Thread 24613672

i am a /lit/let but i want to get into reading some poetry to expand my horizons. eventually being able to write a few things myself would be nice. i dont know where to start, but Lord Byron was recently recommended to me. is that a fucking retarded idea or what?

Byron's good. Not the most adventurous of the Romantics, but he's very technically sound. He's also funny as fuck when he wants to be, go read Don Juan and you'll laugh through it.

>>24613672 (OP)

Fuck the English high IQ poetry is Haiku. Extreme skill to evoke imagery.

Summer grasses,
All that remains
Of soldiers' dreams

Brits need like 10 pages to just express that.

Hi anon I’m happy more people are getting into true poetry. Start with learning scansion or how poetry is created, this helps you appreciate what you are reading, next you should get a general timeline of English poetry/canon and start with a specific era that interests you (as in Elizabethan, Romantic, Victorian, Modernist etc) Byron has a lot of longer narrative poems so I would start with his shorter poems included in the collection titled “Hebrew Melodies”. Write poems whenever you feel inspired, just make sure they are actual poems and not free verse.

>>24613722
The japs don't want you lil bro

>>24613686
Byron is indeed good but I strongly recommend not starting with Don Juan not only because it‘s his longest work, and unfinished, but it’s atypical of his style and the quality further declines precipitously halfway through.

I recommend Childe Harold‘s Pilgrimage or Manfred.

Read Sott
Scott
>But as they left the dark’ning heath,
>More desperate grew the strife of death.
>The English shafts in volleys hailed,
>In headlong charge their horse assailed;
>Front, flank, and rear, the squadrons sweep
>To break the Scottish circle deep,
>That fought around their king.
>But yet, though thick the shafts as snow,
>Though charging knights like whirlwinds go,
>Though billmen ply the ghastly blow,
>Unbroken was the ring;
>The stubborn spearmen still made good
>Their dark impenetrable wood,
>Each stepping where his comrade stood,
>The instant that he fell.
>No thought was there of dastard flight;
>Linked in the serried phalanx tight,
>Groom fought like noble, squire like knight,
>As fearlessly and well;
>Till utter darkness closed her wing
>O’er their thin host and wounded king.
>Then skilful Surrey’s sage commands
>Led back from strife his shattered bands;
>And from the charge they drew,
>As mountain-waves, from wasted lands,
>Sweep back to ocean blue.

>>24613672 (OP)
No that’s a good idea. I also recommend starting with Don Juan
Also, never read Scott.

>>24613672 (OP)
read a collection

>>24613750

this haiku is shit, you fucked up the line breaks and syllable count.

>>24613672 (OP)
Milton
Alexander Pope

>>24613722
>high IQ poetry is Haiku.

>>24613722
The japs can't make shakespeare. And I like japanese haikus.

>>24613672 (OP)
Don Juan’s an excellent place to start, if you find it funny. It’s the funniest book I’ve read. Byron however is not the most technically sound, especially here where a kind of purposeful amateurishness gives it a peculiar charm
Many moderns relate most to Eliot but remember he was the beginning of the end for poetry
Yeats may be a good place to start, that’s the basic choice as a late romantic with modernist development, though I personally have problems with his attitude to life

Start with contemporary poets and work backwards. 19th century stuff like Byron is only worth reading if required for your degree, I wouldn’t force your way through it.

Also, OP: don't forget about Shakespeare. In addition to his plays, read his sonnets and his long poems like The Rape Of Lucrece.

>>24613672 (OP)
Read an anthology of poems to identify who you like most. Then read a collection of theirs.
For heaven's sake, do not read Don Juan as your first poem. It is (mostly) excellent but its joy hinges on your knowledge of Byron's contemporaries, especially the first few cantos.

>>24613672 (OP)
Poe is the most néophyte-friendly poet.