Thread: Emily Dickinson
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Unread 02-17-2001, 08:58 AM
Caleb Murdock Caleb Murdock is offline
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Mike, I just want to support what you say. Some poets, like Dickinson, are an acquired taste -- and if you don't acquire it, you are not to blame. A lot of the poets I say I like are acquired tastes, yet in my deepest heart of hearts, they aren't for me.

Robinson is one. Tim and Alan went to great lengths to get me to study Hardy and Robinson. Hardy I came to genuinely like (despite his clumsiness), but there is only one poem of Robinson's that I really love (he is just too obscure). Dickinson is also an acquired taste, as is Whitman. As much as I keep talking about Hopkins, the fact is that I don't care for most of his stuff. I find that that's the case with many poets -- there are dozens of poets who have written one, two or three poems that I madly adore, but most of their work leaves me cold.

There is one poet I absolutely cannot stand, and that's Keats. Keats is often held up as the perfect poet, but I find his language to be flowery and pretentious.

The poets that I love in large measure (meaning, large numbers of their poems) are Shakespeare, Frost, Owen, Auden and Millay (though Millay sometimes gets too cute for my taste). I would put Donne in that group if his diction were not so intractably formal. Many of Wilbur's poems I like, but I love only a few.

Mike, who on earth is Parker? I don't know that name. In fact, it sent me scurrying to the Biographical section of my dictionary, and I still don't know who you mean!