Best literary criticism books according to Reddit

Reddit mentions of Good Poems

Sentiment score: 8
Reddit mentions: 11

We found 11 Reddit mentions of Good Poems. Here are the top ones.

    Features:
  • Penguin Books
Specs:
ColorBlue
Height1.5 Inches
Length8 Inches
Number of items1
Release dateAugust 2003
Weight1.05 Pounds
Width5.2 Inches
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Found 11 comments on Good Poems:

u/zebulonworkshops · 11 pointsr/Poetry

Read a lot. A LOT. To start, at least like five poems for every one you read. Obviously this is an arbitrary number, but it is important to read a lot of poetry when you're getting started, because poetry is a very different beast from prose, especially the type of popular fiction that most general readers are familiar with. It requires a lot more attention paid to what's happening even at the word level, as ambiguity and multiple meanings are important to poetry.

 

There are numerous very good resources online and free:
Poetry 180.

Poetry Foundation is a tremendous resource that has tonnnnnns of poems organized by theme, occasion, author etc.

Poets.org is also wonderful.

Poem Hunter is a great resource once you have found poets you think you'd like to read more of—but I have noticed small typographical errors in some of their poems when comparing them to the poems actually in collections, though not that often.


New Pages is a resource that can help you browse publications that are currently publishing, read reviews and interviews. It won't be as important right away, but once you get a decent feel for poetry, and especially once you're writing what you consider polished poems it's a great place to research possible markets for your work (please, please don't just send out to random or big name magazines without researching first. Most magazines have an aesthetic of some sort, so many poems simply don't fit at an individual magazine, and submitting it will only result in clogging the slush pile (unsolicited submissions) and wasting your (and the editor's) time. They can also help you find online magazines where you can read current writing for free. There are hundreds of them, of greatly varying content.

 

Now, by saying read a ton of poems doesn't mean don't write. Do. Especially when you're inspired by something a poem you've read has done. Try it yourself. I highly recommend keeping a writer's notebook (I have actual physical ones, as well as a google drive file for snippets and interesting tidbits I've found that I want to use in a piece sometime).


Time for my little plug here. I run a blog where I post writing exercises/writing prompts every day called Notebooking Daily. The point is to spend some time every day possible actually writing, and by starting with very specific directions it helps jumpstart the creative process even if you don't have anything in particular that you are inspired to write. On my sidebar I have a quote from David Kirby that I love:

>I’d have the young poets maintain a stockpile of linguistic bits: stories, weird words, snatches of conversation they’d overheard, lines from movies they’d seen or books they’d read. Most young poets will say something like, “Well, I have to write a poem now. Let’s see; what can I write about?” And then they end up writing about their own experiences, and, let’s face it, we all have the same experiences. So what all poets need is a savings account they can raid from time to time.

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If you like the blog please spread the word. There aren't ads or anything on there right now, I'm just doing it as a sort of public service because I think writers can use all the support and opportunity they can get. And I really enjoy writing, haha.

 

/r/writingprompts is another good resource to use. It's quite an active sub and helps you write when not necessarily otherwise inspired. Some of the topics are extremely specific, while others are broad, and open for interpretation.

/r/passtheparagraph is a fun collaborative writing sub where you join other redditors and piece together a story or poem one paragraph or a few lines at a time. This is a great place when you don't want to write a full piece, but feel like writing.

/r/ocpoetry is a good place for beginning poets to publish, but be sure to take a look at the reddit TOS (especially the 'your content' part). But it will likely be some time before your pieces are in any shape that this will be an issue.

 

I hope the links and words are of some service. I can offer some critiques when I have the time, but I have no idea when that is usually, but if you have something specific you need an opinion or advice on you can message me and I'll do my best to get back to you in a timely fashion. Best of luck on your path! And I do highly recommend Poetry 180 to new writers, the poems are all quite accessible but not silly or light verse. Garrison Keillor's Good Poems is also a great resource, and you can buy it used for under $0.40. I found the poem I had read at my wedding in that book—shout out to Steve Scafidi!

u/clearisland · 7 pointsr/Poetry

I'm a kind of casual reader these days, but Good Poems, selected by Garrison Keillor played a huge part in me getting into poetry ~10 years ago. Keillor grabs a good range of old classics and newer ones (though he kinda seems to favor beat era writers), and sorts the poems vaguely according to themes, like "Failure," "A Day's Work," "Sons and Daughters." I'd bet I've discovered 80% of my favorite writers due to this book. Props to u/JTK102 for also recommending this!



If that's too entry level, my other go-to anthology is The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry, but obviously that one sticks to contemporary American writers. I like this anthology because it also gives some background to the career and cultural significance of the featured writers.


Good luck on your hunt!

u/minibike · 4 pointsr/booksuggestions

I'm a big fan of the poetry collection taken from the writers almanac by Garrison Keillor, aptly named Good Poems

u/simongrey · 3 pointsr/booksuggestions

Garrison Keillor has an excellent anthology, titled simply and accurately Good Poems.

u/subtextual · 3 pointsr/books

I'd suggest starting with poems that are relatively brief, highly readable, and modern -- really get a taste for how poetry can be relevant to your everyday life. There are a ton of good books out there dedicated to poetry of this type, such as Garrison Keillor's Good Poems, with poems like Mary Oliver's Wild Geese:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Oliver has also written a Poetry Handbook which discusses the technical aspects of poetry like rhythm and form, and illustrates the principles with poems generally considered to be modern classics, if you're looking for something more technical.

Keillor also does the The Writer's Almanac on NPR, and you can go to the Writer's Almanac site for a (usually) good poem each day. Other good starting points include Billy Collin's Poetry 180 and Hirsch's How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry.

I'm also a fan of Catherine Bowman, who's a bit obscure (she's the Poetry... um... person for NPR's All Things Considered) and so I'm going to post one of her poems (Broke Song) because I'll probably never have another chance to do so as smoothly as I am clearly working it into this post.

You move through the world broken. Navigating
by the stars encoded on your hearts axis. July
grasses. Rain. How the world breaks us.
Midnight scatters across what’s left
from an evening prayer. The broken
song of the warbler at dawn
on the last day of winter. You move
through the world gathered
together in a pulse. Running your fingers
up and down what is odd and so familiar.
How dazzling the fit. To be remade
by the glue of your oaths and kisses.

Edit: Also, Robert Bly.

u/allthegoo · 3 pointsr/Poetry

Good Poems is my go-to for a great, well-rounded collection of poems. https://www.amazon.com/Good-Poems-Garrison-Keillor/dp/0142003441

u/Arhadamanthus · 2 pointsr/AskLiteraryStudies

First off, good on you for taking the initiative.

For introductory books, I'd recommend Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Travelled. Now, I haven't read it myself, but it's been mentioned on this sub often enough for me to feel comfortable mentioning it. It might also be a good idea to pick up a miscellaneous collection of poems in order to get an understanding of the variety and depth of the subject matter. A more informal volume might be something edited by Garrison Keiler, like Good Poems. While that specific book is more bent towards Modern American poets, there's still a lot to draw from. A more academic book would be The Norton Anthology of Poetry ot The Norton Introduction to Poetry, which has a lot more to choose from. These two also give you a bit of structure – my copy of the Introduction has clear headings, like "Symbol" or "The Sonnet," with neat little introductory essays and poems chosen to help you understand how these concepts work. That being said, Norton tends to be a little expensive, though if you live in a college town you can probably find a cheaper copy. The benefit of these kinds of collections lies in helping you to find a poet whose style or subject matter you particularly like.

Regarding online sources, there's The Poetry Foundation, which has archives of poems and articles on the poets themselves. Their monthly articles can vary from the interesting to the banal, however, so keep your bullshit detector on. You can probably also find podcasts that deal with the subject. A personal favorite of mine is called "Entitled Opinions," and is run by a professor of Italian Studies over at Stanford by the name of Robert Harrison. Mind you, this particular podcast deals with philosophy and literature as well, so while I'd recommend listening to all their episodes you would have to do a little bit of searching in order to find a particular episode on poetry – though I would reccomend the one on "Dante and Prufrock." I imagine these kind of examinatioms would be useful because they can give you a sense of what poetry 'does' or 'how it means' beyond a surface play with words.

As for the writing of poetry, the first thing I'd recommend is that you read and meditate on a lot of poetry, good and bad, in order to get a sense of how its all done. Learn certain conventions – like, say, that of the sonnet – in order to see how poets follow through with them, or how they play with them. Learn prosody so you can understand how the precise meter, or 'beat,' of each line can affect the reader. I can't really give concrete advice with regards to this, save for a metaphorical "go west, young man!"

u/symphonyintea · 2 pointsr/books

I've quite enjoyed Garrison Keillor's Good Poems.

u/iampete · 2 pointsr/Poetry

It's not "small" (fairly thick), but I've really been enjoying Good Poems, edited by Garrison Keillor.

u/doomtop · 1 pointr/OCPoetry

If you believe your words are gospel, then just accept the feedback and move on with your life. If you want to start down the road of legitimately writing poetry that someone who actually reads poetry can appreciate, it's time to get to fucking work.

Of course, you think your "words" are special, but they aren't. This is the same thing every beginner churns out. It's cliché abstraction and it's not worth sharing with anyone. You can call it "poetry" and say it's your "art" and that poetry can't be "defined" -- whatever.

But anyone who actually reads poetry will recognize your "words" immediately for what they are and turn the page.

Read some poetry, man. Read some books about writing poetry and the tools poets use to craft their poems. If you need recommendations, I can give you some, but you'll have to do some fucking work. You might have missed the memo, but writing poetry is hard work.

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Edit: Here some recommendations to get you started.