Literature & fiction books>Books>Poetry books>Regional & cultural poetry books

(Part 2) Best european poetry books according to redditors

We found 211 Reddit comments discussing the best european poetry books. We ranked the 102 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.

Subcategories:

French poetry books

German poetry books

Norse & Icelandic sagas

Spanish poetry books

Italian poetry books

Top Reddit comments about European Poetry:

u/OntologicalErasure_ · 5 pointsr/ThomasPynchon

In Orphic Bling: Pynchon and Rilke from Wicklit blogspot, translations from both Mitchell and Leishman & Spender were cited.
On Quora, Michael Masiello whom I follow suggested Edward Snow.
An excerpt from archetypographia reads as such: “While Mitchell tends to avoid God, Gass revels in spirituality, Leishman and Spender write a more dry, academic version, Barrows and Macy play with the imagery and delicate language."
On Amazon, experienced user M. Myshack seemed to lean on MacIntyre’s “plainer, more resonate language,” and he thought Snow’s adaptation is more mundane than the poetic Mitchell.

As for me I couldn't recall much, but Mitchell seems reasonable enough. It has been my principle to prioritize poetic over literal ever since I picked up Beckett's translation of Rimbaud's "drunken boat." Anyway, good luck with your picking~

u/Daedalus18 · 5 pointsr/AskLiteraryStudies

The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry 1 -

This book is heavy, so it doubles as a brick for smashing in the windows of capitalist bourgeois pigs. Reading it is like taking a shot of tabasco sauce and injecting it into your eye with a hypodermic needle.
Surrealist Poetry in English 2 -

I had to buy this one on ebay, but it's a damn fine collection. Makes me want to hand out LSD-laced lollypops to schoolkids, then piss on the grave of H.W. Longfellow.
Norton Anthology of Modern & Contemporary Poetry 3 -

These two have all the good ones of the 20th century, a clean layout, and a fine selection. Good for reading beneath a tree in the autumn, in a graveyard.
Penguin Anthology 4 -

It's edited by Rita Dove, so you know this collection has good taste. The poems are from a wide spread of poetry movements, but personally, I find a lot of the pieces in it to be a little too 'delicate'. But very good for reading naked in bed, while softly stroking the hair of your sleeping lover.
English Romantic Poetry 5 -

Got all the biggies like Byron, Shelly and Keats. I fuckin love Keats. This book is a great introduction to 19th century poetry. This is good for reading on a bus while driving past a field of flowers on a humid summer evening with the windows open, reminiscing about your high school crush.

u/GhostofRimbaud · 5 pointsr/hiphopheads

(sorry, incoming long ass post)

Hahaha truuu. Hmm that's a good question, he's one of the original people that got me into poetry/French poets, he has a good amount of work even though he basically revolutionized French poetry by the time he was a teenager, then quit to go be an arms dealer in the middle East/Africa.

I still really don't know as much about French surrealism and all that as I should. Rimbaud's life and mystique is just as interesting as his work tbh.

His whole idea was to push himself to the limit through starvation, insomnia, and drugs, to reach his mental and spiritual limit, and create art out of the pure fiber of his soul, type thing. As a kid he was sort of a wandering vagabond on and off and would intentionally starve himself. He dreamed of creating a universal language, and his poem about synethesia was sort of a mini manifesto on his concepts about perception, color, language and art. He was all about self flaggellation for the good of his art basically, there's even this story that marked the beginning of his gun trafficking phase, where he had to travel through some Alps, instead of going around the mountain he went up through knee deep snow for hours, and was lucky enough to make it to a monastery somehow on the mountain, where his life was basically saved. He thought of himself as a seer who could wield the power of speaking or writing things into reality.

I can give as a quick summary as is possible, especially since it's important context for his work. Basically, he was a poor farm boy from provincial France, right during really tumultuous times in France, he grew up in war/very close to really active war zones. His father was an absent military man who abandoned his wife and three kids before Rimbaud was six. Rimbaud's mother was this really strict religious, abusive, insufferable woman. She'd make her kids recite Bible verses in the original Latin and not feed them dinner if they messed up a word. His nickname for her was "Mouth of Darkness". He was an academic prodigy growing up and won awards in his district for writing, and was surprisingly pious himself as a child. He first got a poem published when he was like 11 or something (The Orphans Christmas, I think?).

Right around the time he became a teenager he started getting really rebellious, skipping school/church, smoking weed/tobacco/drinking absinthe and hanging out in taverns everyday. He was also homosexual, and even unapologetically homosexual, at a time when that obviously was really taboo in ultra religious 19th century France. He was basically rebellious in every sense of the word, lots of people refer to him as the "original punk." He's what inspired a lot of people like Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Jim Carroll, Beat writers like Ginsberg, Burroughs, Corso, people in the punk scene. He toed the line really well between purity and the loss of purity/innocence. Lots of religious imagery and grandiose diction, but throwing a weird twist into it with really surreal, dark, and vivid imagery. He was also essentially a disciple of Charles Baudelaire at least in spirit and style/content.

As a teenager he ran away from home a couple times but got caught at the border by police since it was during wartime. He finally left home completely, and went to Paris. He had been corresponding with one of the biggest French poets of his time named Paul Verlaine. One way or another, Verlaine read Rimbaud's Drunken Boat, one of his most famous and influential poems he wrote when he was like 14, decided Rimbaud was a teenage genius, and invited him to live with Verlaine and Verlaines wife and child in Paris.

Verlaine and Rimbaud eventually developed a sexual relationship, basically just did drugs and wrote poetry from their drug induced visions, got kinda strung out on opium and absinthe. Verlaine eventually left his wife completely, moved into some flat with Rimbaud, and their relationship went downhill from there since they were just kinda poor drug addicts, feeding themselves through occasional translation commissions and tutoring.

Rimbaud started to realize Verlaine was basically just an insane, angry, violent alcoholic, and started making plans to leave Paris and the relationship. This period of his life is what A Season in Hell is about.

During an argument with Rimbaud trying to leave the flat and Verlaine refusing to let him, Verlaine shot Rimbaud in the wrist. The police got involved, and Rimbaud was eventually returned to his mother once again since he was still a minor. He left his hometown soon after, swore off poetry and refused to write creatively anymore by the time he was in his early 20s, and decided to be a gun trafficker and merchant-soldier throughout the Middle East and Africa for most of the rest of his life. He died in his early 30s from cancer.

I would either get a collection, ideally with some biographical background, I have this one with some really cool drawings in it. Or get his two biggest works A Season in Hell (I'd recommend the one with a red cover and preface by Patti Smith, it also includes the poem Drunken Boat which is one of his most famous pieces, there's even a wall in his home town that has the whole poem painted on it, def make sure you read that one), and then Illuminations, which was his surreal, divine visions experienced while high on hash and whatever else book. Both have excellent versions translated by John Ashbery. This latter book basically solidified his reputation as an extremely influential, surrealist writer, he'd write a lot of stuff that had a very visionary feel, or like youre reading a dream.

Also, if you're gonna read Rimbaud, I'd recommend reading Paris Spleen by Charles Baudelaire beforehand. It's a book of prose poetry. Baudelaire was this genius but completely spaced out alcoholic/absinthe/opium addict and writer who wrote a lot about vice and sex and the underworld of Paris. The idea of Paris Spleen was to write and highlight all the darkness and toxins of life in the city, and purge it through a sort of literary "spleen". He was basically one of the first poets to freely write about taking drugs, sleeping with/falling in love with prostitutes, hanging out with gamblers, and people who lived in poverty. Really gorgeous writing. Paris Spleen was as scandalous as it was influential at the time of its release, and basically changed everything in French poetry following it.

This book, as well as Baudelaire's more traditional book of poems called Flowers of Evil, were extremely influential on Rimbaud as a teenager and were essentially what he tried to copy. That whole era is super fascinating, I used to be really, really into all the history of it and the writing was hugely influential in shaping my own shit. I'll update with some actual titles/links to good starting points.

Edit: /u/ItsBigVanilla

Paris Spleen by Baudelaire
https://www.amazon.com/Paris-Spleen-New-Directions-Paperbook-ebook/dp/B00BNQRPGC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1539065048&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=paris+spleen

Complete Works
https://www.amazon.com/Arthur-Rimbaud-Complete-Works/dp/0061561770/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1539064862&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=rimbaud

Season in Hell
https://www.amazon.com/Season-Hell-Drunken-English-French/dp/0811219488/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1539064862&amp;sr=8-4&amp;keywords=rimbaud

Illuminations
https://www.amazon.com/Illuminations-Arthur-Rimbaud/dp/0393341828/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1539064862&amp;sr=8-6&amp;keywords=rimbaud

I'd actually recommend the Collection over anything, it's an awesome comprehensive collection with great, really interesting autobiographical info, and might even include all of the main two books plus other poems. Absolutely loved my copy I got, needa go find it. If you're gonna grab any, I'd grab that and Paris Spleen, those should be a great primer for that era/movement. Hope ye find something you dig, lmk if you got questions or what ya think.

u/ebneter · 4 pointsr/tolkienfans

...and it's available for pre-order on Amazon UK, at least. Thank you for reminding me of that! It will have a bunch of otherwise very hard-to-find poems that were early versions of much of the work in the book as well as, apparently, an unfinished prose story about Tom.

u/ColePT · 3 pointsr/pbePortugal2016

"O que está a passar" sounds wrong. It needs to be written like "o que é que se está a passar" or to be rewritten entirely.

"Que é que se passa?!" has the same amount of words and sounds much better.

AQUELES QUE POR OBRAS VALOROSAS SE VÃO DA LEI DA MORTE LIBERTANDO is a quote from our national book, and an instantly recognizable sentence to any Portuguese.

u/ameseleven · 3 pointsr/booksuggestions

I sometimes feel like it's good to read poetry aloud, because hearing the rimes and the musicality of it helps you get into it. The poem that first got me into it was Coleridge's classic The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

u/tanglekey · 2 pointsr/books

My husband has a copy of this Penguin Anthology. It's a great collection of surrealist poetry.

I also recommend the Secret Life of Salvador Dali by Salvador Dali. I remember reading the chapter on intra-uterine memories in one of my Freshmen English classes in college.

u/Teotwawki69 · 2 pointsr/funny

Looks like Alexander Pope was onto something.

u/Walkuerus · 2 pointsr/de

Ich habe so bis zur 5.-6. Klasse sehr viel in meiner Freizeit gelesen, aber ab da ist mir das dann irgendwie etwas abhanden gekommen. Auf der weiterführenden Schule habe ich nicht ein Buch (durch)gelesen. Privat eventuell ein oder zwei, aber bis zum Abi war da nicht wirklich was. Comics, Graphic Novels und Zeitschrifen aber immer viel und häufig. Gerade bei Zeitschriften war einfach immer ein baldiges Ende des Textes abzusehen.

Als ich dann aber von der Schule runter war, hab ich mir nochmal angeschaut, was ich denn eigentlich so an Lektüre über die Jahre verpasst habe und dann Jugend ohne Gott und Faserland nachgeholt, welche mir auch beide sehr zugesagt haben. Gerade Jugend ohne Gott hat sich als Wiedereinstieg gut geeignet, da nicht zu lang.

Seit dem habe ich wieder ab und an was gelesen, bin aber weit davon entfernt eine Leseratte zu sein.

Bücher die ich gelesen habe sind u.A.:

Nichts (Empfehlung, gerade zum Einstieg)
Tschick (Empfehlung, gerade zum Einstieg)
Honig (Keine Empfehlung)
Gomorrha (Empfehlung)
ZeroZeroZero (Empfehlung)
Der Pate (Empfehlung)
Per Anhalter durch die Galaxis (Empfehlung)
Das Restaurant am Ende des Universums (Empfehlung)

Ansonsten bin ich mittlerweile dazu übergegangen mehr Sachbücher als Romane zu lesen. Geschichten erfahre ich einfach am liebsten über's Kino.

Oh, und ich hab mal versucht Harry Potter zu lesen. Zumindest auf deutsch hat mir das überhaupt nicht zugesagt und ich habe das Gefühl, dass wenn man das nicht als Kind/Jugendlicher gelesen hat, ist es schwer das noch nachzuholen.

Redigierung: Gab sicher noch ein paar mehr Bücher die ich gelesen habe, aber diese sind mir auf Anhieb eingefallen.

u/[deleted] · 2 pointsr/france

Poetry: Richard Howard translated The Flowers of Evil. The original text follows the English. It's a good thing, too, because Richard Howard once translated "les affaires hexagonales" as "hexagonal affairs".

In addition, you can read the poems at this website.

As for Rimbaud, here's Wallace Fowlie's bilingual edition of his poetry. Unfortunately, it sets the English beside the French. That said, it collects much of what Rimbaud wrote. It isn't bad.

u/CiroFlexo · 2 pointsr/Reformed

All right, here's my best effort at trying to tie together all these threads with some recommendations. Two different routes to take.

1. Get some polish poets. My recommendations of three volumes would be Zbigniew Herbert's Elegy For The Departure, Czesław Miłosz's New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001, and Wisława Szymborska's Map: Collected and Last Poems. In mid-to-late 20th c., Polish poets were at the top of their game. They were confront a lot of issues like morality, politics, oppression, society. Herbert is a personal favorite of mine. Miłosz is just a towering figure. And Szymborska was a master at language. Miłosz and Szymborska both won the Nobel Prize, and Hebert was nominated several times but (controversially) never won.

2. Get some novels by Erskine Caldwell. Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre are the natural starting points for him. If you're into Percy and O'Connor, he's a natural fit. Personally, he has some controversial views, but he was a master at presenting the struggling, impoverished South.

Edited Addendum:

3. Get a collection of short stories from Jorge Luis Borges. Ficciones and The Aleph (as published by him) and Labyrinths (as first published in English) are the collections you see most often, but I'd reccomend something all-encompassing, like the more modern Collected Fictions.

u/amazon-converter-bot · 1 pointr/FreeEBOOKS

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Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
I currently look here: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.com.au, amazon.in, amazon.com.mx, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.com.br, amazon.nl, amazon.co.jp, amazon.fr, if you would like your local version of Amazon adding please contact my creator.

u/kungfupao · 1 pointr/france

u/Earthsophagus · 1 pointr/ebookdeals

I'm not familiar with Coghill's version. There's also an $8.00 version at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B006X2AZHC, I can't tell the difference in the preview.

The version I really like is worth getting even at $10, if you have any long-term interest in Chaucer: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B13DK7K -- it has the original with stresses indicated (often not obvious) and great easy to use glosses. An exemplary ebook.

u/ElKisoz · 1 pointr/tolkienfans

I would recommend reading the book, it’s dope! here you can buy it on amazon I think. if I did it right

u/makers_markers · 1 pointr/languagelearning

You can look for bilingual or parallel editions. For example: The Count of Monte Cristo, Complete Works of Rimbaud. I found a lot at my local university library.

u/AsyloniaRising · 1 pointr/selfpublish

Ghosts in the Cosmos - A collection of poems inspired by dreams and nightmares, by friends and family, by fleeting moments and half-formed thoughts, by passing strangers and those who permanently tattoo themselves onto our lives whether we want them to or not.

Available on Amazon for $1.24 / £0.99 or for free via Kindle Unlimited.

I’m currently preparing to self-publish my first ‘real’ book and put this together to learn how Kindle Create and the whole
Amazon self-publishing system works.

Would appreciate your feeeback :)

u/MiltBFine · 1 pointr/Poetry

https://i.imgur.com/5mKcZdz.jpg

Wilderness Party https://www.amazon.com/dp/B014J5EL9C/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_.14bAbQGMPXKN

Poetry Book Society Recommended

u/Chiliarchos · 1 pointr/nrxn

A flippant response might read "Your list, with 'The Annotated' [0 - 4] prepended to each entry". Less glibly, I concur with /u/dvdvh, that it is necessary to build a broad recognition of the landscape of history before one goes exploring the geological forces that shaped it. This can be accomplished by picking your favorite time, place, or culture, querying a suitable encyclopedia entry, taking notes if desired, and expanding from there; I personally find the histories of Hungary [5] and Uzbekistan (Sogdiana/Transoxiana) [6] to hold criminally low profiles in the lay-historian's mindset.

For historical perspectives orthogonal to any one physical dimension, I would recommend military histories, which, truer to your own suggestions, can be classical original sources, e.g. Xenophon's "Anabasis" [7], so long as one is willing to research details assumed known by the authors. B. H. Liddell Hart's "Strategy" [8] specifically takes the position that military science prerequisites a knowledge of precedents, and so provides it.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Iliad-Homer-Annotated-H-ebook/dp/B005Y0MWUC

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Divine-Comedy-Translated-Annotated-Illustrated-ebook/dp/B00SIWHOWO

[2] On this point I must bend "The Annotated" to "The Reader's Companion to": https://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Companion-Cervantes-Companions-Literature/dp/0521663873

[3] https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/019953621X/

[4] https://www.amazon.com/Fyodor-Dostoyevsky-Annotated-critical-Biography-ebook/dp/B0057JQ206

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Hungary

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Uzbekistan

[7] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Anabasis

[8] https://www.amazon.com/Strategy-Meridian-B-Liddell-Hart/dp/0452010713

u/andro1ds · 1 pointr/MedievalHistory

(Part 2) Best european poetry books according to redditors

21. Rimbaud: Complete Works, Selected Letters, a Bilingual Edition

22. Surrealist Poetry in English (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)

23. The Adventures of Tom Bombadil

24. Ghosts in the Cosmos: A Collection of Poems

25. The Pursuit of Happiness *** Number 1 Poetry Book ***

26. Bedside Days: A collection of sixty poems: *** Number 1 Book ***

27. Coronach *** Number 1 Poetry Book ***

28. Lost on the way back home *** Number 1 Book ***

29. The Wilderness Party

30. The Divine Comedy

31. Map: Collected and Last Poems

32. Duino Elegies: A Bilingual Edition

33. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Illustrated Poetry Classics)

34. Paris Spleen (New Directions Paperbook Book 294)

35. Canterbury Tales

36. The Lusiads (Oxford World's Classics)

37. The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems

38. From the Sagas of the Norse Kings

39. Das Restaurant am Ende des Universums.

40. Canzoniere (Poesie/Gallimard) (French Edition)

Subcategories:

Top Reddit comments about European Poetry:

25. The Pursuit of Happiness * Number 1 Poetry Book *

26. Bedside Days: A collection of sixty poems: * Number 1 Book *

27. Coronach * Number 1 Poetry Book *

28. Lost on the way back home * Number 1 Book *