Beginner Poetry Reading List

[Wildcard]

   As most of you know I am a beginner at poetry, however I am eager to learn and expand my horizons. Along with participating in this and a couple of other poetry forums I have been reading poetry. The problem is the poetry I've been trying to read is as clear as mud to me. I'm obviously too ignorant as of yet to understand.
   What are some good poems/authors to begin with? I got the annotated John Milton and I can tell you that ain't the one! I have T.S. Elliot's 'The Wasteland and other poems', but I just don't think he's very good (it may be because I am a newb, though) and I have Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman, but I haven't started either.
   So, what would you suggest an uncultured poet read to acclimate to this new world of images and trying not to communicate?

[Todd]

Here are some ones that I like (read more than once):

Louise Gluck

The Wild Iris

James Wright

You should be able to get a complete collection of his work

Charles Simic

The Voice at 3 AM

Carolyn Forche

The Country Between Us

Phillip Levine

What Work Is


Li-Young Lee

Rose

Pablo Neruda

(again should be a best of type collection)

Wislawa Szymborska

View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems

Rainer Maria Rilke

Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

Let's stop there. I'm already probably overdoing it.

[Wildcard]

   Sometimes I am amazed at my own seclusion. This forum has been such a breath of fresh air, but it's also been a slap in the face. I feel way under-educated. I will search these poems out, Todd. Thanks a lot for the suggestions and, no there weren't too many. I'd welcome as many as you'd like to share.

[Aish]

Demon by Anne Sexton

Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath

The Freshness by Rumi

The Dark, Blue Sea by Lord Byron

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond by ee cummings

Conversation by Ai

A Process in the Weather of the Heart by Dylan Thomas

[Leanne]

High Windows by Phillip Larkin. I can't recommend Larkin highly enough for someone who wants to know what rules to break when it comes to meter, and how to make it work -- plus he says lots of rude stuff and it's fun

Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Her sonnets are much lighter than Shakespeare's, and beautifully constructed, although it gets a bit mushy if you try and read it all at once.

Don Juan by Lord Byron. He was a dirty bugger, that Byron! You should be able to get a full text online at Project Gutenberg. Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is worth a read as well. You can get most of the classic texts there, it's like my heaven.

Don't waste(land) your time with Eliot until you've read most of the poems he's referencing -- he wasn't really writing for the man on the street, he was more about how clever other poets would think him (and themselves) when they realised how much he'd read. Maybe that's unfair, but... well, just don't go straight there, work up to it.

[billy]

jack like larkin as well, i remember him doing a good homage poem about the windows.

have a look in the poetry text section we have here mark. just skim till you fund something you like.

[abu nuwas]

You are wanting to follow up the world of non-communication? TS Eliot really did set a bench-mark, along with Ezra Pound. You must go back, disregard Leanne, if you dare, and be non-communicated with whenever you are finding it difficult to sleep.

I doubt that Todd's non-communicating man meant to rule out Coleridge and his 'Ancient Mariner', or 'Kubla Khan', even though they are straight narratives, if you exclude the language and rhythms. I wonder if Keats' 'Ode to Autumn' or (and I have a vested interest here) 'Ode to a Nightingale'. These have the double disadvantage of not being new, and not being American. Many Australian writers must hang their deceased heads in shame also: they go along in fine fashion, only to realise, too late, that they were comprehensible all along! Imagine how humiliating it must have been to come to London, and bump into a fully paid-up member of the Bloomsbury Set -- Eliot himself perhaps! 'Why you must be that Australian chappie, who writes such nice children's verse. Good day,Sir!'

I have a minor problem with Neruda and Rilke. I think Neruda appeals to women, and makes for a good present. But he wrote in Spanish, and Imost people only access Rilke through translation. That can work wonders. The Latvian Golden Age consisted og a man called Reinis, and one day, in a pretty little town outside Riga, I saw a sign to his house. I had never heard of him, but the two elderly custodian ladies assumed I knew all about him, and produced various versions of a poem called, in English, 'Broken Pines'. It was nothing special. Then I read the Russian version: the tone was all different, because of the language, and the image those vast forests where witches live etc. Then I looked at the French version of this Balto-Slavonic masterpiece. 'Pins Brises' it was, and so light, and evocative, it might have been knocked by any one of a hundred fine writers of the fin de siecle, or early twentieth century. Of course, we have what we have. We don't need to worry about other versions, or the original. But I find Rilke's French poems, quite different from translations from German. In brief, I don't count foreigners.

[Wildcard]

Wow guy! Thanks for so much input. When free time comes back around I will start working my way through some of these poems.

Aish I've glad to see some Plath and Sexton on the list. I am trying to find a 'reasonably priced' (haha) copy of 'The Bell Jar' for a little history on Plath. I'm thinking maybe this will help me understand her poetry better.

I just went looking through my eBooks and I found a Phillip Larkin 'greatest hits' type book. I'm gonna sync it to my iPhone so I can check it out today. Thanks, Leanne.

Abu, you're suggestions are noted. I appreciate your descriptions and will definitely look into those suggested poems.

[Todd]

Here's one more book of poetry that's really worth it:

Mark Strand

Reasons for Moving

---

Oh, and Mark everything I've suggested is a book.

If you'd like a list of individual poems (which should be mostly on the web to give you an idea):

Louise Gluck: The Wild Iris, The Brown Circle, The Parable of the Dove, Gretel in Darkness, Mock Orange, Midnight

Mark Strand: Moontan, From the Long Sad Party

Sylvia Plath: Mirror

Pablo Neruda: Tonight I Write the Saddest Lines

Charles Simic: The White Room, Eyes Fastened With Pins

James Wright: The Seasonless, A Blessing

Charles Bukowski: dreamlessly, Genuis of the Crowd

Sharon Olds: Sex Without Love, I Go Back to May 1937

Carolyn Forche: Selective Service, Reunion

Wislawa Szymborska: The Joy of Writing

Dorianne Laux: The Tooth Fairy

I'll think of more but most of those should be online.

[bogpan]

Please let me recommend American writers and where it can be read. Unfortunately, most names are unknown today especially as I see and European poets are also unknown in America (except Shimborska not be used with extreme respect for fame and is the result largely of political reasons).

[Todd]

Mark these are just more random poems that I happen to like:

Wallace Stevens: Invective Against Swans

Kim Addonizio: Chicken

Percy Bysshe Shelley: Ozymandias

Lucile Clifton: shapeshifter poems

James Autry: On Firing a Salesman

Gerard Manley Hopkins: Pied Beauty

Robert Frost: Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

Marge Piercy: Joy Road and Livernois

Ted Kooser: Abandoned Farmhouse, After Years

Philip Levine: What Work Is

Robert Hayden: Those Winter Sundays

[Leanne]

I'll add a couple more randoms after I strongly second Todd's suggestion of Ozymandias, which should be compulsory reading for anyone ever contemplating a career in either politics or the arts. And it's just a damn good poem.

Because I really enjoy stuff that seems quite simple on the surface, but sticks in your head until you realise how complex it actually is, I'd recommend:

The Nightingale by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

A Party of Lovers by John Keats

A Poison Tree by William Blake

The Destruction of Sennacherib by Lord Byron

The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

And I'm going to add these two poems in, that I remember word-for-word from my childhood:

The Triantiwontigongolope by C. J. Dennis -- a kid's poem that to me is the very essence of poetry, just loving the language and having a huge amount of fun with it.

and the most beautifully stirring ballad ever written, in my opinion:

The Man From Snowy River by A. B. (Banjo) Paterson

[Aish]

And a darn good movie

[Leanne]

I thought you meant Ozymandias for a minute there... I'm a bit thick you see...

but yep

[Aish]

Ohhhh noooooooooooooooo The Man From Snowy River. I have never quite figured out how he goes from dud to stud, but does he ever!

[Leanne]

The Snowy Mountains is my spiritual homeland
I always suggest that anyone wanting to learn how meter can be made work perfectly using regular, honest language to appeal to people from all walks of life read the Australian balladeers, chiefly Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson. They're much like Robert Burns is to Scotland.

Burns is another good one to read for meter and fitting the vernacular into classic forms... but you do need to have a good grip on your Scots!

[Aish]

Intriguing!