/lit/ - Literature

>>19739456
Any tips on how to get into earlier stuff that I've as yet had no luck with (e.g. Metaphysical poets, Romantics) would be appreciated too.

>>19739456
lol

>>19739509
Pls no bully.

Have you tried Hardy, Rossetti and Arnold?

>>19739693
>Have you tried Hardy...
Yep. Thought he was pretty decent.

>...Rossetti and Arnold?
Only Dover Beach, which I thought was okay. I'll try some more and take a look at Rossetti too. Cheers.

>>19739456
there's a chap called Christopher Logue.
check him out.
you're welcome.

>>19739456
Dylan Thomas is the man. He has a limited range, but playing on his home ground there's no-one to touch him.

Sometimes he might have been too concerned with sound over sense, but his best stuff isn't *that* obscure. You just have to get on his wavelength. Here are my dozen favourites:

>1. Fern Hill
When DT was young he spent his summer holidays on a farm. Then he grew up, which sucks. (Wordsworth said much the same in Intimations of Immortality.) Best last three lines in the language.

>2. In My Craft Or Sullen Art
Syllabic (each line has seven syllables, except the closing line of each stanza, which has six. There's one slip, IIRC, but that's the basic pattern.) DT once laughed about this poem and said it was all lies, because he worked in the daytime, like everyone else. It doesn't matter though. It's true emotionally. Art is the lie that reveals the truth, as Picasso said.

>3. The Hunchback In The Park
This is good but restrained until the last three stanzas when it suddenly spreads its wings. There's a YouTube video of DT himself reading it but it's flawed, sadly, because he messes up at the end and skips a line and adds it out-of-place.

>4. If My Head Hurt A Hair's Foot
A conversation between a woman and her unborn child. Robert Graves once said this was gibberish and offered a reward of £1 to anyone who could explain it. Sorry Robert, you wrote some good poems yourself, but when it comes to appreciating DT, you're an idiot.

>5. Not From This Anger
DT's girl has just said she's not in the mood. This is exactly how you feel when that happens.

>6. How Shall My Animal
Every writer (and everyone else too, I guess) feels from time to time how ridiculously pallid and inadequate words are for conveying reality. Musicians have it better.

>7. Lament
Rake gets too old to party and suddenly discovers virtue. Many such cases!

>8. O Make Me A Mask
A natural desire for privacy, felt particularly strongly by someone whose job is writing about his feels.

>9. After The Funeral
Eulogy for a woman DT knew. I'm sure Sylvia Plath copied this for "Point Shirley".

>10. Once It Was The Colour Of Saying
He feels himself going stale and mechanical as the vividness of youth dies away. Many poets have written about this.

>11. And Death Shall Have No Dominion
As close to religious as he ever comes. But it works pretty well from a secular perspective too.

>12. Especially When The October Wind
This is about lots of things, but mostly I like it because it nails exactly what it's like to go for a vigorous walk on a raw October day.

Also, if you like Larkin who might enjoy the anthology of modern English poets he made for Oxford.

you*

>>19739456
my recommendation is the bard of salford

>>19739847
Thanks for the detailed response. Just read and enjoyed the first two poems. Will get to the others later.

>>19739902
Saw him in Urgh! A Music War years ago and he recently came up in The Sopranos of all places.

>>19739456
Keats is the most readable and enjoyable Romantic in my opinion. His complete works aren't massive either. Just skip his plays and longer pieces to begin with and check out his sonnets, especially the later ones, they're gorgeous.

>>19740342
Just expanding on my reply on Keats.
Read:
> Bright Star
> O Solitude
> When I have fears
> On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

Longer ones, all gems:
> La Belle Dame Sans Merci
> On Melancholy
> Ode to a Grecian Urn
> To Autumn
> Ode to a Nightingale (immortal classic)

>>19739456
I haven't read Swinburne yet but have seen him praised by writers I hold in high esteem. Just in case you haven't tried him.

>>19739456
William Wordsworth

>>19739456

>>19739456

>>19739456
Swinburne.

>>19740315
>he recently came up in The Sopranos of all places.
yeah i've never seen it but apparently they used evidently chickentown over the credits or summat
not sure how the lines about fucking chips being fucking cold and the fucking beer being fucking flat went down with the sopranos audience
he was on good form on would i lie to you last week as well https://youtu.be/TEs-BiVSG30

There are no good British poets. I'm pretty convinced you can't even write good poetry in English.

william wordsworth

Tennyson

>>19741309

It was fairly well received to be honest, soprano fans that made it to season 6 are pretty based.

Some of the main themes of the last season of Sopranos include decay. The mafia is shrinking, they are becoming irrelevant, the protagonist is slipping morally - he was always a sociopath but his last few real emotional connections to the world are being severed.

Another theme is disillusionment, the protagonist survived being shot and a coma but the glow of the miracle faded. In his own words ‘Everyday is a gift but does it have to be a pair of socks? His rival who is in the montage and is gearing for war also spent 20 years in jail and faces similar disillusionment, he hasn’t seen the world around him decay but he has returned to an unrecognisable world.

The recording of the poem perfectly summarised how both men feel, ground down and finding little joy in a hostile world.

>>19740342
>>19740365
Thank you. Hadn't really delved into him seriously and kind of wrote him off with the other romantics whom I don't particularly care for (esp. Blake). Doesn't have that kind of prosody and rhyme that I find quite cloying and clanging that I associate with them. Enjoyed all of those poems, esp. Ode to a Nightingale, Ode to a Grecian Urn, and On Melancholy.

>>19740376
>>19740969
I've read a little bit of him (shorter works, with Dead Love and Love and Sleep being my favorites) and enjoyed him about as much as I enjoyed Hardy. What's meant to be his best work (or what are some particular favorites that you'd recommend)?

>>19741527
Have I gone wrong in reading his shorter works? I haven't really enjoyed them and I see a greater deal of praise reserved for The Prelude.

>>19742978
Have read The Charge of the Light Brigade and found it okay if a bit Victorian (in the pejorative sense) for my taste. What's his best, generally considered or in your opinion?

>>19744024
>What's his best, generally considered or in your opinion?
generally it's considered to be morte d'arthur or the lady of shalott or crossing the bar and so on
dunno about that other anon but mine is locksley hall
>I will take some savage woman
>she shall rear my dusky race.
tennyson getting an early case of jungle fever and frankly i can relate to that

>>19744105
>>19744024
Dude, In Memoriam AHH is his best. It is long as fuck, so I recommend reading the first couple of pages. If it doesn't grab ya, then Victorian poetry might not be your thing.

Coleridge is one that no one has mentioned. Kind of a failed poet, but his failures reach higher ground than successful poets. Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel, and Kubla Khan are poems worth reading.

>>19744150
>In Memoriam AHH
wrote a whole essay on this poem at university.

>>19744158
What was your thesis?

>>19740962
hes scottish not english

>>19744370
>hes scottish not english
>>please provide me with some recommendations for British poets.
Do Americans really?

>>19744598
Not him, but it can be a bit confusing and contentious. While Scotland is part of the UK, it has a distinct culture with separatist currents and varying degrees of antagonism towards England.

>>19744637
>it has a distinct culture
not really

>>19744637
So you're saying Scots aren't British but the English are because flying saint andrew's saltire is more of an identity than flying saint george's cross?

>>19744637
You spend to much time on reddit. Scottish culture is no different to than any regional culture of any European country. And the antagonism is mostly perma-online youngmen. Bavarians have a more separate regional identity and independent government structure than Scotland.
The only confusing thing about Scotland is that it is a "country" without being a nation-state but really it's not much more than nomenclature. You could easily call Bavaria a "country" or Scotland a federal state but because of history Scotland is a "country" and Bavaria is a "federal state".

>>19744651
Well, I suppose that it depends and you can talk about grades of distinctness and the prevalence of those things that distinguish the Scots from the English, but the Scots that I've known have had a strong sense of identity and have resisted Scottish things being too strongly assimilated into the category of "British".

>>19744675
>So you're saying Scots aren't British
No, I'm just defending the anon from the charge of serious ignorance and/or stupidity by noting that "British" is a complicated and contentious term to some. I'm not really concerned with whether Scots are British or not and basically tried to say that saying both yes and no make sense in their own senses.

I said "British poets" in my OP, but I guess I was being imprecise, as what I'm really looking for is "Old World Poetry in English" (I guess I do have a faint bias in favour of England, though) to contrast with the American poetry with which I'm more familiar. I'm not opposed to Irish stuff being mentioned per se (though I'm not interested in heavily folkloric, nationalistic stuff), but I didn't say "British and Irish" because that seemed like an invitation for lovers of each to trash the other as I've seen happen here before.

>>19744771
Stop walking on eggshells and ask for what you want instead of apologising for existing.
>No, I'm just defending the anon from the charge of serious ignorance and/or stupidity by noting that "British" is a complicated and contentious term to some.
Northern Ireland wasn't mentioned. The charge still stands and anon must serve his sentence of humiliation by belittlement.

>>19744817
I've offered no apologies, only charitable interpretations and explanations. I've elaborated on what I want in response to this muddle, too: I guess I would prefer English poetry from England, but I have no objection to English-language poetry from Wales (as the Thomas thing shows), Scotland, or even Ireland provided that you're not getting to folkloricy and nationalistic.

>The charge still stands and anon must serve his sentence of humiliation by belittlement.
Nah, he's alright. Even if it's actual ignorance, it's a peccadillo unworthy of even such a light sentence.

>>19744856
*too folkloricy and nationalistic

>>19739456
Have a look at the Penguin Modern Poets series from the 70s. There are a couple of volumes of Americans but the rest are British.