Is Yeats a good place to start with poetry?
The Iliad is the only place to start with poetry.
>>7495024
Some Yeats is, if you're familiar with or prepared to sketch over the run-up to the 1916 rising. September 1913 is beautiful regardless, and accessible IF you grok the context. Other stuff, eg Sailing To Byzantium, is quite beautiful but requires more involved familiarity than a wiki page. The Second Coming is heavily dependent on knowing exactly when it was written and understanding the geopolitical situation at the time (there is some bonus to be got from appreciating Yeats' own perspective on that situation, but a bonus is all it is, if you ask me).
>>7495029
>not the epic of gilgamesh
Yeah, he's really readable for someone new to poetry, especially his earlier work.
>>7495038
>grok
Please never use this word, OK?
>>7495047
I don't grok why you'd say that. Or why you'd imagine your request has any weight.
>>7495052
It's a shit word that should never be used.
>>7495097
Sez YOU. I feel it connotes perfectly the offhand tone certain contexts demand.
>>7495038
all wrong. learn new criticism faggot.
>>7495144
No, all 100% correct in every particular. Learn just about anything, really, bound to be an improvement.
>>7495024
He's often the reason people get hooked into poetry nowadays. I suppose he's a "simple" poet in the sense Frost is, though he was a lot more intellectual (in the sense of well-rounded subject matter) than Frost. Works range from elegies about the irish uprising to faggy faeries to discourses on time and memory. His early work is probably going to catch you quickest, even though it's relatively weak poetry. His late work is probably better, though I still prefer how well he made his faggy early poems work well even though they're all about sweet lakesides and faeries and irish tales.
Some other good poets to start with:
Shakespeare
Keats
Browning
Leave these alone until you actually have read a lot about of poetry and a lot of poetry itself:
Eliot
Pound
etc.
otherwise you're one of "those guys" that people who actually read poetry hate.
>>7495144
new criticism is for morons who enjoy seeing what they want to see in works of literature
it is truly the cancer of art
>>7495047
Get grokked nerd
>>7495286
Reader response is the cancer of art.
>>7495245
I'm reading some Keats now. I'm enjoying his poems, but sometimes they may be hard to follow - his vocabulary exceeds mine as a non-native speaker by far.
>>7495476
>as a non-native speaker
If you're even half-way to getting any canonical Anglophone poet, you're already doing better than 90% of native English speakers. I can't ever help but have mad respect for brave soldiers like you. You're like some combination of a masochist and a volunteer fireman.
>>7495038
>it is impossible to enjoy Yeats' poetry if you don't understand the circumstances of its creation
if this were true, nobody would write poetry.
The happy truth is that any idiot can read Yeats and admire his work without knowing anything about the man or his time. This is because Yeats wrote good poetry.
>>7495534
>saying that something is better if X is the same as saying that X is a sine qua non for that thing
No. Shut up and fuck off. You didn't even understand my post (indeed, you had to ignore several parts of it) - this means you're fatally unqualified to discuss poetry.
>>7495626
Oh lord, what a cringe-inducing post.
>>7496190
If I made someone inclined to use the phrase "Oh Lord" uncomfortable, that's an achievement in itself.
>>7495245
>Leave these alone until you actually have read a lot about of poetry and a lot of poetry itself:
>Eliot
Aw hell naw. There's an immediate, quotable beauty to a lot of his stuff. I'd say Prufrock is a great introduction to poetry.
>>7496258
>Atheism at its best
Why do you even read Yeats if even the combination of symbols that's "Oh Lord" brings from you a reaction as furious as the sound of a bell to the Pavlovian dog? I suspect that if I told that Yeats was a member of the Golden Dawn, an occult organization with strong Christian motives, you would burn all his books that you own.
>>7496459
"Oh Lord" as an exclamation is fedora-tier
>>7496495
>fedora-tier
kill yourself
dont even read yeats just only read the cantos and the wasteland and tell as many people as possible, then you're done with poetry
>>7496930
IT's almost as bad as saying "oh dear". If you ever say "oh dear" then you should kill yourself
>>7496459
>i am fond of imagining that people are ignorant of whatever subject is being discussed
Wow, I better watch out for you! You know about the Golden Dawn! How ever could I aspire to such erudition?!
"Oh Lord" is a contrived, wanky-sounding phrase that makes you sound like a tryhard prick, by the way. But I imagine "He's an angry atheist" is more fun to think to yourself than "Jesus, I really am a cunt, aren't I?"
>>7496429
>Prufrock is a great introduction to poetry.
Agree. It won't turn some effectively non-literate person, but someone who reads even casually can get quite into Prufrock.
