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View Poll Results: Poetry Vote • January 2014, Multiple Choice
Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966-1996 by Seamus Heaney 5 38.46%
The poems of Wallace Stevens 4 30.77%
Inferno by Dante 7 53.85%
The poems of John Keats 6 46.15%
High Windows by Philip Larkin 7 53.85%
The poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins 5 38.46%
Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes 4 30.77%
Aimless Love by Billy Collins 4 30.77%
Multiple Choice Poll. Voters: 13. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 01-05-2014, 10:51 AM   #1
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Poetry Vote • January 2014

Help us choose the January 2014 selection to read for the MR Literary Club! The poll will be open for three days.

The vote is multiple choice. You may vote for as many or as few as you like.

A discussion thread will begin shortly after a winner is chosen.

In the event of a tie, there will be a one-day non-multiple-choice run-off poll. In the event that the run-off poll also ends in a tie, the tie will be resolved in favour of the selection that received all of its initial nominations first.


Select from the following works:


Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966-1996 by Seamus Heaney
Spoiler:
Nobel Laureate Seamus Heany died on August 30, 2013. A biographical sketch of Heany at the Poetry Foundation.

This interview of Seamus Heany from 2006 on the NPR program On Point was rebroadcast on September 2, 2013 any interested: Listening Back To Seamus Heaney


Kindle
Kobo


The poems of Wallace Stevens
Spoiler:
This is from The Poetry Foundation:

Wallace Stevens is one of America's most respected poets. He was a master stylist, employing an extraordinary vocabulary and a rigorous precision in crafting his poems. But he was also a philosopher of aesthetics, vigorously exploring the notion of poetry as the supreme fusion of the creative imagination and objective reality. Because of the extreme technical and thematic complexity of his work, Stevens was sometimes considered a willfully difficult poet. But he was also acknowledged as an eminent abstractionist and a provocative thinker, and that reputation has continued since his death. In 1975, for instance, noted literary critic Harold Bloom, whose writings on Stevens include the imposing Wallace Stevens: The Poems of Our Climate, called him "the best and most representative American poet of our time


Like Trollope, Stevens had a day job, in the insurance industry.


issybird has been looking around and sees several possibilities:

Poem Hunter has a selection of his poems in the public domain in PDF format.

Or there's the collection of all his poems. Kindle Kobo and other ebookstores, but it's much more expensive than Amazon.

The collection selected by his daughter, The Palm at the End of the Mind also is available in eformat and is slightly cheaper, but issybird's own druthers would be to get the complete collection and read the poems from his first work, Harmonium. Most of the Harmonium poems are public domain and she thinks can be read online at Poem Hunter. There are also much cheaper used pbook options.


Inferno by Dante
Spoiler:
paola said on translations:

Well, first of all I am biased: especially the Inferno is something that is drilled into each school kid, so even if the words are difficult to understand, it is very musical, so hard to render I guess (it does rhyme). I have had a look around, and for the moment the one that seems closer "music wise" is Dorothy Sayer's translation (I've found it in Penguin).


The poems of John Keats
Spoiler:
Quote:
'I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death,' John Keats soberly prophesied in 1818 as he started writing the blankverse epic Hyperion. Today he endures as the archetypal Romantic genius who explored the limits of the imagination and celebrated the pleasures of the senses but suffered a tragic early death. Edmund Wilson counted him as 'one of the half dozen greatest English writers,' and T. S. Eliot has paid tribute to the Shakespearean quality of Keats's greatness. Indeed, his work has survived better than that of any of his contemporaries the devaluation of Romantic poetry that began early in this century. 'No one else in English poetry, save Shakespeare, has in expression quite the fascinating felicity of Keats, his perception of loveliness,' said Matthew Arnold. 'In the faculty of naturalistic interpretation, in what we call natural magic, he ranks with Shakespeare.'

This nomination leaves all his poems open to reading (about 400 pages worth in total) but suggests a shorter central list of poems to read, which include:

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art
La Belle Dame sans Merci
Ode on a Grecian Urn
Ode to a Nightingale
To Autumn
Endymion: A Poetic Romance
The Eve of St. Agnes
Hyperion
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
When I have fears that I may cease to be

Also, not as a central list, but as additional possibilities if so inclined (though any of his poems could be read):

(in spoiler tags because of length)
Spoiler:

To Hope
The Human Seasons
On Seeing the Elgin Marbles
On the Grasshopper and the Cricket
This Living Hand
To Haydon with a Sonnet Written on Seeing the Elgin Marbles
A Song About Myself
First Love
The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream
Isabella or The Pot of Basil
Lamia
Meg Merrilles
Ode on Indolence
Ode on Melancholy
Ode to Psyche
Sleep and Poetry
Staffa
Stanzas
To Kosciusko
You say you love; but with a voice


Keats, John: Complete Poetry, epub here at Mobileread


High Windows by Philip Larkin
Spoiler:
paola said:

Another poet who also had to work to earn his keep, Philip Larkin. He is crude, but oh so effective! The Collected poems would be good, but to keep it manageable I'd suggest High Windows - a couple of the poems are available at the Poetry Foundation, otherwise it is available at Amazon uk, Amazon US, and couponable on Kobo.


The poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins
Spoiler:
Nearly unknown when he was alive, Hopkins is now regarded as one of the three great poets of the Victorian Era--along with Robert Browning and Tennyson. His innovative use of rhythm, imagery, structure and syntax make his poetry sound far more modern than any of his contemporaries.

Most of his poems have a religious theme but again they are anything but conventional. The "Terrible Sonnets", for instance are among the finest poetic expressions of the thin ice of belief over the pit of despair.

His poetry is available in the first edition by his friend Robert Bridges for free and there are many ebook editions--such as that by Delphi--which give good value for money.


Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes


Aimless Love by Billy Collins
Spoiler:
.
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Old 01-05-2014, 11:34 AM   #2
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done my duty! I did not vote for Billy Collin only because I wanted to restrict myself to four (ending up with five), but I'd be happy with any selection, apart from my resistance to Heaney, though if anyone can make me change idea on any work, it is this group
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Old 01-05-2014, 03:51 PM   #3
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done my duty! I did not vote for Billy Collin only because I wanted to restrict myself to four (ending up with five), but I'd be happy with any selection, apart from my resistance to Heaney, though if anyone can make me change idea on any work, it is this group
So is your resistance to Heany based on having read much of his poetry? I ask because aside from listening to bits of his work in the NPR broadcast I referenced in my nomination, and reading his excellent verse translation of Beowulf I have never read any of his works.

Holding off on voting in anticipation of further information.
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Old 01-05-2014, 04:11 PM   #4
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The hard decision was which to omit rather than which to vote for! I did vote for Heaney as I have heard of him of course but not read him, and the same with Wallace Stevens.
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Old 01-05-2014, 04:55 PM   #5
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Originally Posted by Hamlet53 View Post
So is your resistance to Heany based on having read much of his poetry? I ask because aside from listening to bits of his work in the NPR broadcast I referenced in my nomination, and reading his excellent verse translation of Beowulf I have never read any of his works.
I have never read any complete books, as when browsing them I found them "too much", he is a bit overwhelming for me with his language (see e.g. Death of a naturalist. It is an issue of taste, though, and a large chunk of the world disagrees with me - of course I do not question his amazing craft, and although I probably would no read him on my own in the immediate future, I might end up glad that the reading group has compelled me to read it
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Old 01-07-2014, 01:36 PM   #6
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still very close, but nothing has changed in more than 24 hours, will we all be going to hell tomorrow?!
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Old 01-07-2014, 01:42 PM   #7
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still very close, but nothing has changed in more than 24 hours, will we all be going to hell tomorrow?!
After you, our Virgil!
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Old 01-07-2014, 04:04 PM   #8
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After you, our Virgil!
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Old 01-07-2014, 05:41 PM   #9
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oh dear, pressure is mounting!
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Old 01-08-2014, 11:19 AM   #10
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So Dante it is. Well that's daunting. There is an illustrated version of The Inferno translated into English by Reverend H. F. Cary in the MR library (in LRF format). What would the recommended translation be?

Last edited by Hamlet53; 01-08-2014 at 11:23 AM.
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Old 01-08-2014, 11:24 AM   #11
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So Dante it is. Well that's daunting. There is an illustrated version of The Inferno translated into English by Reverend H. F. Cary in the MR library (in LRF format). What would the recommended translation be?
hang on, there is a tie: Larkin's High Windows also has 7 votes, or am I missing something?
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Old 01-08-2014, 11:26 AM   #12
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hang on, there is a tie: Larkin's High Windows also has 7 votes, or am I missing something?
Oh, you are right. It's to be a runoff.
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Old 01-08-2014, 12:26 PM   #13
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A tie it is! The one-day runoff poll will be up shortly.

ETA - The run-off poll is up here. This was a very close month all around - only three votes separated first and last place!

Last edited by sun surfer; 01-08-2014 at 12:41 PM.
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