Poetry!
ALRIGHT! So poetry is a genre I’ve had very little experience with, but I’ve enjoyed the collected works of Emily Dickens and plenty of one-offs recently, so have been slowly pulled into its orbit. This year I’d like to make a concerted effort to explore poetry more fully. I’m not going to set myself a specific goal or challenge or anything, but here’s a list I’ve been compiling for a while of poetry that interests me. I think I’ll start with something akin to a novel-in-verse, as narrative poetry is the kind that’s been most compelling to me thus far, and then dabble!
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Dante’s Inferno, by Dante Alighieri
Aurora Leigh, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The World Doesn’t End, by Charles Simic
The War Poems, by Wilfred Owen
The Wasteland, by T.S. Eliot
Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman
Ariel, by Sylvia Plath
The Collected Poems, by Langston Hughes
The Country Between Us, by Carolyn Forché
The Moon is Always Female, by Marge Piercy
The Fact of a Doorframe, by Adrienne Rich
The Great Fires, by Jack Gilbert
Map of the Lost, by Miriam Sagan
The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, by Pablo Neruda
A Village Life, by Louise Glück
Emplumada, by Lorna Dee Cervantes
The Black Automaton, by Douglas Kearney
Life on Mars, by Tracy K. Smith
Voices, by Lucille Clifton
Breaking Poems, by Suheir Hammed
Citizen, by Aaron Shurin
Smith Blue, by Camille T. Dungy
Pretty Tilt, by Carrie Murphy
As I’ve said though, I’ve had very little exposure to poetry and so I don’t really know where to start. This list is incomplete and only a rough jumping-off point. Now that I’m looking at it all typed out, I realize that it’s made up almost entirely of works by European and American poets, which is unsatisfactory. Clearly, I need to do some more pointed research, and will be updating this list as I go. General recommendations are greatly appreciated, and specific ones for poets from non-Western countries are even more so!
Do you have a favorite poet? Collection? Single work? Let me know!
Booked All Week 
All you can so to begin is to begin. Something will grab you.
I would like to suggest a few more narrative poems that a lot of people like and that mesh with your interests as I understand them from your blog. Also, nothing too long!
Christina Rossetti – “Goblin Market,” at least; Rossetti pairs well with Dikcinson
Robert Browning – “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came” and any number of his “dramatic monologues”
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz – “The Dream” and many other lyric poems. She is a 17th century Mexican poet.
While I am in the 17th century, the “Fables” of Jean de la Fontaine are fun – Aesop and similar stories in sparkling verse. Marianne Moore did a good translation.
Alexander Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin” is a light, funny novel in verse.
I am not much help out side of Europe and America. No, I have one piece of advice there. Try a book of Classical Chinese poetry – any book. They are usually short . See what you think. Something like The Selected Poems of Tu Fu translated by David Hinton or One Hundred Chinese Poems, or maybe Women Poets of China, both translated by Kenneth Rexroth. If you get hooked, this is a whole other world of poetry.
Amateur Reader (Tom)
January 13, 2013 at 2:47 am
You’re right of course, there really is only one way to get started and that’s just to do it. Thanks so much for these suggestions, they seem right up my alley! Will definitely be checking out at least a few of these, and anthologies are a great idea 🙂
Emily Jane
January 13, 2013 at 9:56 pm
I’m looking forward to hearing about these! I too am fairly unfamiliar with poetry, so I’ll be interested to hear more about your experimenting. Please love Aurora Leigh! I absolutely adore it. The plot isn’t my favorite thing in all the land, but Elizabeth Barrett Browning has all these amazing, incisive observations. In such lovely language. Oh EBB. She was so cool and great.
Jenny
January 13, 2013 at 2:37 pm
I’m totally prepared to! I can’t remember where I first read/heard about it, but I became convinced that I’ll like it. Now I’m even more sure I won’t be let down!
Emily Jane
January 13, 2013 at 10:05 pm