It’s Anne’s birthday!!
If you want to send me an email with birthday wishes for Anne, please do, and I’ll pass them along.
In celebration of this great day, I’m asking you to think about some of Anne’s favorite things: poetry and fantasy literature.
Join the party by recommending:
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four of your favorite books of poetry, or
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four of your favorite poets, or
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four of your favorite fantasy books, or
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four of your favorite fantasy authors.
I’ll pass along the recommendations, and maybe she’ll discover a new favorite!
(Hint: She’s already a big fan of Patricia McKillip, George R. R. Martin, and Tolkien, so dig deeper, people!)
I’m not sure where to submit my favorites, but here are four of my favorite poets:
1. T. S. Eliot – If she hasn’t already read his latter stuff, it’s worth the time. His post-conversion poetry is excellent as well.
2. Thomas Transtormer – The Great Enigma is a collection of his translated poems. I believe he is swedish.
3. C.K. Williams – Pretty much anything by him. He has been one of my favorite living poets for a long time. Known for his incredibly long lines.
4. Franz Wright – Son of James Wright. Read just a few of his poems, but I dig him.
Okay, there are no women on this list…my apologies. Here are two of my favorite women poets:
Carolyn Forche – her poem, The Colonel, is incredible
Adrienne Rich – Diving into the Wreck is a masterpiece.
And my crowd pleaser poem is Robert Frost’s Birches.
Okay, here are some favorite books of poetry:
1) Collected Poems of T.S. Eliot
2) George Herbert and the 17th Century Religious Poets (Norton Critical Editions) – This is not the edition I was looking for, but it will survive. Essentially, I was looking for a book of the Seventeenth-Century poets, notably the Metaphysical poets like Crashaw, Marvell, Traherne, Donne, Herbert, etc. I wish they would reunite and go on a world tour.
3) Carolyn Forche – The Country Between Us
4) Joseph Brodsky – So Forth
And my crowd pleaser book is Billy Collin’s Sailing Around the Room – New and Selected Poems
This was fun!
Four favorite books of poetry:
1) Paradise Lost by John Milton
2) The Temple by George Herbert
3) Divine Comedy by Dante (trans. by Dorothy Sayers, if possible; Robert Pinsky has a good trans. of the Inferno, as well)
4) And, to cheat: Anthology of Modern American Poetry, ed. by Cary Nelson. Technically, this is a textbook, but it has a few poems from so many different great authors, it’s perfect for any mood. =)
Four favorite poets:
1) George Herbert
2) Scott Cairns
3) John Donne
4) John Milton
Four (of my) favorite Fantasy Books (not counting anything by George RR Martin, Tolkein, or Patricia McKillip):
1) The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde –though it exists somewhere between fantasy, science fiction, and a detective novel.
2) Summerland by Michael Chabon
3) Sunshine by Robin McKinley
4) Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake (not for everyone, but I’m fond of it)
Four (of my) favorite Fantasy Authors (again, avoiding the obvious):
1) Robin McKinley
2) Jasper Fforde
3) Ursula Le Guin
4) Charles de Lint
Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. They’re extremely funny, but also coherent in a way Douglas Adams, for example, never tried to be. In its own special way, the Discworld is one of the best-developed fantasy worlds I know of. My favorite in the series: Small Gods.
And just to make sure: She’s already read Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke, right? It’s by far my favorite fantasy novel; kind of like a combination of The Prestige and Winter’s Tale.
I know this is a bit late but here are my choices foir poetry
Four poets & their books
Jane Kenyon – Otherwise: New and Selected Poems
I know of no other poet I like better.
Wendell Berry – A Timbered Choir
I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
where I left them, asleep like cattle
e. e. cummings – Complete Works 1913-1962
He uses the English language as if he invented it. Some of it he did.
John Leax – Grace Is Where I Live
I cheat here since it is not a book of poems. Leax has subtitled the book ‘Writing As A Christian Vocation’. And he is more than a poet.
Happy Birthday Anne!
Four Favorite Fantasy Authors?
J. R. R. Tolkien
Christopher Hopper
Wayne Thomas Batson
J. K. Rowling
Oh read it wrong… Recommendations.
Well Wayne Thomas Batson and Christopher Hopper still are good reccomendations… But I’ll try to think of four more here (And their books that I liked):
Suzanne Collins (Underland Chronicles)
Jeanne DuPrau (City of Ember)
Christopher Paolini (Eragon)
R. K. Mortenson (Landon Snow and the Auctur’s Riddle)
And while it’s not really fantasy except for the fact that some of the things are a little outside normality. Lemony Snicket, a little weird, a little morbid, and a little charming.
Poets:
Richard Wilbur
Gerard Manly Hopkins
Thomas Traherne
and one more, hmm…
Chesterton has some good poetry.
A series of awesome fantasy books, introduced to me by my dad when I was a teenager… The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever by Stephen R. Donaldson. The first series was a trilogy, then he released a second trilogy, and now he is one book into his final series, The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.
These books are thought provoking, the descriptions of land, people, and emotions are all beautiful. I love these books so much, I read them again about every 5 years for the last 25 years.