'Serenity'
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
I love poetry. I think many people hate it because of how it's taught.
Lots of contemporary poetry is fantastic because you don't have to do the big giant lit crit on it.
In terms of novels written in verse, there are plenty for young adults, including Make Lemonade. Even my kids who hate poetry like the books because you forget that they are verse (most are free verse). They're great for reluctant readers because there is so much more white space!
Paging Steph! Have you read the second Skulduggery Pleasant book? I just ordered it and wanted to know what you thought.
LOVE!!!! More Tanith, which made me happy. Skulduggery is still SMOOV. My namesake kicks some ass. It's really good.
OOOH! Now I can't wait for the book to arrive. Tanith rocks. Does Ghastly become destatue-ified ?
Poets I consider influential: James Wright, Theodore Roethke, Richard Hugo, John Berryman, A.R. Ammons, Marvin Bell, James Dickey, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, maybe Charles Simic.
Corwood? you are in my house, looking at my bookshelf?
I was trying to stick mostly with 20thc. writers. I could go on for days, and didn't want to bore everyone. (Yeats, Auden, Hughes, Whitman, Wordsworth, Shelley, Basho, Shakespeare, Rilke, Milton (yes, don't hurt me.).
Kat, you're right - it is how poetry is taught that is a big turnoff for a lot of people. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for fighting the good fight.
Corwood? you are in my house, looking at my bookshelf?
Heh. I have a movie review going up later today in which I prove my ultimate pansy-hood by ending a discussion about a football movie with James Wright's "Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio." I almost gave myself a swirlie for that one.
I was trying to stick mostly with 20thc. writers
Yeah, those are the ones with the greatest influence on the way I write, mainly because of the proximity of their syntax to my own. I based a lot of my little 33 1/3 book on Dante's Inferno, but I went with the John Ciardi translation (instead of, say, the Longfellow translation) because his ear is musical enough to incorporate prior translations into language more seamless with English as it is spoken now.
Does Ghastly become
I am SO not spoiling you! Nice try....
Here's that review I mentioned. It's on Nerve.com, so browse accordingly.
Nicely done, bunk. (And I totally would have called that town A-kee-lah, and gotten "You're not from around here, are you?" Of course, I get that around here, too. Even though in meatspace, I'm not likely to be mistaken for a Charm City homegirl.) There are a lot of black women coming up a few years after me that spell their name the way I do..that misunderstanding has come up a few times.