based on the description of the contents on the webpage.

‘and the yearning for an absent love is simply and beautifully portrayed in Constantine Cavafy’s ‘Come back’. Snippets of Sappho are translated from Greek, while Arabic, Catalan, Tamil, Chinese, Irish and French are among the many native languages of the poets included in this emotive and joyful collection.’

>18 assemblyman:

To me that's just a list of some languages the poets included probably wrote in, rather than of languages represented in the anthology - Arabic, Tamil, Chinese etc. wouldn't mean much to very many likely purchasers.

I really don't understand the appeal of anthologies, but I guess this one isn't meant for me

>19 terebinth: Yes your right. I misread it.

Looks like a nice production—ribbon marker trolling notwithstanding. Poetry (and especially love poetry isn't my thing), but I had a lot of good experiences in that ~£75 price bracket, so glad to see more of that kind of book coming out of Folio.

>13 joco30: One to be used by you and one to be used by your loved one.
Makes thematic sense. The red and the gold ribbons are also mirrored on the motif on the spine, intertwined. I don't care for ribbon markers but it has some thought behind it here. Very pretty and presumably released ahead of Valentine's.

>20 gmacaree: I don’t seek them out, but often buy them because they include content that is unavailable in sewn binding elsewhere. This one isn’t for me either though.

I actually think that this volume is quite beautiful and will, no doubt, match the quality of other fine editions. I love the symbolism of the two ribbon markers as well. The problem is the content. Folio is clearly not marketing this as another "Folio book of..."; this is an anthology by the poet Imtiaz Dharker, not by Folio. Maybe we could understand it as similar to Israel Gollancz's Homage to Shakespeare rather than the Folio Book of Humorous Anecdotes. In any case doubling the price for the signature of an editor is ridiculous.

I met Dharker at a poetry event once and got her signature for free. If someone went to an event she's at and brought the anthology she'd probably sign it at no extra cost, and not on a bookplate!

Yeah, might pick this one up when, given its subject, price point, and editor, it inevitably ends up on sale.

Has anyone bought this who could give me a rough idea of the contents or point me to somewhere that they are listed? I want an interesting selection and not hoary old favourites.

I was tempted by this, until I saw a photo of one page in 'Fans of the Folio Society' on Facebook - 'Bloody Men' by Wendy Cope - which had a rather egregrious misprint. Anyway, I've got tons of poetry books, including five other anthologies of love poems, so I doubt if it contains anything I haven't already got somewhere.