/lit/ - Literature

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>>5116769
First start with Homer, Iliad and Odyssey.

>>5117030
this.

Start with the Greeks.

>>5116769

>latin
>pablo neruda

jokes aside, and i know lit hates him, e.e. cummings has some really good poetry. he has a lot of bad poetry, as well, but 'since feeling is first' to this day remains my favorite.

and also, the epics really are beautiful. i havent read any homer, but paradise lost, the d.c., and faust are all fabulous :)

thanks for all that, ill check out e.e.cummings. I'm more interested in poetry collections than epic poems since the latter are read basically like novels. I've read Homer, Dante, etc.

>>5117048

i find the hardest part of poetry is sifting through the b.s. I love Plath, but i fucking hate so many of her poems. Likewise with cummings, he's great, but he's written so much that there's bound to be some not-so-great by comparison poetry.

also try t.s. elliot and walt whitman.

>>5116769
Lunch Poems by Frank O'Hara
The Branch Will Not Break by James Wright
Organic Trains by Jim Carroll
Howl and Other Poems/Kaddish and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg

Recommended pleb-tier collections. Enjoy anon.

>>5116769
I never expected to run into this. We studied it at the international writing program at the University of Iowa. I learned a shit ton about poetry from that class. I'd recommend it.

>>5117030
>>5117038
Disagree. The epics are more or less a series of events coupled with a few standard phrases so a skilled bard could remember it all and assemble the phrases into meter on the spot. This has very little to do with the modern idea of the poetic tradition that OP wishes to infiltrate, where the focus is on careful word choice and composition.

Poetry is something I myself have had a lot of trouble getting into. The American poetic tradition (which I come from) is particularly tricky because it isn't as rooted in very ancient tradition the way much of Asian and European poetry is. When an American writes a sonnet or a ghazal, we're alluding to the traditions those respectively come from.

It's easy to forget that in the grand scheme of things, America, culturally, is very new. Free verse is almost unheard of in Russia. If you don't rhyme or write in meter, in fact, they call that style American.

The "unrooted" style is becoming more prominent globally as we become more connected, but it seems to me that American poets are still the most exemplary.

I've read a few books examining poetry in a technical light. Musicality, the effects of syntax and diction, all that good stuff. But ultimately, those skills apply in hindsight. First-time reading of a poem, optimally, doesn't include a 10 minute analysis with each line.

>>5117273
To clarify, I'm recommending the book. Although the program is top-tier, that information isn't very useful to you.

The way i've come to look at it is that to really feel a poem requires considering ("sensing," even) language on a level that conventionally-schooled prose readers aren't used to thinking on. It involves knowing a lot of people who enjoy poetry, taking classes, not so much for analysis as for the close reading and the feelings of an entire group vs. what you could feel on your own, and maybe even writing some. It's like speaking a foreign language in a way.

Anyways, this is all just my experience, and I'm not really a guru on the topic. Hope I've been of some use.

Yeats

Stan Rice
(yes Anne Rice's dead husband)