[William Thompson]

What do you read most, contemporary (i.e., living) poets or past masters?

Why?

Just curious,

Bill

[Gail White]

Sort of a mix. I try to buy poetry books regularly and read my contemporaries in a spirit of do-as-you-would-be-done by. But I read a lot of classics too. Also I recently joined a Facebook site called "Let's talk short poems we didn't write", where I've encountered quite a few poems by living poets that I would not otherwise have seen, and posted poems by my friends as well.

[Seree Zohar]

Gail, that sounds worth checking out! Tnx for the headsup!

I read both, in both my primary languages, but more interesting is comparing how translations of a specific poem have altered over time, especially when the original has a structure [eg: 20+ line monorhymes, parallelism, etc] that doesn't go over well into the second language.

[R. Nemo Hill]

I read dead people, mostly.
More perspective.

Nemo

[Orwn Acra]

I read mostly dead people, too. The good thing about dead people is that they are constantly growing in number, so you always have something more to read.

[Maryann Corbett]

I read everybody from the 1940s or 1950s on, whether they're living or dead. Like Gail, I buy fellow poets' books.

I go for long periods without reading much genuinely old poetry, and then I go on jags of reading big chunks of it. Last summer, for example, I read two different translations of the Iliad.

[Quincy Lehr]

I mostly read the news, or nonfiction more generally. Doing a bit of a deep dive into certain branches of political philosophy. Or books about orcs wasting things with bazookas and the like. Sometimes I read poetry. Usually what's to hand. Frequently on the toilet.

[John Whitworth]

I read novels, mostly novels I have read before. I read some new poetry, always Sam's and Ann's, but others too. I read the magazines I get sent because something of mine (usually a poem) is in them. Quadrant is really good. I read the Spectator, the Oldie and the DailyTelegraph, to all of which I subscribe. I read old poetry, of course I do. I BUY old poetry too, in second hand bookshops. I read other newspapers in the public Library. I read Swedish and Danish Detective stories. I reread the novels of Ruth Rendell, Dorothy Sayers and the chap who wrote about Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin.

I could go on.

[Gregory Palmerino]

My reading habits are kind of like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. When I want to feel big, I eat the living. When I want to feel small, I drink the dead. There is very little time in the day when I am not reading, so all this growing and shrinking is exhausting.

Cheers,
Greg

[William A. Baurle]

Originally Posted by R. Nemo Hill

I read dead people, mostly.
More perspective.

Nemo

Me too.

Hi Bill!