Current Events > Have you EVER read any good poetry books?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I sometimes wonder about poetry. Some people absolutely love it, but after reading some books, partly or in full, I'm almost completely unimpressed. I think it might just be a giant leg pull? Is it?

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I like Florida poems and seven notebooks, both by Campbell mcgrath

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I like poetry, but I don't like talking about poetry I like. People are very elitist or weird about it.

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Poetry is an excuse to write down every clever metaphor that runs through your head without having to write a whole story around it.

It can be good, and has been good, but I don't make a habit of reading poetry for its own sake. Every poem I've ever read has been part of a school assignment.

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Yes.

My favourites would be this big book I have of every Raymond Carver poem (All of Us) that I've read cover to cover countless times, the dada poetry of Tristan Tzara, Allan Ginsberg's Howl is of course incredible, a book of the poems of Forough Farrokhzad an Iranian woman poet and filmmaker from the 20th century, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart which is a prose poetry novel, TS Eliot's The Waste Land, Tau by Philip Lamantia.

That's just the poetry I've read and loved. There's plenty of others that's just been good or hasn't left a major impression.

The poetry of Leonard Cohen is quite funny and touching too now I think about it

I rarely read poetry but I did enjoy Sylvia Plath's Ariel

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Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

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Giant_Aspirin posted...

Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

Charming for all ages, and filthy for those old enough to read between the lines

The Trent posted...

awww yeeee

my November guest

dat fire and ice doe

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treewojima posted...

Charming for all ages, and filthy for those old enough to read between the lines

yup

the guy wrote music too and made a number of pro-pot songs like this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MP4GjgBrE2M

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Childe Harold's Pilgrimage by Lord Byron (especially cantos 3 and 4)
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Of course. Among the best are Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Yeats, Blake.

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houellebecq but hey i love him

also
aeneis
de rerum natura

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Poetry is great, expand your heart and mind tc.

Maxine Kumin's Up Country is my favorite sequential collection.

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Giant_Aspirin posted...

Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

Beat me to it

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I can't imagine a worse hell, personally, than reading a book filled with poetry

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Smackems posted...

I can't imagine a worse hell, personally, than reading a book filled with poetry

Not even sitting on running power tools?

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Evening_Dragon posted...

Not even sitting on running power tools?

Nope. Please put a drill up my ass before you make me read a whole book with poetry

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The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Basho is insanely good in the way he writes poetry to reflect on the narrative experience he has had.

Smackems posted...

I can't imagine a worse hell, personally, than reading a book filled with poetry

This is sad. I'd rather read good poetry than a novel.

DarthWendy posted...

Of course. Among the best are Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Yeats, Blake.

Impeccable taste!

T.S. Eliot as mentioned, is great; Ezra Pound; Dante; what little there is of Sappho is pretty remarkable. You can go on and on. There's really something for everyone out there

BurmesePenguin posted...

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Basho is insanely good in the way he writes poetry to reflect on the narrative experience he has had.

Have you read any Saigyo? I discovered him pretty recently but his work is also beautiful. He's a sort of precursor to Basho; wrote while he was wandering alone in the mountains

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MeIon Bread posted...

I sometimes wonder about poetry. Some people absolutely love it, but after reading some books, partly or in full, I'm almost completely unimpressed. I think it might just be a giant leg pull? Is it?

Poetry is more like a precision art of language. The part that's supposed to impress is how well it flows or rhymes and not necessarily the content of the poem itself.

Now if you can simultaneously do both have a great story in your poem while also having excellent verse and rhyming then that's really impressive.

The most recent author I can think of that did both really well is Robert Frost.

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I've never been a big poetry fan, but a guy once gave me a small book of Japanese love poems (I think it was his way of flirting, but sadly he lacked follow-through) and I was pleasantly surprised. The verses were succinct and gorgeously written, even with the translation.

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Leaves of Grass is the only one I really read; in general I just look up interesting poems online and read them individually

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