Reading list for life – part 3 (bring on the poetry)

OK...I know I said Monday but I'm obsessive too and friend's daughter's wedding (tick), scarecrow festival (tick) so now let's get on with this reading list business. Cast your minds back to that imaginary 17 year old and the reading list we were putting together for them (I know it was a female 17 year old to begin with but I'm tired of being so gender specific...boys can read too, right?). This time...drum roll...let's recommend the poems or poets our 17 year old really, REALLY has to read. What or who should they read first? Which poet's name should they shriek as they run down to the local library, a half-forgotten iPod trailing in their wake? I know they could start by hunting down some poems on-line but you know me and libraries...I do love 'em...plus the running-down-the-street drama plays better, don't you think?

As we had the random pre/post 1920 division with prose let's use it again but this time let's squeeze all our thoughts into one post. I know this may make some of you feel cramped...but remember this is a few good recommendations for getting started and/or hooked - I'm not asking you to list every poet you ever read or anything. Back on 28th March of this year I wrote a great long rambling post about the poets and poetry I've read, liked and studied over the years so I'm not going to reproduce all that again right now. To get you started, though, here are my 17 year old reading list priorities for poetry written in English:

pre-1920 – Oh right...here's my weak spot...in fact it's so weak I even considered starting with the post-1920 poetry just to make me look better. However that would have been shallow and fake and if I try to be anything in this life (and in this blog) my quest is to be as upfront, honest and truthful as possible (life is so full of crap – you don't need it from me as well, do you?). So here's the truth - I like Shakespeare (but rarely read any these days) and the pre-1920 poets I've read most often recently are Emily Dickinson (can't get enough of that wacky punctuation) and Robert Burns (I'm a New Scot...and quite a convert - it's the poem/song thing). After that...it gets a bit misty for me. I've tried to read all the big names (oh...you know Milton, Keats, yada, yada, yada...see I told you I was George from Seinfeld) but in all honesty...I usually start thinking about something else once the book is in my hand and end up not really reading at all. It's weird because back in our prose reading list posts the other week I found myself a little disappointed with some of the lack of interest in pre-1920 prose writers and yet here am I...admitting my...well...terribly embarrassing lack of enthusiasm for and knowledge about poets of that same era (and what a huge era...). It's not that I'm not interested in them - I just can't honestly say that I have read many of them with any great...understanding or vigour as yet. How can this be? Well...the family I grew up around was not a poetry reading family (at all), at school we did no-one before Eliot and then at uni I didn't study anything in English so I'm sure all of that didn't help but I don't want to hand out blame or excuses – I'm a big girl now after all! I have even thought about going back to study classic poetry (if such a course existed) but you know..time, money, family, stuff, plus I already have one degree that I never used for anything (other than getting jobs I didn't really want to do and shutting people up who presume I'm uneducated because of my bizarre punctuation and other weirdnesses). Also...well...I'm pretty busy writing and reading about a million other things (weak, I know, very weak...). Is it the subject matter (partly), the language (partly), the what seems like a neverending list of blokes (partly – although see below...some kind of feminist I may be but most of my newer recommendations are blokes so there's that argument as up the duff as a Republican Party candidate's teenage daughter). I even went to the Adrian Mitchell StAnza lecture on Blake this year and he was so evangelical that I thought 'yes, I'll go home and read Blake!'...but did I? Er, no. I started..but then I probably read the Radio Times and the local paper and the Independent music supplement and some Larkin (see below) and a novel and some old diaries and...well...pretty much everything except Blake. They say you need to hear the 'classic' poems read aloud to really appreciate them...but at home if I have noise on in the house it's nearly always music (addict, remember?) and there aren't many spontaneous Blake readings in Montrose. Plus sitting-still, well-behaved poetry reading events make me really uncomfortable (no, not bored...I specifically didn't say bored...) so I don't exactly rush off to them (music events every time – every time). As you can see...I need your help to make this bit of the reading list a bit more useful. So come on – let's have some must-reads please. All I can offer is the three I mentioned at the start of this extremely long paragraph. If you're still with me at this point!

post-1920 – This should be easier, if a bit short on the Scottish angle...some one else had better get to that. Sometimes these days I'm almost surprised how English I really am. For the most part when you're English and live in England you don't much think about it (perhaps sad but fairly true).

Philip Larkin. Number one priority. No question. On this Jim Murdoch and I are one! I've rambled about Larkin before but for me he just had (and still has) everything. I love the fact that he wrote both short, snappy, clever poems and long, detailed, clever poems. Also I love the bitterness and the sweetness in his writing... as well as the bitter sweetness (and the sweet bitterness? Probably that too). I think what makes him stand out to me so much is that X Factor (for want of a less trash-culture reference). It's like a tone of voice and I can really HEAR him, even when I'm reading it quietly in my head. (OK there may be a weird father-figure thing going on too but that's really not important to anyone but me).

Liverpool poets – Roger McGough, Adrian Henri, Brian Patten. It's not very fashionable to like them just now but fashion...pur-lease! They're not quite poetry gods like Larkin but they're pretty good mortals in my book and they did a lot to bring poetry back out of universities (Larkin, for example, much as I adore him hid in universities his whole adult life...no wonder he was so bloody miserable). I'm not anti-university...not at all...well, not much...but...hmmm...I think it's another English thing...possibly a class thing...and I'll finish that thought another time.

Stevie Smith – there are a lot of great weird women poets of the 20th century but this one is as good a one to start with as any. I wouldn't put 'women poets' together necessarily but for the fact that most of my favourites are all odd ones, weird women who don't fit in anyone's group of anything...so they end up grouped as a non-group...if you follow me.

T.S.Eliot – well, 'The Wasteland' anyway. I'm not quite the fan that I know some other poets are but I will just mention him at the end here. I studied 'The Wasteland' at A level and really enjoyed getting to grips with it so I would still recommend it (if nothing else) to a younger reader (although I'm not sure how I would have got on with it without good teachers to keep me focussed and explain some of the references). I don't reread it much now, I have to say. When I try to these days I get the Monty Python/French & Saunders voices in my head ('no, no, keep away from the shadow of that red rock, you naughty boy') and I'm afraid I just can't carry on. Now you see, I don't get that with Larkin, never have. Larkin was somehow above pisstake for me and that is possibly the truest sign of greatness. For me anyway.


So now it's over to you...list away. I know some of you could probably fill blank-sheet bibles with your recommendations but let's try and keep them to a manageable number. Pick the ones you think are the must-read-firsts. Can you see that 17 year old looking up (or down) at you with at least some hope left in their eyes...where would you send them first?