I turn to you for your expert advice.
I need suggestions on my future reading.
Details: Books Books Books
Relevant languages: English, Hebrew, Russian.
You'll notice the lack of poetry with existing comments, so anything in that sphere would be especially welcome.

Try digging up poetry by Jack Gilbert.

Thanks, but I was thinking more along the lines of classic poets, a kind of "Must Read" list for the educated man (or woman, naturally)

You could check out an anthology of poetry. The New Golden Treasury of English Verse (Ed. Edward Leeson) covers everyone from Chaucer to ted Hughes. No commentaries though, just the poems. A browse throgh the poetry section of a good bookshop should unearth similar titles with commentaries.

quote:

Thanks, but I was thinking more along the lines of classic poets, a kind of "Must Read" list for the educated man (or woman, naturally)

The question is whether you want a longer anthology with includes most every title you might want (and is fun to dip into), or a shorter one that you can read cover-to-cover and feel you've accomplished a reasonable and well-varied reading.

For the former, browse the used book vendors for Burton Stevenson's Home Book of Verse. This is almost a century old, so recognize that you won't get more modern poets. But it's extensive -- 4000+ pages, but reasonably sized on the bookshelf. Failing that, I believe Stevenson put out some shorter anthologies.

For the latter, you'll find that most collections which focus on only a single poet. There aren't all that many multi-poet collections. I'd recommend Martin Gardener's Best Remembered Poems, 123 poems with good comments. The slant here is "memorable poems", not "a hundred poems everyone should know", but there is much overlap between those categories.

Putting poetry aside, I can see three sorts of book-lists that could be particularly valuable, with a limit of 3-5 suggestions per person for each:

• "Great literature -- "books that every well-educated person should know" (recognizing that no one could read all of them)
  
• Enjoyable books from which you'll carry away significant new knowledge or insights. "Books that change you," perhaps. (These would be mostly non-fiction.)
• Enjoyable books you'll be glad to have read, and from which you may carry away knowledge, but not "Books that change you". (e.g., a good travelogue)

HH, I'm not sure which of these you mean, but from the remarks on your link I'm assuming you mean any of them. I'm starting new threads for the first and second.

In the third category I'll mention Bill Bryson, In a Sunburned Country. It's non-fiction, telling about Australia, and it's one of those books you can open to any random page and start reading, with full enjoyment.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: shufitz,

That was pretty much my idea. Thank you, Shufitz.

My favorite poets include:

Lanston Hughes (just about everything he's written)
T.S. Eliot (the Practical Cats, of course, but also "The Waste Land")
Robert Louis Stevenson (of course, everything)
Shel Silverstein (many of his are fabulous, but I particularly rec. "Dreadful" and "Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout")
Jack Prelutsky ("Homework" is oft quoted and set to random tunes in our house)
Eloise Greenfield (esp. "Honey, I Love")

quote:

Originally posted by Caterwauller:

Lanston Hughes (just about everything he's written)
T.S. Eliot (the Practical Cats, of course, but also "The Waste Land")
Robert Louis Stevenson (of course, everything)
Shel Silverstein (many of his are fabulous, but I particularly rec. "Dreadful" and "Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout")
Jack Prelutsky ("Homework" is oft quoted and set to random tunes in our house)
Eloise Greenfield (esp. "Honey, I Love")

My children introduced Silverstein and Prelutsky to me, and then I went to the children's section of the library and got more. (I figured I could always pretend I'm getting some book for the kids, rather than myself, if anyone asked.)

I turn to you for your expert advice.
I need suggestions on my future reading.
Details: Books Books Books
Relevant languages: English, Hebrew, Russian.

Here's some of my favorite books that fit your criteria.

Linguistics:

1. Uriel Weinreich. 1970. Languages in Contact: Findings and Problems.

2. Tamaz V. Gamkrelidze & Vjacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov. 1984. Indoevropeiskij jazyk i indoevropeitsy: rekonstruktsija i istoriko-tipologicheskij analiz prajazyka i protokultury; s predisloviem Roman O. Yakobsona.

3. Calvert Watkins. 1995. How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics.

4. Ghil`ad Zuckermann. 2003. Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew.

5. Any of the collected papers of Emile Benveniste, Jerzy Kurylowicz, or Roman Jakobson.

Poetics and Literary Criticism:

1. Viktor Borisovich Shklovskij. 1925. O teorij prozy.

2. Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp. 1928 Morfologija skazki.

3. Victor Ehrlich. 1965. Russian Formalism: History, Doctrine.

4. Gary Taylor. 1989. Reinventing Shakespeare: A Cultural History from the Restoration to the Present.

5a. Brian McHale. 1991. Postmodernist Fiction.

5b. —. 1992. Constructing Postmodernism.

quote:

Originally posted by Caterwauller:

My favorite poets include:

Eloise Greenfield (esp. "Honey, I Love")

I was able to find some of Greenfield's poems today. They were enjoyable, especially, Honey, I Love, that you mentioned.

One book called Angels had two poems, Flowers and An Angel for My Friend, that I particularly liked.

quote:

Originally posted by shufitz:

In the third category I'll mention Bill Bryson, In a Sunburned Country. It's non-fiction, telling about Australia, and it's one of those books you can open to any random page and start reading, with full enjoyment.

After reading a few pages of this book, I agree that you could open it at any page and find it enjoyable.

Here's a line from it:

"On every side, desert lapped at the town like floodwater."

I love it!

This is the first time I've actually considered reading a travel book (and not a travel guide book like what Rick Steves produces), but I now think that with an atlas and some good books like this one, I could have a more enjoyable time travelling right at home.

In any case, I picked A Walk in the Woods as the first Bryson to read. I've worked at both ends of the Applachian Trail and have always wanted to take off half a year and walk it. This is likely as close as I'll get to doing that.

Thanks for the suggestion!

Frank,
I'm so glad you enjoyed Greenfield . . . she has a nice touch, I think. I read her poems aloud to children often. I always hear them (in my head) in the voice of Rudine Sims Bishop, who was my Children's Literature professor in grad school. She, too, has a way about her.

As for Silverstein and Prelutsky - don't be ashamed to just get them for yourself from the library! They are well worth reading, and really should be on EVERYONE's list!

CW

I love children's poetry, CW! My youngest has an anthology she got from the library called Sunflakes selected by Lilian Moore that we're reading now.

You know, I've come to realize that walking through the children's section of the library without a child at my side does make me feel a little strange. Not as bad, though, as going into a fabric store without my wife or a cosmetics store without my oldest daughter.

In some ways I liked Greenfield better than Prelutsky. Preluksky's rhyme and meter sound better, but Greenfield has more interesting content.