(Apologies in advance for essentially blogposting.) I have never really read any poetry until now (other than Epic poetry all of which I have read in translation.) I was previously only aware of a handful of names : Wordsworth, Keats, Yeats, from popular culture and have encountered the odd poem throughout my life, but know next to nothing about the tradition or history of poetry. I found myself unsure of where to start, and couldn't find many charts and haven't seen any posted here in a while. I was browsing in Waterstones yesterday and not wanting to buy any more literature as I am currently reading several books and my stack grows at an alarming rate. I thus decided to peruse the poetry section, and picked out picrel and bought it. I read the introduction last night which I found incredibly informative on the "Romantics." I feel enlightened somewhat on the history of the tradition, the term and the specifics of the stylings and content of such poets. I have now read a few poems from this collection and am enjoying them; varied as they are in subject. If anyone cares to spoonfeed me some recommendations or charts, or inform me on the other types of poetry I would appreciate it. What poetry does /lit/ like? Who or what do you enjoy reading the most when it comes to poetry?
>>24716693I don't read much of any poetry, but I really like James Tate. The Lost Pilot would be an example of his earlier style, and Long-Term Memory his later (more prosaic). This is the reading of his that I was introduced to him by:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPJTXOMHTk4There's a page on poetry on the wiki (see the sticky), but I can't vouch for it. Pic rel could be worth checking out, and the collection it mentions is still online.
>>24716785Thank you for the reply anon. Looking through the wiki now. I will check out James Tate's The Lost Pilot, I will probably opt to read it first. As for picrel lets see what I get.
>>24716693Nice horse. I wonder who painted it...
>>24716693poetryfag here. /lit/ knows nothing about poetry and most of the advice you get will be from anons who are much less interested in poetry as poetry and much more interested in poetry as heckin based trad memeword exemplar of the West, if that makes any sense. The Romantics are as good a place to start as any. Just read your picrel. If you like your picrel, check out Hopkins. After that, check out Whitman, Yeats, and Dickinson. (For Dickinson you want the edition of her selected poems titled Final Harvest ed. Johnson. Her complete work ed. Johnson or ed. Franklin is also fine, you just don't want the mass-market editions of her shit because they rape her grammatical style for no fucking reason.) You can more or less go wherever you want from there, but that'll give you the general overview of the poets who are the most influential to poets working today. >but muh free verse is heckin cringeTry not to think like this until you've read a lot of high-quality free verse poetry. This will make /lit/ very upset because /lit/ does not read poetry and thinks something has to rhyme and say "thou" or it's not poetry. Remember that /lit/ knows nothing about poetry. Regardless, you don't have to read contemporary work, or any poetry written in free verse, if you don't want to. (That would be a mistake but it's a free country.)>>24716785>James TateGreat poet. If OP likes Tate, he'll like Bob Hicok and Tony Hoagland as well. >chartChart's fine. A little fusty but all the poems and poets on there are worth reading.
>>24716806I sense irony in your post but if you didn't know or were genuinely asking it is George Stubbs' 'Horse Frightened by a Lion.'>>24716808Thanks for your reply, and guidance. I am something of a chud myself, but my interest in poetry is not borne of those motivations that you attribute to the average /lit/anon. I have taken note of your recommendations.
>>24716808>Whitman
>>24716808>Bob Hicok and Tony HoaglandAs the guy who rec'd Tate, thanks for these. Just read and enjoyed Calling Him Back from Layoff by Hicok.
>>24716892Exhibit A>inb4 pound quote jpeg againYou've never read Pound either, you just think he's heckin based trad memewords etc. OP don't get me wrong, Pound's worth reading -- I'm sure Penguin or New Directions or someone puts out a selected poems of his. (Will say that ND publishes an edition of Pound's selected translations that's absolutely worth reading. He's not very "accurate" to the source text but also that doesn't matter because his translations are great.)
>>24716897Happy you liked it. That's a great Hicok poem. If you liked that, you'll like Larry Levis's poem "Winter Stars.">https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53388/winter-stars-56d232a1c9b93That entire book (Winter Stars) is amazing, btw. It's not Levis's best -- that's probably The Darkening Trapeze, which he wasn't able to finish before he died. "Poem Ending With A Hotel On Fire" is one of my all-time contemporary favs.
>>24716901When earth's last thesis is copiedFrom the theses that went before,When idea from fact has departedAnd bare-boned factlets shall bore,When all joy shall have fled from studyAnd scholarship reign supreme;When truth shall "baaa" on the hill crestsAnd no one shall dare to dream;When all the good poems have been buriedWith comment annoted in fullAnd art shall bow down in homageTo scholarship's zinc-plated bull,When there shall be nothing to researchBut the notes of annoted notes,And Baalam's ass shall inquireThe price of imported oats;Then no one shall tell him the answerFor each shall know the one factThat lies in the special ass-ignmentFrom which he is making his tract.So the ass shall sigh uninstructedWhile each in his separate bookShall grind for the love of grindingAnd only the devil shall look.
>>24716806im not being ironic. thanks for telling me. stop reading ellipses like youre reading text message.
>>24716916When I heard the learn’d astronomer,When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
>>24716966The thought of what America would be likeIf the Classics had a wide circulation Troubles my sleep,The thought of what America,The thought of what America,The thought of what America would be likeIf the Classics had a wide circulation Troubles my sleep.Nunc dimittis, now lettest thou thy servant,Now lettest thou thy servant Depart in peace.The thought of what America,The thought of what America,The thought of what America would be likeIf the Classics had a wide circulation . . . Oh well! It troubles my sleep.
>>24716976I can't find it but can you post the first bit from the Cantos? The one that's the "translation" of Anglo-Saxon verse, or if not the translation then the one where he's doing Anglo-Saxon verse techniques in modern English. Might be my favorite Pound
>>24716982it's called Cantico del Soleas for the Anglo-Saxon translation of Homer And then went down to the ship,Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, andWe set up mast and sail on that swart ship,Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies alsoHeavy with weeping, and winds from sternwardBore us out onward with bellying canvas,Circe’s this craft, the trim-coifed goddess.Then sat we amidships, wind jamming the tiller,Thus with stretched sail, we went over sea till day’s end.Sun to his slumber, shadows o’er all the ocean,Came we then to the bounds of deepest water,To the Kimmerian lands, and peopled citiesCovered with close-webbed mist, unpierced everWith glitter of sun-raysNor with stars stretched, nor looking back from heavenSwartest night stretched over wretched men there.The ocean flowing backward, came we then to the placeAforesaid by Circe.Here did they rites, Perimedes and Eurylochus,And drawing sword from my hipI dug the ell-square pitkin;Poured we libations unto each the dead,First mead and then sweet wine, water mixed with white flour.Then prayed I many a prayer to the sickly death’s-heads;As set in Ithaca, sterile bulls of the bestFor sacrifice, heaping the pyre with goods,A sheep to Tiresias only, black and a bell-sheep.Dark blood flowed in the fosse,Souls out of Erebus, cadaverous dead, of bridesOf youths and of the old who had borne much;Souls stained with recent tears, girls tender,Men many, mauled with bronze lance heads,Battle spoil, bearing yet dreory arms,These many crowded about me; with shouting,Pallor upon me, cried to my men for more beasts;Slaughtered the herds, sheep slain of bronze;Poured ointment, cried to the gods,To Pluto the strong, and praised Proserpine;Unsheathed the narrow sword,I sat to keep off the impetuous impotent dead,Till I should hear Tiresias.
>>24716693I felt the empty cabin wasn’t abandoned.The axe, for one thing, blood still moiston the blade. Then, warm coffee on the stove.God, it blew outside. The owner, I said,won’t last long in this storm. By midnightI was singing. I knew the cabin was mine.Fifty years later, he still hadn’t returned.Moss covered the roof by then. I calledthe deer by name. Alice, I liked best.Winslow, next. Reporters came to write me up.They called me ‘animal man’ in the featurein the photogravure. The story said I leda wonderful life out here. I said cloudswere giant toads but they quoted me wrong.The coroner identified the bones as woman.I denied I’d been married and the localrecords backed me. Today, they are hunting all overthe world for the previous owner.I claim the cabin by occupancy rights.I pray each dawn. How my words climb cedarslike squirrels uttered by God.-- 'Living Alone' by Richard Hugo
