This demonstrates the power of pure truth and honesty. The only works I've ever read that demonstrate this kind of self-knowledge are Ghandi's autobiography and The Awakening of Intelligence.

Thanks for the video.

This is the most famous Hindu epic, every Indian child knows it and most of the (PG parts, anyway) story. Very exciting story.

One of the core ideas, to me, is that everyone, including the most supreme gods, have their fatal flaws and personality weaknesses, and even the evilest demons have their good sides. Another one is that often in life there is no clear moral choice, and making the right choice seems impossible, even to a god, which brings up the question of what it means to be a moral person at all.

Featuring:

• a jealous queen that gets the king-to-be, Rama, exiled from his city (turns out: Rama is the incarnation of one of the 3 supreme gods Vishnu), so her own son would be crowned king
  
  
• a demon disgusing himself as a deer in an incredibly clever plot to kidnap Sita, Rama's wife
  
  
• the demon Ravana taking Sita to his island kingdom fortress of Lanka (Sri Lanka)
  
  
• how does Rama cross? He gets his army of monkeys to build a bridge of stones all the way from India to Lanka
  
  
• an incredible and lengthy battle between Rama and Ravana, including Ravana's brother Kumbakarna, who only wakes up every 3 months and then eats everything in sight, and Hanuman, a monkey god (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanuman), lifting an entire mountain on his back all the way to the battleground because he couldn't find the herb he needed
  
  
• Rama crowned king but the people of his city think his wife is impure (since Ravana kidnapped her), so by public opinion Rama is forced to exile his own wife. (being a good governor vs being a good person question here, Rama knew Sita was pure)
  
  Leaving out a ton of exciting details. Any translation should be fine [although Goldman's one is sure to be interesting!] (https://www.amazon.com/Ramayana-Shortened-Version-Penguin-Classics/dp/0143039679), but I do like illustrated versions (https://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Ramayana-Children-India-Epic/dp/8184682425) as well.
  
  If you're looking for a story with more philosophical questions about good vs. evil, morality, and justice, check out the Mahabharata, an even more epic tale. At one point the "good guys" gamble away their wife during a dice game. This is where the famous Bhagvad Gita comes from, which is where Krishna and Arjuna talk about the justness of war.

I made a post in /r/Stoicism a while ago when someone asked about books for Epicureanism. I'll just repost it here:

The influences of Epicurus spread through much of the writings of other philosophers and major historical figures. Prominent examples include Isaac Newton, Karl Marx, and Thomas Jefferson. In fact, the pursuit of happiness part from Jefferson's Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was likely heavily influenced by Epicurus.

Anyway, here's some reading material since /r/Epicurus is a barren wasteland where everyone seems to just downvote none stop:

• On the Nature of Things by Lucretius. Here's the translation I have. Most of Epicurus' writings have unfortunately not survived. As a result, this remains the best primary resource for those wishing to study Epicureanism.
  
  
• The Art of Happiness by Epicurus and others. This is a collection of Epicurean writings, including Epicurus' fragments. It also includes some of Lucretius' writings from the above work, plus other stuff that you can read in the Amazon description, so keep that in mind when considering buying.
  
  
• The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt is a narrative of the discovery of the old Lucretius manuscript of The Nature of Things by Poggio, a fifteenth-century Florentine and Roman scholar. Greenblatt analyzes the poem's subsequent impact on the development of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and modern science.
  
  
• The fragments of Epicurus.
  
  And some extra stuff that might be worth checking out:
  
  
• The Essential Epicurus by Epicurus, trans. Eugene O'Connor
  
  
• The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism by James Warren

The Prophet, by Kahlil Gilbran

http://www.amazon.com/The-Prophet-Kahlil-Gibran/product-reviews/1614270627/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?showViewpoints=1

Love is a Dog from Hell by Bukowski

I made a list based on where you can purchase them if you want to edit it onto your post:

This Month's Book

• The Woman in the Dunes by Kobe Abe
  
  

  January:
  

  
  

• [Consider Phlebas
  by Iain Banks]
  (https://www.amazon.com/Consider-Phlebas-Culture-Iain-Banks/dp/031600538X)
  
  
• [Brave New World
  by Aldous Huxley]
  (https://www.amazon.com/Brave-New-World-Aldous-Huxley/dp/0060850523)
  
  
• Fahrenheit 451
  by Ray Bradbury
  
  
  
• The Picture of Dorian Gray
  by Oscar Wilde
  
  
• Children of Time
  by Adrian Tchaikovsky
  
  
• [12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
  by Jordan B. Peterson]
  (https://www.amazon.com/12-Rules-Life-Antidote-Chaos/dp/B0797Y87JC)
  
  
  

  February:
  

  
  

• I Am Legend
  by Richard Matheson
  
  
• Dune
  by Frank Herbert
  
  
• Kafka on the Shore
  by Haruki Murakami
  
  
• American Psycho
  by Bret Easton Ellis
  
  
• Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
  by Max Tegmark
  
  
• Beyond Good and Evil
  by Friedrich Nietzsche
  
  

  March:
  

  
  

• The Old Man and The Sea
  by Ernest Hemingway
  
  
• Moby Dick
  by Herman Melville
  
  
• Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
  
  
• Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
  
  
• The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
  
  
• The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima
  
  
• The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima
  
  
• The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi
  
  
• Bushido: The Soul of Japan by Inazo Nitobe
  
  

  April:
  

  
  

• [The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart]
  (https://www.amazon.com/Dice-Man-Luke-Rhinehart/dp/0879518642)
  
  
• [Stoner by John Williams](
  https://www.amazon.com/Stoner-York-Review-Books-Classics/dp/1590171993)
  
  
• [Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky]
  (https://www.amazon.com/Crime-Punishment-Fyodor-Dostoyevsky/dp/0486415872)
  
  
• [No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai](
  https://www.amazon.com/No-Longer-Human-Osamu-Dazai/dp/0811204812)
  
  
• Sun and Steel by Yukio Mishima
  
  

  May:
  

  
  

• [Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima](
  https://www.amazon.com/Spring-Snow-Sea-Fertility-1/dp/0679722416)
  
  
• [Runaway Horses by Yukio Mishima]
  (https://www.amazon.com/Runaway-Horses-Sea-Fertility-2/dp/0679722408)
  
  
• Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
  
  
• In the Buddha's Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon by Bhikkhu Bodhi
  
  
• Mythos by Stephen Fry
  
  
• Inferno by August Strindberg
  
  

  November
  

  
  

• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
  
  
• Japanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death by Yoel Hoffmann
  
  
• Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes
  
  
• Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
  
  

  Books Pewds suggested but hasn't talked about in any of the episodes yet:
  

  
  

• The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima
  
  
• Tony Takitani by Haruki Murakami
  
  
• The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
  
  linking pewds to see this u/pewpewpewPEWdie

Books Felix reviewed:


The Master and Margarita
Rating 5/5
Video https://youtu.be/OoRlp3--ckU?t=56
Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Master-Margarita-Mikhail-Bulgakov-ebook/dp/B01DC7OGSO/


Japanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death
Rating 4/5
Video https://youtu.be/OoRlp3--ckU?t=263
Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Death-Poems-Written-Monks-ebook/dp/B00R1W9PEW


Don Quixote
Rating 5/5
Video https://youtu.be/OoRlp3--ckU?t=623
Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Quixote-Penguin-Classics-Cervantes-Saavedra-ebook/dp/B002RI99J6

Read this.

The first book, Hyperion, is good for background.

tl;dr Commercial culture would spread throughout the universe, fucking up entire planets and creating permanent underclasses.

Das Parfüm von Patrick Süßkind https://www.amazon.de/Das-Parfum-Geschichte-eines-M%C3%B6rders/dp/3257228007/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1314457197&sr=1-1

[The Awakening Of Intelligence – by Jiddu Krishnamurti]
(http://www.amazon.ca/The-Awakening-Intelligence-Jiddu-Krishnamurti/dp/0060648341)

I think all the actual suggestions I made in this post would apply here (disregard that it's about buying a poetry gift, you're the 'they' or 'she' in this haha) so I'll paste it in and make a few additional suggestions. But #1 suggestion is to read through Poetry 180 and when you find pieces you like to search those poets in google or at poetryfoundation.com (they also have a great browse function where you can search by theme, 'school', poet, subject, occasion etc)

​

There's certainly a wide variety of options, the best options are mostly more poetry to read. All good poets read lots of poetry. I mean, sure, there's probably 3 or 4 out there that don't, but outliers aside, poets read poetry. So there's a couple options, if she only started writing a couple years ago, I would suggest a workshop type text book and a subscription to a nice literary journal like American Poetry Review, Rattle, Ploughshares, Iowa Review, Georgia Review, Arts & Letters, Five Points, Gettysburg Review, Paris Review etc. Depending on the type of poets she likes, different magazines would be better.

One good tact would be to ask them for a few of their favorite poets, maybe say you're thinking about reading more poetry or something, or just ask. Do a google search for their name and "literary journal" or "literary review". If you see that name in any of the above journals I mentioned, get her that subscription. If not, consider getting her one of their collections from Amazon. For anthologies, which are great for young poets especially, because it can help introduce a reader to many similar or dissimilar voices to broaden their reading horizons, and also some of the books I'll be recommending have a strong prompt/craft component to help them continue to develop. I especially recommend the bolded titles, and Seriously Funny, while good, may be a bit complicated for a newish reader of poetry. But I could be misreading what you mean by poetry career and they could be plenty comfortable with it.

Here are a couple that are good options:

Seriously Funny is a great anthology themed after poems that bring wit to serious topics. It's edited by husband/wife poetry duo David Kirby and Barbara Hamby.

Staying Alive has a great variety of poems organized by theme. These are mostly poems published in the last 50ish years, and lean slightly toward being more accessible (easy to understand) than the first anthology.

Contemporary American Poetry: Behind the Scenes was edited by Ryan G. Van Cleave and is more of a textbook (like the next 2). It has a CD with audio recordings of many of the poets in the book and it is broken up by poet, mostly chronologically I believe. It has some craft essays as well. Being a textbook, new copies are expensive, but used are cheap cheap.

The Poet's Companion is edited by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux, both tremendous poets in their own right. This one is more oriented in using poems to spark your own writing, but it does have a good amount of poetry in there, and the craft essays are brief and to the point.

In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet's Portable Workshop edited by Steve Kowit is also a great textbook for producing your own writing by looking at certain aspects of other poems. Stylistically this is similar to The Poet's Companion, and both are tremendous. Used they're each only $6 with shipping too.

Or, here are a few books that you can't go wrong with: Rose by Li-Young Lee, Tell Me by Kim Addonizio, Rail by Kai Carlson-Wee, The House of Blue Light by David Kirby, American Noise by Campbell McGrath, The Gary Snyder Reader—a huge book, but great, Some Ether by Nick Flynn

​

If you find a few more specific poets you like and want to find more of feel free to message me, and if I'm familiar with them I'll shoot you some more suggestions. A couple other poets who get personal and focus on minutiae/details etc would be like Albert Goldbarth, Billy Collins, Stephen Dunn, Matthew Neinow, Nick Latz, Gaylord Brewer, Ted Kooser, Philip Levine and, a couple that do similar with a definitely stylistic approach would be like Bob Hicok, Dean Young, Alex Lemon and Emma Bolden. For other lyrics/audio you may enjoy Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon, Ani DiFranco, Utah Phillips, Sage Francis, Aesop Rock, Atmosphere/Slug, Josh Martinez...

Best of luck on your journey!

Invaluable web sites:

• Dickinson College Commentaries — Select classical texts with vocabulary and very helpful commentary.
  
• Perseus Digital Library — If you have trouble locating a word in the dictionary, enter it into the Word Study Tool to identify it.
  
  Some helpful Latin schoolbooks on Google Books and the Internet Archive (with many more to be found, especially if you read the publishers' advertisements):
  
  
• Gildersleeve's Latin Grammar — If you can't find the information you need in Allen & Greenough, look in this book.
  
• Fabulae Faciles by Frank Ritchie — Four very easy retellings of Greek myths.
  
• Eutropius, edited by J. C. Hazzard — Eutropius' history of Rome is easier to read than any Classical author, and his style is remarkably close to the Golden Age.
  
• Cornelius Nepos, edited by Thomas Bond Lindsay — The easiest Classical author. His surviving works are a book of Lives of the Outstanding Generals of Foreign Nations, and portions of Kings of Foreign Nations and Roman Historians.
  
• Caesar's Gallic War, edited by Arthur Tappan Walker — Traditionally the first book of real Latin read by students because of its combination of simplicity of style, purity of style, and intrinsic literary interest. The received text of the Gallic War is in eight books, but this edition lacks the eighth because it was not written by Caesar.
  
• Select Orations of Cicero, edited by J. B. Greenough and G. L. Kittredge — "The Citizenship of Archias" is not too difficult.
  
  A few helpful books you can buy:
  
  
• Vergil's Aeneid, edited by Clyde Pharr — With vocabulary and notes on the same page as the text in a similar format to Walker's Gallic War. This book only contains the first half of the Aeneid, and nobody has done a complete corresponding edition of the second half, but by the time you're through with this, you shouldn't need quite that depth of annotation.
  
• Scribblers, Sculptors, and Scribes by Richard A. LaFleur — A collection of easy unaltered sentences drawn from ancient Roman graffiti, inscriptions, and various literary sources.

• By John C. Wright: The Golden Age (first in a trilogy) and the upcoming Count to a Trillion (likewise).
  
• By Greg Egan: Permutation City (in its second half) (excerpt), Diaspora (excerpt), Border Guards, Schild's Ladder (excerpt), Riding the Crocodile/Incandescence (excerpt of the latter).
  
• Possibly Iain M. Banks' Culture series; they say you should start with The Player of Games.
  
• Riding the Crocodile and the elsewhere-mentioned Thousandth Night first appeared in the anthology One Million AD.
  
• Relevant TV Tropes pages: Human Subspecies, Time Abyss, Transhuman Aliens.
  
  In response to this comment, Egan's one example of someone who wrote near-future stories in the '90s that remain non-ridiculous.

Da ich nicht genau weiß, was du mit "ältere Schriftstellern" meinst bzw. welchen Zeitraum, einfach mal ein paar detusche Bücher, die mir spontan einfallen: Patrick Süßkind - Das Parfüm, Martin Suter - Die dunkle Seite des Mondes, Friedrich Dürrenmatt - Die Physiker und Michael Schmidt-Salomon - Sollbergs Inferno

There's the Giant Book of Poetry which is over 700 pages and basically spans all of written history (from years BC to poets born in the 1980's). There's bound to be something you like in there.

There's also The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry (vintage here refers to the publisher, in case you were thinking "vintage" and "contemporary" were contradictory lol). This book has a wide variety of poets that might be lesser known since they aren't American, but still includes some well loved poets including Pablo Neruda and Seamus Heaney. This is a great one too.

I've recommended this a few times on here but there is also the Best American Poetry Series. It comes out every year. Basically, a prominent poet is chosen as the editor each year and they choose the best (totally subjective, but still) poems that were published in literary magazines that year. While it's limited to American poets, it provides a huge variety of poets both established and emerging. Also, it comes out every year, so that's pretty awesome too. The most recent one is Best American Poetry 2013 whish was edited by one of my favorite poets, Denise Duhamel. Totally recommend it. Good luck, hope this was helpful!

The Prophet-

In a distant, timeless place, a mysterious prophet walks the sands. At the moment of his departure, he wishes to offer the people gifts but possesses nothing. The people gather round, each asks a question of the heart, and the man's wisdom is his gift. It is Gibran's gift to us, as well, for Gibran's prophet is rivaled in his wisdom only by the founders of the world's great religions. On the most basic topics--marriage, children, friendship, work, pleasure--his words have a power and lucidity that in another era would surely have provoked the description "divinely inspired." Free of dogma, free of power structures and metaphysics, consider these poetic, moving aphorisms a 20th-century supplement to all sacred traditions--as millions of other readers already have.

I have been practicing a little less than a year, so I am a relative newbie. The most important thing is support from your sangha, which is your Buddhist community. Find one and spend time with them. Learn how others react to specific situations and deal with everyday problems that way. Without the sangha, all the books, tapes etc in the world are of little use.

My teacher is Thich Nhat Hanh. My sangha is Deerpark monastery in Escondido, Ca. A good place to start reading is here

Good luck to you!

Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion (collectively known as Hyperion Cantos) by Dan Simmons. easily my absolute favorite books, ever - not only are they well written, they mingle theoretical physics and science fiction in a way that makes my nerd girl toes tingle with anticipation.

*edit: words everywhere! also, don't want the pizza (I'm sure someone else can put it to much better use than me). just want to share good books :)

I like Staying Alive by Niel Astley

I highly recommend The Awakening of Intelligence for a good primer on Krishnamurti's ideas.

Pharr's Aeneid is an excellent example of such a book.

The rarer vocab words are on the bottom of each page, and the more common ones rolled out on a fold from the back of the book.

Read these books:


http://www.amazon.com/The-Mahabharata-Penguin-Classics-Anonymous/dp/0140446818

and

http://www.amazon.com/Ramayana-Shortened-Version-Penguin-Classics/dp/0143039679/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382550210&sr=1-1&keywords=ramayana+r.k.+narayan

The Golden Age by John C. Wright, and its two sequels, The Phoenix Exultant: and The Golden Transcendence.

It's not quite what I think you mean by transhumanism, but it's a great posthuman novel. The publisher says:

> The end of the Millennium is imminent, when all minds, human, posthuman, cybernetic, sophotechnic, will be temporarily merged into one solar-system-spanning supermind called the Transcendence. This is not only the fulfillment of a thousand years of dreams, it is a day of doom, when the universal mind will pass judgment on all the races of humanity and transhumanity.

The trilogy is written with style and humor, with a strong dash of the classics, and with an eye toward limits and implications of communication across different levels of computational capacity, mind architecture, and processing speed.

In fact I think I just talked myself into re-reading it :-)

Also available in Canada for free!

One of my favorite poetry books is "A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry," edited by Czeslaw Milosz. The poems aren't difficult to understand yet are diverse and really wonderful. https://www.amazon.com/Book-Luminous-Things-International-Anthology/dp/0156005743/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=A+Book+of+Luminous+Things&qid=1565830406&s=gateway&sr=8-1

Here are some links for the product in the above comment for different countries:

Link: The Prophet


|Country|Link|
|:-----------|:------------|
|UK|amazon.co.uk|
|Spain|amazon.es|
|France|amazon.fr|
|Germany|amazon.de|
|Japan|amazon.co.jp|
|Canada|amazon.ca|
|Italy|amazon.it|
|China|amazon.cn|




This bot is currently in testing so let me know what you think by voting (or commenting).

I would suggest one of Neil Astley's anthologies. Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times was the first, and he's since also put out 'Being Alive' and 'Being Human'. It's all contemporary, thoughtful poetry, some of it similar to the one you posted above, but there's lots of variety.

If you don't mind a mixture of poetry from different styles and eras, I really love Poem for the Day (Poem A Day in the US, apparently).

Also, if you wanted to look into individual poets, I think you might like Richard Siken, Warsan Shire, or Andrea Gibson. I'm happy to dig out some examples of their work online for you, if it would help!

If you like Epicurus, you'd like Lucretius. His "De rerum natura" was beautifully translated a few years ago.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Nature-Things-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140447962

Here's a wholesome classic, Lucretius.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Nature-Things-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140447962/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371675762&sr=8-1&keywords=Lucretius&tag=68656c7064757-20

Lovely classical 1BC Atheist poetry.

ATHEISMMMMMMMM WTF BLERGGHHHH

It's a bit different from other suggestions, but you might try Chinese Through Poetry by Archie Barnes.

germanum *, sorry. However, in book 1, line 341 of Vergil's Aeneid, this word appears, and my AP Vergil textbook (what we commonly refer to as Pharr)and nodictionaries.com suggest that it is translated as "own brother" or "full brother". This, of course, is in context talking about Sychaeus' brother Pygmalion.

edit: changed a bracket to a close parentheses

• Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
  
• Awakening of Intelligence by Jiddu Khrisnamurti
  
  You might end up not caring about the list after those, though :)

Definitely work on creating concrete images in your poetry. Pulling in sensory descriptions (touch, taste, sight, sound and smell) will help your readers better visualize and connect to your thoughts.

For poetry anthologies, I really enjoyed Staying Alive

I would also recommend visiting The American Academy of Poets and Poetry Foundation for free poetry online from classic poets.

As for poets to read, there are many out there so if you don't like the poets suggested in these comments just remember there are so many more. I personally love Pablo Neruda, Anna Akhmatova, Sylvia Plath, Mary Oliver, Wallace Stevens, H.D., Rainer Maria Rilke and too many more to list.

I haven't finished it yet, but I'm enjoying Chinese Through Poetry quite a bit.

Get yourself a good anthology, like this one edited by the Polish poet Czesław Miłosz. Once you know what you like you can get more specific anthologies or collections by specific poets.

I've been reading Thich Nhat Hanh's Peaceful Action, Open Heart, which is wonderful, concurrently with A Guide to the Threefold Lotus Sutra, by Nikkyo Niwano, that gives a concise overview of each chapter. It also helps to have an introduction, in the form of a talk or short articles. There's a short chapter in Cultivating the Mind of Love on this Sutra.

I was at a retreat with TNH in the 1990's where he spoke about the Avatamsaka and Lotus Sutras, that's since been issued by Sounds True as The Ultimate Dimension.

Most of the talks were on the foundational practices for entering into the kinds of experiences described in these Sutras, and I found that his framing them in this way actually made them accessible. Remarkable!

These are good places to start.

As Thay said in his commentary, these are not so much works to be studied with the rational part of ourselves as they are to be received as inspired poetry, lived with and enjoyed. Then meaning of these sutras and the truth they speak of can reveal themselves to us gradually.

He says, in the beginning of The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching:

“When we hear a Dharma talk or study a sutra, our only job is to remain open. Usually when we hear or read something new, we just compare it to our own ideas. If it is the same, we accept it and say that it is correct. If it is not, we say it is incorrect. In either case, we learn nothing. If we read or listen with an open mind and an open heart, the rain of the Dharma will penetrate the soil of our consciousness.

“The gentle spring rain permeates the soil of my soul.
A seed has lain deeply in the earth for many years just smiles.

“When reading or listening, don’t work too hard. Be like the earth. When the rain comes, the earth only has to open herself up to the rain. Allow the rain of the Dharma to come in and penetrate the seeds that are buried deep in your consciousness.

“A teacher cannot give you the truth. The truth is already in you. You only need to open yourself - body, mind, and heart - so that his or her teachings will penetrate your own seeds of understanding and enlightenment. If you let the words enter you, the soil and the seeds will do the rest of the work.”

Best wishes to you in your practice.

The item on my wishlist I want is this. It is the album that introduced me to punk when I was a little guy. It is just such an important album for me and the genre as a whole. It was and is revolutionary. Plus Johnny Rotten is probably your cousin or something!

The coolest thing on my wishlist is this. A little known sci-fi epic poem full of hoplessness and despair, what is cooler than that! Also, the only sci-fi book to win a nobel prize. Just all around cool-ness.

For the ramayana I would recommend Narayan's translation.
Keep in mind it is a condensed version, so I don't know if that is a positive or negative for you.

I really would advise reading fully both of the introductions, which give some sense of the history of the different versions/translations of the Ramayana and how it has evolved from its origins as an oral story (as well as the reasoning behind some of Narayan's decisions about how to tell the story).

I'm so happy to hear that you enjoyed studying Latin so much. Where I live (Canada), classical studies are not valued at all; people honestly don't understand why it would be important to retain some cultural continuity with all of Europe's past, where until just two or three hundred years ago, going to university in Europe meant doing scholarship in Latin. It therefore warms my heart to hear you speaking so fondly of it, and to know that there's a place in the world where even engineers have heard of Vergil.

I do hope you're able to keep reading Latin in your free time. If you like poetry digestible in small chunks, you might enjoy the very user-friendly Catullus. There are other excellent small-scale poets like Propertius, but I find his language rather more difficult. If you can find a book with bite-size excerpts of Ovid, that would be a wonderful way to go as well; Ovid is just stellar.

If you're up for a larger-scale work at any point, there's a fabulous student edition of the first six books of the Aeneid in English where there's an index of the very most common words at the back, then all the other vocabulary is given, with grammatical notes as well, on the same page as the Latin; it saves very, very much time with a dictionary. The book was prepared by an early 20th-century schoolteacher named Clyde Pharr and is available both in paperback and hardback editions.

The Giant Book of Poetry has everything from 4000BC through Shakespeare up to contemporary stuff; it's a great starting point. And, unlike a lot of poetry anthologies, it's only $15.

The Fall of Hyperion - The first one was too good not to continue.

Furthermore, he put together a wonderful anthology of poems entitled A Book of Luminous Things, which can be found here.

you can start by reading two of hinduim's epic tales - mahabharata and ramayana. the stories are LONG. RK Narayan has a concise version of it - Mahabharata and Ramayana.

for a fuller version, try ashok banker's series of ramayana.

Pretty recent stuff:

John Brown's Body

The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel

Aniara

Ah! Right now I'm working on the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series and am currently on The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (got maybe 10 pages left) to continue on. I've been getting through them oh-so-slowly because they're on my phone and I read them on my breaks at work.
You ALL still have Zoidberg!

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran It's a very profound book of poetry. Though Gibran was a Christian, The Prophet is not overtly so, though it does reflect Christian beliefs.

A quote:

He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.
All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


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amazon.ca

amazon.com.au

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amazon.es

amazon.com.br

amazon.nl

amazon.co.jp

amazon.fr

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And if you haven't read Warsan Shire's poetry, I highly recommend it. I re-read this recently:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Teaching-Mother-Give-Birth-Mouthmark/dp/1905233299/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart: A Poetry Anthology
This is my favorite poetry anthology.

I have that same Penguin version of de rerum natura, but I'll check out the Loeb one. I see that the new Penguin version is done by A.E. Stallings, who seems to be well regarded, so I might check that out as well. This seems to be a reliable versed translation, or so reviewers ranked highly by google tell me. Alas, I've read the wikipedia and many random articles on sexuality in Rome, I'll just have to use the google to find further resources. Thanks for the recommendations.

Still learning. I've taken three years of formal Mandarin classes during undergrad (with more to come next fall), more rigorous classes while in China, and supplemented these with a shit-ton of personal study through books, podcasts, apps, and good old language cds. As for classical, along with personal study from the standard text books, I've had a couple of professors who've sat down with me for translation roundtables. Other than that, I make a conscious effort when I read a translated text or academic study, to look up characters for important names, and find the original texts. I find it invaluable to refer to them for clarification, or to just check to see If I can correctly guess a specific term or reference. I also like to just buy random ancient texts, flip open a page, and see if I find something interesting. Once you get your head around the basics, it becomes a matter of finding the right dictionary, grammar handbook, or reference guide. All the stuff I've translated here has been more of less for fun. I'd spend about a week or more perfecting a translation before including it in a conference paper or potential journal article.

If you are looking for recommendations on where to start, I'd point you towards Chinesepod (I've heard there is an awesome torrent of their episodes floating around) and Chinese Through Poetry: An introduction to the language and imagery of traditional verse.

Sounds like you need something to read while you relax at home...

Faust

Die Physiker

Die Leiden des jungen Werther

Der Prozess

Buddenbrooks

Emilia Galotti

Das Parfüm

Die Blechtrommel

Im Westen nichts neues

These are the ones I remember from school.

I am not sure if they are easy enough to read for you, "Die Physiker" and "Emilia Galotti" are probably the easier ones to read out of these.

If you believe your words are gospel, then just accept the feedback and move on with your life. If you want to start down the road of legitimately writing poetry that someone who actually reads poetry can appreciate, it's time to get to fucking work.

Of course, you think your "words" are special, but they aren't. This is the same thing every beginner churns out. It's cliché abstraction and it's not worth sharing with anyone. You can call it "poetry" and say it's your "art" and that poetry can't be "defined" -- whatever.

But anyone who actually reads poetry will recognize your "words" immediately for what they are and turn the page.

Read some poetry, man. Read some books about writing poetry and the tools poets use to craft their poems. If you need recommendations, I can give you some, but you'll have to do some fucking work. You might have missed the memo, but writing poetry is hard work.

***

Edit: Here some recommendations to get you started.

• A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver
  
• The Poetry Home Repair Manual by Ted Kooser
  
• In the Palm of Your Hand by Steve Kowit
  
• The Poet's Companion by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux
  
  And if you insist on trying to use end rhymes:
  
  
• Rules for the Dance by Mary Oliver
  
  And please, please pick up a good book of poems from multiple authors so you can get some exposure, such as the Norton Anthology of Poetry or the compilation Good Poems by Garrison Keillor. One of my favorites is A Book of Luminous Things by Czeslaw Milosz.

I'm not sure if it has 100+, but my favorite collected anthology, by far, is The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart. The subtitle can go fuck itself, but the collection itself is unbeatable. So, so good. Really, this book showed me so much of what poetry can be. I really enjoy that it doesn't focus on one era so much over others, contemporary poetry is well-represented, and this all shows in the organization of poems. Pound right next to Olds right next to Li Po. Brilliant.

If I can get over the subtitle, I feel like anyone should be able to. Check it out!

Ah, yes. The perpetual tragedy of Men's social awareness movements.

​

Late 80's a group of psychologists and writers attempted to address the issues affecting men's psychology and identity in a changing world and society and called it the "Men's Movement." [Suggested Reading](https://smile.amazon.com/Rag-Bone-Shop-Heart-Anthology/dp/0060924209/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1550604390&sr=8-1&keywords=rag+and+bone+shop+of+the+heart) When it makes overtures to try and ally itself with feminist groups they are largely rebuked under suspicion and lose just enough interest by it's founders that it gets taken over by a group of horrible misogynists before slowly sputtering out of steam.

​

Late 90's a group of well meaning men looking to address heavy handed policies in the justice system start the men's rights movement so they can spend more time with their kids, before being rebuked by feminist groups and losing all of the reasonable voices inside of itself by the loud bellow of horrible misogynists. This one just sure is taking it's fucking time dying.

Reading Rainbow! Or this one or even this one...

Happy almost birthday 🎉
The secret to my wellness is my dog. He is literally the only thing that keeps me going. The only other thing I can think of is Bukowski because his poems are just so great. He is absolutely the best writer and his stuff is just so relatable; I'm extremely grateful my English teacher covered Bukowski instead of Shakespeare.

Book 6 of 10 in the Amber Chronicles.

And then I'll jump back to the Hyperion Cantos with The Fall of Hyperion

Thich Nhat Hanh: "In 1976, the communist government of Vietnam wanted to set up a government-supported Buddhist organization to replace the Unified Buddhist Church, and they spread a rumor that I had died of a heart attack in Paris. The young monks and nuns in Vietnam had strong faith in me. They knew I was doing my best to help and protect them. In Paris, through our office at the Peace Delegation of the Unified Buddhist Church, we stayed in touch with Amnesty International and other humanitarian organizations, and every time there were human rights violations by the government, such as the arrests of monks or nuns, we informed the press and others so they would intervene. That is one of the reasons the government decided to close down the Unified Buddhist Church and set up their own Buddhist organization. They had already arrested Thich Quang Do and Thich Huyen Quang, the leaders of the Unified Buddhist Church and they wanted to confuse people and undermine the support that the people felt from us in Paris." https://www.amazon.com/Cultivating-Mind-Love-Thich-Nhat/dp/1888375787

One of my sci-fi favs which is CRUNCHY in its sci-fi is The Golden Age by John Wright. The plot is twisty enough you won’t know where it will head, but the ideas in the book are so constant that many have trouble reading it. Not because it’s bad but rather it’s DENSE. The next two in the trilogy is easier though. Do please read some reviews first.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Golden-Age-Paperback-ebook/dp/B000FA5QJK/

Probably look for anthologies, such as 101 Great American Poems, or the Giant Book of Poetry.

Staying alive: real poems for unreal times is a good anthology of modern poems, edited by Neil Astley. it covers all areas of human experience edited into thematic chapters allowing for comparison of perspectives in subjects the that you wish to explore.
cant recommend it highly enough.
edit; Amazon link

Would you be interested in my copy of Love is a Dog from Hell?

I'm interested in both of your Vonnegut books.

Edit: I also have Welcome to the Monkey House by Vonnegut to balance it out if you're interested.

Get a book of poetry and leave it within reach of the can. You never know when you'll need it, and nothing relaxes the bowels like some Coleridge or Yeats.

http://www.amazon.com/Staying-Alive-Poems-Unreal-Times/dp/1401359264

Staying Alive is a great anthology of poems and it has a bit of everything.

Just finished Motorcycle diaries, 4/5*

Currently reading Japanese Death Poems and Maze Runner.

Free ebook of gaming-themed poetry.

Lullabies for Dungeon Crawlers

first replying to the topic of clarity & purple

didnt know they had a phrase for this:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_prose
  
  
• https://medium.com/@lucillemoncrief/what-is-purple-prose-beige-prose-and-blue-language-9cae7fd44ba9
  
  
• https://thewritepractice.com/purple-prose/
  
  
• https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=purple%20prose
  
  tho i understand it harms clarity tho:
  
  
• the context requires it
  
  
• & it's not meant for other minds so it wont be relevant to this context
  
  ---
  
  it seems overall that many dont like thes kinds of things,
  
  
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aniara#Reception
  
  
• https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1138948.Aniara
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Aniara-Epic-Science-Fiction-Poem/dp/1885266634
  
  & overall culturally this has been the trend
  
  ---
  
  i also dont like these kinds of things tho i can understand some of the main reasons why others would think that this is the only and best that certain things could said
  
  tho i should add that i dont consider the scene/piece that poetic/purple cos it could be 1000x more so
  
  tho that's the thing with relative words like 'purple' and such, they're all just relative, and in that way, they do lose 1) clarity & 2) meaning
  
  ---
  
  

I love the 'Staying Alive' anthology http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1852245883/ref=redir_mdp_mobile
It has a lot of contributors and is in sections of different aspects of life. Has a little bit of every style from lots of different time periods. Great way to stumble upon a poet you haven't read before and then go in search of their other stuff! I was worries when I got this as a gift that it would be all very wishy washy 'carry on through difficult times' but it is honestly a great collection :)