Been trying to get into reading poetry. Also looking for something to read on the train. I’ve about had it with awful sci fi/fantasy books, so I figure that poetry would be good because it’s generally short and I can read and reflect on something and then read it again and reflect some more without having to read an entire freakin’ book.
So, here’s some of what I’m looking for:
Rhymes
Isn’t in all lowercase
Not Byron or any of the shit I could find on any thousands of random blogs
So, I’m pretty easygoing as far as that’s concerned. Typically, I like my poetry with lusty heroes, evil enemies and some good old-fashioned mead-swilling (you know, Roland, Cid, Beowulf, Iliad), but I figured I’d try to get in touch with the higher emotions for once.
So, who do I start with and why? I figured I’d just scout the used book stores until I find a “complete works of.” I’d have done it already, but the editions I find are really old and done in two columns to fit everything, which I find really screws up the flow.
Of course, they were both prolific, so perhaps I should just get a “selected works” of and cut out all the crap. Any suggestions?
Also, I vaguely recall one of them wrote a poem denouncing a “psychic” of the day. I think it was called “Mr. Drudge” or something. Does this sound familiar?
Well, I don’t necessarily know if you’d like Shelley if you don’t like Byron. Shelley was completely enamored of Byron and thought that he was pure genius. Shelley’s all about the beauty of nature and the loss of one’s sense of self through that beauty. He’s very idealistic. Can you nail down what it is you didn’t like about Byron?
You should like Tennyson. He’s got action, but he’s also kind of melancholy.
I suggest you go to a used bookstore near a university and pick up an anthology of English and American verse, one that covers the 19th century and early twentieth. Then you can browse a whole bunch of different poets and decide who you like.
According to my Norton Anthology, Shelley and Thomas Jefferson Hogg “collaborated on a pamphlet, The Necessity of Atheism, which claimed God’s existence cannot be proved on empirical grounds.” If that helps at all.
I should have posted this before. Project Gutenberg has Shelley’s Complete Works, with a foreword and notes by his wife Mary Shelleym, viewable online. The actual poetry begins at the bottom of page 15.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge is just about one of the best poets ever. In fact, some of his contemporaries thought he had the potential to rival Shakespeare. William Hazlitt in particular was bitterly disappointed and angry when Coleridge pretty much became a poor, shiftless dope-addict who stopped writing poetry altogether and went on the lecture circuit to keep opium in his wine.
Some highlights include <B>The Pains of Sleep</B> (thoughtful), <B>Christabel</B> (innocent girls and evil villians), <B>The Rime of the Ancient Mariner</B> and <B>Kubla Khan</B> (unbelievably beautiful). I also really like <B>Frost at Midnight</B>.
As for Shelley, <B>Prometheus Unbound</B> is very long and tedious but it’s got some beautiful passages and <B>THe Mask of Anarchy</B> is one of the most astute political poems I have ever read.
If you like clever rhymes and are, as you say, “touch with the higher emotions for once,” Dorothy Parker is witty and wry. And most of her poems are on the short side.
I second the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. It sounds like exactly what you are looking for - every verse advances the plot, there’s several twists and turns, it’s got a real spooky atmosphere.
There’s none of that boring emotional stuff - it’s the action thriller of poems. But if you want to read something that will make you do a double-take every line then e.e.cummings.
If we’re going 19th century here, a vote for Browning {Robert, not Elizabeth}: much tougher minded and less mimsy than Shelley, and less wallowing in melancholy than Tennyson.
Reaching back some further, pick up some Blake if you want to read the most chilling “children’s” poem ever in Songs of Innocence and Experience. He wrote them under the guise of children’s literature, so they’d be acceptable to parents, but if you read them closely, the poems are damning and very on-point criticisms of that age’s society. None are very long, but all are powerful.
And I second Coleridge. Good stuff, that.
Contrasting early WWI British poetry with late WWI British poetry is also fun. You can watch the idealism of “let’s defend the homeland” and “there’s a piece of Britian everywhere” dissolve into the hopelessness and despair of “what the hell are we doing here?” and “I just want to go home.” More good stuff.
Start with an anthology, that way you can get a general view of what’s out there, and can then focus on what you like. You can find all kinds at any used book store. I like The Viking Book of Poetry of the English Speaking World.
As for a particular poet, I’m fond of A.E. Housman, and there are lots of copies of his complete works floating around.
My suggestion is to go through a few anthologies, starting with the shorter poems and then go after longer poems of poets you like, or that share characteristics of poems you like. Any thing you have difficulty with, read aloud a few times. I like eee cummings, but did not start to like the poetry until I read it aloud. Poe is my favorite though.
If you want to read some modern poetry, I would go with Billy Collins. He was Poet Laureate (although I will admit to not knowing exactly what that means).
My god, yes. I don’t know how I forgot it. It’s perfect commute reading. You can read a few poems at a time, and let that world develop around you slowly. Spoon River Anthology is wonderful. On the surface, it’s this almost catty, gossipy retelling of people’s lives, but once you’re past that, you realize it’s a beautiful study of human nature and the way communities function.