The Selected Poems of Li Po
Li Po (c750 AD)
Remarkable for their succinctness and apparently throw-away insights, these poems delighted their Chinese readers in the 8th century and, in the hands of various interpreters in the 20th, such as Ezra Pound, brought new life to English poetry (as well as to Mahler).
John Milton (1667)
The brainiest poet to write in English could somehow wrench the language around and still make it speak in sonorous, memorable cadences: his ambition in Paradise Lost is breathtaking, but so is the fact that he delivered.
Don Juan
Lord Byron (1819 – 1824)
For all Byron’s reputation as the great Romantic, he was actually devoted to clever jokes and attacks on his peers worthy of Alexander Pope for their smartness. Don Juan is a triumph of this style: a narrative following a journal on which trouble is the only predictable thing.
Would you agree?
Check out the full list at:
maybe you choose
' The Waste Land' TS Eliot (1922)
or ' Birthday Letters' Ted Hughes (1998)
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