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Poetry Appreciation Discussion - August 2024 (Patreon)

Published:
2024-08-23 20:26:27
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2026-06
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  • HLBC Poetry Appreciation - Emily Brontë, Matthew Arnold, Gerard Manley Hopkins.pdf

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Content

Dear Book Club Readers ---

Your appreciation of great poetry in July was phenomenal, and it would be lovely to hear about the poems you're enjoying this month.

Our poetry appreciation thread is the place to mindfully check in and share what poetic works have resonated with us recently. So let us know:

What poems are you appreciating at the moment?

Let us know anything that has resonated with you during your poetic excursions:

  • Resonant lines

  • Striking imagery

  • Sublime musicality

  • Intriguing allusions

  • Compelling themes

  • Your favourite poets

  • Powerful metaphors

  • Elements you want to examine

  • Poems you want to recommend

  • Reflections, musings, and insights

  • Passages you're learning by heart

This is the place to put your poetry appreciations and get other readers weighing in on your thoughts!

Curated Poetic Vintages:

Your responses to our last three poems were beautiful. It was deeply rewarding to read your insights and meditations. And you can read my appreciation in the downloadable PDF at the bottom of this post.

I have also specially curated three more poems for you to enjoy. There is another link running through these poems. It could be thematic, stylistic, or philosophical. You don't need an in-depth knowledge of poetry to uncover the connection. You only need to read, reread, and feel.

I would love to know what you make of the chosen poems. Which one is your favourite? Which poet resonates with you the most? And what lines stand out to you?

I will reveal the link running through them in the next poetry thread, along with the next three poetic vintages. And all poems can be found in the Norton Anthology of Poetry, which makes an excellent poetic textbook.

Thank you so much for sharing your love of great literature with us.

Happy reading, everybody!

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Comments

Pati

This month I decided to re read an Epic Poem from my own country that I've wanted to revisit since I joined the book club this year and saw about the Poetry appreciation thatwe do every month. So I grabbed my copy and started to read it. It's called "Tabaré" by Juan Zorrilla de San Martin written in 1886. I'm enjoying it completely at another level after all we learnt here.

Leah

I am so glad I tuned into the poetry appreciation this month. I am quite new to appreciating poetry and I really enjoyed reading the pdf. I listened to a reading of "Pied Beauty" on youtube and it really stood out to me. I have been wanting to give more of a try to poetry and I am thinking it would be most helpful to listen to some audio before bed or something.

Anna

I LOVE “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”. Last month I used it to show my poetry class a classic example of a villanelle, and we all ended up falling in love with this poetic form! I managed to write two villanelles of my own, which is wild because I don’t consider myself much of a poet! Right now, I’ve been reading some poetry by W. H. Auden. My favorite poem of his is “September 1, 1939” that he wrote in the wake of World War II. It’s a poem that addresses themes of fear and uncertainty in the face of war and fascism. Despite the poem’s sobering tone, I appreciate its glimmer of hope at the end of how people can collectively gather and fight against authoritarianism. A highly recommended read.

Judy
>>147606105

Pati, sos uruguaya, que casualidad. I grew up and went to school in Montevideo and at Liceo de Sauce, but that was in the 50’s and 60’s. We read Sor Juana de Ibarburu as well, and of course Spanish poetry, like Machado. Thank you for bringing back those memories.

Ellen M

What a gorgeous surprise to see that my current obsession is one of the poems in this post. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I struggle to connect with poetry. I’ve decided to let a poem find me and I live with it for as long as it takes until the next poem comes along. I’ve been living with and loving the Thomas poem for quite some time now. Maybe it’s because I’m dealing with health issues that, while not serious, have forced me to adapt my quality of life, at times making me pissy on the outside while raging on the inside. The more serious health issues of two family members and their completely different ways of dealing with them, have had me thinking about my own mortality. I have decided that I will always strive to rage against the dying of the light. The Thomas poem will be my forever mantra ‘Whenever it is a damp drizzly November in my soul’. When I’m feeling melancholy or down, I find myself reading this poem - it gives me spark and courage. It is inspiring and gorgeous and raw and true. I simply adore it. Here is a wonderful reading by the great Michael Sheen: https://youtu.be/w-sM-t1KI_Y?si=o_TlMkYHKIYUCo9T

Julie Nevin
>>147709055

I sent this to my sister, after she was diagnosed with a degenerative illness. 🤔 it did the trick. Love it :-)

David Campbell

This past month I was only able to dip into poetry a little bit. Highlights were “The Lotus Eaters” and “Ulysses” by Tennyson. I also listened to Jack Kerouac’s “Blues and Haikus”. This was a combination of spoken word (haikus) combined with jazz saxophone (played by Zoot Simms). I think I was leaning to liking the saxophone more than the spoken word, but I did really appreciate hearing poetry recited by the author, and the almost time travel aspect of listening to a 1959 recording of Kerouac himself. Another favourite of mine for this is recordings of Allan Ginsberg reciting “Howl”.

Ylva

With my thus far limited occupation with poetry, the cinema first brought me to that Thomas poem, and I'm already looking forward to the anniversary airing of Interstellar and being treated to it there again. I can't believe it's been 10 years already. A stunning poem at any rate. This month was a wild dip into poetry for me. I got the Everyman Library Pocket Books of Tennyson, Byron, Shelley, Emily Brontë, and Burns, and find myself reaffirmed in my weirdly late—yet better late than never—revelation that I love my Romanticism in whichever form I can get it. I also picked up Elspeth Barker's "O Caledonia" last week, expecting a light novel to enjoy in the evenings, only to find myself delightedly rabbit-holing into even more poetry by Longfellow, Keats, Auden… and looking up the collection of Child Ballads online. In combination with deep reading Middlemarch these days and looking up Coleridge, Wordsworth and their circle, it's disorienting even trying to pick a favourite. Looking at the end of August being upon us, though, and my current course of life, Ode to the West Wind has been strongly on my mind. "Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; / Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!"

Paul Servini

Three very interesting and enjoyable poems this month. I see I'm not alone in preferring the Dylan Thomas poem. But I'm going to be honest, I'm surprised at myself and my choice. Of the three very different approaches to death, I disagree with Thomas' approach (rage) the most. Yet, the intensity of the language and the emotions unleashed by that language really hit me. Especially when I heard Michael Sheen and also Dylan Thomas himself read them. Beautiful, wild and violent. I'm reassessing my attitude to death in light of the poem. Rage which reacts by living life to the full… I think I have some raging to do.

Paul Servini
>>148588726

As well as Michael Sheen's version which someone already mentioned, you may like to hear Dylan Thomas himself reading the poem (https://youtu.be/1mRec3VbH3w?si=GQwRFf92KHlWi52c) And perhaps I should declare a personal interest. Although I haven't live there for well over forty years, I'm still a passionate Welshman who can't stop singing and reciting.

Glamaris Cohen

This month’s was a tough one for me, as I just lost my father on July 12th. Reading these poems was too emotional and I chose to move away for a while. In a “normal” time, I would prefer Rossetti, but in this moment the Thomas poem was what I needed.

Anna

I find it interesting that I started my day reading Marina Tsvetaeva's poem "Yesterday He Still Looked in My Eyes," which, in a way, presents the end of a romantic relationship as a profound emotional death. Marina's poem is filled with a bitter tone as the speaker is devastated by the betrayal of love. In a way, I think it resonates with Thoma's defiant tone in his poem, where the speaker resists death.

Gonzalo Broto

The poem that resonated with me the most was also "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas, a poet I was not acquainted with before. While I was reading it, I couldn't stop relating it to Tennyson's "Ulysses", which I read (and loved) recently, for both of them deal with a similar topic, that of leaving with a bang, for "Old age hath yet his honour and his toil", and senescence still has adventures and discoveries to offer. And rage and drive and violence too, if one so wishes!