• Welcome to BookAndReader!

    We LOVE books and hope you'll join us in sharing your favorites and experiences along with your love of reading with our community. Registering for our site is free and easy, just CLICK HERE!

    Already a member and forgot your password? Click here.

Fav Poets

I am sorry to hear Rimbaud disappointed you. I know he's one of those lightning rod figures of literature, where in people tend to become enamored of the myth more than actually reading the words for what they are. But I can tell you from experience, when reading translated works, you are at the mercy of the translator. Perhaps a version by a different translator would give you a different perspective. Rimbaud's language is really beautiful, especially in "The Drunken Boat," but I've heard "Illuminations" is also very good. "Illuminations" is on my to-be-read list, but I haven't gotten there yet.

Irene Wilde
 
Billy Oblivion said:
I spent a long and boring train journey yesterday reading Rimbaud. Very overrated in my opinion; although if I could read more of the original French it might appeal to me more. The subject matter on the whole seemed quite juvenile (admittedly he was 16 - 19 when he was writing) and I think I he made a good decision when he renounced literature in favour of gun-running and the slave trade.
Click to expand...

My good friend Mr. Burns posted this elsewhere. He tends to find the really good translations of Rimbaud. :) Maybe this will help you reassess his work.

Irene Wilde

aube

I embraced the summer dawn.

nothing yet stirred on the face of the palaces. the water is dead. the
shadows still camped in the woodland road. I walked, waking quick warm
breaths; and gems looked on, and wings rose without a sound.

the first venture was, in a path already filled with fresh, pale gleams,
a flower who told me her name.

I laughed at the blond waterfall that tousled through the pines: on the
silver summit I recognized the goddess.

then, one by one, I lifted up her veils. in the lane, waving my arms.
across the plain, where I notified the cock. in the city, she fled among
the steeples and the domes; and running like a beggar on the marble
quays, I chased her.

above the road near a laurel wood, I wrapped her up in gathered veils,
and I felt a little her immense body. dawn and the child fell down at the
edge of the wood.

waking, it was noon.

--arthur rimbaud
 
No the best poet is Emily Dickinson, she has very good and sad poems.They make you wonder why you wake up in the morning.
 
Ah, that is one poet that I am really intrested in learning more about. I will probably buy a collection at some point :)
 
now that you mentioned, yeah i think you are rigth, litany must be by far the best poet i have ever read in brit literature
 
I have a number of favourite poets. The short list is John Donne, Stephane Mallarme, Palblo Neruda, Allen Ginsberg, Anna Akhmatova, and Ossip Mandelstam. There doesn't seem to be many women on the list... I'm open to suggestions.

Here's a taste of Mandelstam for those of you who might not be familiar with his work, from the poem Tristia,

How threadbare the language of joy’s game,
how meagre the foundation of our life!
Everything was, and is repeated again:
it’s the flash of recognition brings delight

buddi
 
buddi said:
There doesn't seem to be many women on the list... I'm open to suggestions.
Click to expand...

I like Edna St. Vincent Millay, Adrienne Rich, occasionally Anne Sexton. I have a few favorite Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti, too.
 
I generally like the poets from the romantic period. John Keats is my favourite, though Byron is good too, as well as European romantics, such as the great Goethe and of course Pushkin. Those two are probably two of the most influential poets ever. Walt Whitman is also brilliant, as is Edgar Allan Poe. I also like Jone Donne.

As a rule, great poets are manic depressants and the greatest are verging on suicide. ;) Though I hear that Goethe was very charming and gregarious; even Schopenhauer liked him-and that's saying something. Though I am merely a dilettante when it comes to poetry-I prefer prose.
 
Inderjit S said:
as well as European romantics, such as the great Goethe and of course Pushkin. Those two are probably two of the most influential poets ever.
Click to expand...
Aren't Goethe's prose (Werther) and dramas (Faust) more influential and well-knowned than his poetry?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top