Hi! I love the curiosity about poetry going on around these parts.
#656300 this came up on 8/20
It sounds like you want a comprehensive overview approach, and I like that, because looking at poetry explains much about human nature and our histories that you can't always get from other things. You could begin with Beowulf if you really want to go deep, that's where my British Literature course began. Other notable early writers would be Alexander Pope, Shakespeare. Get into T.S. Eliot and William Wordsworth for sure. For the Americans, you gotta look at Charles Bukowski, people love him. I love Billy Collins. I don't believe in a path, necessarily, because that's a little too academic for poetry, I think. So that's why my suggestion is get lost in a library, put your curiosity before you and sniff it out in books that you can touch. Oh pick up any issue of Poetry magazine or The Paris Review.
man I didn't mention any women....but shout out Sylvia Plath, that's my bitch
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Love it. Being lost in an unknown section of a public library is why I still keep buying and reading paper books and I didn't completely surrender to ebooks and pdfs
Being lost in poetry is going to be hell of a ride, I'm looking forward to it. Thanks.
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I would encourage to share what you like (or what you don't like) here! I should do that more
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I always felt that a bit odd since my mother tongue is not english nor any other widely spoken language. I usually tend to read poetry in italian because it's what turns me on with regards to emotions and feelings. English always felt a bit of a technical-only language for me, at least until few months ago. I'm trying to deal with this at the moment, that's why I asked this here.
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I would also highly recommend A Book of Luminous Things because each poem is translated to English from many different languages and it's an incredible book
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Interesting! This is my all-time favorite poem, I wonder how it will come across to you.
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Love the audio version, that's very musical I would say. A lot to digest :-)
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