They Have Not Seen the Stars: The Collected Poetry of Ray Bradbury

by Ray Bradbury

The eminence of Ray Bradbury in American literature is beyond question. For more than half a century now his short stories and novels—and the television shows and movies drawn from them—have delighted and inspired generations. His prose and the worlds he wove from it have captured the hearts and imaginations of millions throughout the world. But the man who brought us Montag the book-burning fireman of Fahrenheit 451, who captured lost summers in Dandelion Wine and the darkening autumnal tones of late boyhood in Something Wicked This Way Comes has always had another mistress: Poetry.

As the author himself explains in the Foreword written especially for this volume—a Foreword that is itself classic Bradbury in its nostalgic evocation of long-gone days and people—poetry was his first literary love and for years he has been laying at her door the flowers of his imagination that comprise the marvelous contents of this book.

It seems inconceivable that there could still be little-known treasures in the work of such a celebrated wordsmith, yet treasures there are—buried for too long but now rediscovered and brought back to the world in this first collected edition.

Genres: Poetry

482 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Ray Douglas Bradbury was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of genres, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, and realistic fiction.

Bradbury is best known for his novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and his short-story collections The Martian Chronicles (1950), The Illustrated Man (1951), and The October Country (1955). Other notable works include the coming of age novel Dandelion Wine (1957), the dark fantasy Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) and the fictionalized memoir Green Shadows, White Whale (1992). He also wrote and consulted on screenplays and television scripts, including Moby Dick and It Came from Outer Space. Many of his works were adapted into television and film productions as well as comic books. Bradbury also wrote poetry which has been published in several collections, such as They Have Not Seen the Stars (2001).

The New York Times called Bradbury "An author whose fanciful imagination, poetic prose, and mature understanding of human character have won him an international reputation" and "the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream".

Reviews

[Snickerdoodle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting ... I would imagine many enjoying it wonderfully ... it's just not my cuppa. Some are very nice but generally, to me, it feels like he's trying too hard to be poetic, to fit the form. I prefer his other writings.

[Mark Oppenlander · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is an omnibus, incorporating pieces from "When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed," "Where Robot Mice and Robot Men Run Round in Robot Towns," "The Haunted Computer and the Android Pope" plus several other shorter collections. You can read my reviews of some of those earlier books if you want to know what I think of the poems themselves.

All I have to say about this book is that more is not always better. Throwing every poem Bradbury has ever written together between two covers (and compiling them in essentially the same order they were originally published in, I might add) doesn't make a good collection. Bradbury's poems are uneven at best and I think a good editor would have pared this down to a leaner, better, more focused book by cherry-picking his best writing. I'd recommend skipping this one and reading some of the earlier collections - or just individual poems as the Spirit leads.