The Magazine

A Lidless Eye

Early verse that clears the path to Tolkien's genius.

Sep 21, 2009, Vol. 15, No. 01 • By ELI LEHRER
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The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun

by J.R.R. Tolkien
and Christopher Tolkien

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,

384 pp., $26

Nearly every parent, at one time or another, has had the experience of seeing a son or daughter eagerly unwrap a new toy, only to find that the child greatly prefers the box to the gift itself. This new poetry collection by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (J.R.R. on book jackets, Ronald to his friends) is a lot like the disappointing toy in the great box. To put it simply: The poetry is pretty bad, but the explanatory material that surrounds it--written by Ronald himself and his son Christopher--is good.

Unlike the low-rent fiction published under the names of such long-dead authors as Ian Fleming and V.C. Andrews, there's no doubt about the provenance of the poems in the collection. But by Christopher Tolkien's own account, there's no evidence that the elder Tolkien ever intended to have this work published, either.

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