/lit/ - Literature

John Donne (pbuh)

T. S. Eliot and Lord Byron.

>>16356163
Whats the OG image?

>>16356163
Thomas Carew is quick and easy. The Cavalier poets in all are worth checking out.

http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/carew/carewbib.htm

>>16356167
John Donne has like 11 good ones and that's it (Elegy no. 2: The Anagram is thoroughly underrated); If you are not Christian then the bulk of Donne's poems are boring and tedious.

>>16356163
William Butler Yeats is one of the best and most interesting poets. Surprisingly enough, his poetry is quite accessible and comfy.

T. S. Eliot too. I wouldn't call his work complicated to 'get' and enjoy, but it gets more difficult when it comes to track every reference. He does have a reputation of being an incredibly difficult poet, but I think he is not. Nevertheless, he is maybe the most rewarding of all poets.

>>16356163

bump

>>16356163
>who should I read next?
That rather depends on who you've read already (and liked).

How can I get into poetry? I tried googling for beginner poetry books but all of the recommendations are of poems by black transgender bisexual demipeople and shit like that.

>>16358388
First step is not thinking like that

Robert Herrick

get the Oxford Verse series, a volume for each century, then look into the poets who strike your fancy

>>16356232
Here's the original one, not sure what it's from I saw it on /biz/ then added the apu

Anyone else like that shes barefoot?

I want to lick her soles

>>16359678
Michael Whelan art. Not sure if it’s to a cover or just independently made

bump

>>16356163
AE Housman
Percy Shelley
William Blake
Alexander Pope

>>16359678
What is she gonna do once she gets to where the road breaks

>>16358388
>>16356163
Read a couple poems by:
>Donne
>Blake
>Keats
>The Brownings
>Robert Service
>Frost
>Auden
>Plath
See which one speaks to you most, then go down the respective rabbit hole.

>>16356180
>T.S. Eliot
The celebrated English poet from St Louis

>>16360414
>Plath
Is there an English poet named Plath that I don't know about?

who are some good modern/contemporary english language poets?

>>16359954
She can step on my face

>>16360437
Sylvia Plath. Her first collection, The Colossus, is actually really really good. Her second collection, Ariel, has been hijacked by feminists, at least in my opinion. It still has some really solid poems in it, but I do find it a bit overrated. If you're going to read Sylvia Plath then I definitely recommend checking out her husband Ted Hughes, who is my favourite poet of all time. His collection Hawk In The Rain and Crow: The Life and Songs of Crow are both some of the greatest poetry collections of 20th century England.

>>16360524
Sylvia Plath was from Massachusetts.

>>16360534
I know that? She still wrote in English. Also I am not OP who recommended her. Just clarifying who she was because the person I replied to made it sound like he had never heard of her. Ted Hughes is English though. Definitely check him out

Is H.D. (Helga Doolittle) any good?

>>16360701
Amazing, at least in my books. Her book Trilogy is a super underrated poetry book and has some of the best lines of verse. Here's an example of her poem about Leda being raped by Zeus in disguise as a swan.

Leda
BY H. D.

Where the slow river
meets the tide,
a red swan lifts red wings
and darker beak,
and underneath the purple down
of his soft breast
uncurls his coral feet.

Through the deep purple
of the dying heat
of sun and mist,
the level ray of sun-beam
has caressed
the lily with dark breast,
and flecked with richer gold
its golden crest.

Where the slow lifting
of the tide,
floats into the river
and slowly drifts
among the reeds,
and lifts the yellow flags,
he floats
where tide and river meet.

Ah kingly kiss—
no more regret
nor old deep memories
to mar the bliss;
where the low sedge is thick,
the gold day-lily
outspreads and rests
beneath soft fluttering
of red swan wings
and the warm quivering
of the red swan's breast.

>>16360437
Frost is American. You can't have him, but you can have Plath

>>16356163
I'm partial to John Dryden's fart jokes in Mac Flecknoe.

>>16360728
very nice poem

>>16358388
>read poems in an anthology until you find a poet you like
>read poems slowly, line by line, listening to what the poem is saying
>don't rush through a poem trying to "get it"
>read poems with a dictionary at hand
>read poems out loud
>read poems without any outside distractions
any of those should work

>>16356523
>John Donne has like 11 good ones and that's it (Elegy no. 2: The Anagram is thoroughly underrated); If you are not Christian then the bulk of Donne's poems are boring and tedious.
Is this true?

bump

>>16356163
assuming by english you mean from england, here are a few that aren't quite so musty:
tom raworth
tony lopez
jh prynne
steve mccaffery
basil bunting

>>16361178
i mean english from anywhere

>>16361215
rather hopelessly broad without a point of comparison

bump

>>16361643
Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Philip Sidney, Anne Carson, Seamus Heaney, William Butler Yeats, Oscar Wilde, D.H Lawrence, and Robert Graves.

>>16360524
I downloaded Sylvia Plath's complete poems on my kindle. The poems are listed in chronological order and the few I read (about 12) were kinda boring. I assume her first few poems aren't as good as some she composed later. Is the Colossus still worth checking out if I didn't find her early work too enticing?

How is Anne Sexton?

>>16356163

Keats is the best of the romantics, and surely top 5 in the language. Give him a read.

>>16363457
Amusing

Philip Larkin. Try Church Going, This Be The Verse, and MCMXIV.

>>16356163
I'm reading Coleridge and enjoying at the moment.

>>16356523
I would heavily disagree. I am not a Christian, but I can still admire his holy sonnets for their artistry. Especially compared against Shakespeare sonnet (both of which I love for different reasons) the meter and rhythm of his sonnets are wholly unique. My favorite is "round the round earths imagines corners ". Once you recite it enough, and the trochees make sense, the sense of climax is impressive.

Tennyson

>>16356163
Spenser

>>16356163
Poetry is going to seem whack of you just go into it headfirst. I honestly think it's good to look at some GCSE analysis of poetry just to get into it's mechanisms, i remember that's how i got into poetry back when i was sixteen.
I'll also recommend you start with the Georgian poets (English WW1 poets basically). They are accessible as they don't use difficult language, use different forms including ones both modern and archaic (which helps in understanding both Shakespeare and Modern stuff), and also use basic aural techniques, including metre, that provide an easy foundation for seeing how these things relate to meaning. It also helps that they were all soldiers and thus wrote about some actually gripping stuff. Everybody already knows all the historical context too which is useful.
For this reason i'll recommend you read 'exposure' which is in the current GCSE syllabus. Watch an analysis video on youtube. I know its humiliating, but nobody's watching, and its a bloody good start.
I'd recommend you move onto Rupert Brooke after that poem. Perhaps buy Tim Kendall's publication of WW1 poets (which is an OWC!) that has a lovely introduction to each poet and notes and everything else. After that, buy an anthology of popular verse (Parragonhas has a good one) and see what you like! You'll be reading Milton and Hughes and whoever and god you are going to have fun. Of course you are going to want more info as you progress. That will come, but i feel this is the best starting point possible. You won't need to ask 4chan what to do once you have a solid base.
Don't fall for those just namedropping in the thread too. As i said, the best poets will seem shit if you have no idea what they're doing.

>>16363384
Unrelated to plath, and how odd it is you think she's boring lol, but poetry on kindle is abysmal. I had the hardest time finding ebooks of poetry that dont get chewed up on Kindle. I just gave up after a while

>>16364026
Larkin is great. This be the verse is a fun one to memorize.

>>16363384
>>16363457
The Colossus, in my opinion, is her best work. She has this voice in the collection that is so powerful and hypnotic that it's really hard to escape from. Ariel, like I said in one of my posts here, is good, but it has been hijacked by ultra feminists. There are some strong poems like Daddy and Lady Lazarus and a few others, but I do find the collection overall to be a bit lackluster.

Anne Sexton is probably the strongest of the American female poets in the 50's/60's. She uses poetic forms and myths so well to convey the limitations of her personal life. Though she does write about the woman experience in the 50's it never feels super in your face and she has strong metaphors and imagery to keep it original.

>>16363457
Her Kind
BY ANNE SEXTON

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.

Shelley! I actually got into him because there’s a beautiful passage in Stoner, which I read because of /lit/ lmao

Good thread, keep it going

Do you guys read poetry in books or online?

I loves me some Tennyson, and Spenser, and Marvell. Milton's Lycidas is also nonsense good (fuck you Johnson its good). Also Dylan Thomas and Leonie Adams, for poets from the last hundred years.

>>16358388
Unironically, read the poems of Charles Bukowski. He's very good and very easy to read. Assmad plebs will disagree because he's not cultured enough or something. Who gives a fuck. Read Bukowski. Here's "The night I was going to die"

the night I was going to die
I was sweating on the bed
and I could hear the crickets
and there was a cat fight outside
and I could feel my soul dropping down through the
mattress
and just before it hit the floor I jumped up
I was almost too weak to walk
but I walked around and turned on all the lights
and then I went back to bed
and dropped it down again and
I was up
turning on all the lights
I had a 7-year-old daughter
and I felt sure she wouldn't want me dead
otherwise it wouldn't have
mattered
but all that night
nobody phoned
nobody came by with a beer
my girlfriend didn't phone
all I could hear were the crickets and it was
hot
and I kept working at it
getting up and down
until the first of the sun came through the window
through the bushes
and then I got on the bed
and the soul stayed
inside at last and
I slept.
now people come by
beating on the doors and windows
the phone rings
the phone rings again and again
I get great letters in the mail
hate letters and love letters.
everything is the same again.

>>16364652
>>16360760
Plath is good. People only dislike her because the way she appears in the collective consciousness as this glorfied suicidal feminst. The Collosus is great though.

Anyways here's a short list:
Dickinson
Yeats
Rilke
Keats
Emily Bronte
Mallarmé
Virgil's Eclogues

>>16365764
I approve of this list!

OP here. I just blew a bunch of money because I can and ordered poetry collections of the following:
Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Yeats, Eliot, Stevens, Crane, Heaney, Hughes, Plath, Sexton, Merrill, Bishop, O'Hara, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Larkin, Moore, H.D., WC Williams, Dickinson, Walcott, cummings, Frost, Ashbery, Wilbur, Hecht, and Carson

How did I do?
Anyway thanks frens. I want to read more poetry. I have taken poetry classes and read anthologies and some stuff from some of these poets in classes before already so I have experience with poetry.

>>16365972
You did good, pig. You did good.

>>16356163
>>16359678
white goddess, blessed and barefoot

>>16365670
cringe

>>16366525
I prefer to imagine a young boy

These are some of my favorite poems:
As Kingfishers Catch Fire
Tom O’Bedlam
Hound of Heaven
Hollow Men by Eliot
Conundrum of the Workshops
Stolen Child by Yeats

Can you anons give me some recommendations

>>16367907
not poets but anths: maybe try either penguin poetry of the 1890s or penguin decadent poetry
>>16360728
>Amazing, at least in my books. Her book Trilogy is a super underrated poetry book and has some of the best lines of verse.
i saw trilogy in a charity shop for £2 on friday but passed it up
based on this i will go back for it tomorrow, i think
if the cute ecclesiastical college chick who served me before is there again i'm gonna ask her out wish me luck

>>16367964
ted hughes consciously follows the yeats/eliotian idea of poetry as myth re-construction, try him - his selected poems is a better introduction than picking any anthology

Bump

>>16367964
Good luck, my man!

Bump

>>16360701
>>16360728
thanks for the new name
1/14

>>16356163
>>16370995
2/14

>>16371007
3/14

>>16371016
4/14

>>16371028
5/14

>>16371032
6/14

>>16371038
7/14

>>16371050
8/14

>>16371061
9/14

>>16371068
10/14

>>16371077
11/14

>>16371085
12/14

>>16371089
13/14

>>16371098
14/14

I always recommend people start with this general flow: romantics to Victorians to modernists.

Romantic recommendations: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats

Victorian: tennyson, browning

Modernists: Eliot, Yeats, Pound

If you just want to jump in, I would pick Yeats and Wordsworth as two great starting points.

>>16371148
Don't forget Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Her poems are also fantastic!

A Musical Instrument
BY ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

I.
WHAT was he doing, the great god Pan,
Down in the reeds by the river ?
Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
And breaking the golden lilies afloat
With the dragon-fly on the river.

II.
He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
From the deep cool bed of the river :
The limpid water turbidly ran,
And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
And the dragon-fly had fled away,
Ere he brought it out of the river.

III.
High on the shore sate the great god Pan,
While turbidly flowed the river ;
And hacked and hewed as a great god can,
With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
Till there was not a sign of a leaf indeed
To prove it fresh from the river.

IV.
He cut it short, did the great god Pan,
(How tall it stood in the river !)
Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,
Steadily from the outside ring,
And notched the poor dry empty thing
In holes, as he sate by the river.

V.
This is the way,' laughed the great god Pan,
Laughed while he sate by the river,)
The only way, since gods began
To make sweet music, they could succeed.'
Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,
He blew in power by the river.

VI.
Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan !
Piercing sweet by the river !
Blinding sweet, O great god Pan !
The sun on the hill forgot to die,
And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly
Came back to dream on the river.

VII.
Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,
Making a poet out of a man :
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain, —
For the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.

>>16365972
When you're looking for more: Robbie Burns, Poe, Tennyson and Edward FitzGerald's "Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam".

> A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
> A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread--and Thou
> Beside me singing in the Wilderness--
> Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

>>16356163
Another really good poet is Olga Broumas. She deals a lot with Greek mythology and the land of Greece while also writing from her experience as a young lesbian. When I first heard of her I thought I'd hate her and almost didn't read her because I thought she was going to be super political full of "men suck", but I was surprisingly wrong. Here's a poem that is reminiscent of HD's poem above:

Leda and Her Swan

You have red toenails, chestnut
hair on your calves, oh let
me love you, the fathers
are lingering in the background
nodding assent.

I dream of you
shedding calico from
slow-motion breasts, I dream
of you leaving with
skinny women, I dream you know.

The fathers are nodding like
overdosed lechers, the fathers approve
with authority: Persian emperors, ordering
that the sun shall rise
every dawn, set
each dusk, I dream.

White bathroom surfaces
rounded basins you
stand among
loosening
hair, arms, my senses.

The fathers are Dresden figurines
vestigial, anecdotal
small sculptures shaped
by the hands of nuns. Yours
crimson tipped, take not part in that
crude abnegation, Scarlet
liturgies shake our room, amaryllis blooms
in your upper thighs, water lilly
on mine, fervent delta

the bed afloat, sheer
linen blowing
on the wind: Nile, Amazon, Mississippi.