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Poetry Appreciation Discussion - September 2024 (Patreon)

Published:
2024-09-30 20:16:46
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2026-06
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  • HLBC Poetry Appreciation - Thomas, Dickinson, Rossetti - The Dying of the Light.pdf

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Content

Dear Book Club Readers ---

Your appreciation of great poetry is always 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

Caroline P

Just a quick comment. I am very slowly ( very very slowly) reading Anatomy of Melancholy and just read ‘ of the seasons of the year Autumn is most melancholy’ which makes me think melancholia might be a connecting theme too. Personally I think January and February in the U.K. are far more tedious than autumn

Tena Sue

In this poetry reading journey with the group, I'm learning that my heart and recent experiences tend to color what i see in the poetry and how I relate to it. I'm normally a joyful person, and i tend to focus on the beauty in things. But right now, we have a bit of grief going on in our family due to a loss. Connecting this to the poems: Autumn is my favorite time of year, I absolutely love Autumn. But i connected with the sad aspects of these poems instead of the beauty of Autumn. So passages like "Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?" jumped into my heart. Maybe I should read these again next Autumn and see if i connect differently to them, or if they will always remain sad to me because of how I felt this first time when reading them. That will be an interesting experiment.

Caroline P
>>151192670

Sorry Tena that you have been dealing with grief and loss. I love the next line in the Keats poem ‘Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—‘ I find reassurance in this line, I hope that by next year you will be in a place to connect even more deeply with them. I came across this little poem recently by Mary Oliver and thought it quite meaningful The Uses of Sorrow
(In my sleep I dreamed this poem) Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

Spider in your cider

I really enjoyed After Apple Picking.. I had read it before but now I’m older and it means more to me. It has such a dreamy quality. “I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight I got from looking through a pane of glass”. All the grasping of apples and rungs, and the climbing of ladders represents our striving and attachments in the world. And then there’s winter which catches us with apples left unpicked and baskets empty. “For I have had too much Of apple-picking: I am overtired Of the great harvest I myself desired. There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.” In the end, the things we cherish are both fleeting and perishable. “For all That struck the earth, No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble, Went surely to the cider-apple heap As of no worth.” The poems imagery of winter, age, and mortality become “just some human form of sleep”

Maria

“I am overtired Of the great harvest I myself desired” Wow this truly hits deep. I love how I feel like he’s not actually talking about agriculture. “Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,” I just love the “hectic red”, it’s so true it’s exactly that! It makes me think of expressionist art and it’s reminding me of the red petals in Toni Morrisons Song of Solomon which feel equally hectic.

Aaron Kyereh-Mireku

I have been reading Coleridge for the past couple of weeks. I find him difficult. The very early stuff in my collection of his complete poems is very raw, strained and artificial. I'm not getting from him what I love about William Wordsworth. So far there is the odd poem I have liked. Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Religious Musings are two I have enjoyed. I will persist with him despite the fact that I have not warmed to him like I hoped to. I recently read the Lyrical Ballads which of course is a joint work of both Wordsworth and Coleridge, and I found myself moved as ever by those beautiful lines in Tintern Abbey: 'Therefore let the moon Shine on thee in thy solitary walk; And let the misty mountain-winds be free To blow against thee: and, in after years, When these wild ecstasies shall be matured Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms, Thy memory be as a dwelling-place For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then, If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief, Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts Of tender joy wilt thou remember me, And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance— If I should be where I no more can hear Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams Of past existence—wilt thou then forget That on the banks of this delightful stream We stood together; and that I, so long A worshipper of Nature, hither came Unwearied in that service: rather say With warmer love—oh! with far deeper zeal Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget, That after many wanderings, many years Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs, And this green pastoral landscape, were to me More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!' Reading Wordsworth is like being with an old friend, one rich in wisdom and worldly experience.

Judy

Benjamin, thank as always for lovely thoughtful choices. Keats is a favorite, and reading To Autumn held me still for a while. The season is squeezing all it can out of what’s left of summer - load, bend, fill, swell, plump…I like that honeycombs are ‘clammy cells’ and gnats are mourning, and ‘last oozings ‘ of the cider press.

Caroline P
>>151185402

Hello Don, I am really enjoying it but the first 130-150 pages were a challenge.. then it really gets better. When it arrives hang in there at the start.

Gonzalo Broto

Ay! As if we, dwellers of the Northern hemisphere, needed anything else to fall into melancholy! What a moving and powerful trio of poems. I had only read "To Autumn" before, while the other 2 are new to me, and even though I have found them all bewitching, my favorite has to be "Ode to the West Wind" (its fourth stanza took my breath away, as it did the last 2 lines). Autumn has certainly inspired some of the most poignant poetry (and prose) ever written!

Anna

In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept 15-Oct 15), I read "Tiny Feet" by Gabriela Mistral, "The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams, "Ode to Bicycles" by Pablo Neruda, "The Street" by Octavio Paz, "Bitter Song" by Julia de Burgos, and "I Am On My Way to Oklahoma to Bury the Man I Nearly Left My Husband For" by Sandra Cisneros.

Ally Edmondson
>>151734182

Thank you for this, Anna! I am currently doing a deep dive on Octavio Paz. I will also go seek out "The Street" and the others.

CIN27

Frank Skinner's poetry podcast just introduced me to "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by TS Eliot. (First off, i love the podcast and would recommend it). About the poem: I think it is about the author being pulled by the desire to be the confident, creative, fire part of himself but being pulled towards and limited by the restraining aspects of society. A famous refrain in the poem is: "In the room the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo." Along with being catchy, i think it sums up the poem. The women represent society (like Huck Fin's Widow Douglass--a timeless theme I guess). The author both wants to be in society but feels insecure and deadened when in it. This reminded me of the quote by Nietzche that Ben often uses: "That for which we find words is already dead in our hearts." The author wants to be admired but is cynical about the admiration when even Michelangelo's work turns into small talk in most rooms. This cynicism could be 1) sour grapes as the author shows himself to be vain and self-conscious, or 2) a sharp observation, or 3) both true at the same time. The author is crippled by the "Hawthorne effect" or "audience effect" where a person acts and even thinks differently when people are watching. At one point in the poem, the author thinks: "I should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floors of silent seas." (I love this) This poem is nice to read out loud and something I've enjoyed thinking about for a few days now.

Josie Swallow

Hi Ben, I know I’m writing this rather later than your post, but just wanted to say how much I have enjoyed exploring poetry with your selected trios each month this year. I was put off by poetry analysis at school and, though I have tried every so often, poetry hasn’t clicked for me since, until this year. Maybe it’s just that I’m finally at an age to appreciate some of the subtleties and feelings that come with lived experience. I’m sure being introduced to such a diverse and quality selection from you has helped a lot too. Thank you, I really appreciate you, and really appreciate the new layers of meaning brought to my life from a regular immersion in poetry!