What's your favourite book of poetry?

[Red-Headed]

This is another one of those what's your favourite? threads. I apologise for not being particularly original, but what is your favourite book or anthology of poetry? Especially one that you actually own or have owned in the past.

I own a lot of books of poetry including some rare & antique ones (they aren't worth a great deal though lol). I would be hard pressed to choose just one. I have a hardback copy of The Penguin Book of Zen Poetry that I have always treasured. A 1901 Blackwood's English Classics edition of Milton's Samson Agonistes I bought for virtually nothing. I don't think it is worth much but it is in beautiful condition & has excellent notes. I have always been fond of my illustrated Oxford Songs of Innocence & Experience.

There are many more. However, there is one book that has had a huge affect on me, from the day I bought it continuing right up it until today. It is English Poetry 1918 - 60 edited by Kenneth Allott. A slightly battered paperback now, & I honestly believed it to be a bit on the expensive side when I bought it as a teenager, it starts with Yeats & ends with Geoffrey Hill. Essentially it was a couple decades & then some out of date when I purchased it, but it turned out it was worth every penny as it introduced me to so many poets (86 in fact).

[Dr Jekyll]

The Barnes & Noble edition of Eliot's The Waste Land has always been dear to me, probably because my love of poetry grew while reading the book and the collection introduced me for the first time to symbolism, which improved my writing greatly.

[Dinkleberry2010]

my favorite book of poetry that I have actually owned is T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land and Other Poems

[TheFifthElement]

Staying Alive published by Bloodaxe Books. It's a truly wonderful, eclectic collection.

[Red-Headed]

Staying Alive published by Bloodaxe Books. It's a truly wonderful, eclectic collection.

I have a copy of The New Poetry by Bloodaxe Books, I have even met some of the poets in that.

[TheFifthElement]

I have a copy of The New Poetry by Bloodaxe Books, I have even met some of the poets in that.

Yeah, Bloodaxe are a really excellent publishing house. I've got a few of their titles, including The New Poetry and Being Alive. Staying Alive is my favourite though; it's lead me to a lot of excellent poets.

[stlukesguild]

Barring Dante's Comedia... which I have little doubt is the single greatest work of literature in the West... I'd be torn between Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal (translated by Richard Howard) which is undoubtedly the book which first drew me to my current obsession with poetry... and especially with poetry outside of the English language, and my Complete Works of William Blake. Forced to choose I'd probably end up going with Blake who really forced me into rethinking literature, poetry, art, spirituality, and any number of other things.

[Pryderi Agni]

Well, I'd say The Golden Treasury by F.T. Palgrave is just about the best anthology of poetry around; the second edition edited by Cecil Day-Lewis includes even more poems in an appendix.

[Red-Headed]

Yeah, Bloodaxe are a really excellent publishing house. I've got a few of their titles, including The New Poetry and Being Alive. Staying Alive is my favourite though; it's lead me to a lot of excellent poets.

OK, I'll look out for Staying Alive then, cheers.

[Vladimir777]

I don't really own much poetry, as I'm trying to get into it very badly in the coming years, but I haven't really succeeded as of yet. I own the Lattimore translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey, and I also have Harold Bloom's The Best Poems of the English Language. I've been going through it in chronological order (i.e., from front to back), and I got done with Spenser a few weeks ago and haven't read anything lately. I suppose I have to choose this anthology by default, since I don't own much poetry, but I hope going through it will help me develop an affinity for poetry. It is something that I never cared much for in school, but it's also something I haven't put much effort into, so how could I hope to get much back out of it? I have enjoyed some stuff I've read in it, particularly Chaucer (one day I hope to read all of Canterbury Tales in Middle English). Poetry I find very difficult, however, and I am continually in awe of a lot of the posters on here who draw so much out of it.

Homer was relatively easy (I am about to begin The Odyssey, and I liked--although I wasn't crazy over--The Iliad), but there is a lot of verse poetry out there--stuff like Whitman or Wordsworth or a lot of others--that I find very difficult to appreciate. Hopefully reading a lot of poetry will increase my ability to appreciate it.

[neilgee]

Poetry 1900-1975 edited by George Macbeth is the one I always go back to. A brilliant selection.

[Lynne50]

i guess most of my collection includes Billy Collins, Keats, and a children's anthology I just bought called A Tree that Time Built by Maryann Hoberman, poet laureate of US for children.

[JBI]

Four Quartets by Eliot - I can practically visualize all the notes and footnotes in my mind when I read it now, despite working from a perfectly clean copy - must've read it 500 or so times, and each time, more notes.

[Il Penseroso]

Selected Early Poems of John Ashbery.

[Red-Headed]

I have a fairly new copy of The New Oxford Book of English Verse, which is considered a classic now since its original publication in 1972.

When I was a student I bought a Pan paperback copy of The New Golden Treasury of English Verse chosen by Edward Leeson (ISBN 0-330-26165-7). It is a little worse for wear now & I'm scared to open it too often as many of the pages are loose. Over the years I think I have read it to death! The cover has a William Morris design. Although the New Oxford Book of English Verse has virtually all of same poems in it, I think that Pan paperback was invaluable when I was an undergraduate.

Did anyone else buy Leeson's Golden Treasury?

[Red-Headed]

I forgot about Bloodaxe's web page. (http://www.bloodaxebooks.com/)

[mal4mac]

I don't really own much poetry, as I'm trying to get into it very badly in the coming years, but I haven't really succeeded as of yet. I own the Lattimore translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey, and I also have Harold Bloom's The Best Poems of the English Language. I've been going through it in chronological order (i.e., from front to back), and I got done with Spenser a few weeks ago and haven't read anything lately.

I have Harold Bloom's anthology, and Christopher Rick's Oxford anthology. I don't think either are for beginners. They both have some very difficult poetry, especially amongst the early writers, and the notes are insufficient.

Shakespeare (not Dante!) is generally considered the greatest poet, and you can read him in his own language. He's also not *too* difficult, given a good set of notes -- try the RSC Complete Shakespeare. I was a very prosaic science type until the bard converted me.

For a straightforward anthology I recommend "By Heart" by Ted Hughes. He provides 101 poems worth remembering, and even give tips on how to remember them. He includes a lot of Shakespeare...

[stlukesguild]

Shakespeare (not Dante!) is generally considered the greatest poet...

By whom? Based on what? The sonnets and the few late narrative poems? Shakespeare is almost certainly the greater writer but he composed no poetic work to rival Milton's Paradise Lost let alone Dante's Comedia.

[Virgil]

Dante is the greatest! Not that Shakespeare is far behind. ;)

[Red-Headed]

I'm with mal4mac with this one! The poetry of Shakespeare is in the plays. He would have been a poet if he hadn't had to make a living as something as lowly to the Elizabethans/Jacobeans as a common playwright.

I was born not far from Stratford so as a fellow Midlander I feel that I have to support the Bard! :lol:

(Wasn't that Dante some foreign bloke? :banana: )

[stlukesguild]

I agree Shakespeare is the greater writer... but I'm not certain about ranking him as the greatest poet on the basis of his sonnets and few narrative poems combined with the poetic passages of his plays. Proust has fabulous passages of poetic prose in his great work... but one's not about to start counting him as one of the greatest poets of the 20th century... let alone count In Search of Lost Time as the greatest poem. My earlier post stated that I feel the Comedia to be the single greatest poem ever written. If Shakespeare is being put fort as having written a greater poem, which work is it?

[JBI]

Shakespeare (not Dante!) is generally considered the greatest poet...

By whom? Based on what? The sonnets and the few late narrative poems? Shakespeare is almost certainly the greater writer but he composed no poetic work to rival Milton's Paradise Lost let alone Dante's Comedia.

Ironically, if you were to do a worldwide poll, I bet you would find some "weird" stuff - for instance, you may just find that there are several billion people in this world who don't happen to be English language enthusiasts, and will choose something from Goethe, through Li Bai, and everything in between.

Though, it could be said that Western literature has a special preference for building up central figures more so than some other traditions - Shakespeare to me seems in part a national export, and promoted as such.

Dante arguably is greater than most, and certainly one of the most written about (I believe the Ravenna museum holds over 100,000 different copies of Dante criticism, with special stacks and other large collections elsewhere) and arguably he has had profound influence across Western Europe - but one must also realize that there are other major traditions, with huge canons and just as big figures - Confucius' Book of Odes, for instance, was memorized to the character by every educated person for a period of 1600 years or so (with a brief decline during the period disunity and second half of the Tang). Likewise, Ferdowsi forms the centre of a Persian canon.

What all this means is nothing - certain Shakespeare plays are better than others, and certain cantos of Dante are better than others - all of the mentioned poets have something, so quibbling is a waste of time. Besides which, I would never put my Booth edition of Shakespeare's sonnets as my favorite - it isn't as personal and dear to me as some of my other volumes, despite being perhaps the greater work.

[stlukesguild]

Dante's Comedia... I have little doubt is the single greatest work of literature in the West...

You will notice I did stipulate "the West". Of course the better than/worse than arguments are indeed rather useless. It does not lessen the value of reading Shakespeare if Dante is indeed the better poet... or Du Fu better than both of them. But isn't that what most of these discussions on the general literature are about? Of course what might be of more interest is a bit more written about why a member here is so enamored of this or that book of poetry. That is something we don't see enough of... or is too often reduced to simple statements that this or that poet/author is great or sucks.

[Red-Headed]

Proust has fabulous passages of poetic prose in his great work... but one's not about to start counting him as one of the greatest poets of the 20th century... let alone count In Search of Lost Time as the greatest poem.

I really don't see this analogy, there again I don't read French. Anyway, they (the French) drive on the wrong side of the road, their beer is fizzy & *Voltaire once described Shakespeare as a barbarian. The poetry of Shakespeare in the plays is far more poetic in form than boring old Proust. Shakespeare was a frustrated poet & the poetry surfaces in his plays. Proust was a frustrated agoraphobic with a mother fixation.

*It is a little know fact that Voltaire was actually decapitated in his youth in a freak accident with a garlic picking machine. He had to have a wooden prosthetic head made to replace his original. The artificial head was so skilfully made that not many people actually noticed the difference.

[stlukesguild]

The French make beer?!?:confused:

[Red-Headed]

The French make beer?!?:confused:

& it's expensive. On the bright side supermarket wine is cheap (& not fizzy).

[mortalterror]

I really don't see Shakespeare as a frustrated poet anymore than I see Aeschylus, Euripides, Calderon, or Racine that way. I usually think of him the same way I do Moliere, as an actor who wanted to make some extra money.

[Jimmybates]

The Wild Swans at Coole by W.B. Yeats is a great collection of poetry and is fairly easy to get into.

[Dinkleberry2010]

Great and greatest are words that have been thrown around so much and applied to so many different things that they have largely lost any value.

And now we also have the "personal opinion" and "relative" responses: to wit, "that may be your opinion, but the consensus is...", or "relatively speaking, it is believed that..."

It is as if nothing can be stated with certainty, that there is always an exception that must be acknowledged, that when we emphatically state something, we must also state that we might be mistaken or that it after all is only our opinion.

I suppose it is an inescapable quality of life in the early twenty-first century that nothing can be stated or written with absolute certainty. Those days are gone forever. And I find that to be tragic. We are living in a time that to me is like living in a bubble. It may burst at any moment.

[sixsmith]

Proust was a frustrated agoraphobic with a mother fixation. And they were his good points. Rats anyone?


I really don't see Shakespeare as a frustrated poet anymore than I see Aeschylus, Euripides, Calderon, or Racine that way. I usually think of him the same way I do Moliere, as an actor who wanted to make some extra money.

Agreed.

[wlz]

My list of favourites in my collection:

2nd edition copy of the work Equinox by Aleister Crowley.
1st edition copy of a manuscript for members of The Golden Dawn.
A collected works of John Keats dating 1868.
1st edition of The Silmarillion.
A very large and rare edition of the works of Byron. I can't remeber the exact date but is dated before 1900.

Recently I came across an 18th Century Edition of the Collected Works of Shakespeare. It is in terrible condition. The owner had it stored away in the attic for decades. It is torn, stained and the cover is hanging on by threads. Price of sale: 350euro? Do you think it worth the price? It is impossible to read due to the condition it is in but I am not buying it in order to read. I have old college editions for that purpose.

Apologies, I moved off the thread somewhat. I always found the early school anthologies as enjoyable reads - even today. I take them everywhere. The earliest anthology I have is A Choice of Poets, An anthology of poets from Wordsworth to the present day, chosen and edited by R. P. Hewett, (Formerly Senior English Master Northgate Grammar School for Boys Ipswich). First published in 1968. This work and others like them, (I think a more contemporary version is the anthology Soundings) present no great difficulty and can be enjoyed anywhere and at anytime for a quick fix of poetry. GREAT!!!

[wlz]

He was a frustrated farmer!

[Red-Headed]

I really don't see Shakespeare as a frustrated poet anymore than I see Aeschylus, Euripides, Calderon, or Racine that way. I usually think of him the same way I do Moliere, as an actor who wanted to make some extra money.

He wasn't 'just' an actor wanting to make extra spondoolies either & when he left Stratford for the first time to walk to London he had ambitions of finding a wealthy patron & possibly teaching wealthy patron offspring (which he may have already done anyway) &/or writing poetry. He knew he was a brilliant poet. He just couldn't make a living out of it, let alone his fame & fortune. The plays were his bread & butter & he knew (along with Johnson inter alia) that his plays were also 'cutting edge' & breaking new ground in what was effectively the English Renaissance. There is a rumour he started out as a 'car park' attendant parking horses then working his way up to being Johannes Factotum (1587-92 ~ in the same time frame as the defeat of the Spanish Armada, Marlowe's Tamburlaine & Faustus, Lodge's Rosalynde & Spenser's Faerie Queen). He very probably did start as an actor but I reckon it was very early on that he started to write &/or 'script doctor'. If he could have made a living as a poet he would have done. Between 1592 & 1593 (Marlowe, a huge influence on the Bard was killed in 1593) the plague closed the theatres (much to Will's chagrin, & he never forgot that the Church, which tried to blame 'sins' & 'divers playsures' for the explanation for the plague had a lot to do with the negative propaganda about the theatre) so during this time he wrote Venus & Adonis & Lucrece. You have to realise that being a playwright or an actor in the Elizabethan era wasn't considered much more in status than being a prostitute (ironically many brothels were actually run by the Church, something else which didn't escape Will's attention). Being a poet would have given him the status as a serious writer that he so desperately wanted among his peers. By 1594 Shakespeare was at the head of the Lord Chamberlain's Men along with Burbage & Kemp. He did ok for himself in the end anyway. I'm not sure I follow your analogy as in one respect, making a living as a poet, he was frustrated. He did pretty well as a playwright though & the plays are full of wonderful poetry.

EDIT:

Arguably the most famous poet in the English language, William Shakespeare, obviously needs no introduction. Of the many legends about him, one of them is that he was born & died on the same date: St George's day (April 23rd), fifty two years being between them of course. St George, conveniently being the patron saint of England.

Warwickshire parish records state that he was baptised on April 26th 1564, his father was a leading citizen of the town of Stratford-Upon-Avon & his mother belonged to the landed gentry of the afore mentioned county shire.

It is generally believed that the sonnets were written in two periods of time; the earlier works being written between 1592-96 around the same time as 'The Merchant of Venice' & 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' & the later sonnets written around 1600-08 between the composition of the later plays of 'Julius Caesar' & 'Hamlet'. It is worth pointing out, however, that not all Shakespearian scholars agree on these dates & many disagree on almost everything.

The sonnets were first published in 1609 for the printer Thomas Thorpe in addition to a three hundred & twenty-nine line poem in Rhyme Royal entitled 'A Lover's Complaint'. The latter poem is now not considered by some scholars to actually be the work of Shakespeare. However they seemed to be quite satisfactorily printed & it was 1640 before another edition was produced. The order of the sonnets themselves being changed slightly.

I do not intend in this column to go into the various controversies surrounding the sonnets. I am not that concerned as to whether they were based on real experiences or not, whether they are in a coherent sequence or not, who the rival poet & dark lady were or were not etc. I especially do not want to speculate on which particular young man the Bard was encouraging to engage in matrimony in the first cycle of seventeen sonnets commencing with sonnet one.

I tend to agree with W.H. Auden, that there has been enough nonsense written about these subjects over the past couple of hundred years, & anyone who wishes to research this literary quagmire of speculation may do so at his or her own leisure.

Although in my opinion; Auden was just as guilty as many others in his own peculiar speculations about the Bard. However, I do agree with the British writer Anthony Holden, that the great mystery of the now famous dedication to the enigmatic Mr W H, is probably the printer acknowledging the source of the acquisition of the sonnets themselves. This was most probably Shakespeare's indigent brother-in-law William Hathaway trying to make a pretty penny out of his famous relative.

[Red-Headed]

And they were his good points. Rats anyone?

Plus he liked to listen to opera on the telephone.




Agreed.

See:

He wasn't 'just' an actor wanting to make extra spondoolies either & when he left Stratford for the first time to walk to London he had ambitions of finding a wealthy patron & possibly teaching wealthy patron offspring (which he may have already done anyway) &/or writing poetry. He knew he was a brilliant poet. He just couldn't make a living out of it, let alone his fame & fortune. The plays were his bread & butter & he knew (along with Johnson inter alia) that his plays were also 'cutting edge' & breaking new ground in what was effectively the English Renaissance. There is a rumour he started out as a 'car park' attendant parking horses then working his way up to being Johannes Factotum (1587-92 ~ in the same time frame as the defeat of the Spanish Armada, Marlowe's Tamburlaine & Faustus, Lodge's Rosalynde & Spenser's Faerie Queen). He very probably did start as an actor but I reckon it was very early on that he started to write &/or 'script doctor'. If he could have made a living as a poet he would have done. Between 1592 & 1593 (Marlowe, a huge influence on the Bard was killed in 1593) the plague closed the theatres (much to Will's chagrin, & he never forgot that the Church, which tried to blame 'sins' & 'divers playsures' for the explanation for the plague had a lot to do with the negative propaganda about the theatre) so during this time he wrote Venus & Adonis & Lucrece. You have to realise that being a playwright or an actor in the Elizabethan era wasn't considered much more in status than being a prostitute (ironically many brothels were actually run by the Church, something else which didn't escape Will's attention). Being a poet would have given him the status as a serious writer that he so desperately wanted among his peers. By 1594 Shakespeare was at the head of the Lord Chamberlain's Men along with Burbage & Kemp. He did ok for himself in the end anyway. I'm not sure I follow your analogy as in one respect, making a living as a poet, he was frustrated. He did pretty well as a playwright though & the plays are full of wonderful poetry.

[Red-Headed]

He was a frustrated farmer!

& butcher/glover.

[Dinkleberry2010]

Will was a pretty astute and practical guy. He began planning for his retirement before he was forty, and by the time he was forty-five he was relatively well-off and able to more or less retire by his late forties.

[Red-Headed]

Will was a pretty astute and practical guy. He began planning for his retirement before he was forty, and by the time he was forty-five he was relatively well-off and able to more or less retire by his late forties.

I think that when he was young when his dad was mayor for a year, he had seen good financial times. By the time he was 16 his father had fallen on leaner times & this precluded him going to university. He never forgot this & it drove him to be ambitious about his writing. I still say that if he could have made money from being a poet he would have done. He wrote his wonderful poetry in the plays that made him his money! I still stand by what I originally said.

[Jason Whittaker]

Blake's "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" is the one that, in the end, changed my opinion about more or less everything. But the most perfect poem (in the English language) for me is Coleridge's "Kublah Khan".

[sinotsimon]

The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams is the most important book of poetry to me. At the moment I am writing my dissertation on Sylvia Plath, and although it was her novel, The Bell Jar, which first got me into her, Ariel is an incredible collection of poems, although I have a feeling that once my dissertation is finished it will be a long time before I will want to read her again! I have a small anthology called 'Polish Women Poets' which my mum had for some reason, it turned out to be one of my favourite books. Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes is a very good book. EE Cummings' Selected Poems...any TS Eliot...