Literary Poetry Vote • January 2013

[sun surfer]

Help us choose the January 2013 selection to read for the MR Literary Club! The poll will be open for two 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:


War Poems by Siegfried Sassoon

Spoiler:

War poems by Siegfried Sassoon, which though may or may not be available in public domain, are available legally in various places, e.g. here

Sassoon's War Poems are available here at MR.

Andrew Marvell

Spoiler:

One of the pre-eminent 17th century English metaphysical poets. The Marvell poem everyone knows is "To His Coy Mistress."


From The Poetry Foundation:

In an era that makes a better claim than most upon the familiar term transitional, Andrew Marvell is surely the single most compelling embodiment of the change that came over English society and letters in the course of the seventeenth century. Author of a varied array of exquisite lyrics that blend Cavalier grace with Metaphysical wit and complexity, Marvell turned, first, into a panegyrist for the Lord Protector and his regime and then into an increasingly bitter satirist and polemicist, attacking the royal court and the established church in both prose and verse. It is as if the most delicate and elusive of butterflies somehow metamorphosed into a caterpillar.


Public domain.


An edition from the University of Adelaide:

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au

Their editions are usually good.

The Sonnets of Shakespeare

Spoiler:

They are profound, beautiful meditations on Love, Life, Time, Eternity Death and Mutability. They are available in several good free editions.

The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems by Tomas Tranströmer

Spoiler:

This is a complete collection of the poetry of Tomas Tranströmer. Winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize for Literature, Tranströmer is a Swedish poet, psychologist and translator. His poems capture the long Swedish winters, the rhythm of the seasons and the palpable, atmospheric beauty of nature. Tranströmer's work is also characterized by a sense of mystery and wonder underlying the routine of everyday life, a quality which often gives his poems a religious dimension.

This is available as an ebook from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo Books.

Can be bought for 40% off at Kobo with coupon code vouchercodes40 .

Inferno by Dante

Spoiler:

Various translations, some public domain. Or not in translation.

Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Spoiler:

There is a nice version in English translation here at MR LRF file.

Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Spoiler:

(1798)

This was the great trailblazing poetry anthology that ushered in the Romantic Literary movement in England and initiated what some regard as the greatest explosion of great poetry in the language. It includes Coleridge's justly famous "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and Wordsworth's profound "Lines Written a few miles above Tintern Abbey"--both remarkable masterpieces.

It is available free from Project Gutenberg.

[Bookpossum]

Oh, that was tough, but not much point voting for all of them!

[medard]

Oh.. So difficult.. I have no idea who should get my vote..

Spoiler:

[fantasyfan]

What an excellent choice!

[jersysman]

These are all good. I finally narrowed it down to two and voted for those.