>want to get into poetry >pick up an anthology at a used

>>9076673
>he didn't start with the Greeks

>plagiarising Homer for 2300 years
Poetry is a meme.

>>9076673
Read some Whitman. Leaves of grass is very timely read. Fuck 1984, people need to read whitman.

Just read The Odyssey. It's fun, relatively easy, and incredibly rewarding. You can probably finish it in a week or two. And The Iliad is even better.

>>9076693

>guy mentions poetry

>immediately someone recommends "whitman" and even throws in 1984

you should kill yourself, you skipped about 2000+years of poetry to recommend the most popular american poet. congrats. faggot.

>>9076702
It's easy to read, but there's a ton of stuff beneath the surface that's difficult to understand, especially if you read a translation because the original has a lot of wordplay that can't be translated.

>>9076734

>you need to have read every single poet in the Western tradition before you can even THINK about reading the guy who tried (and really in large measure managed) to develop a poetics independent of that tradition

Would you fucking cool it, my man? Whitman is worth reading for people of all stages of literary education. Heck, you can even read Ulysses and get a great deal out of it without having previously read the Odyssey or Hamlet, just like I did. Chock on a dick, my man. Not everybody feels the need to have their hand held through a mindless completionist project of reading the entire canon.

>>9076673
Give Wordsworth a try.

>>9076739
not that guy but why the fuck do people say this like its an offhand thing to just learn ancient greek so they can get deeper into a work that had been analysed to shit already over the past 2500 years anyway, I mean fucking come on
>especially if you read a translation
what do you mean "especially"? are you under the impression that there is something unusual about not learning a dead language when you could spend the time reading a fuckton of actual texts in the time it would take to learn it?!

>>9076734
Things are usually popular for a reason anon. If Whitman is the most popular american poet then he's worth checking out, if only to see why he's so popular.

>>9076796
This needs to be stickied

>>9076796
greek
dead
>>

>>9076796
Why are you throwing a tantrum over something I didn't say or imply?

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>>9076685
>He thinks Homer lived in 300 B.C
Why do I keep coming back here?

>>9076673
What is the context to these translations? I almost never hear Homer referenced
Also who hasn't read the Odyssey, I thought it was pretty much required in school

>>9076849
personally I blame your parents

>>9076859
The more shocking thing to me are posts on here asking if they have to read The Bible before, say, Paradise Lost or The Divine Comedy. How is anyone who can post on an English imageboard not familiar with Genesis or the concept of Hell!? Baffling.

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>>9076685
>2300 years

>>9076859
Reference not translations
>>9076864
Ya I guessGreek myths are alluded to a lot in literature, but anyone who's seen Disney's Hurcules will get half the references

>>9076875
"Troy" is a pretty good action flick too.

>>9076673
>reading poetry

faggot

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>>9076685
>plagiarising Homer for 2300 years

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>>9076685
It was published in 2007, dumb-dumb.

>>9076790
>Wordsworth
Fucking great name for a poet

>>9076734
that's the whole point, to help op, silly

>>9076685
You think he was born in 300 BC?! You're a fuckING MORON! Go die in a pit of burning adherence...oh wait, that's not what you said. Right, my fault I just lack any basic reading comprehension skills. Please excuse me for my dumb niggardly retardation.

>>9077266
>Who is Callinus
>The poet who references Homer around 650 BC
>Still being this wrong
>Damage control

>>9076796
As someone who had ancient greek in school, I really do think that the Odyssey has a lot hidden under the surface that you won't simply pick up on when you just read a basic translation. I mean, sure, you can compensate by reading a metric shit ton of secondary texts on the side, but if you already know latin, greek is really not all that hard. (Only difficult thing for me was remembering all those aorist forms.)

If you want to follow /lit/'s advice and spend a few years learning ancient Greek before reading the foundational text of the canon for the first time that's your decision, but it's really REALLY not necessary. Reading a few different verse translations is more than enough if you don't plan on becoming a classics scholar.

It's the worst when poets allude to obscure shit in the odyssey and related myths that no one even remembers. pound will never give you an allusion to achilles or odysseus, but some little known mithraic cult. what's the point

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>be OP
>want to get into poetry
>but can't read
>ask a clerk at the bookstore if that's a book of poetry
>he says it is
>there's some picture of an old dude sculpture on the front, so it must be legit art
>buy it
>come home and ask mom to read it aloud
>it's all about the Odyssey
>haven't read the Odyssey because again, can't read
>tfw

>>9076685
but the earth is only 2017 years old CHECKMATE FOOL

>>9078235
Unironically this. How can you guys still believe the BC meme?

>>9077962
my first thought

>>9076673
>>literally every poem alludes to the Odyssey, which I haven't read
Obviously, because you can't even tell that most poems don't allude to the Odyssey.

>>9076673

>be OP
>neglect to start with the Greeks despite being told hundreds of times
>write a post about the consequences of not starting with the Greeks before going on craigslist/m4m looking for dicks to suck

Why do you do this OP?

>>9076673
Don't bother unless you know Ancient Greek. Read the Wikipedia summary instead. If you want to read classical authors, read Gavin Douglas' translation of the Eneados and Arthur Golding's translation of the Metamorphoses.

>>9079843
What translation do I use if i really, really wanna read em though?

>>9076734
fuck off, whitman is bae

>>9076886
youre like the retard who walks into science club, shouts "NERDS!" then runs away. isn't your handler around?

>>9079843
>>9079918
read the mandelbaum translation of ovid, durling translation of dante and gh mcwilliam for bocaccio