for some reason, i've been reading more poetry this week. a friend of mine sent me a link to this article, published in The Atlantic almost 20 years ago, but that I think still has some interesting things to say.
i have always found poetry difficult. that is to say, i've always wanted to be the sort of person that is into poetry, but i find actually reading poetry very demanding, so i don't often do. part of this is perhaps cultural--i was never encouraged to appreciate literature when i was young (at least, not nearly as much as i was encouraged to appreciate math and science), and i never had any particularly literary close friends growing up. my interest in poetry mainly comes from reading philosophers who are interested in poetry (people like Nietzsche or Heidegger or Derrida, but especially Alain Badiou) and what they are capable of in terms of interpreting a poem and making poetry a profound resource for thought. but most of the poetry that German or French philosophers read and interpret is (not surprisingly) German or French. i've read some of the great French poets (Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarme) with varying degrees of success, but i've come to realize that the fact that i'm not reading them in the original language is a significant barrier to really understanding the linguistic operations and formal procedures at play. i also lack a historical context for understanding some of this work. therefore, i've come to the conclusion that i really need to give myself a grounding in the history of English poetry. some months ago, i composed the following syllabus for myself:
William Shakespeare's "Sonnets and other Poems"
John Milton's "Paradise Lost"
a book of selected poems from William Blake
Coleridge's and Wordsworth's "Lyrical Ballads"
Emily Dickinson's "Complete Poems"
Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass"
Wallace Steven's "Collected Poems"
T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land and Other Poems"
Allen Ginsburg's "Collected Poems"
and I've already read a bunch of Edgar Allen Poe. so that's a start. at first i wanted to tackle all this in a strictly chronological manner, but i might get bored with that approach and i might start skipping around. i'm about halfway through the Shakespeare by now. am i missing anything crucial? or does anybody know of any good anthologies (but i mean really good, because i'm generally more interested in following the development of an individual's thinking and art than i am in anthologies)? what poetry inspires you?
i have always found poetry difficult. that is to say, i've always wanted to be the sort of person that is into poetry, but i find actually reading poetry very demanding, so i don't often do. part of this is perhaps cultural--i was never encouraged to appreciate literature when i was young (at least, not nearly as much as i was encouraged to appreciate math and science), and i never had any particularly literary close friends growing up. my interest in poetry mainly comes from reading philosophers who are interested in poetry (people like Nietzsche or Heidegger or Derrida, but especially Alain Badiou) and what they are capable of in terms of interpreting a poem and making poetry a profound resource for thought. but most of the poetry that German or French philosophers read and interpret is (not surprisingly) German or French. i've read some of the great French poets (Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarme) with varying degrees of success, but i've come to realize that the fact that i'm not reading them in the original language is a significant barrier to really understanding the linguistic operations and formal procedures at play. i also lack a historical context for understanding some of this work. therefore, i've come to the conclusion that i really need to give myself a grounding in the history of English poetry. some months ago, i composed the following syllabus for myself:
William Shakespeare's "Sonnets and other Poems"
John Milton's "Paradise Lost"
a book of selected poems from William Blake
Coleridge's and Wordsworth's "Lyrical Ballads"
Emily Dickinson's "Complete Poems"
Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass"
Wallace Steven's "Collected Poems"
T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land and Other Poems"
Allen Ginsburg's "Collected Poems"
and I've already read a bunch of Edgar Allen Poe. so that's a start. at first i wanted to tackle all this in a strictly chronological manner, but i might get bored with that approach and i might start skipping around. i'm about halfway through the Shakespeare by now. am i missing anything crucial? or does anybody know of any good anthologies (but i mean really good, because i'm generally more interested in following the development of an individual's thinking and art than i am in anthologies)? what poetry inspires you?
That's a great syllabus, and it has inspired me to read more poetry also. I would humbly recommend adding Elizabeth Bishop's Collected Poems to your list, because she is really amazing, and an important modern poet as well. She didn't write too many poems, so it's not as daunting as some of the other collections.
I've started the article but haven't had the chance to finish it yet. It's true that poetry lives is its own world of sorts, and poets do seem to be writing primarily for other poets. Hmm. I'll write more when I finish the article.