Suggest some good poetry

[Greg_Charles]

@Johnny_Angel

I would alternatively suggest not ever listening to the Waterboys version. It makes me angry. They broke the poem’s spine to fit it into a mishapen box. But of course tastes vary.

I sort of agree with Johnny here, or at least I prefer the version by Golden Bough. You can hear part of it here*. It’s a nicer melody, and doesn’t break any spines.

• (And also “The Wandering Aengus”, another Yeats poem put to music.)

[Malthus]

@Greg_Charles

I sort of agree with Johnny here, or at least I prefer the version by Golden Bough. You can hear part of it here*. It’s a nicer melody, and doesn’t break any spines.

• (And also “The Wandering Aengus”, another Yeats poem put to music.)

For that matter - I like the version of An Irish Airman Foresees His Death by Shane MacGowan. Though he more or less simply recites it.

[Loisseau]

@Johnny_Angel

Get yourself a fat anthology, and feast from it randomly. I particularly treasure my copy of The Viking Book of Poetry of the English Speaking World. It goes from the earliest known english poetry to the mid 20th-century. You can decide later what poets you want to pay particular attention to.

Excellent advice.

Just finished “Talking Dirty to the Gods” by Yusef Komunyakaa-wonderful read.

[jjimm]

All this and no Seamus Heaney The Follower just for starters.

Then there’s Auden and Larkin.

[KneadToKnow]

@jjimm

All this and no Seamus Heaney

Hell, dude, no one’s even mentioned Shakespeare yet.

[Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela]

I’d like to second the recommendation to get a big, fat anthology or two. Read through it at your leisure, with a big pile of sticky tabs beside you. When ever you find a poet who speaks to you, put a sticky on him or her and read further works.

Anthologies I’d recommend - The Norton Anthology of Poetry
15 Canadian Poets X 3
Open Wide a Wilderness
and there are lots more…

A couple of individual poets no one else is likely to mention - Michael Ondaatje and Don McKay.

[suranyi]

@Johnny_Angel

Well, just as a warning for anyone who hasn’t encountered the piece before, it is famous among poets as an example of what not to do. It’s brilliantly executed, and therefore illustrates marvelously the cost of over-doing a technique even at the hands of a master. My own take is that the reader’s growing frustration with the perversely indulgent onomatopoeia parallels the slow revelation of the narrator’s madness.

I find it almost hypnotic in its effect.

[Malthus]

@suranyi

I find it almost hypnotic in its effect.

Yeah; for an “an example of what not to do”, it is surprisingly effective and memorable.

[A_Z_Foreman]

Tadeusz Borowski’s “Night on Birkenau” originally written in Polish. One of the very greatest holocaust poems. Translation below. (and the translation I’m posting is by yours truly, so no worries as to copyright.)

**Night on Birkenau
**Tadeusz Borowski
Tr. from Polish by Yours Truly

*Again the night. Again the nightly land.
The sky is gyring like a bird of prey,
Like some grim beast about the calm-struck camp.
The corpse-pale moon is down where it must stay.

And like a shield cast to the ground in battle
Airy Orion lies among the stars.
The crematoria’s eyes glint. Then the clatter
Of motors in the dark. The loaded cars.

Scalding and stifling. Slumber like a stone.
Breath is choked out. The throat is split and red.
Only a heavy boot on the breast-bone
Cracks through the silence of three million dead.

Night, endless night. And no light on the land.
Drowsiness stuns the eye and numbs the brow.
Here like God’s Judgment on the world of man
The fog must now come down on Birkenau.*