Thanks for all the suggestions and guidance on Browning. I did get his collected after the last time Bill recommended him and I read a handful of poems. I came away agreeing with much of this assessment from Oscar Wilde (which I think also explains Harold Bloom’s very high assessment of RB, as something of a ventriloquist of many characters … more in the encyclopedic than the visionary category of poets):

He is the most Shakespearian creature since Shakespeare. If Shakespeare could sing with myriad lips, Browning could stammer through a thousand mouths. [...] Yes, Browning was great. And as what will he be remembered? As a poet? Ah, not as a poet! He will be remembered as a writer of fiction, as the most supreme writer of fiction, it may be, that we have ever had. His sense of dramatic situation was unrivalled, and, if he could not answer his own problems, he could at least put problems forth, and what more should an artist do? Considered from the point of view of a creator of character he ranks next to him who made Hamlet. Had he been articulate, he might have sat beside him. The only man who can touch the hem of his garment is George Meredith. Meredith is a prose Browning, and so is Browning. He used poetry as a medium for writing in prose.

Anyway, it’s clear I need to spend more time with him. I also appreciated the accounts of personal experience on this thread.