/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.15067328]

When getting into a poet, do you prefer to buy a Complete Poems or a Selected Poems?

[Anonymous No.15067341]

>>15067328
>buying poetry
As to your question, even the greatest poets wrote 90% shit 10% good stuff

[Anonymous No.15067346]

>>15067328
>prefer to buy

U wat m8?

[Anonymous No.15067387]

>>15067328
I read almost all poetry on my phone (or listen to good recordings if they exist) as it’s more convenient for memorization that way. And it’s best to memorize or at least become very familiar with individual poems than to read a large number superficially. That being said I’ve been considering Eliot’s complete poems just because there’s some that I wouldn’t have access to otherwise.

[Anonymous No.15067396]

why are you buying poetry just write your own like nigga you got hands and a brain lmao

[Anonymous No.15067417]

>>15067341
This is true, tbf.
Can’t engage with Eliot outside of the greatest hits and a handful of sundry works.

[Anonymous No.15067460]

>>15067328
If you aren't 'into' Eliot yet, I'd recommend just becoming reasonably familiar with a handful of his best poems first. You definitely don't need to buy the complete poems. I'd recommend starting with Prufrock and The Hollow Men for a digestible introduction to his basic themes, then tackle one of the longer poems like The Waste Land, Ash Wednesday, or Four Quartets. No point reading all the random obscure shit you'd find in his complete poems before doing this.

[Anonymous No.15067628]

I bought Eliot's complete works yesterday. Pretty good stuff.

[Anonymous No.15067672]

Those guys claming not to buy poetry are just ignorants or trolls.
I recomend selected poems. If you go right into a full antology may find yourself bored or lost

[Anonymous No.15067739]

>>15067328
>>15067672
>The Waste Land
accurate text: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land
read by poet:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rpFBSO65P4
read by Alec Guiness (my preference):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hcj4G45F9pw
>Four Quartets
accurate text: http://www.davidgorman.com/4quartets/
read by the poet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga8tQrG4ZSw
read by Alec Guinness (again my preference):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccupYGfiDEw
>Prufrock
accurate text:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/44212/the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock

If you have a strong preference for physical books by all means buy one. It's completely optional though. I got tired of pasting links but all of Eliot's major poems are readily available to anyone who knows how to use a search engine.

[Anonymous No.15067963]

>>15067328
>Complete Poems or a Selected Poems?
You have to have a case-by-case approach, it really depends on what edition and poet you are talking about. Most poets aren't going to have 1000 pages worth of great poetry.

[Anonymous No.15068297]

>>15067328
Selected Poems first, then go after complete works if you really like them. For Eliot, I needed absolutely everything.

[Anonymous No.15068582]

>>15067963
>mfw I bought a Complete Poems of Fernando Pessoa edition.
Did I fuck up?

[Anonymous No.15068595]

>>15068582
Not at all, Pessoa is top tier and all his poetry is worthwhile. What edition did you buy?

[Anonymous No.15068612]

>>15067328
don't see who would actually have a need for a "complete poems" except literature scholars. the maddening thing is, "complete poems" are actually more common than "selected poems".

[Anonymous No.15068671]

>>15068582
fuck no, pessoa is among the greatest ever

[Anonymous No.15068790]

>>15068582
if it has all his heteronyms, then yeah. he wrote a lot of crap and a lot of generic parodies of pastoral poems, etc.

>>15068595
>>15068671
t. book of disquiet plebs

[Anonymous No.15068840]

>>15068790
>and a lot of generic parodies of pastoral poems, etc.
But I like "O guardador de rebanhos" even better than "Mensagem". There's something candide about the way he talks about the boy Jesus (even if he was being ironic), and I'm not even christian, kek.

[Anonymous No.15068883]

>>15068595
>What edition did you buy
>>15068671
This one. Is an old edition from the seventies, bible-esque. I like that. It's my Pessoa bible. I took it on a trip in the summer, but I wasn't suficiently depressed to read it (too many sunny days outside). But now I think I'm in the right mood, kek.

[Anonymous No.15068899]

[Anonymous No.15068906]

Also, share some of your favourite Pessoa poems.

[Anonymous No.15068918]

The reason to buy this particular edition is to get your hands on the wonderful commentary by Christopher Ricks. It takes about up over half of the book and is terrific.

Highly recommended.

[Anonymous No.15068925]

I just read this one and it's already a favourite of mine. Holy based!!

[Anonymous No.15068961]

>>15068925
For the english speaking anons:


Original Sin (Pessoa)

Ah, who will write the story of what he could have been?
Will that story, if anyone writes it,
Be the true story of Humanity?
The only thing there is is the real world; it is not us, just the world;
What is not is us, and there the truth lies.
I am the one I failed to be.
We are all what we supposed ourselves to be.
It is our reality that we never achieve.
What has become of our truth — the dream at the childhood’s window?
What has become of our sureness — the purpose at the afterward’s table?
I meditate, my head bent over against hands placed
On the high windowsill on the balcony windows
Sitting sideways on a chair, after dinner.
What has happened to my reality, that I possess only my life?
What has happened to me, I who am the only I that exists?
So many Caesars have I been!
In my soul, and with some truth;
In my imagination, and with some justice;
In my intelligence, and with some reason —
My God! my God! my God!
So many Caesars have I been!
So many Caesars!
So many Caesars!

[Anonymous No.15068998]

>>15067328
when getting into a musical act do you buy the greatest hits first or listen to the discography?

[Anonymous No.15069005]

>>15068918
I'm trying to get into Yeats. Someone recommend me a good edition, a selected poems one, since this seems to be the direction the posters in this thread are inclined to (at least in a first approach).

[Anonymous No.15069017]

>>15069005
bloom sez the collected poems

[Anonymous No.15069077]

>>15067328
Selected poems first but I'll get the Complete if they are similar price.

As for Fernando Pessoa's poetry, I only like his poems from his Alberto Caeiro heteronym.
If there was a complete edition in English solely from that heteronym that'd be great

[Anonymous No.15069158]

>>15069005
Yeats has 2 major full versions, one regular Collected which reprints the poems as they were published in their separate collections and a Complete that attempted to impose a chronological order (that in my opinion Yeats himself tied to carefully carefully avoid.)

Make sure your version keeps to the original order.

[Anonymous No.15069191]

>people actually like T.S. Eliot
I will never understand this, the only thing remarkable about his works is how they manage to be so vulgar and so pretentious at the same time.

[Anonymous No.15069318]

>>15067963
This begs the question, which poets are worth reading their complete collections?

[Anonymous No.15069504]

>>15069318
Emersons

[Anonymous No.15069523]

>>15068918
here's mine. I ordered it used for 15$ and instead got a new copy, still shrink wrapped and everything.

Highly recommended.

[Anonymous No.15069736]

>>15069318

>which poets are worth reading their complete collections?

Three who come to mind:

>Dylan Thomas
"Selected poems 1934-52" is effectively his Complete Poems since there's very little else. Obviously they aren't all as good as the best dozen, but they're all worth reading. This was one of the books I automatically put in any suitcase I packed for many years.

>Philip Larkin
He didn't write much, and scrapped most of what he wrote, so what remains is all worth looking at, once you're past the juvenilia.

>Wilfred Owen
Again, with the caveat of skipping the juvenilia. Like Keats he cunningly avoided the Wordsworth trap of getting old and turning out interminable rubbish in his dotage.

[Anonymous No.15069792]

>>15067328

>When getting into a poet
I just try a few things first, obviously.

Once I'm into him, though, I want the Complete, for sure. Of course, almost every writer (even the best) turns out a lot of rubbish, but I want to decide for myself what's good and what's not; I don't want to let someone else do it for me.

That includes the poet himself. Most poets are pretty bad judges of their own work.For example: a few years back I got Thom Gunn's Complete Poems and found he had DELIBERATELY EXCLUDED A POEM BECAUSE HE DECIDED IN RETROSPECT HE DIDN'T LIKE IT.

What makes this worse is that the missing work is (in my opinion) pretty good and certainly better than many others he included. For what it's worth, here it is:

BREAKFAST
------------------

For two years I looked forward
only to breakfast. The night
was not night, it was tempered
by hotel signs opposite.

Yet I must have dozed, for all
at once I could distinguish
loaf and cup, monumental
on the sill's ginger varnish.

I do not mean that breakfast
was a remedy — still less
a ritual — but that toast
and coffee served as markers.

Unsour pungency, hot and
dark, sank down my throat. Dry rough
substance encountered the grind
of my teeth. These were enough,

were properties, as it were,
for a tenacity. I
would now get up from the chair,
to look for a job, or try

phoning my ex-wife. Without
future I had to keep on
— without love, without hope, but
without renunciation.