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Anyone read poetry? I need some recommendations, no Bukowski tho
Blake, Keats, Neruda, Rilke, Whitman.
I have a hard time with more modern poetry. There are exceptions though...
what do you consider modern/ who are the exceptions?
edit: your post is kind of funny because i have trouble reading keats and blake because they seem almost too traditional to me, although i want to look thru their stuff still
Blake is well worth persevering with. As is Keats. I'm not trying to be too pretentious, they just stuck with me from school.
As far as more modern stuff, that was a lazy term. I should say contemporary. No one in particular, just when I come across it, I find it hard to stomach. Maybe a bit of historical distance makes it seem less trite? I don't know.
I do like Dylan Thomas a lot but being from the same town helps.
More 'modern' would be like Linton Kwesi Johnson, Benjamin Zephaniah, Grace Nichols and Simon Armitage would be the exceptions for Brits. Maybe, Gary Snyder and Sylvia Plath for Americans.
This.
Sylvia Plath must be one of my favorite poets. "Daddy" and "Lady Lazarus" are the two most intense poems I've ever read.
Other than that, I also second the notion of Blake persevering. Songs of Innocence and Experience has great poems in it. My favorite Romantic poet by far.
Whitman on the other hand... are you guys really into him? I don't know. To me, he's a) too spritual, b) too patriotic, and c) too optimistic. Growing up in our times I cannot relate to anything he wrote. I'm teaching literature at a university and everytime I read Whitman with a class my approach is as follows: "Ok, guys, Whitman wrote a bunch of bullshit. Let's figure out why." The amazing thing is: it always works. I went about Whitman seriously the first time and it totally didn't work.
Dylan Thomas and Pablo Neruda are great. Rilke too.
With Whitman, you have to understand that he pretty much changed poetry. Yes, French poets like Rimbaud (who is an absolute favorite of mine) and Baudelaire had already done some thing he'd done, but Whitman established free verse as well as establishing American poetry. No body had seen anything like his work. In my MFA program, all the teachers, many of whom are published poets, all gush over him.
You guys have good taste. I took a class about Rilke and one about Snyder in my MFA program. Pretty good shit. Though I'd question Plath as being a good poet, she's far overrated.
Anyone read James Wright? Anyone know anybody like that? I've read Berryman, a little Bly, but am looking for others.
Or how about Wright's son, Franz Wright? Or Frank Bidart? Probably our best living poets. If you haven't read them, please do. Good shit.