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Hi, guys!! I'm Malola. :)
Last year I was reading Sylvia Plath's Ariel and was rather puzzled on why it had such high ratings in GR and why do people fangirl/fanboy over her so much. What was I missing?? WHAT??!!

I kept on reading the words... They made grammatical sense, but they seemed to completely lack depth and meaning. So I turned to YouTube and watched a video with John Green explaining SP's Cut poem. A poem I had just passed a bit ago... and whose meaning flew over my head. His quick analysis completely blew my mind away. The meaning was sooo effing obvious and yet I completely missed it. XD She was in fact a genius... and my brain is atrophied, apparently.
From that point on, I've decided to both read and listen poems... And then I search for analysis.

So writing down my thoughts and... tribulations while reading poetry geniuses might help me better exercise my brain muscles. Also I think it'll help me further understand hidden meanings in English, an ability I lack (even when my English is academic) given that I'm not a Native speaker.

So... Twelve books related to poetry, plays or epistles.
Though, I think I'll focus slightly more on poetry (because it's the ability that I lack the most); I will start with Emily Dickinson. I got hooked on the TV show!! XD And I have a hugh crush on Sue Gilbert/Ella Hunt. lol

EDIT: News as of 11/01/2022; I've decided to read at a ratio of 6/3/3 in order to not leave out certain genres; hence:

POETRY
1. Poemas
2. Milk and Honey
3. Live or Die
4. Poems of Passion
5. Averno
6. Swan: Poems and Prose Poems

EPISTLES
7. Letters of Emily Dickinson
8. Selected Letters
9. Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West: Love Letters

PLAYS
10. A Raisin in the Sun
11. Monologos de La Vagina (Yeah, not to fond to read this one. I keep on reading it sort becomes too "in yo face" and mostly exploitative and leaning towards shock value... but I'm happy to be proven wrong.)
12. In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play
____
EDIT: I'm squeezing in:
13. Three women: A monologue for three voices (Dramatic Reading.)
14. Who Are You?: Poems and Inspirational Writings About a Journey to Rediscovering Self (Poetry.)
15. A Year Spent Lost: A Collection of Poetry (Poetry.)
16. Yo acuso. El caso Dreyfus (Epistles/Open Letters.)
17. Letters of a Woman Homesteader (Narrated Epistles.)
18. Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Poetry.)
19. A Father of Women and Other Poems (Narrated Poetry.)
20. A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains (Narrated Epistles.)
21. The Wild Swans at Coole (Narrated Poetry.)

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PD: Yes, men shall excuse my sin and not feel felt out because I'm chosing to read exclusively women's works (read: "I read whatever I want").
Women's voices are somewhat invisibilised and TBH as a reader I've been shrugging it off; so planning my readings this way forces me to at least include women this way.
EDIT: Well, it seems like men are included. XD

Yes, I'm well aware there's only a couple of women of colour. I accept suggestions and recommendations as "extra" readings. XD

Cheers!!
=P

I constantly struggle with poems and plays even though I am an English - speaker. Poetry I especially struggle with, the flow and the meaning. But every year I try a book or two and some I like, some I look at in confusion... lol. Good luck with your selections.

Thanks, man.
I feel less dumb now. XD

4. Poems of Passion

Oh, you who read some song that I have sung,
What know you of the soul from whence it sprung?

Great command of her words and the rhythm was just amazing.
The first half was great. It showed melancholy, gravitas, depth in love... The description of the overwhelming beauty (yuugen) of nature was on point.
Some poems really jumped out, they embrace you in an uplifting kind of way (it's the cadence and pacing). At times a bit (melo)dramatic, but I think she wanted to punch the reader with the rhythm and her choice of words while keeping the 'proper' way of doing poetry. (On a side note: Emily Dickinson was really a revolutionary by not adscribing to traditional rules of poetry.)
The second half... I'm not sure how they're poems of passion. I think it's a bit of a stretch there, but to a degree they fit the theme.

5. Averno

Well, this has left me somehow with a little existential crisis... but I'm not sure exactly why. There's a sinister idea that pervasively lingers throughout her poems. Glück writes about Death, Scatology, Loss and so on with certainty... and authority yet... softness.

All your life, you wait for the propitious time.
Then the propitious time
reveals itself as action taken.

Some of her really strike me as pearls of everlasting wisdom.

A disaster like this
leaves no mark on the earth.
(...)
Once the earth decides to have no memory
time seems in a way meaningless.

The pointlessness of life... things get destroyed, there's no memory... time does seem meaningless. I guess I can only be sure of my own subjective experience, so I shall take action and make sure that "propitious times" happen.

Also, it was quite interesting the two versions of Persephone The Wanderer (from both the perspective of the girl and the mother)... and the Myth of Devotion (which is told from the perspective of Hades).
It definitely had me thinking.

The only thing I found odd, I guess, is that I'm not sure what's the point in poetry that could pretty much be prose. It has no rhymes and the rhythm and cadence don't seem to suggest anything. (I might be mistaken since I did say there's something sinister in her poetry.) If it lacks rhymes and rhythm, why preferring that type of format over... plain prose?

13. Three women: A monologue for three voices

Wow... Just WOW... I mean, it's Sylvia Plath. Could anyone read/listen anything she wrote and not be moved?

I suggest you listen the poem which, after all, was written to be read out loud, (see:
) WHILE reading it (see: ).

I made the mistake of just listening the first time, so I got lost with the voices.
Listening (which was Plath's aim) AND reading it will allow you to not miss cues and clues. This, of course, is important because the poem connects each of the women through the experience of pregnancy: the all go to the same maternity ward of a hospital for different reasons, so it narrates three very different perspectives.

The deshumanisation of the women, the loneliness of the act and how isolating those experiences are, the 'atrocity' of birth and so on were beautifully presented. The yuxtaposition of nature, both unfertile and fertile (depending of the woman's perspective) is amazing.
In the case of two women, the hope/ability of moving on sort of remined of Plath's poetry... kind of in the same note as the ending of Lady Lazarus, I guess, each of these women "resurrected".

(view spoiler)[The first woman, a wife, has an angry, blue boy. XD I loved that description: "Who is he, this blue, furious boy, /Shiny and strange, as if he had hurtled from a star?". And she rejoices with the overwhealming beauty of motherhood: "What did my fingers do before they held him?/ What did my heart do, with its love?". The second woman, a secretary, has a miscarriage that begins at work: "When I first saw it, the small red seep, I did not believe it./ I watched the men walk about me in the office. They were so flat!". She feels defective... sort of amputated, like missing a limb: "This is a disease I carry home, this is a death. (...) I am dying as I sit. I lose a dimension. (...) Who will love me through the blur of my deformity/ As if I had lost an eye, a leg, a tongue" and it is stated that has had at least one miscarriage before: "I lose life after life.(...) I am restless. Restless and useless. I, too, create corpses". Given the raw detail of this particular voice, I'm not surprised Plath had a miscarriage herself. And the third woman, a girl, who seems to be a college student, is sexually assaulted. It is hinted through the myth of Leda and the swan: "And the great swan, with its terrible look,/ Coming at me, like a castle, from the top of the river. (...) He glided by; his eye had a black meaning. I saw the world in it-small, mean and black"; so she decides to give the baby up for adoption. "She is a small island, asleep and peaceful, /And I am a white ship hooting: Goodbye, goodbye". This one reminded of the Grey's Anatomy episode where Jo goes to her birth mother and it turns out that she was given up for adoption because she's the result of date rape. As sad as it is, Plath makes clear that going through something like that completely shatters the person, the girl had no choice but to give the baby up. "And what if they found themselves surprised, as I did?/ They would go mad with it". (hide spoiler)]

Pregnancy should ALWAYS be a happy event, but sometimes the final decisions we made is what allow out to reclaim our bodies. (Maybe a fourth woman was needed. One that decided to have an abortion because "it wasn't the right time" or something.)
I will definitely re-read/re-listen this one.

As for the voices of the actress, well... All were amazing, except that I think the third woman is young (the poem mentions "college" and she's "the girl"), yet the voice actress seemed to be at least over 30. But I reiterate that all of them did an excellent job with their characters.

3. Live or Die

Excellent.
One cannot help but think in Plath while reading her. Yes, they are different women, each with their own history, but the type of suicidal confessional poetry definitely resonates and sets them apart.
Yes, Sylvia stole her suicide.

Very raw and desolated. Yet somehow beautiful.
(I'm not sure what to do with poetry that doesn't rhyme, though. Only one of her poems rhymed, but her point her was sort of to make it child-like... or kind of like playing with irony and infantilisation. All of them, of course, had beautiful cadence.)

2. Milk and Honey

It was good. Kaur takes risks (which I like), so some parts are raw. (The sexuality related parts were not distasteful.)

It's hard not to feel identified with some of her writing. I particularly liked her words celebrating of womanhood (especially in the last part).
Some other stuff seemed like she was spiteful or resentful towards an ungrateful love/r (i.e. "despechada"), so her words sounded like an artificial resignifing of acts/words/thoughts.
Don't get me wrong, it was good; but it was almost like listening to Shakira (or any other pop artists) that claims "nobody will love you like I did", "your new lover won't replace me (because I'm better)" and so on... when maybe for the other person was just time to move on. * shrugs *
You know, people deserve to be happy even if that means that I'm not part of the equation. (And the irony of her mentioning that all women are beautiful and brave... yet she doesn't seem to think that of her lover's new partner.) I think that part should be understood in the particular context of the anger and hurt post-separation.

Anyways, I'm still on the fence with the format. I don't see why pressing enter unnecessarily implies poetry, but what do I know?
It supposed to be poetic prose of whatever, but I'm old fashioned and I prefer my poems to rhyme.

6. Swan: Poems and Prose Poems

This did almost nothing to me.
I didn't even understand it. It's supposed to be a celebration of nature and whatnot, but it almost sounded like gibberish.

1. Poemas

Geezus Christ. OH, LAWRD!!!
GEEZUS TAKE THE WHEEL.

ED is GODDESS. EVERYTHING SHE WROTE IS PERFECTION ITSELF. This is life changing type of poetry.
The rhythm, the mystic, the pensiveness, the depth, the difficulty, the levity, the gravity, the ataraxia... She has everything you need in poetry and life.
She's a philosopher in the shape of a poet.

This was a Poet - It is That
Distills amazing sense
From ordinary Meanings -
And Attar so immense.

I'll definitely be reading more of her work. Open Me Carefully and Emily Dickinson's Poems As She Wrote Them are on my TBR and I can't wait to start them.

I do have a qualm with regards to this edition. Though Margarita Ardanaz has definitely make a good job with her translation (to the point that, even when I'm bilingual, I do think she added something to the book... also, her translation definitely gave me room to think about different ways of understanding ED's poetry), she's one of the Emily Dickinson/Sue Gilbert affair deniers. At this point in time, it seems to be the case that ED y SG were lovers.
Martha Nell Smith (among other scholars) has made a really good case showing that Mabel Loomis Todd had good reasons to erase any SG reference from any poem and letter from ED she came across. It wasn't only the fact that a homosexual relationship between the two women would have been extremely scandalous, but the mere fact that MLT was Austin Dickinson's lover... so she wasn't precisely in the best terms with SG. (Currently I'm reading ED's letters edited by MLT...as, surprise, surprise, not even ONE of the letters dedicated/addressed to SG is in that collection. Still, it's Dickinson... So the prose is beautiful.)
Though Margarita Ardanaz has the right to understand ED's poetry however she likes, if ED was in fact in love with SG, some of her poems definitely would take a much different turn.

To own a Susan of my own
Is of itself a Bliss�
Whatever Realm I forfeit, Lord,
Continue me in this!

14. Who Are You?: Poems and Inspirational Writings About a Journey to Rediscovering Self

Good.

It's very nice to read how the author conveys important messages through her poetry. Definitely her poems are better than her little essays/introductions.
She has good eye for rhythm, however I do think she played it safe at times.

15. A Year Spent Lost: A Collection of Poetry

Well...

I understood nothing of it.
Honestly I'm not sure where she was going.
It's hard to feel identified, since not even the topic is clear.

You're making excellent progress! Thank you for sharing your thoughts, I'm going to take a look at a few of these collections.

Thanks, Carolien. :)

16. Yo acuso. El caso Dreyfus

What a tongue!

What a way to shake a nation, with such eloquence, with statements... viperine (but true).

This version (edited by the Court) contains several of the open letters written by Zolá with a short prologue by Fernando Tinajero; I would have liked a little more historical background, but, well... You can't have everything in this life.
Émile Zolá was for sure committed to the truth...

17. Letters of a Woman Homesteader

Knowledge and strength come from doing.

Recommended for people who are into epistles or narrations about the rural life.

As for the content of the book, it started slow and I felt like Elinore Pruitt Stewart (EPS) was sort of rambling sometimes; but the more I advanced (especially the second half), the clearer it became how lovely and lively this woman must have been.
How she found space for loving her neighbour while being cautious, to learn, to build bridges, to get upset at condescending people, to grief her boy and her husband, to enjoy her work, to believe again.

And her descriptions of how uplifting work can be or how beautiful trivial things like the moon shining behind the trees are, uff... Geezus. Beautiful and quite touching.
The book definitely stole a couple of smiles from me.

Also, I thought a good add one of her girl's letters (and then EPS mentioning her reader/recipient about it). It had and underlying childhood innocence tone imprinted in every sentence (which fortunately the narrator caught and presented adequately). That was a nice show of an event told from two different perspectives.

As for the narrator, Ms. Lynne Carroll, it was mostly good but I think she should regulated her voice a bit more.

18. Calling a Wolf a Wolf

Well, this is something.

It's self deprecating and the statu of the narrator is... extremely pathetic. He's been painfully honest and shows who he is while his drunken stupor... and who he's trying to be while trying to abstain from alcohol (which also has him in a fog-like state.)

I don't think I understood everything. For one, I don't have that subjective experience of being an alcoholic (he did make it clear that I would hate myself if I were to become one) and two, the way he phrases words is... erm... uncommon.

As for one, the overall feeling of that pathetic sentiment lingers even in the poems where he's trying to be slightly more optimistic. But somehow that wasn't off-putting. Somehow you, as the reader, don't end up asking yourself "Geezus Christ, is this motherf*ck3r gonna complain all the time?". He's showing his pustules and open sores and, though maybe disgusted, you don't turn your eyes away... you just keep on staring and even move your hand close... maybe just to poke them a little bit.
So, yeah... It was a nice presentation of that subjective experience.

As for two, yeah, his wording was odd.
Some stuff seemed kind of like stream of consciousness or something like that where one thought would remind him of something else and he'd show you pieces of his childhood or beloved memories.
I think some poems that lack grammar signs (e.g. commas, exclamation points and so on) are meant be read from several points. That is, some phrases connect each other in several different ways. I think maybe the object at the end of a phrase is meant to be the subject of the next one, but not necessarily. Therefore you could read them both ways or not. I think.

It was an interesting read. Not for the fainted heart, I guess.

19. A Father of Women and Other Poems

Well, she knows how to rhyme, but I don't think her poems have that much gravitas.
It's like a laid-back read or just for listening while strolling.
It doesn't have that much philosophy on it, but overall it's nice.

The LibriVox readers did a fine job.
Their intonation was good.

20. A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains

I must admit my mind was running far away, so I wasn't listening attentively.
It could easily be that I listened only half the book with my undivided attention. Maybe even less. (Hence, this is a VERY lenient score. Should I give a low star rating if it was me the one with the lost mind?)

Let this not be taken as an insinuation of poor writing kills of Miss Bird. Quite the opposite, since this is the second book from I've read/listen, I can say I enjoy her style. (And yes, I will read/listen more from her).
The parts where I was most present were exquisite. The fact that the letters addressed to her sister were descriptive and joyful easily tell that Miss Bird was of a most interesting and adventurous character. Her ordeals are quite impressive considering the distances she travelled alone.

Also, though Bird was English, somehow the (slightly) Southern (?) accent of the reader, Laura Caldwell, perfectly set the imagery in front. Somehow it "made sense".

21. The Wild Swans at Coole

The rhythm is very good. I believe I missed a couple of relevant points, since there seems to be a lot of symbolism and the Irish mythos goes way above my knowledge of world culture... So a "guide" probably would be an appropriate reading as well.
Since this is actually in preparation for Poets Thinking: Pope, Whitman, Dickinson, Yeats, hopefully there'll be some clarification once I start that book.

I liked quite a lot Mr. Peter Tucker as a narrator. He definitely has the voice for poetry and a good eye for the rhythm.

7. Letters of Emily Dickinson

I died. This book killed me. You're reading the review of either a zombie, ghost or a kami.

This book was amazing. It's just amazing to me how lively and frolicsome Emily Dickison's letters/letter-poems were... yet when needed to be, the seriousness and gravitas where present. Even at such a young age (18), she had such a witty and vivid mind.
The allusions to nature, the allegories, the imagery, the double entendre, the tenderness, the love, the care, her never-ending desire to think about thoughts... This woman was at a whole different level. A philosopher in her own right.
At one point I just decided that, since I need to digest some of her ideas, I had read only 15-20 pages per day (top)... to give it time to sink in.

“I find ecstasy in living; the mere sense of living is joy enough.�

So... it is a privilege to be alive... and it is a privilege to be able to read... and it is an even bigger privilege to be able to read Emily Dickinson's poetry, ruminate upon it and try to understand the many layers of it.

___
This is the edited version of Mabel Loomis Todd (MLT) which is public domain (that's why I got it). We all know now that she completely erased Sue Gilbert (SG) from history, so yeah... not one single letter dedicated to whom seemed to have been ED's one true love... But one can tell very easily that MLT really respected ED's talent. She recognised greatness and was smart enough to put into ink and have it published.
I can only imagine how good, candid and vulnerable are the letters addressed to SG.