December Daily: poets

[resonant]

minoanmiss - Top five poets? top five titles?

My knowledge of poetry is spotty in the extreme, with huge gaps, but here goes:

- When I was a kid, someone gave me an Ogden Nash collection. I was just that age when you get tickled, you know? when sometimes you start laughing and you can't stop and the very fact that you're laughing is too funny to be able to stop laughing? I'm sure everybody in my family got heartily sick of that book with its red paper cover and me staggering up and attempting to read them some lines, gasping for breath and unable to get more than a couple of words out -- "And they say, 'The snow is a soft blanket after a winter storm' / Oh, it is, is it, then you sleep under a two-inch blanket of snow and I'll sleep under a half-inch blanket of regular blanket material and we'll see who keeps warm."

- Then when I was in high school I discovered Edna St. Vincent Millay, of whose work I still have quite a bit memorized. (My brain is sticky for verse and I memorize it very easily. It goes in the spot where regular people can visualize things they can't see.) I have less ability now than I did then to overlook how self-conscious and romantical some of her work is, but I still like some of it a great deal, and it planted in me a love for rhymes and forms that I still have even though it's badly out of fashion now.

- I don't know why it took me so long to discover Walt Whitman, but I believe he loves me personally.

- The poetry in the New Yorker right now is usually only entertaining for me because I can count the verbs and call the spouse and complain. ("Three! And two of them are forms of 'to be'!") There was a period in the late '90s when whoever was poetry editor was precisely in line with my tastes and I liked almost everything. My favorite poet from that period is Franz Wright.

- I was familiar with T.S. Eliot from high school and enjoyed reading Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats to the kidlet*, but earlier this year the spouse and I read The Four Quartets together, and I loved them. I'd always heard that they were "difficult," and they are, but somehow my mind had turned "these poems are difficult" into "there is no pleasure in reading these poems," and it's not true at all. (I'm at exactly the right age for them. Don't think I would have gotten much out of them in my thirties, but my fifties are perfect.)

* runpunkrun reviewed Old Possum here, including the disgust and heartbreak of reading a charming rhyme for children and being hit in the face with an unexpected racial slur. Alas.



Upcoming prompts below the cut.




15 the_future_modernes - top five things you look forward to as you grow older
16 clevermanka - Five pieces of treasured advice
17 dine - Top five ice cream flavors
18 rhi Five favorite Christmas treats (cookies to make, mulled cider, Advent calendars, e.g.)
19 china_shop - Top five devices/appliances/bluetooth thingies/whatever :-)
20 dorinda - Top 5 comfort movies? Or comfort reads, if you'd rather
21 summerstorm - because it puts me in mind of blackjack, do you play any card or board games regularly? Or videogames? top 5 games?
22 summerstorm - top 5 poems?
23 fox - Top five Advent carols, maybe
24 fox - Top five Christmas carols
25 break for Christmas
26 ride_4ever - top 5 dS fanworks other than fic (arts, podfics, vids)
27 azurelunatic - 5 reasons you enjoy a party in the dark times of the year
28 james - Top 5 places in the past you would like to visit. Top 5 places in the present you would like to visit.
29 laurenthemself - Top five snack foods (sorry, the requested date got taken between the time you posted and the time I edited)
30
31 mergatrude - what five complements/encouragements would you give your young self.

Comments

[nnozomi]

...okay, I'll confess that I still love Ogden Nash. There's something very satisfying about those very deliberately deployed deadpan false rhymes and, as in your quote, messed-up line lengths... . My favorite is No Doctors Today ("what euphorian days them was!") And he was also a lyricist, this is a good one:
Speak Low.

[isis]

Haha, me too! I love his ridiculous rhymes, though I also have a soft spot for one of his rare serious poems, A Lady Who Thinks She Is Thirty.

[resonant]

Ha, both of those were in my book and I remember them vividly. Speak Low is new to me, though.

[twistedchick]

My favorite New Yorker poet is Dorothy Parker.

I read Four Quartets while I was writing Life, Refracted, and ended up quoting from them in a few places, notably the end of the series.

[resonant]

I'd like to know more of Parker's poetry -- the only thing that comes to mind is "Razors pain you / Rivers are damp."

[minoanmiss]

Millay! I wonder how many of us discovered her in high school.

[clevermanka]

Chiming in as a fellow lover of Millay. I never grew out of those teenage feels and honestly I hope never will.

[resonant]

I was in college when I first saw that public service ad that said, "Unfortunately, history has set the record a little too straight," and Millay is one of a number of people whose queerness was entirely erased from the things I read back then.

[lunabee34]

Ogden Nash is so so wonderful. This reminds me I should introduce the kiddo to him; she adores Shel Silverstein and Jack Pretlutsky.

[resonant]

Oh, Jack Prelutsky is new to me! Thanks for that.

[lunabee34]

You're welcome! He's very funny.

[norah]

YES to the New Yorker poetry editor changing. I loved the late 90s poetry I found there. That's how I discovered Kay Ryan.

[resonant]

Someone shared "Carrying a Ladder" recently -- was that you? I loved it.

[norah]

Not me, please link!

[resonant]

Kay Ryan, "Carrying a Ladder"

I love the line break on "there's too much swing or off - / center gravity."

[norah]

Thank you! I have that book, even, but had forgotten that poem. I am definitely carrying a ladder.