[New-Poetry] Books A Poet Should Own (the list as it stands)

[TheOldMole]

And there are a couple of books about Auden I really like -- The Auden generation: (literature and politics in England in the 1930's ) by Samuel Hynes, and The making of the Auden canon by Joseph Warren Beach. 

We're talking here about books that should be on your shelf because you're interested in what goes into making poetry, technically, historically, or through the personalities who have made it, and I think this is a good bookshelf to have, In general, I love this stuff.

Oh, and I can't believe no one mentioned Empson's "Seven Types of Ambiguity."

But while they're books anyone interested in poetry should have, I don't know that they're the list, or the only list, of books a poet should have.

I guess it's no secret here that my most significant mentor, and a man I continue to think of as my touchstone, is Donald Finkel, and Finkel's ideas about what should be on a poet's shelf would be very different. He believed in "reading for writing,"  and that reading was different, whether it was books on the Shackleton expedition, cave exploring or communicating with primates. But it was never that narrow. Finkel's collaged materials, that made its way into his books, branched outward in odd but always right directions.

James, are you keeping up this list? I hope so.

The Donald Justice books I was thinking of are A Donald Justice Reader and Donald Justice in Conversation with Philip Hoy.

I might as well put in a plug for The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poetry, because I was a contributor (I ended up writing more entroes than anyone), but also because I think it's a hell of a good job. And Burt Kimmelman's The Facts on File Companion to 20th-Century American Poetry, to which I made much more modest contributions.

Are you keeping the list up to date, James?





----- Original Message ----- 
From: JforJames at aol.com 
To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu 
Sent: Wednesday, November 08, 2006 3:24 PM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Books A Poet Should Own (the list as it stands)


Dyer's Hand by WH Auden

Can't believe Auden didn't occur to me earlier...he always gets
things right and he manages to say it so well.



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