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Selected Lyrics
Elegantly risque, suffused with understated emotion, delightful in their bursts of comic invention, the witty and romantic lyrics of Cole Porter evoke a golden age of song. Here is the cream of half a century of songwriting, from the Jazz Age resonance of "Let's Misbehave" to such 50s classics as "Too Darn Hot" and "It's All Right With Me"-more than ninety of the most enduring works of America's master of bittersweet sophistication.
200 pages, Hardcover
First published April 6, 2006
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About the author
Robert Kimball
40 books2 followersRobert Kimball (1939-) is a musical theatre historian and critic.
Kimball was educated at Yale College and Yale Law School and has been the music critic of the New York Post. He is the co-author or editor of several books on musical theatre.
Kimball was one of the four participants who hammered out a bipartisan compromise in October 1963 that helped lead to the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Kimball was educated at Yale College and Yale Law School and has been the music critic of the New York Post. He is the co-author or editor of several books on musical theatre.
Kimball was one of the four participants who hammered out a bipartisan compromise in October 1963 that helped lead to the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 21, 2008
If you can't find the complete do get the 'Selected Lyrics" of Cole Porter. In fact this volume is easier to read than the coffee-table 'complete version. It's nicely edited with a great and simple design. And strange enough this volume is part of their 'poetry' series!
October 31, 2016
Interesting to read. Cole Porter without music. Much more, then, is being asked of the lyrics, as if what’s on a page is meant as poetry, poetry usually meaning geared mostly for silent reception, or at most for recitation.
So Cole isn’t being taken wholly if taken wholly on a page.
What can be said, weighing him not even against the ‘musicality’ of noted poets – say, Swinburne or Yeats or Dylan Thomas – is this:
He’s educated as much as any college grad I’ve met, and then some. And he’s educated in the ways of the New York high life of his time and of his calling as a sophisticated showman. Does he name-drop? Neatly. Can he be risqué? Mais, certainement! Does he distribute cheer? By the flute-full.
You’ll recognize from their words his classical pieces of The Great American Songbook. Fewer fingers than we have are those that equal the number of masters from whose company 20th Century American popular music was fashioned. Hum the tunes you find called to mind here. Some you’ve never heard.
It’s hard to name anyone half this clever, a quarter as spirited, as Cole Porter.
Feel free not to read this as poetry. Go instead page by page checking the flex of his feminine end-rhyming. This is a guy who knows play. Living can be a game like this.
So Cole isn’t being taken wholly if taken wholly on a page.
What can be said, weighing him not even against the ‘musicality’ of noted poets – say, Swinburne or Yeats or Dylan Thomas – is this:
He’s educated as much as any college grad I’ve met, and then some. And he’s educated in the ways of the New York high life of his time and of his calling as a sophisticated showman. Does he name-drop? Neatly. Can he be risqué? Mais, certainement! Does he distribute cheer? By the flute-full.
You’ll recognize from their words his classical pieces of The Great American Songbook. Fewer fingers than we have are those that equal the number of masters from whose company 20th Century American popular music was fashioned. Hum the tunes you find called to mind here. Some you’ve never heard.
It’s hard to name anyone half this clever, a quarter as spirited, as Cole Porter.
Feel free not to read this as poetry. Go instead page by page checking the flex of his feminine end-rhyming. This is a guy who knows play. Living can be a game like this.
July 13, 2013
I love Cole Porter's lyrics. They are witty and fresh as the day they were penned. They also tell about society, mores, and politics of their day. They are truly an art form featuring protagonists reminiscent of verbal duels such as doing the dozens and the contrasti, (believe it or not!) What's more the lyrics themselves are uncensored, a surprise for the time period, and in fact contain multiple layers of entendre.
January 29, 2012
just looking at this beautiful book is fun. knowing what is inside of it...great things.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews