But have you got an alternative advice for ‘best introduction to poetry’ or ‘greatest books for the scholar of poetry’? If so, let us know – we realise this record of 5 books is hardly comprehensive, but merely a whistle-cease introduction to what’s on the market.
Upon reading Ricks’s biography of Tennyson, W. H. Auden called Ricks ‘precisely the type of critic each poet goals of finding’. But Ricks can also be a brilliant writer too, with a keenness (some would say weak spot) for puns and wordplay of all kinds.
Emily Dickinson stated, “If I really feel bodily as if the highest of my head were taken off, I know that’s poetry.” The title poem of Maggie Smith’s Good Boneswill take your head of and gently place it back on with terror and tenderness. Shocking in its gorgeous simplicity, this homage to motherhood is emotional, assured, darkish, hopeful, chilling.
The very first sentence of this quantity is, “My project is obvious persistence…” My attraction to Gibbons’ poetry is rooted in her capacity to arrange life’s chaos with out dulling its energy. These poems remain robust and extensive-eyed to the end as they flip from exclamation within the first part to prayer within the second to the elegiac mode of the third section.
Perhaps considered one of these books will present that same ray of light to you, pricey reader. If you’ve been through a major catastrophe, or a big loss, you understand what we imply. Sometimes prose simply doesn’t provide what the soul needs, irrespective of how clever.