Reading FS Poetry

Over the years I've accumulated a few Folio poetry books and most recently GM Hopkins.

Despite having Coleridge, Wordsworth, Tennyson etc. in the FS poets series, I do find myself defaulting to paperbacks for reading poetry. Not sure why to be frank.

Anyone else leave their FS poetry books on the shelf and opt for other mediums?

A supplementary question I have is, do you read your FS poetry books cover to cover or just dip in and out as your fancy dictates?

I have a mix of Folio and Paperback poetry books and I like reading from both.

I'm quite new to poetry as a medium in general and I tend to read them cover to cover, albeit very very slowly, just a few poems at a time normally, amongst other reading. Currently reading the Folio LE Rupert Brooke collection.

If anything jumps out to me as particularly meaningful or beautiful then I transcribe it to a very pretty paperblanks notebook that lives on the shelf next to them, which gives me a nice curated collection I can revisit.

>2 anthonyfawkes:
What a lovely idea.

>2 anthonyfawkes: Thanks. I too have transcribed several poems into my Moleskine annual diaries! Sections from Tennyson's In Memoriam, Shelleys' Ozymandias, Frost's Stopping by Woods etc.

As the years pass to new diaries, the copying continues.

>1 LesMiserables: "Not sure why to be frank."

Think about it and tell us the truth. Are the FS books too large? Bad font or layout? Scared to touch them?

I usually dip in and out of poetry. If I'm really liking the author then I'll read through sequentially until I lose interest, but a lot of poetry is frankly just garbage, especially the more modern stuff.

I don't care for the large print in the 2014 Paradise Lost.

>5 jsilver2: No genuinely, I'm unsure. Yes, I do have a tendency to see ornamentation in my books, but I have no issue picking up my other Folios. Who knows.

I can't really comment on whether poetry is garbage, but that's probably because I'm averse to most of what had been produced in the arts since the mid 20th century, and I don't engage with it so can't really comment with any real knowledge.

If you rely on the Folio Poets series, or indeed their poetry output in general, you'll have a pretty stunted collection. The Donne stands out as being complete, but e.g. Tennyson with only a half-dozen pages from Maud simply doesn't do justice to the poet. There are multiple renderings of Paradise Lost, but not of Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, Lycidas, Il penseroso; 3 or 4 flowery versions of A Shropshire Lad, but none of Housman's mature writing; and multiple pretty renderings of Omar Khayyam, the wino's bible.
On the other hand Penguin has the complete Andrew Marvell, including Greek and Latin poems, with notes, for a song; you won't care if you beat it up a little. For a pittance you can take a flyer on some poet ancient or modern, and maybe strike gold.
I have all but one of the FP series (can't stand Byron), and lots of paperbacks; most new poets arrive in paperback from small houses because of lack of interest. Being of the ancient generation that was forced when young to develop its memory I memorise poetry that appeals to me without much of an effort, so don't often have to refer to the text.

One of my biggest pet peeves about FS is how little poetry the company publishes. There are so many poets whom the company could publish but doesn't: Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, Stevens, Rilke, Celan, Neruda, etc., etc. I realize that Thornwillow publishes very nice editions of poetry, but I still think that FS is missing out.

Just as younger readers buy the comic books and science fiction and YA books the FS has been publishing more and more of recently, they also don't read poetry. Sure, there are exceptions, but poetry isn't a big market (alas). When I dip into my poetry books, I read a few and then move on to other things - it takes me quite a while to get through a full volume.

>8 Jayked: Being of the ancient generation that was forced when young to develop its memory I memorise poetry that appeals to me without much of an effort, so don't often have to refer to the text.

What's your technique?

>11 LesMiserables:
Don't know. In infant school and Sunday school we were all given passages to memorise, first aloud communally then by silent repetition. In high school we had to learn on our own the major soliloquies of the 15 Shakespeare plays we studied, as well as some lesser texts, and you were expected to quote texts accurately in exams. You get into the habit of memorising even when you don't have to. I can still remember every word of the first Latin poem we studied, a piece of drivel by Catullus that begins Passer mortuus est. Odd choice for schoolboys. I expect you just extend the technique you use when learning to spell a word to remembering a longer text.
I'm told that in some Muslim countries where reading wasn't taught young boys could memorise long stretches of scripture by listening to it.

>12 Jayked: Thanks, interesting. I appreciate the power of exposure and spaced repetition: an apt example of my weekly attendance at Latin Mass. I can recite much of the rite due to regular attendance, but this is definitely passively attained rather than active acquisition.

I was wondering if you read to memorise in a particular way or was it largely brute exposure or passive like above.

>12 Jayked: This is the same technique I used to memorise all of Eminem's song lyrics when I was in school.

>14 anthonyfawkes: Well, there's definitely something to adding singing / music (unsure if Eminem sing or rap) to accelerate learning lyrics.

When I read poetry my aim is to let the words wash over me - I make it a multi-sensory experience, in a comfortable chair (or on the bed, surrounded by cushions), with candles lit. If I am by myself, I will have suitable ethereal music playing, but if I am on the bed then my wife will be there as well (reading something of her own), and we don't play music in those circumstances. I have never attempted to learn the words of a poem.

As a result, I far prefer reading from an FS book, as the tactile nature of the book is part of the experience.

The most recent FS book I read in this way was Goblin Market. The only non-FS poetry I have read in recent times was Don Juan, from a copy of the 1926 Bodley Head edition (illustrated by John Austen).

>16 TheEconomist: Similar to me, except I have my wife dress up in a demonic costume and read the poetry aloud in a menacing voice.

>1 LesMiserables: Love the Folio Poets series, especially Lord Byron, which I finally acquired this year.

I'll usually read through a whole poetry volume in one go, FS or not.

This year I in FS, I read G.K. Chersterton's Poems and Edward Lear’s Complete Nonsense.

Non-FS:
"Where Robot Mice and Robot Men Run Round in Robot Towns" by Ray Bradbury
"Gitanjali" by Rabindranath Tagore
"Pretty Boys Are Poisonous" by Megan Fox

>9 CJDelDotto: what a great list. I’d certainly go for a Rilke volume, depends on what they put in/leave out, as always. The others I’ve heard of but I’m not familiar with their work.
And >12 Jayked: wow, you got educated! At my school we did two Shakespeare plays (we watched the movie versions) and didn’t have to memorise anything. Our loss.

>9 CJDelDotto: The problem with most of these poets is that I don't usually want nice editions of translated poetry because I'd rather reread in a different translation. I think I'd shell out for Celan though, where there are some very good translations to choose from.

>20 CabbageMoth: I can appreciate how important the translation is. It's certainly stopped me from purchasing FS books where the translation was less than ideal. That said, there are numerous English-language poets whom FS could publish. In the thread on the FS Emily Wilson translations of Homer coming out next year, I mentioned that FS could produce editions of Derek Walcott, Christopher Logue, and Alice Oswald to at least thematically accompany the new Homer volumes.

>21 CJDelDotto: Yes, there are plenty of English-language poets that FS has neglected, especially I think from North America. I wonder if such books would sell. I guess it would have to be a poet with a lot of name recognition in the general public, and there aren't so many of those.

If I have a fine edition (such as from FS) of a book of poetry, I always read that over a paperback edition. I read collections of poetry from cover to cover. In rare cases some of the verse is boring, but this is always compensated for by the brilliant stretches I would have otherwise missed. (I manage the boredom-brilliance risk ratio through a highly curated "to-read" poetry list.)

Marginal annotations are admittedly problematic with fine editions of poetry. I sometimes permit myself faint pencil dots next to especially beautiful or striking passages.

Recently read large but beautiful FS editions of poetry include Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde (the facsimile of the 1927 Golden Cockerel Press edition) and Langland's Piers Plowman. I'm planning shortly to read Folio's quite gorgeous 2021 edition of Thomas Hardy's verse.

In short, fine editions are the absolute best way to read poetry.