The best collections to help me learn to love poetry?

January 6, 2006 9:39 AM

The best collections to help me learn to love poetry?

Years ago a friend gave me Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. Excited to be all literary, I tried to read the poems, but they were either over my head at that age or I wasn't putting forth the proper effort required to understand and appreciate them, probably both. I've recently tried again and I'm enjoying the poetry much more. Song of the Universal is my favorite so far.

I'd like to read other collections of poems. What are some really excellent starters for a poetry beginner?

posted by aebaxter to Writing & Language (29 answers total)

Norton anthologies are excellent for a survey of different eras and styles of poetry. They can be a little hit or miss, but you will definitely find something you like.
posted by rabbitsnake at 9:45 AM on January 6, 2006

Edward Abbey's Earth Apples
Dirty good fun
Especially if you love nature and aren't too keen on poetry generally.
posted by Seamus at 9:46 AM on January 6, 2006

Poems On The Underground.

The Nation's Favourite Poems.
posted by veedubya at 9:47 AM on January 6, 2006

Also see this thread for some good stuff.
posted by iconomy at 9:47 AM on January 6, 2006

The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-98, edited by Harold Bloom, though contreversial among some poets, is not a bad place to start for what's going on now, and the yearly anthology it's drawn from (Best American Poetry) was, until recently, quite accessible - which is what I figure what you're looking for.

The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry is also a nice overview, though it also has its critics.
posted by theinsectsarewaiting at 9:50 AM on January 6, 2006

This is a great poetry collection for children that contains poems that children can appreciate, rather than poems written for specifially for children. (Although Jack Prelutsky and Shel Silverstein's stuff is good, too.) It is a good intro to many different styles of poetry.
posted by Biblio at 9:57 AM on January 6, 2006

A great book to buy, as others have said, is just the Norton Anthology of Poetry; it's expensive, but you can buy a slightly older edition for only $20. To the extent you will find it lacking, it's mostly through ommission; it is chock-full of the greatest poetry in the language.

To my students, I often recommend Helen Vendler's The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets. It contains all of Shakespeare's sonnets, with a short, illuminating interpretive essay on each, and it's written in a way that will help you learn to read and appreciate poetry more fully. It's a great book and many of my students, after reading it out of the university library, have gone on to buy it for themselves to keep.
posted by josh at 10:01 AM on January 6, 2006

Personally, I find the Norton books too academic and daunting. Reading a poem shouldn't feel like taking a class. I'll repeat my recommendation from that thread iconomy linked to: Hayden Carruth's The Voice That Is Great Within Us. No line numbers, no notes, just a lot of mostly wonderful poetry. And it's cheap.
posted by languagehat at 10:22 AM on January 6, 2006

I would caution against trying something that's not a generously general anthology; books restricted by author, period or theme can get very dry. Walt Whitman has a particular style that I've never liked (yet), so I can see why trying to warm to a book of poetry by him could stunt one's appreciation of the genre!

I like this one, but mainly because I happened to stumble across it and it's relatively cheap. Remember that you don't need to read a poetry book cover to cover or follow each poem by reading the next—reading poetry is hard work, flip through and savour the delights :) Cultivate favourites, memorize them, write about them on a blog, etc.
posted by Firas at 10:27 AM on January 6, 2006

Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 10:27 AM on January 6, 2006

"Stranger Music" by Leonard Cohen
posted by ZenMasterThis at 10:29 AM on January 6, 2006

I'll put in a vote for the Columbia Anthology of American Poetry.
posted by willmize at 10:30 AM on January 6, 2006

This might end up being one of those threads where everyone just shouts out their favorite book. The Norton's are good and authoritative (you probably want to get one with footnotes and introductions; the 20th Cent American poetry (or is the modern) edition has this one, but the nortion's anthology of american poetry doesnt), but beyond a certain point, it's really easy to get editions of out-of-copyright poetry, so there's not a huge difference between getting Oscar Williams or Camille Paglia or one Norton's or another's. Usually, I think most people get these and find themselves pretty bored and just skipping over or sleeping through people they don't like and then just coming out and liking one or two poets.

Also, not all poetry is uniformly great or great in the same way. If you like Whitman, you might not like writers that emphasize a crystal-clear classicism, like a lot of English writers, or writers that are very cerebral (like the shakespeare of the sonnets).

For me, it's always been easier to follow different styles or time periods rather than just dive into the greatest hits pile. You might want to move sideways and read Moby Dick or Emerson or jump forward and read Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane, and T.S. Eliot.

If you're looking for anthologies, it seems like you want one that'll explain things to you and show you why one would actually like the writing in question. So it might be better to approach a single poet and read general interest critical essays on them.

Or for anthologies, there are some more idiosyncratic ones. NY School Poet Kenneth Koch wrote some anthologies about teaching poetry to children (and later inmates and old people)--very unpretentious and fun; one's called ROSE WHERE DID YOU GET THAT RED? There are some good experimental poetry anthologies, such as POEMS FOR THE MILLENIUM and the OTHER SIDE OF THE CENTURY. Also, people sometimes talk about post-war poetry as being the battle of the anthologies: there's one edite by Donald Hall that's more classical and conservative and one edited by Donal Allen (it has John Ahsbery, Allen Ginsberg, Frank O'Hara, Robert Creeley, Keroac, etc.). There was also an incredible anthology that came out like 5-10 yrs ago that was an anthology of all global poetry, from vietnamese to assyrian, elizabethan to japanese!
posted by kensanway at 10:34 AM on January 6, 2006

Don't expect to like all of the work of even your favorite author of poetry. I think the best way to enjoy poetry is to sift through a collection semi-casually, not with the aim of reading every last word, but finding the stuff that really captures your attention and feelings. In a way, it's not that different from listening to most albums -- there's usually 2-3 tracks on it that catch your attention immediately, a number more that you learn to appreciate with further listening, and (sometimes even if the artist is very good) some that never really speak to you. There are exceptions to this (a few albums that are all or nearly all great stuff), but that's the pattern. It's amplified with poetry, since there's generally more material (and it Whitman's case, not only is there more material, much of it goes on and on and on for pages).

I think the suggestions to pick an anthology are good. Use that to find authors you like, then borrow or buy one of the author's collections and peruse that.

There are online reviews and anthologies if you don't mind electrons over ink. The Ftrain Anthology of Poetry is one.
posted by weston at 11:06 AM on January 6, 2006

"Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" is my favorite by Whitman. Very good.

I have Poetry Speaks, which in addition to being a pretty nice anthology of some diverse poetry, has voice recordings by the poets. Very cool.
posted by teece at 11:12 AM on January 6, 2006

I love to hear poetry read aloud, you might try BBC Radio 4's Poetry Please or the Radio 3 poetry library.
posted by ceri richard at 11:20 AM on January 6, 2006

I have enjoyed starting my day with something from Poetry 180, which is a project by Billy Collins and the Library of Congress. You can also listen to a new poem every day read by Garrison Keillor on the Writer's Almanac website.
posted by jasper411 at 11:20 AM on January 6, 2006

my favourite anthtology is the faber book of modern verse (not so modern now); heaney + hughe's rattle bag is also good and covers a wider range. but for love poetry maybe you want a dedicated anthology.
posted by andrew cooke at 11:25 AM on January 6, 2006

Palgrave's Golden Treasury is in the public domain - it's the classic anthology of the stuff that rhymes.
posted by zadcat at 11:25 AM on January 6, 2006

A second vote for Billy Collins. Read some of his stuff here. It is really approachable poetry -- sometimes hilarious, sometimes moving. Try "Forgetfulness" or "Nostalgia."

Another poet in the same super-approachable vein is John Engman. His collection called Contemporary Help is wonderful.
posted by nancoix at 11:30 AM on January 6, 2006

Correction -- Engman's book is Temporary Help.

Also, I can't put my finger on it right now, but there's a website that lets you download an audio file of Leaves of Grass (and other poetry) for about a dollar. Anybody know the URL for this?
posted by nancoix at 11:39 AM on January 6, 2006

I second Stranger Music, and suggest Sharon Old's Strike Sparks. She uses simple but straight-forward and powerful, sometimes devastating language. Most of her poems are less than a page. [You may also enjoy her letter to the First Lady]. I always thought Anne Sexton was pretty accessible yet effective too.
posted by ibeji at 11:48 AM on January 6, 2006

One book I enjoyed as a relative poetry newbie was Poetry Out Loud. It's short, but has a wide variety of different poets and styles, and all are enjoyable to declaim.
posted by amber_dale at 12:25 PM on January 6, 2006

An anthology I've recommended to a few friends interested in expanding their limited poetry horizons is Garrison Keillor's Good Poems. It's a compilation of the poems on the radio that jasper411 mentioned. I'd also second the Poetry 180 recommendation, along with a similar volume from the website Poetry Daily.

Actually, if you're interested in reading contemporary poetry inexpensively but regularly, the Poetry Daily site (along with its imitator Verse Daily) gets a huge recommendation from me. Their poems are very high quality, (mostly) contemporary work, and I've learned a great deal, and found many new favorites, from reading these sites regularly.

Of course, all this presumes that your interest is, in fact, in contemporary poetry rather than older work such as the Whitman you already mentioned, and this may not be the case. In my own case, the only way I really learned to appreciate much canonical poetry was through a well-established fondness for/expertise in contemporary poetry (which included reading contemporary poets' comments on what canonical lit inspired/influenced them, and why). I'm not sure how to tread the opposite path.

However--for a nice mixture of older and newer poems, you might like to check out the anthologies America's Favorite Poems and Poems to Read, compiled by former poet laureate Robert Pinsky (one of the best representatives of this position, just for producing these books, IMHO) and Maggie Deitz.
posted by dlugoczaj at 1:42 PM on January 6, 2006

For dessert, Ogden Nash.
posted by Robot Johnny at 1:50 PM on January 6, 2006

When you are starting out, you may find it helpful to have some commentary on the poems you are reading to help you appreciate more of the things being accomplished with the rhyme and meter and pacing of the poems than you might right now be able to figure out on your own. At the same time, fairly advanced commentary like what you might find in the Nortons may be a little dry at this point. I would actually recommend picking up a grade school or high school level book, which are basically designed to pique students' interest in poetry while teaching them something about it at the same time; to this end these books generally include a range of poets and types of poems, which can also be helpful to you in determining which types you like best.

For me, the book that did this, which is now completely dog-eared, was "Poems to Enjoy." It's now out of print, but you can buy used copies really cheap. I moved on to a college-level anthology next, which was also great, but I can't remember the name of it now. I third/fourth/whatever the earlier recommendation of the Writer's Almanac website, giving a daily poem read by Keillor, and also highly recommend Keillor's newest anthology, Good Poems for Hard Times. Very approachable, good, stuff. And while I'm at it, let me also pimp some of my favorite authors, Mark Strand and (mentioned above for his anthologies by kensanway) Kenneth Koch. Good luck!
posted by onlyconnect at 3:53 PM on January 6, 2006

Libraries!
What wonderful places.
For FREE you can read any book by any author!

Seriously, though, make a list of authors recommended by people whose opinions you trust on other topics. Make a short note of which poems they like and why.

Set aside an afternoon, go to the library, take some books off the shelf and find a comfortable seat. Read specifically suggested poems and compare them to your notes. Read some poems that you choose randomly based on the way they look, their titles, or their authors' names.

Make further notes about what you liked. That way if you come back again you know where you left off or what you learned. Check out a few books to take home and read with a bottle of whiskey (or sodie pop, pickyer poison).

Having spent the last few days reading Norton's Anthology of Poetry, I strongly suggest against a non-poetry lover reading it (not at first). It made me snooze on the job a couple times. But I am an uncultured boor.

Go with an author's collection or an anthology edited by someone you know (Keillor?) or one that sounds neato (or keen, your choice).
posted by Seamus at 12:49 AM on January 7, 2006

I'll third Billy Collins. Very readable, very poignant, very in touch with today's world.
posted by bilabial at 2:41 PM on January 7, 2006

Found the website where you can download spoken poetry at low cost. Main website is www.spokenalex.org (The Alexandria Project), but here is the link to the Whitman (Leaves of Grass) that you can download for $4.
posted by nancoix at 7:19 AM on January 12, 2006