poetry recommendations
Here are some of my favorite poetry collections and poems! Most of these are originally English; those that aren't have a translation available at least.
collections
| title | author | lang. | notes | link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Selected Poems | E. E. Cummings, ed. Richard S. Kennedy | Eng. | A fabulous selection of Cumming's poetry, accompanied by some of his art and some little introductory essays. | x |
| Notes on the Sonnets | Luke Kennard | Eng. | My favorite work of contemporary poetry. Incredibly lovely and absolutely trippy.[1] | x |
| Zoo of the New | Nick Laird and Don Paterson, eds. | Eng. | Probably my favorite poetry anthology of my adult life. Designed as the spiritual successor to Heaney and Hughes' The Rattle Bag. | x |
| The Poet's Corner | John Lithgow, ed. | Eng. | The poetry collection that got me into poetry as a kid. If you can get your hands on the audiobook version, do. | x |
| Poems from the Edge of Extinction | Chris McCabe, ed. | var. | A collection of poems in the original and translation from threatened languages, all accompanied by lovely introductory essays. | x |
| Verses from 1929 On | Ogden Nash | Eng. | My go-to feel good collection. If you've never read Nash, you're missing out on a really good time. | x |
| Heroides | Ovid | Lat. | I wrote my BA and MA theses on this collection; I cannot recommend it highly enough. My preferred translation is the Claire Pollard. | x |
poems
| title | author | lang. | notes | link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| "The Last Toast" | Anna Akhmatova | Rus. | Approximately the bleakest possible poem. | x |
| "Sonnet 43" | Elizabeth Barrett Browning | Eng. | x | |
| "Dream Song 76" | John Berryman | Eng. | The source of one of my header messages. | x |
| "Filling Station" | Elizabeth Bishop | Eng. | Somebody arranges the rows of cans so that they softly say: esso—so—so—so to high-strung automobiles. |
x |
| "Father's Old Blue Cardigan" | Anne Carson | Eng. | I am a massive Anne Carson fangirl on the basis of her classical work (see below) but let it never be said that she can't deal just as beautifully with modernity. | x |
| "On Ovid" | Anne Carson | Eng. | Now Ovid is weeping. | |
| "Incident" | Countee Cullen | Eng. | Huge warning for racism (the poem is about an incident of harrassment Cullen suffered as a child), but I couldn't not recommend this. It's one of the most unforgettable poems I've ever encountered. | x |
| [one's not half two] | E. E. Cummings | Eng. | Justifiably one of Cummings' most famous poems. Probably one of my favorite love poems of all time. | x |
| "Thanksgiving (1956)" | E. E. Cummings | Eng. | I know it's not what Cummings was talking about, but I can't not think of the line "a which that walks like a who" every time corporate personhood comes up. | |
| "Epigram 16" | J. V. Cunningham | Eng. | Cunningham is the English poet who most gets the epigram in a classical sense. | x |
| "The Death of Antinoüs" | Mark Doty | Eng. | I love Mark Doty's works of queer classical reception desperately. The source of one of my header messages. | x |
| "Aristocrats: 'I think I am becoming a God" | Keith Douglas | Eng. | How can I live among this gentle obsolescent breed of heroes, and not weep? |
x |
| "We Wear the Mask" | Paul Laurence Dunbar | Eng. | x | |
| "The Colonel" | Carolyn Forché | Eng. | Warning for...gore? I think gore is the best way to put it. Anyway, a brilliant and vividly horrible poem. | x |
| "Design" | Robert Frost | Eng. | x | |
| "A Supermarket in California" | Allen Ginsberg | Eng. | Lovely and trippy. The source of one of my header messages. | x |
| "After My Brother's Death, I Reflect on the Iliad" | Elisa Gonzales | Eng. | A beautiful work of classical reception. | x |
| "Ruins" | Eliza Griswold | Eng. | Again, warning for gore. In a lot of ways, this poem is actually reminiscent of "The Colonel". | x |
| "Fragment 113" | H. D. | Eng. | ...though rapture blind my eyes, and hunger crispdark and inert my mouth... |
|
| "Ovid in the Third Reich" | Geoffrey Hill | Eng. | Do I understand this poem? Not quite. Do I love it? Desperately. | x |
| "Pied Beauty" | Gerard Manley Hopkins | Eng. | One of the most profoundly joyful poems I've ever read. | x |
| "Last Poems XII" | A. E. Housman | Eng. | This is from a set of poems published posthumously by Housman's brother (his literary executor, to whom he left the choice of what to publish). Heartbreaking expression of the experience of being queer and closeted in early 20th century England. | x |
| "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" | Randall Jerrell | Eng. | Short and terrible. | x |
| "What He Thought" | Heather McHugh | Eng. | This is probably my dad's favorite poem. | x |
| "No Doctors Today, Thank You" | Ogden Nash | Eng. | This is just a cheerful poem. One might even say "rollicking". | x |
| "Lady Lazarus" | Sylvia Plath | Eng. | No one can convince me that the way the penultimate stanza sounds like Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" is an accident. | x |
| "Good Bones" | Maggie Smith | Eng. | x | |
| "After Experience Taught Me..." | W. D. Snodgrass | Eng. | Again, gore. Worth it (ha) for those last lines, though. | x |
| "If I Told Him" | Gertrude Stein | Eng. | You've gotta read this one aloud. | x |
| "No Second Troy" | W. B. Yeats | Eng. | x |
- It's all set at a shitty house party and a sad horse is involved.^