Meme: Reading Wednesday
27 February 2013 07:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
larryhammerWhat I've finished since last I memed: The Book of Elizabethan Verse ed. William Stanley Braithwaite, which is not quite as good for the period as the Penguin Book of Renaissance Verse or Hebel & Hudson's Poetry of the English Renaissance, but up there in the tier below them. Its main weakness is a focus on lyric poetry -- there's not a single verse-letter, not even one of Donne's, Ovidian narratives are represented by only two stanzas of Orchestra, there's barely any epigrams, and no satires. But within its genre limitations, its wide net and associative arrangement makes for an excellently readable volume. Recommended. ¶ The Barons Wars and The Battle of Agincourt by Michael Drayton, two narrative poems of medieval English history. There's reasons the former gets mentioned far more often than the latter, but even so, it's a bit too episodic for real enjoyment as history. ¶ The Story of Rimini by Leigh Hunt, a narrative poem spun out of a snippet of Dante. Again, there's reasons that, even though it gets mentioned as an influence on Keats, turning him from Spenser toward Italian influences, it rarely gets reprinted. The descriptive set-pieces are fine, but anytime a character does anything -- like, yanno, move across a room -- the matter (and sometimes even the meter) escapes Hunt's control. ¶ Charmides by Oscar Wilde, a narrative poem inspired by Greek mythology notable mostly for its late-Victorian eroticism. ¶ Right Royal by John Masefield, another of his narrative poems of contemporary (early 20th century) manners, this one set at a horse race. Not as good as Reynard the Fox but still compulsively readable stuff, especially the scene-setting before the race actually starts. ¶ Hermann and Dorothea by Johann von Goethe tr. Ellen Frothingham, a narrative poem in hexameters that defies my easy description. In brief and oversimplified, it's a novella of a romance between the son of German town burgher and a French refugee from the Revolutionary Wars. I went into it knowing it had once been one of his more popular works but is now rarely mentioned in comparison to, say, Faust (at least in the English-speaking world). Popular it was indeed, and important: I can see echoes throughout 19th century literature, not the least in Longfellow's Evangeline. Recommended on its own merits, though, despite dependence on the Romantic trope of true love at first sight. ¶ The Ingoldsby Legends by Thomas Barham -- which is to say, I finally read the last dozen tales, in which the energy drops off in a way that suggests he was right to stop before a jumpable shark appeared. Or even a culpable one. Still recommended.
What I'm reading now: The Book of Restoration Verse ed. William Stanley Braithwaite, which unlike the Elizabethan volume breaks things up into three broad periods plus a section of traditional ballads -- which means we don't get Marvell rubbing shoulders with Swift, the way Herrick did with Wyatt. Still liking the associative arrangements within each section, though. Am 3/4 through with this. ¶ Various bits of Robert Browning from his Dramatic Lyrics/Dramatic Romances and Lyrics/Men and Women period -- I'd be more specific, but I'm reading from his collected works, which redistributes material from his 1842, 1845, and 1855 volumes pell-mell across three thematic sections. Rereads of old friends, in any case. ¶ The Works of Thomas Campion, or rather the poetic works. I've always liked his anthology pieces, but I'd never sat down with his complete lyrics and poems to read them through -- and my, but this is lovely stuff. His songs especially, even when the content is weak, are smooth and and sit nicely in the mouth -- part of making them singable, I suspect. One thing that strikes me is that not only are the metrical requirements different for poems and for songs, which I already knew, but the nature of closure is as well: poems need more movement to feel complete, while a successful song can present a situation, take it nowhere, and still feel sufficient. This explains why two-verse pop songs (and songs where the third verse repeats the first) can "work" even when not working as a binary form.
(Yes, everything above is poetry. I'm not quite in a state of "What is this 'prose' of which you speak?" but I don't think I've actually touched the stuff since a couple chapters of Joseph Balsamo two weeks ago. Oh, plus a handful of stories from Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio in there somewhere. But I'm very much on a verse kick at the moment. This happens every so often.)
What I'll read next: I'm pretty sure about Braithwaite's The Book of Georgian Verse, which takes things through the Romantics. (I misspoke before, btw: Braithwaite's projected fourth volume, covering the Victorian era, apparently was never published despite forthcoming announcements. Bartleby's alternatives seem to be Stedman's A Victorian Anthology and Quiller-Couch's Oxford Book of Victorian Verse -- and I trust the editorial tastes of neither as much as Braithwaite's at this point (I mean, "Rabbi Ben Ezra" but not "A Toccata of Galuppi's" or "Fra Lippo Lippi" -- really Q?). Also, the former is from 1895 and so lacks perspective. Ah, well -- there's always rereading the Rick's Oxford Book.) Aside from this, though, I find it a little hard to predict. Especially when I don't know what sort of prose will finally prick up my interest, but I can hope it's back to Dumas.
---L.
What I'm reading now: The Book of Restoration Verse ed. William Stanley Braithwaite, which unlike the Elizabethan volume breaks things up into three broad periods plus a section of traditional ballads -- which means we don't get Marvell rubbing shoulders with Swift, the way Herrick did with Wyatt. Still liking the associative arrangements within each section, though. Am 3/4 through with this. ¶ Various bits of Robert Browning from his Dramatic Lyrics/Dramatic Romances and Lyrics/Men and Women period -- I'd be more specific, but I'm reading from his collected works, which redistributes material from his 1842, 1845, and 1855 volumes pell-mell across three thematic sections. Rereads of old friends, in any case. ¶ The Works of Thomas Campion, or rather the poetic works. I've always liked his anthology pieces, but I'd never sat down with his complete lyrics and poems to read them through -- and my, but this is lovely stuff. His songs especially, even when the content is weak, are smooth and and sit nicely in the mouth -- part of making them singable, I suspect. One thing that strikes me is that not only are the metrical requirements different for poems and for songs, which I already knew, but the nature of closure is as well: poems need more movement to feel complete, while a successful song can present a situation, take it nowhere, and still feel sufficient. This explains why two-verse pop songs (and songs where the third verse repeats the first) can "work" even when not working as a binary form.
(Yes, everything above is poetry. I'm not quite in a state of "What is this 'prose' of which you speak?" but I don't think I've actually touched the stuff since a couple chapters of Joseph Balsamo two weeks ago. Oh, plus a handful of stories from Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio in there somewhere. But I'm very much on a verse kick at the moment. This happens every so often.)
What I'll read next: I'm pretty sure about Braithwaite's The Book of Georgian Verse, which takes things through the Romantics. (I misspoke before, btw: Braithwaite's projected fourth volume, covering the Victorian era, apparently was never published despite forthcoming announcements. Bartleby's alternatives seem to be Stedman's A Victorian Anthology and Quiller-Couch's Oxford Book of Victorian Verse -- and I trust the editorial tastes of neither as much as Braithwaite's at this point (I mean, "Rabbi Ben Ezra" but not "A Toccata of Galuppi's" or "Fra Lippo Lippi" -- really Q?). Also, the former is from 1895 and so lacks perspective. Ah, well -- there's always rereading the Rick's Oxford Book.) Aside from this, though, I find it a little hard to predict. Especially when I don't know what sort of prose will finally prick up my interest, but I can hope it's back to Dumas.
---L.