Poetry suggestions appreciated.

[Veho]

Hi,

Can anyone recommend some poetry collections that will inspire an appreciation and enjoyment of poetry. Thus far I've not read much or enjoyed what I have read, apart from the odd Blake poem. Go easy (no Wordsworth's Prelude kind of thing) but obviously something with literary merit.

Maybe something with a melancholic tone, to suit my current mood.

Hope some of you have some good suggestions.

[stlukesguild]

It is impossible to recommend anything to someone with a degree of certainty that it will resonate with them and open the door to a greater appreciation of poetry. Having said that much... I will make a few suggestions:

Elizabeth Barrett Browning- Sonnets from the Portuguese
e.e. cummings- Selected Poems
Robert Frost- A Boy's Will and North of Boston (Dover)
Robert Frost- The Road not Taken (Dover)
Samuel Coleridge- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Other Poems (Dover)
John Keats- Lyric Poems (Dover)
101 Great American Poems (Dover)
100 Best Loved Poems (Dover)
English Victorian Poetry (Dover)
English Romantic Poetry (Dover)
Alfred, Lord Tennyson- Selected Poems (Dover)
Robert Browning- My Last Duchess (Dover)
Edgar Lee Masters- Spoon River Anthology (Dover)
Lord Byron- Selected Poetry (Dover)
Pablo Neruda- Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
Dylan Thomas- Collected Poems
Charles Baudelaire- The Flowers of Evil (Matthews and Matthews- New Directions)
Rimbaud- A Season in Hell and The Drunken Boat (New Directions)

These may provide a good start in appreciating poetry... although I make no claim to offering a well-rounded collection from diverse nations or eras. The Dover books offer a particularly good place to explore English-language poetry i good quality editions that are incredibly inexpensive. I still have a good many of these in spite of having later collected far more inclusive editions of these great poets.

[Alexander III]

Personally I would recommend the collected works of Keats. He is the one who got me into this whole literature thing, but if you don't go for Keats, I would still suggest a romantic, they seem to be the best introduction to poetry.

Shelley
Goethe
Leopardi
Pushkin
Ugo Foscolo

Are all marvelous as well.

Also If before reading their poems, your read the poets biography on wikipedia it helps you gain a greater appreciation of the poetry, which makes the achievements seem more grand as most of them died relatively young, the Romantics had a particular talent for premature death.

[MorpheusSandman]

If you're just getting into poetry it's often good to start with Anthologies, because then you can sample a lot of different writers and see who appeals to you before you dip deeper into their works. The Norton Anthology of Poetry (http://www.amazon.com/Norton-Anthology-Poetry-Margaret-Ferguson/dp/0393979202/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1304085657&sr=8-2) is the standard and the best I own. It's a 2250 page tome that includes almost every major poet and a healthy selection of their work. If you want something slimmer, Penguin's 100 Greatest Poets of the English Language (http://www.amazon.com/Great-English-Language-Penguin-Academics/dp/0321198670/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1304085687&sr=1-1) is quite good as well. If you want to learn more about poetry then I'd recommend Norton's Introduction to Poetry (http://www.amazon.com/Norton-Introduction-Poetry-Alison-Booth/dp/0393928578/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1304085712&sr=8-3) and Helen Vendler's Poems, Poets, Poetry (http://www.amazon.com/Poems-Poets-Poetry-Introduction-Anthology/dp/0312463197/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1304085734&sr=8-2). Both of which feature commentaries alongside their anthology selections. Vendler especially is a superb poetry critic, scholar, and teacher.

If you insist on individual poets, if you like Blake, you might like Milton who was Blake's primary influence. If you're leery of tackling Milton's masterpiece, Paradise Lost, then read some of his shorter works. Lycidas is perhaps my favorite lyric poem ever written. Milton's works can all be read for free online here. (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/contents/index.shtml) WB Yeats is always a safe bet too, as I know very few people who love poetry but dislike him. Keats is another good suggestion if you want something more beautifully romantic. Donne is the best poet if you want to excite your intellect on matters of love, death, and religion. Chaucer and Shakespeare are great storytellers who happen to be great poets as well. If you want dark and melancholic you might try Poe, although he's perhaps more Gothic than melancholic.

[Veho]

Thanks stlukes and Alexander. I'm looking into all your suggestions and will purchase a few of the ones that sound most promising to me. I appreciate your recommendations.

Alexander, I've read some of the three main early romantics (Wordsworth, Blake and Coleridge) but I'll look into Keats now.

[Pierre Menard]

I'd recommend Walt Whitman, personally. He was probably the poet that really inspired my interest in poetry. He's got some really beautiful stuff.
I wholeheartedly agree with the: Keats, Tennyson, Goethe and Shelley recommendations.

I'm actually still a relative new comer to poetry myself, and am about to start some collected poems of W.B. Yeats whom I also love what I've read of so far, so maybe try some of him as well.

[Veho]

Morpheus, good idea about the anthologies. Also, just had a look at Poe and he looks really promising. Milton's Paradise Lost is on my wish list but perhaps your recommendation of reading some of his shorter work first is the best thing to do.

Pierre, I'll look in to Whitman and Yeats too. No doubt my wish list is going to get even bigger after all this (my birthday can't come soon enough!).

[JCamilo]

It is interesting to know which languages do you understand. Spanish?

[Veho]

It is interesting to know which languages do you understand. Spanish?

I'm afraid not. I have to confess to being a monoglot like most Brits (to our detriment one day, perhaps).

[MorpheusSandman]

Morpheus, good idea about the anthologies. Also, just had a look at Poe and he looks really promising. Milton's Paradise Lost is on my wish list but perhaps your recommendation of reading some of his shorter work first is the best thing to do.Poe is a safe bet as he's really accessible. He's one of the few I know who is consistently popular amongst younger generations (The Simpsons even did an episode based on one of his works) yet is also praised amongst critics; he's one of those "cross the barrier between popular audiences and the cognoscenti" types.

I love Milton, but he requires some effort and dedication. Paradise Lost is one of those works that a reader could spend a lifetime analyzing, studying, parsing, interpreting, and reading about. It's just so immense and complex and inspires such a tremendous range of reactions. It's not the easiest read; Milton was, afterall, imitating the greats while redefining and innovating blank verse as a poetic form. So I'd recommend setting him aside a bit until you're more comfortable with reading poetry in general, especially Rennaissance Poetry and Early Modern English. But do read Lycidas, at least, and perhaps L'Allegro & Il Penseroso to see if he seems like a poet you want to invest some serious time in.

[JCamilo]

I'm afraid not. I have to confess to being a monoglot like most Brits (to our detriment one day, perhaps).

Well, then you may go after those suggestions, the non-english writers, for dual-idiom editions. It is a good toy to get closer to any language, specially if you have at least a 1% notion of what is said. I do not see much to add, if you get keats, you have a path to Shelley and Byron. Then you can just wipe out the entire pantheon of XIX century english literature, and nobody mentioned any Emily, so I would add Emily Dickinson and the Bronte sisters to the lot.

[OrphanPip]

Dickinson is a good recommendation.

There have been a lot of 19th century recs, so I'll go more 20th century and recommend Elizabeth Bishop. If you like Blake you might enjoy Wallace Stevens as well, since he shares some of that philosophical preoccupation, but his style is radically different. Langston Hughes is good too, his poetry is very rhythmic and easy to get into.

Sylvia Plath is not a critical darling, but she's quite popular with more casual readers of poetry.

I think Stevie Smith is remarkably accessible as well. In a less serious vein, the poetry of Dorothy Parker can be quite fun.

[Veho]

Poe is a safe bet as he's really accessible. He's one of the few I know who is consistently popular amongst younger generations (The Simpsons even did an episode based on one of his works).

Yeah, I've seen that episode with the Bart lookalike raven? Thanks for the advice about Milton.

Thanks to JCamilo and OrphanPip for your recommendations too.

I've decided to purchase Frost's The Road Not Taken, an Edgar Allan Poe collection and Emily Dickinson for the time being. I also have a small selection of Keats, Shelley and Byron already that I haven't wanted to read so far, so considering most of you recommended those, I will actually read what I have of them.

I'll be looking into all the poets mentioned to weigh them up, so thanks to all.

[missmeadowsweet]

As has been said, I would definitely try Emily Dickinson. I recently read her entire collection of poems and it was a great mix of pure enjoyment and food for thought. And some of her poems are just stunningingly beautiful (imhp, anyway).