In one month’s time, I will be nearing the end of the fourth residency of the Pacific University MFA, preparing to head in to my fourth and final semester of correspondence work. I feel as though I blinked, and suddenly have reached the three-quarters-done mark. And, although I have given close reading to well over sixty works so far, I also feel as though I have just begun to chip away at the tip of the iceberg that is poetry. I am thinking about reading mostly heavy-hitting Modern poets in the coming semester, in an effort to fill in some gaps in my experience of their work. Here is my list so far:
- Yehuda Amichai, Love Poems
- John Ashbery, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror: Poems
- John Berryman, 77 Dream Songs: Poems
- Robert Bly, Silence In The Snowy Fields
- James Dickey, Drowning With Others
- Richard Hugo, The Lady In Kicking Horse Reservoir
- Rolf Jacobsen, The Silence Afterwards: Selected Poems
- Randall Jarrell, The Lost World
- Paul Mariani, The Great Wheel
- Thomas Merton, In the Dark Before Dawn: New Selected Poems
- W.S. Merwin, The Lice
- Frank O’Hara, Meditations In An Emergency
- Marianne Moore, Complete Poems
- Ezra Pound, Selected Poems
- Adrienne Rich, Diving Into The Wreck
- Jon Silkin, New and Selected Poems
- W.D. Snodgrass, Heart’s Needle
- Wallace Stevens, The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens
- Thomas Tranströmer, The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems
- Richard Wilbur, Love Calls Us To The Things Of This World
- William Carlos Williams, Spring And All
- William Carlos Williams, Imaginations
That’s more than the recommended twenty works (and notice I have deliberately not added any books about poetry)–so, I will have to trim and tinker.
Any suggestions, anyone?
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Thanks, Jilly. She looks like a remarkable woman!
p.s. why are you listed as “for sale” on Facebook?
Such a great list! Thanks, Carol.
Val was quick to point out how male-biased my list was, as compared to yours, which is predominantly women.
Levertov’s work I know well, and love.
Oni Buchanan’s book, What Animal, is a favorite of mine too.
Facebook = I’m for sale at Lulu.com, LOL.
Ah, super. Nice review from The Radish Queen.
Yes, Oni’s book is outstanding.
Two more that occurred to me are WCWilliams Autobiography and James Longenbach’s Stone Cottage, which is about Pound and Yeats living together.
Robert,
Two that were just recommended to me:
The Neverending by Andrew Hudgins
The Bank of Beautiful Sins by Robert Wrigley.
Also something by Laura Kaschike? Hope I spelled her name right. Love both those lists… Almost done! M
Considering you’ve already a few great lists here, I’ll just make two suggestions, books I return to all the time.
Carlos Drummond De Andrade: Traveling in the Family: Selected Poems
Zbigniew Herbert: Selected Poems
Thanks, Boyd. Read Herbert’s Selected last semester and enjoyed it.
Thanks, Michelle. Not familiar with Hudgins; read that Wrigley with Joe. Immense talent, almost baroque attention to detail in scene. See you soon!
Never occurred to me to read an autobiography. What did you like about Williams’?
Major Jackson: Hoops
Allison Hedge Coke: Blood Run
Creation Myths: Mathias Svalina (chappie)
Fa(r)ther Down: Arielle Greenberg (chappie)
Rebecca Loudon’s books
haiku by George Swede
formalists Marilyn Nelson and AE Stallings and RS Gwynn and Annie Finch
Mary Ruefle: A Little White Space
Lorine Neidecker’s books
and honestly, I’ve read a lot of books by fellow poet-bloggers and I haven’t come across one that I wouldn’t recommend, yet.
WCW’s autobiography reveals his surprising ancestry, his childhood year in Europe, his friendship with Pound that began when they were 18 — fascinating other view of the man.
Sounds great! Thanks, Carol.
Good stuff, Jilly. Much obliged.
Since it appears you have translations on your list Transtromer, Jacobsen, oh and Pound (well, he reads like a foreign language some times) here are a few more:
Pier Pasolini
Yves Bonnefoy
George Seferis
Miguel Hernandez
Tomas Venclova
Bertolt Brecht
sooooo many more!
Thanks, Keith. I love David St. John’s long poem sequence “To Passolini.”
Brecht I only know from that quote about trees. Soooooo many more indeed!
Give me Billy Collins or give me death by glazed donuts.
(Billy, crank out a couple dozen more books tomorrow, please!)
Kind of a Billy Collins Fan,
Jannie
And Charles Bukowski (Freaking Brilliant,) if you don’t mind some depravity, but he couldn’t really help it with a drunk for a dad and all. Lucky the poor bastard did as well as he did.
Pessoa! Pessoa! Pessoa!
Obrigado, Ted.
hi Robert -
soooooooo many good books –
I loved Hugo’s Lady at Kicking Horse — it’s short and worth it — you can read and re-read, like
James Wright : Shall we Gather at the River.
Peter had me read — The Lice — challenging
I think Robert Wrigley is fabulous — In the Bank of Beautiful Sins really fine. Reminds me of Baudelaire.
Don’t forget the French…
Ponge, Desnos, Perec — although I don’t know the translations (a bad one could kill the intricacies);
“Le Ton Beau de Marot” by Douglas Hoffstadter (after you finish this semester) was the book which pushed me to look for an MFA program.
I’m on a McHugh roll : Really enjoy her translation of Paul Celan: Glottal Stop and her
The Father of The Predicaments;
her essays and Broken Hinges. The others not so much.
Amichai is terrific. I read “Amen” but his love poems have been recommended. BTW, He says of Glottal Stop “perfect in language, music and spirit” (the rest of the blurb praises Popov/McHugh for the translations of Celan’s work, his dense multilingual resonances, his brutal broken music, syntactic ruptures and dizzying wordplay.)
and so many more.
Yes for Wallace Stevens!
I’ve included Hart Crane this time..
and so many more.
Good luck!
All best,
Kitty
Thanks, Kitty. Nice to see you last week!
I would recommend:
ALIVE TOGETHER by Lisel Mueller
CRAZY HORSE IN STILLNESS by William Heyen
THE WHOLE MOTION by James Dickey (I think it would be good to swallow the pill whole so you can trace his arc)
As someone previously recommended, Andrew Hudgins is quite good.
Although I haven’t read your full blog, I assume given your program you’ve read all of Pattiann Rogers who is in my view essential to the very act of being alive and able to read in the English language.
Best wishes, David
Thanks for your suggestions, David. I’m on a good track with late-modern/early-contemporary poets right now. Hudgins/Heyen/Muller all sound good to look in to. And yes, Pattiann is on faculty at Pacific. Great lady. I swallowed /Firekeeper/’s flame.
Ah, those poets are probably later than the period you’re currently reading in. Nice blog!
Good luck,
David
Thanks, David. Come back and visit.