How do I get into english poetry?Should I start with Shakespeare and Milton? When I tried reading Paradise Lost it just sounded like prose to meI've read the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock which was interesting but I struggled with the references in The Waste Lands
>>24743079Just Shakespeare and more Shakespeare
Start with Beowulf, Sir Gawain, and Canterbury Tales
>>24743093I'm not studying Old English and Middle English>>24743088Yeah that seems like a decent project to work on, I'll focus on Shakespeare first
>>24743079Keats' odes; or, if you want something longer, either Wordsworth's 1805 Prelude or Byron's Don Juan. Byron's lyrics, Wordsworth's sonnets, John Clare's works, or Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell are also convenient (easy) early entry points. Of all these, Byron's lyrics are perhaps the most straightforward
>>24743079Get the old edition of the Penguin Book of English Verse by John Haywood (the newer one is gigantic and doesn't arrange the poems by author), read through it and then pursue the poets you liked.
Give it to me straight: how hard is Paradise Lost? I am allergic to reading literature of any type on the screen so I never checked even the first line.
>>24743161not hard at allbit dry
>>24743161Same dude. Is it ADHD? Because I dont have that problem with physical books or e-readers.
>>24743166For some reason i can read poetry on the screen but never like a novel with enjoyment. You cant really relax when you're reading on the screen. With poetry its like you’re actively reciting it which gives you focus. I would like read a book like PL or a play straight through though
wouldnt* read a book straight through though
>>24743079
Read Walter Scott>But as they left the dark’ning heath,>More desperate grew the strife of death.>The English shafts in volleys hailed,>In headlong charge their horse assailed;>Front, flank, and rear, the squadrons sweep>To break the Scottish circle deep,>That fought around their king.>But yet, though thick the shafts as snow,>Though charging knights like whirlwinds go,>Though billmen ply the ghastly blow,>Unbroken was the ring;>The stubborn spearmen still made good>Their dark impenetrable wood,>Each stepping where his comrade stood,>The instant that he fell.>No thought was there of dastard flight;>Linked in the serried phalanx tight,>Groom fought like noble, squire like knight,>As fearlessly and well;>Till utter darkness closed her wing>O’er their thin host and wounded king.>Then skilful Surrey’s sage commands>Led back from strife his shattered bands;>And from the charge they drew,>As mountain-waves, from wasted lands,>Sweep back to ocean blue.
>Don’t miss some of Spenser’s fantastic allegorical poem The Faerie Queene, and the lyrical poems of Ben Jonson, Suckling, Carew, and Herrick.>The later seventeenth century has a different mood, or set of moods, and bridges the gulf to modernity. Here Milton dominates. Read all of Paradise Lost for unforgettable and inimitable grandeur of concepts, imagery, and language, and revel in the haunting pensiveness of Lycidas, the force of the sonnets, and the rare, ethereal felicity of Comus, “Il Penseroso”, and “L’Allegro”. Some of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress ought to be approached, and the best of Dryden’s poems will scarcely bear missing>In poetry we shall relish the ringing verses of Pope, the pastoral beauty of parts of Thomson’s Seasons, the felicity of Goldsmith’s “Deserted Village”, the deathless Elegy of Gray, quiet bits of Cowper, the homely lyrics of Robert Burns, and the prophetic mysticism of William Blake.>As the eighteenth century passes into the nineteenth we see a culmination of that “romantic revival” which dealt with extravagant individual emotion and looked to the Gothic Middle Ages for inspiration. Important poets now become numerous. We cannot afford to skip the dream-heavy Coleridge, the placidly pantheistic Wordsworth, the martial and resonant Scott, the misanthropic and infuriate Byron, the ethereal Shelley, and the beauty-drugged Keats. Here we have the greatest poetic flowering since the age of Elizabeth.>This brings us to the early period of many of the giants of the middle and later nineteenth century. Several of Dickens’ novels, especially David Copperfield, should be read, while selected poems of Tennyson, Browning, Mrs. Browning, Longfellow, Bryant, Lanier, Lowell, Holmes, Whittier, Emerson, Matthew Arnold, Walt Whitman, and Swinburne will bring rich rewards.
>>24743079Paradise Lost and Milton are definitely not entry-tier. He was perhaps the most musical poet in the English language, but it takes time to appreciate. Definitely start with Shakespeare, read as much of him as you can, and then read the English Romantics along with him, since they have a greater plainness and simplicity which at once makes them easier to enjoy and serve as a modern contrast to the ornateness of Shakespeare's Elizabethan style. Coleridge's three great narrative poems, Wordsworth's lyrics, Keats's Odes, Byron's Don Juan is good to start with.
>>24743161>I never checked even the first lineOF Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruitnow you have lolP. Loft is easier than Shakespeare since Milton uses more formal English, which hasn't changed as much.
>>24743754Yes, but the period of Milton's thoughts and arguments is also much longer, via the Baroque influence of Latin rhetoric. So if you're low iq you'll probably find it harder to read Milton than Shakespeare in the long term.
