Top 10 Favorite books of Poetry

[arrytus]

I tried looking for a thread already in progress but couldn't find one so starting my own top 10 personal favorite books of poetry, not including any Collected editions.

Hardest choice was to not include religious texts like the Bhradaranyaka Upanishad, the Shahnameh, or the Ramayana [of course this last I've not read the entire thing as it's very hard to find in English unabridged and my Sanskrit isn't good enough to read without stopping every other word to consult the dictionary.] Other favorite poets like Charles Cros, Pasternak, and Borges had to be left out as well.


indicate works I'd prefer in the language of origin (if other than English).

Once more this is highly subjective and I assume people will definitely rather have Pushkin or Dante or Milton et al but look forward to seeing what other people read and perhaps learn about someone new.


in no particular order:

1-Faust (especially Part 1)* - Goethe
2-Duino Elegies*- Rainer Rilke
3-Confucian Odes translated by Ezra Pound
4-Residencia en la Tierra- Pablo Neruda
5-The Manyoshu
6-The Gulistan- Sa'adi
7-Les Fleurs du Mal*- Charles Baudelaire
8-Hamlet-Shakespeare
9-The Odyssey*- Homer
10- Four Quartets- T.S. Eliot [this was borderline with Ezra Pound's Pisan Cantos]

[arrytus]

i suppose people find this sort of thing rather insipid or worn out

[stlukesguild]

Largely, I suspect that the number who will post here will be slim for the simple and sad reason that so few are seriously passionate about poetry. Whenever discussions of "favorite books" come up, inevitably these lists are predominantly made up of novels.

I'll approach your query with two distinct lists

Favorite Epic or Narrative Poems:

1. Dante- The Comedia
2. Milton- Paradise Lost
3. Firdowsi- The Shahnameh
4. Homer- The Odyssey
5. Spenser- The Faerie Queene
6. Chaucer- The Canterbury Tales
7. Homer- The Iliad
8. Virgil- The Aeneid
9. Tennyson- In Memoriam
10. Byron- Don Juan

(Runners-up would include Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered and Ariosto's Orlando Furioso)

Non-Epic/Non-Narrative/Lyrical Poetry Books (Original collections and not poems collected later by publishers/editors)-

1. Baudelaire- Les Fleurs du Mal
2. Spenser- Amoretti (Sonnets and Epithalimion)
3. Shakespeare-Sonnets
4. Robert Herrick- Hesperides
5. William Blake- The Songs of Innocence and Experience
6. Whitman- Leaves of Grass
7. Rimbaud- Illuminations
8. Verlaine- Fêtes galantes
9. T.S. Eliot- The Wasteland and Other Poems
10. Eugenio Montale- Cuttlefish Bones

Runners-up/alternatives:

11. Rilke- New Poems
12. Boris Pasternak- My Sister-Life
13. Dante- Vita Nuova
14. Neruda- Residence on Earth
15. Novalis- Hymns to the Night
16- anon.- The Song of Songs (The Song of Solomon)
17. Rilke- Duino Elegies
18. Jorge Guillen- Cantico
19. Theophile Gautier- Enamels and Cameos
20. Verlaine- Poèmes saturniens

[JBI]

Arthur Waley > Ezra Pound. His translation of the Book of Songs is so unbearable to read.


As for me, I have too many to choose, though I think to keep with the game, I will put my Chinese copy of the Book of Odes/Book of Songs/Classic of Poetry (詩經）and edit in 9 more later :p

[JCamilo]

I am not good making rankings at all and a considerable ammount of my poetry books are collections and comple works (less expensive this way) so I never remember well where are them...

anyways, I would add, I-Juca-Pirama (Gonçalves Dias), Heroides and Metamorphosis (Ovid), Theogony (Hesiod), Lyrical Ballads (Wordsworth and Coleridge), Moldoror (Lautreamont), Petit Prose Poems (Baudelaire), Sonnets from Portuguese (Elizabeth Barret Browning), Lusiadas (Camoes), Rymas y Legendas (Becquer) but the rest I would, watever place the odes of Keats are, however way Pessoa and Dickinson were organized, etc.

[YesNo]

I would include in my list

Laurence Hope (aka Adela Florence Nicolson),
Dorothy Parker, and
Eknath Easwaran's translation of the Bhagavad Gita.

[Jassy Melson]

1. T.S. Eliot - The Waste Land and Other Poems
2. Poe - The Raven and Other Poems
3. Poe - Poems
4. Dylan Thomas - Quite Early One Morning
5.. A.E. Housman - A Shropshire Lad
6. Collected Poems of Gerard Hopkins (ed. by Robert Bridges)
7. Homer's Iliad
8. Homer's Odyssey
9. Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems
10. Leonard Cohen - The Spicebox of Earth

[Alexander III]

I am glad to finally see a whats your favorite, not centered around prose !

I to shall divide mine in sections



Narrative/Epic

1) Pharsalia - Lucanus
2) Childe Harold's Pilgrimage - Byron
3) Eugene Onegin - Pushkin

Lyric poem collection

1) Illuminations - Arthur Rimbaud (not verse but poetry)
2) La Vita Nuova - Dante
3) Lamia and other poems - Keats

Verse Drama

1) Prometheus Unbound - Shelley
2) Prometheus Bounds - Aeschylus
3) Othello - Shakespeare

[arrytus]

[QUOTE=stlukesguild;991966]

(Runners-up would include Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered have yet to find a copy of this but it's been on my list for more about 5 years at this point

Spenser- Amoretti (Sonnets and Epithalimion)
4. Robert Herrick- Hesperides
8. Verlaine- Fêtes galantes
haven't read any of these, though perhaps some of the Verlaine

12. Boris Pasternak- My Sister-Life []i love this





[QUOTE=Alexander III;992039]

Narrative/Epic

1) Pharsalia - Lucanus [I haven't even heard of this. good to learn of something new]


Two which I totally overlooked are Martial- who is amazing and hilarious; and Horace, who simply is the best latin poet, IMO. And of course Ovid's Metamorphoses are a must read. good additions. I must say there were a few I've never read, and others I've never even heard of.

[Virgil]

I tried looking for a thread already in progress but couldn't find one so starting my own top 10 personal favorite books of poetry, not including any Collected editions.

Hardest choice was to not include religious texts like the Bhradaranyaka Upanishad, the Shahnameh, or the Ramayana [of course this last I've not read the entire thing as it's very hard to find in English unabridged and my Sanskrit isn't good enough to read without stopping every other word to consult the dictionary.] Other favorite poets like Charles Cros, Pasternak, and Borges had to be left out as well.


indicate works I'd prefer in the language of origin (if other than English).

Once more this is highly subjective and I assume people will definitely rather have Pushkin or Dante or Milton et al but look forward to seeing what other people read and perhaps learn about someone new.


in no particular order:

1-Faust (especially Part 1)* - Goethe
2-Duino Elegies*- Rainer Rilke
3-Confucian Odes translated by Ezra Pound
4-Residencia en la Tierra- Pablo Neruda
5-The Manyoshu
6-The Gulistan- Sa'adi
7-Les Fleurs du Mal*- Charles Baudelaire
8-Hamlet-Shakespeare
9-The Odyssey*- Homer
10- Four Quartets- T.S. Eliot [this was borderline with Ezra Pound's Pisan Cantos]

Hey, you're an Ezra Pound fan. I don't come across too many. I can't list top ten but I do agree with you on The Four Quartets, and of course I would include lots of Shakespeare, Dante (an absolute must), Virgil's Aeneid, Homer, though I lean to The Illiad. Oh I have a great love of Tennyson's In Memoriam. I do like Pound, though I wouldn't include him in my top ten. Nice to meet you. :)

[Paulclem]

Mine would be - as I think of them in no particular order:

1) T.S. Eliot - The Waste Land and Other Poems
2) Basho - The Narrow Road to the Deep North
3) Blake - Songs of Innocence and Experience
4) Milton - Paradise Lost
5) Shelley - Prometheus Unbound
6) Dylan Thomas - Under Milk Wood
7) Chaucer - The Canterbury Tales
8) T.S. Eliot - Old Possum's Book of Cats
9) Larkin - Collected Poems
10) Ted Hughes - Collected Poems

[arrytus]

Hey, you're an Ezra Pound fan. I don't come across too many.

<_--------------------- Hence my avatar

This is perhaps my favorite poem of all time, or at least while being read by ole Ezra

http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Pound/1939/Pound-Ezra_01_Sestina-Altaforte_Harvard_1939.mp3

AND HERE IS THE LINK FOR THE OLD RECORDINGS VARIOUS POETS MADE IN THE BEGINNING OF THE 20TH CENTURY OF THEIR POEMS, IT'S A MUST

http://www.ubu.com/sound/

[LitNetIsGreat]

I seem to neglect poetry at times and have clear English bias (though I am a student of English literature and am Englishish) even so, these chaps have meant a lot to me. Not strickly in order.

Shakespeare (life in words)
Keats (some sublime stuff)
Milton (Paradise Lost - followed me around the house for about a year, magical)
Wordsworth (essential idealist summer reading, sitting under a tree looking at sheep with a flask of tea)
Philip Sidney (I like the pastoral stuff and Astrophil and Stella)
Shelley (great reading when drunk as it really flows, also Ozimandias is one of my favourite things ever)
Homer (Odyssey in particular, loved reading this, stuff of myths and legends)
Dante (I’ve only scratched the surface with this (having read one version only relatively quickly) but I enjoyed the ride and look forward to the greater depth ahead of me)
Baudelaire (Flowers of Evil, darkly realistic, memories of reading this laid on grass and trying to learn French with the duel edition, didn’t happen, but I enjoyed the poetry nevertheless)
Hmm, I can’t tie down the tenth, maybe Blake (some top stuff)

[Emil Miller]

[QUOTE=Neely;992146]I seem to neglect poetry at times and have clear English bias (though I am a student of English literature and am Englishish) even so, these chaps have meant a lot to me. Not strickly in order.

[B]Wordsworth (essential idealist summer reading, sitting under a tree looking at sheep with a flask of tea) [QUOTE]

Neely old chap, I'm afraid I don't read much by way of poetry so am unable to comment on the given choices but I was just wondering what sheep would be doing with a flask of tea.

[Virgil]

<_--------------------- Hence my avatar

This is perhaps my favorite poem of all time, or at least while being read by ole Ezra

http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Pound/1939/Pound-Ezra_01_Sestina-Altaforte_Harvard_1939.mp3

AND HERE IS THE LINK FOR THE OLD RECORDINGS VARIOUS POETS MADE IN THE BEGINNING OF THE 20TH CENTURY OF THEIR POEMS, IT'S A MUST

http://www.ubu.com/sound/

That's a heck of an angry poem, but very well written. Thanks. My favorite Pound poem is Canto 17. I think that's the number, the one with Kore. Thanks for the links.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Neely old chap, I'm afraid I don't read much by way of poetry so am unable to comment on the given choices but I was just wondering what sheep would be doing with a flask of tea.
Ha ha, you'll be surprised just how civilized Yorkshire sheep are - you should see what they eat, as well only the best home baked bread for them, no factory stuff!

[mortalterror]

1.Dante's Divine Comedy
2.Homer's Iliad
3.Shakespeare's Complete Works
4.Firdawsi's Shahnahma
5.Ovid's Metamorphoses
6.Vyasa's Bhagavad Gita
7.Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil
8.Leopardi's Selected Poems
9.T.S. Eliot's Collected Poems
10.Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner
11.Teachings of Rumi
12.Jayadeva's Gita Govinda
13.Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered
14.Lucan's Pharsalia
15.Statius' Thebaid
16.Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
17.The Complete Poems of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
18.The Complete Poems of Robert Frost
19.The Complete Poems of John Donne
20.Norton Anthology of English Literature
21.300 Tang Poems tr. Walter Bynner, especially Tu Fu, Po Chu-i, Li Po, and Wang Wei
22.Pound's Persona
23.Omar Khayyam Rubaiyat, tr. Fitzgerald
24.Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins
25.Greek Lyric Poetry, especially Archilochus, Sappho, and Anacreon
26.Works of Shelley
27.Works of Yeats
28.Poems of Poe
29.Housman- A Shropshire Lad
30.Wordsworth- Selected Poems

[arrytus]

1.Dante's Divine Comedy
2.Homer's Iliad
3.Shakespeare's Complete Works
4.Firdawsi's Shahnahma
5.Ovid's Metamorphoses
6.Vyasa's Bhagavad Gita
7.Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil
8.Leopardi's Selected Poems
9.T.S. Eliot's Collected Poems
10.Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner
11.Teachings of Rumi
12.Jayadeva's Gita Govinda
13.Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered
14.Lucan's Pharsalia
15.Statius' Thebaid
16.Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
17.The Complete Poems of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
18.The Complete Poems of Robert Frost
19.The Complete Poems of John Donne
20.Norton Anthology of English Literature
21.300 Tang Poems tr. Walter Bynner, especially Tu Fu, Po Chu-i, Li Po, and Wang Wei
22.Pound's Persona
23.Omar Khayyam Rubaiyat, tr. Fitzgerald
24.Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins
25.Greek Lyric Poetry, especially Archilochus, Sappho, and Anacreon
26.Works of Shelley
27.Works of Yeats
28.Poems of Poe
29.Housman- A Shropshire Lad
30.Wordsworth- Selected Poems

To be captious, we were trying to exclude collections.

Nice call on Rumi though, the Masnavi is a good read. Those Sufis sure can write. Haven't read Leopardi's poetry but have read his Operati.

However I'm finding that I've missed another latin poet: Statius. thanks for the heads up! Adding him to the TBR pile with Lucanus.

[Alexander III]

To be captious, we were trying to exclude collections.

Nice call on Rumi though, the Masnavi is a good read. Those Sufis sure can write. Haven't read Leopardi's poetry but have read his Operati.

However I'm finding that I've missed another latin poet: Statius. thanks for the heads up! Adding him to the TBR pile with Lucanus.

Of latin poet's Virgil has the biggest reputation, but that is mostly due to the fact that in the middle ages, the church saw the a portion in the Aeneid which could be interpreted as prophesising the birth of Jesus ( however most likely it was prophesising the birth of Augustus). And during the Roman times Virgil was held in such high regard due to the fact that his poem was a huge poem dedicated to the glory of AUgustus and Rome.

Personally I find Ovid, Lucanus and the silver age latin poets to be equal or better than Virgil. Lucanus and Ovid both don't show Rome in and ideal state, but rather for what it was, the truth, and does they were both considered bellow Virgil. My biggest complaint with Virgil is that his verses don't flow, they seem artificial they lack the natural ease of other poets.

[arrytus]

Of latin poet's Virgil has the biggest reputation, but that is mostly due to the fact that in the middle ages, the church saw the a portion in the Aeneid which could be interpreted as prophesising the birth of Jesus ( however most likely it was prophesising the birth of Augustus). And during the Roman times Virgil was held in such high regard due to the fact that his poem was a huge poem dedicated to the glory of AUgustus and Rome.

Personally I find Ovid, Lucanus and the silver age latin poets to be equal or better than Virgil. Lucanus and Ovid both don't show Rome in and ideal state, but rather for what it was, the truth, and does they were both considered bellow Virgil. My biggest complaint with Virgil is that his verses don't flow, they seem artificial they lack the natural ease of other poets.


I've read Maro. And I wrote in an earlier post that Martial is my fav latin poet, Horace I consider the best [of what I've read], and Ovid is always interesting. Catullus is terrible IMO. But as it stands I obviously have much more to read.

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

My exposure to poetry is woefully lacking, so as it stands I am left with listing among the few I have read.

Chaucer – Canterbury Tales
Sir Edward Dyer – “My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is”
Oliver Goldsmith – “The Deserted Village”
Coleridge – “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
Homer – “The Iliad”
Homer - “The Odyssey”
Shakespeare – Any one of the tragedies
Walter Scott – “The Lady of the Lake”
Poe – “The Raven”
James Whitcomb Riley – “Down Around the River”

Waiting in the wings: Poe’s “Al Aaraaf”, just purchased Dante’s “Inferno”. Off in the distance: Milton, Thoreau, Wadsworth…etc


.

[Paulclem]

In The Works, Neely, the bargain bookstore, they are selling large illustrated hardback copies of The Ancient Mariner, Canterbury Tales, Dante, Poe and Paradise Lost. Paradise Lost £6.55. The Ancient Mariner £2.55. Good quality too.

[LitNetIsGreat]

In The Works, Neely, the bargain bookstore, they are selling large illustrated hardback copies of The Ancient Mariner, Canterbury Tales, Dante, Poe and Paradise Lost. Paradise Lost £6.55. The Ancient Mariner £2.55. Good quality too.

Excellent thanks. I'm down town today so I'll pop in.

[Paulclem]

I'm such a skinflint I'm waiting for therm to put a sale price on them.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I didn't manage to get down that end of town today, so I'll lookout for the sale too.:D