Poetry to Create Poetry

Good and great poetry has these characteristics, a combination of inspiration and structure.

Unless I'm a UNintentionally a Muse I cant provide the Inspiration part but I can give some guidance and hints on structure. The first is this:

READ POETRY TO WRITE POETRY

Like it or not even "free verse" has structure! I will give further hints and tips on technique and how to sharpen those poetic reflexes over in Scholia as well as in this blog in future posts. This first post will since this is a book blog list a few useful anthologies.

Most of the Great poets read and studied other poets.

There are some good intro articles with links on Wikipedia and you might want to check out Project Gutenberg and other free e-booksites for pdfs you can download.

Here are some works that will aid your quest.

SIDNEY'S APOLOGIE FOR POETRY an Elizabethan essay.

THE Golden Treasury by Palgrave. Multiple editions available!

A.P. Wavell's OTHER MEN'S FLOWERS.
An anthology of his personal favorites arranged around subject and theme so you get an idea of how different poets handled subjects! Possibly out of print but worth hunting for!
A good selection of comic, light, lyric and epic verse with a bias toward ballads but the man had excellent taste!

Herder's 500 Best Loved Song Lyrics. Dover Edition.

What song lyrics!? Yes!!! many great poems were originally songs, including those chinese TZU or ci poems mistranslated too loosely back in the 1920s that influenced the creation of "FREE VERSE" Pindar's poems were sung. Many Eliabethan sonnets and poems were sung. See Tottel's Miscellany!

The best songs and hymns also work as poems.

Shakespeare's Sonnets

Shame on you if you have not read any of these yet!

The King James Bible especially Psalms and Prophets.

Daniel C. Buchanan 100 Famous Haiku.

I've reviewed this one before but if you want to understand haiku read this!

Buchan's Northern Muse a great selection of Scots English and Scots Lallans verse.

Gardeners Metaphysical Poets!

Now for some non English Poetry.

Waddell's Mediaeval Latin Lyrics.

David Hawke's A Little Primer of Tu Fu

Agreat introduction to a Classic Chinese poet. Has the chinese text as well as a translation and notes!

Greg Whincup

The Heart of Chinese Poetry. Likewise has chinese and translation and notes but more poets

Try to read any of the great TANG period poets.

Look for translations of parts or all of the HYAKUNIN ISSHU
100 poems from the Heian era.

If you cant read Greek I suggest Trypanis' Penguin Book of Greek Verse as it has selections ranging from Homer to the twentieth century and the greek text plus english.

Any or all of these works will aid you in the enjoyment and even creation of verse whether you're looking at different treatments of themes or for somethign to analyse or want to compare one genre to another!

Hope some of these are useful.

Please ask questions!

I'll be reviewing some of these books in greater detail over the next month and explaining why they're useful!

bye for now!

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