Czeslaw Milosz

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I don't read poetry at all but I read a few of his poems in The New Yorker and liked em so I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions on a good collection to start with. Or maybe other good poets who aren't too esoteric or saccharine.

Moti Bahat, Tuesday, 7 March 2006 04:10 (nineteen years ago)

He has a collected edition that has pretty much everything. (He's dead.) I have the older version, but I think Bob Hass is the best translator (based on very little empirical examination).

If you like him, you might want to check out: Phillip Larkin, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Derek Walcott, Robert Pinsky, Louise Gluck, Daisy Fried.

kenchen, Tuesday, 7 March 2006 04:34 (nineteen years ago)

For Mr. Milosz you may as well obtain a copy of his Collected Poems and browse around in it, as it will have everything and you can make your own selection. I second Phillip Larkin and Seamus Heaney as fitting your non-esoteric, non-saccharine requirements very well.

I generally find that just pulling a volume of a particular poet and attentively reading segments of three or four poems gives me a pretty good gauge of how they strike me. However, I realize that what strikes me one way today may strike me another way next summer, so I allow myself to repeat this exercise several times before I make up my mind more solidly about a poet's congeniality to my tastes.

Aimless (Aimless), Tuesday, 7 March 2006 19:18 (nineteen years ago)


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