(no subject)

[the_rck]

Hm. If I don’t like the first four or five pages of a poet’s collected works, is that enough to say I don’t like the poet’s work? This collection is a little odd because it has a play first, so I’m kind of thinking I need to skip to the end of that and see if I like anything beyond that, but I also don’t really want to bother because I very much am not enjoying the play. My main problem is that, as I read it, I keep going, "WTH? Who talks like that?" The words are pretty but not actually coherent in terms of conveying meaning or even image/emotion.

There’s something that I keep thinking I want to post about, but when I open my document to write, I can’t for the life of me remember what it is.

I’m still draggingly tired. The hard part is that I know that sleeping right now won’t help and that my instinct to eat all the food will lead to bad places without giving me any actual energy. But part of my mind remains convinced that, if I eat the right thing, I will magically feel better. It’s days like this when I really, really wish that Provigil had actually worked for me.

Comments

[alexseanchai]

If you're looking only at the first few pages of the poet's collected works, you may be looking only at the poet's earliest poems, which may be very different from her later ones. That said, life's too short, so if you need permission from someone to put the book down for keeps, granted.

[kyrielle]

What alexseanchai said. Normally if I get a collected works, I try to see how it's organized (often by the books it was taken from, but not always). If it's by book, I usually pick an arbitrary poem from each book; otherwise I tend to start with something near, but not absolutely at, the back of the collection.

And some things just don't work for me. Marvin Bell is one of my favoritest poets. I think he's amazing. And I loathe his various Dead Man poems completely. I think they are tedious and pretentious and overly-constructed and just boring...but they're not all he wrote, and I love some of his other work.

[trepkos.livejournal.com]

Who is the poet?

[gillo]

I think it depends very much on the poet in question - some take their time getting into their stride, some are better in youth or age. I'd suggest you ask people who like that poet's work which are their favourite poems, and read some of those. If you dislike half a dozen of "the best", perhaps that work is not for you.