#but at least they could follow a book

[damn-daemon]

Can't believe House of the Dragon is making me reconsider my hatred toward D&D...

[tea-cat-arts]

Shen Yuan getting transported into pidw isn't "the system punishing him for being a lazy internet hater," but instead representative of "step 1 of the creative process: getting so mad at something you decide to go write your own fucking book" in this essay I will

[poetrysmackdown]

hi hiii i wanted to say that your account is so refreshing to see, esp with the passion you have for the arts. as someone who's been meaning to read (and write) more poetry, do you have any recommendations? some classics that everyone and their mothers know? perhaps some underrated pieces that changed you? or even just authors you like, I'm very open to suggestions :]]

Hi! Thank you so much for this kind ask :) So exciting that you’re looking to delve deeper into reading and writing! I had to take a little time to answer this because my thoughts were all over the place lol.

For a review of notable/classic poems/poets, I honestly just recommend looking at lists online or, hell, just binging Wikipedia pages for different countries’ poetry if that’s something you’re into, just to get a sense of the chronology. I read one of those little Oxford Very Short Introductions on American Poetry and thought it was pretty good, but online is quicker if you’re just searching for poets or movements to hone in on. Poetry Foundation also has lots of resources, in addition to all the poems in their database. I guess my one big classic recommendation would have to be Emily Dickinson (<3), but really the best move is just to find a poet you already enjoy and then look around to see who their peers were/are, who they were inspired by, who they’ve maybe translated here and there, etc. and follow it down the line as far as you can.

For some personal recs, here are some collections I’ve really enjoyed over the past two years or so. Bolded favorites, and linking where select poems from the book have been published online. But also, if you want a preview of a couple poems from another of the books to see if they interest you, DM me and I can send them over! You can also feel free to pilfer through my poetry tag for more stuff lol

Autobiography of Death by Kim Hyesoon trans. Don Mee Choi

Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings by Joy Harjo

DMZ Colony by Don Mee Choi

Hardly War by Don Mee Choi

Whereas by Layli Long Soldier

Geography III by Elizabeth Bishop

Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine

Mouth: Eats Color—Sagawa Chika Translations, Anti-Translations, & Originals by Sawako Nakayasu

The Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam trans. W.S. Merwin and Clarence Brown

The Branch Will Not Break by James Wright

This Journey by James Wright

God’s Silence by Franz Wright

Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke (the translation I read was by Alfred Corn—I thought it was great, but idk if there are better ones out there!)

DMZ Colony, Hardly War, Dictee, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely, and partially Whereas are all book-length poems with some prose poetry and varying levels of weirdness/denseness/multilingualism—if you were to pick one to start with, I’d say do Don’t Let Me Be Lonely or Whereas. Mouth: Eats Color is some experimental translations of Japanese modernist poet Chika Sagawa, with other translations and some of Nakayasu’s original stuff mixed in—it's definitely a bit disorienting but ultimately I remember having such fun with it, as much fun as Nakayasu probably had making it. It’s a book that emphasizes co-creation and a spirit of play, and completely changed my attitude towards translation.

If you’re less interested in that kind of formal fuckery stuff though (I get it), can’t go wrong with the other books! Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings is the one I read most recently, and it’s great—Harjo also featured in Round 1! Franz Wright also featured, and God's Silence is the collection which "Night Walk" comes from. James Wright (father of Franz) is one of my favorite poets of all time, though his poetry isn’t perfect. Even so, I’m honestly surprised he’s not doing numbers on Tumblr—Mary Oliver was a big fan of his, even wrote her "Three Poems for James Wright" after his death.

I mentioned in another post that one of my favorite poets is Paul Celan, so I’ll also recommend him here. I read Memory Rose into Threshold Speech which is a translated collection of his earlier poems, but it’s quite long if you’re just getting to know him as a poet—fortunately, both Poetry Foundation and Poets.org have a ton of his poems in their collections. There’s also an article by Ilya Kaminsky about him titled “Of Strangeness That Wakes Us” (!!!!!) that’s a great place to start, and is honestly kind of my whole mission statement when I’m reading and writing poetry. Looking at the books I’ve recommended above, a lot of them share feelings of separateness or alienation—from others, from oneself, from one’s country, from language—that breed strange, private modes of expression. That tends to be what I’m drawn to personally, and that’s some of what Kaminsky talks about.

Sorry of the length of this—I hope it's useful as a jumping-off point! And if you or anyone ends up exploring any of these poets, let me know what you think! If folks wanna reply with recommendations themselves too that'd be great :)

[my-name-is-apollo]

Shoutout to this book for having both Apollo and Helios as the sun gods simultaneously. They're both also the physical sun, somehow. 10/10 would love if modern adaptations just said fuck it and had two sun gods (and moon gods) instead of disposing one of them in favor of the other.

[everysongineverykey]

i dunno it kinda bothers me sometimes to see characters who are referred to with they/them pronouns in games described as "ambiguously gendered" or "gender left unclear" or "gender unstated" by fans and stuff like. yeah absolutely they are sometimes that. sometimes the creator had a gender in mind for them while creating them and just didn't think to talk about it in the game. but also, like. sometimes characters can just be nonbinary? and it makes me kinda sad that everyone's first reaction to they/them pronouns in games is "oh, they have a binary gender, it's just up to the player/not stated in-game".

[distraughtlesbian]

literally the best part of this whole stupid book iwlove weird obsessed horndogs thee villain archetype of all time. he’s so silly. “we could’ve had a life together”, he says to his lesbian ex-neighbour who he’s just shot with a crossbow bolt meanwhile her girlfriend who he’s also just shot is half dead across the room. god i love it here he said me and the bad bitch im going to fumble

[the-busy-ghost]

Me normally: Let people love what they love

Me, after a Test Match Special commentator expresses their belief that the new All Creatures Great and Small is somehow "better" than the 1978 version: This is pure insanity and TMS can no longer be trusted on anything, how can they even be trusted to know about cricket, do they have no TASTE

[deelovesbooks]

the annoying thing about knitting and crocheting is that I keep having to pause my audiobook to fucking count >:|

[crystalkitty1220]

Man I wonder where the leader of the fear realm could've gone, it's alMOST LIKE NEVIN HAS AN

[raininyourblackeyes]

My cousin, a published writer, a well-known poet in my country and a literature professor, for whom I've always been no.1 support ever since her first attempts at writing in high school, told me that I must stop writing as a hobby because that's her thing and since I'm writing fantasy mostly my writing could never have any important artistic value anyways.

[coquelicoq]

dammit. loved the end of the traitor baru cormorant. which means i'm gonna read the sequel. save me from myself. AUGH.

[kyouka-supremacy]

Mmmhh...

[lizzibennet]

the thing about each pjo book is that each of them is uniquely the best in what it sets out to do. each is so monumental in what the story ends up amounting to, picking a favorite is almost like pointless. you could not have all 5 work so well if one was missing

[thetimelordbatgirl]

God why did a video on Disney fatigue have to remind me Hocus Pocus 2 existed because that in turn led me to remember Hocus Pocus 3 was confirmed and the last update we got was October last year, aka that the story is being worked on.

[lipstickontheglass1985]

honestlyyyy i lowkey need to burn down my smartphone

[autistic-katara]

jesus christ rhat opinion is so stupid but its not that serious and i dint wanna argue rn