Oooh, go Jen with your big poetical love.

However, you skipped the darkest work of art in any medium: Crow by Ted Hughes.

The poetry a talented man might write with two suicides on his conscience.

Where's my good friend, Wm. Blake: "Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by incapacity."

William Stevens? Marianne Moore? More recently, Sharon Olds. C'mon, work with me here.

I'm on my way out the door, so the list is shorter than it could be. Wallace Stevens would have been an excellent addition, yes ("the nothing that is"); I can live without Hughes, Moore, and Olds.

This was a very "what Jen likes" recommendation list, so it's skewed heavily towards things I like to read and not just the talent of the writer.

If you think she's a canon-izable prose writer, I beg you to read some of her poetry. I think it's a thousand times better.

Jen, the Atwood you quoted is the Atwood I think of when I think of her poetry.

Which, of course, falls under the "modern Canadian poetry" section of my collection that I mentioned earlier.

Discussions I've had off thread have made me wonder, and this is a curiousity question more than anything: are you more prone to enjoy a book if you stumbled across it yourself, or if it was at some point assigned?

Most of my WC reading (you know, that could be read two ways, but I'll let it stand, because the sight makes me giggle) was done on my own, because I wanted to broaden my reading horizons. I spent most of a summer at 14 tracking down and reading books considered great, because I figured that was as decent a starting point as any. Which means I've loved Hardy for more than half my life. Which scares me, but I digress. Then I hit my all-Atwood, all-the-time period, and my short story period, and so on and so forth. I used to read a lot. I miss having that amount of bandwidth.

However, I've been blessed in that from high school on, I've had (mostly) incredible lit teachers and (mostly) great reading lists. (The notable exception to both is all one woman the first year at Evergreen, and not to put to fine a point on it, I was right and she was wrong, so there. Oddly, this was my only prof who rejected all things European when teaching Latin American lit, which is sort of like only counting one half of someone's DNA. Did I mention I was right and she was wrong? Because I was. Honest.) So things I've been assigned have been enjoyed at about the same ratio as things I picked up on my own.

are you more prone to enjoy a book if you stumbled across it yourself, or if it was at some point assigned?

I think I get a bit more of a thrill from the things I've found myself, but on reflection a lot of my favorite books and poets were assigned. Probably a similar ratio to you, Ple.

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Robert Frost rules.

That settles it. If ever I get back to Uni for my own personal enjoyment, English Lit is going to make an appearance on the list. Along with Philosophy, History, Psychology, Biology, and... umm...

It's probably just as well that the prospects of me getting back to Uni for fun are a touch limited.

My all time favorite poem, though, is by Alastair Reid, called

Curiosity

may have killed the cat; more likely
the cat was just unlikely, or else curious
to see what death was like, having no cause
to go on licking paws, or fathering
litter on liter of kittens, predictably.

Nevertheless, to be curious
is dangerous enough. To distrust
what is always said, what seems,
to ask odd questions, interfere in dreams,
leave home, smell rats, have hunches
do not endear cats to those doggy circles
where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches
are the order of things, and where prevails
much wagging of incurious heads and tails.

Face it. Curiosity
will not cause us to die--
only lack of it will.
Never to want to see
the other side of the hill
or that improbable country
where living is an idyll
(although a probable hell)
would kill us all.
Only the curious
have, if they live, a tale
worth telling at all.

Dogs say cats love too much, are irresponsible,
are changeable, marry too many wives,
desert their children, chill all dinner tables
with tales of their nine lives.
Well, they are lucky. Let them be
nine-lived and contradictory,
curious enough to change, prepared to pay
the cat price, which is to die
and die again and again,
each time with no less pain.
A cat minoriy of one
is all that can be counted on
to tell the truth. And what cats have to tell
on each return from hell
is this: that dying is what the living do,
that dying is what the loving do,
and that dead dogs are those who do not know
that dying is what, to live, each has to do.

(no copyright infringement intended. Poetry can't be summarized, it can only be told)

Damn, I got such chills down my back the first time I read that.

connie, those are some great poems.

are you more prone to enjoy a book if you stumbled across it yourself, or if it was at some point assigned?

I think I'm with you and Hec. Yes, I love a lot of books I've discovered myself (or through friends' recommendations), but I've also loved a great many books I've been assigned, because I've had some great professors who've helped me appreciate what I've read.

Keeping in mind that I'm very picky with my non-genre stuff (err, please don't ask me about the book sitting on my desk right now... I'm gonna lie, and claim it's Decartes Sue or something--okay, fine, bodice rippers from the late 80s/early 90s amuse me like the Bad Fic, the more lurid the cover art the better, and if it's relief? I practically swoon), I'd say my love/meh/hate breakdown is about 60/30/10 either way (assigned or found).

PS, Hec, you will notice that I did, in fact, post some of my brain droppings on Batcrap in the other thread. Just for you.

Okay, I lie. Because I want/NEED to talk about this issue. And so I did.