British Author Challenge October 2021: Narrative poetry

Arthur Rackham illustration for Rossetti's Goblin Market

Wait! Don't run away! This is *narrative* poetry, poems that tell a story. It's "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven" not "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways." Narrative poems come in all sizes, from the massive Faerie Queene to the 200-odd lines of Tam O'Shanter.

Why October for a poetry month? Because National Poetry Day in the UK is the first Thursday in October.

Suggestions

Beowulf
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Simon Armitage's translation is great. Even noted poetry hater @richardderus raved about it in his review.)
Sir Isumbras
The Moral Fables of Robert Henryson by Robert Henryson
Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare
The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser
Paradise Lost by John Milton
Hudibras by Samuel Butler
The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope
Tam O'Shanter by Robert Burns
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Don Juan by Lord Byron
Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti
Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came by Robert Browning
Aurora Leigh by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Tristram and Iseult by Matthew Arnold
The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The Owl and the Pussy-Cat by Edward Lear
The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll
The Fall of Arthur by J. R. R. Tolkien

Starred!

What a fun challenge!

I'm rounding up Lear, Tennyson, and Coleridge from my poetry shelves.

I'm with RD and not a poetry gal, but may try Aurora Leigh, since it fits in with my Victober (Victorian October) reading.

>3 fuzzi: Hi!

>4 m.belljackson: Coleridge's Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner is an excellent spooky read for Halloween.

>5 kac522: Evidence has recently surfaced showing that RD may not be as anti-poetry as he claims.

https://www.librarything.com/work/8508092/reviews/58629113
https://www.librarything.com/work/25918/reviews/110544661
https://www.librarything.com/work/343627/reviews/173505161

>7 amanda4242: traitor!

>8 kac522: Shocking, isn't it?

>6 amanda4242: Yes, Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner is perfectly scary and still mysterious -
fun for a ZOOM Group Read Aloud Together!

>10 m.belljackson: I've never done a group read aloud--well, except for the awful readings we were forced to do in English class. *shivers*

Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti

I'd forgotten how odd this poem is. This rather short tale of a girl giving in to the temptations of goblins with their fruits and her bizarrely, uh, sensual restoration to health by eating fruit off of her sister is the sort of poem that makes you wonder wtf Rossetti was smoking. It's very good, but also very, very strange.

I'm almost finished with my second poem of the month, a much longer work which coincidentally also features forbidden fruit.

>11 amanda4242: No group read alouds anywhere that I've heard of, but I've registered for my first online ZOOM group Dance Class =
Line and Party Dancing, beginning with The Monster Mash on October 29th.

>12 amanda4242: Intriguing, intriguing!

I spent the weekend with a choice selection of the doyen of Victorian narrative lyric - Alfred Tennyson
The Charge of the Light Brigade
Morte D'Arthur
The Lady of Shallot
etc etc

Some great stuff in there even though it isn't my most comfortable poetry reading usually. I have a couple of times tried to write narrative poetry but found it difficult to keep things fresh and not sink into fatuous cliche.

>13 m.belljackson: My brain just fizzled a bit at the thought of ZOOM line dancing. I can't quite wrap my head around an online version of something that, by definition, requires people to be standing next to each other. Let us know how it turns out.

>14 PaulCranswick: Tennyson could turn out some great lines, but for the most part I find him so stodgily Victorian in his thinking.

>15 amanda4242: I agree he could be stodgy but there were gems in there too.

>12 amanda4242: I'm sold! I was already planning on reading The Goblin Market but it definitely moved up the list.

>15 amanda4242: I have a big book of Victorian Poetry with many Tennyson highlighted!

Okay - each of the 8 Line dancers stands (or sits, for elderly and disabled) in front of their own computer and
is somehow miraculously ZOOMED onto the screen where he/she/they/it can see medium size photos of everyone
as they are introduced. Then full screen on the teachers. Then...I'm not sure where we show up again...

I completed Chaucer's Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, translated by R.M. Lumiansky. I have had this book sitting on the shelf for some time. Glad to have read it. It really is a work of "short stories" Interesting that it is 14th century and the stories are told by a cross section of people on a pilgrimage to Becket's shrine in Canterbury.

>19 Kristelh: Congratulations on making it through the whole thing! I've read sections, but never found the time to sit down and read it all.

Paradise Lost by John Milton
I had stalled out on this after book three when I tried reading it several years ago. Starting it again I couldn't understand why I had stopped as the first two books, while dense, are dramatic and epic in scope; and then I hit book three and remembered why I quit: book three introduces God and Milton's God is a dick. As I continued my reading, it was easy to see why basically everyone roots for Satan: Milton's Satan is eloquent and dynamic, and Milton's God is a smug tyrant in comparison.

My interest in the poem waxed and waned mightily. Any books with Satan are thrilling, especially the two that cover the war in Heaven, but there are entire books that just seem lazy, despite their glorious verse. Some low points:

the book that plagiarizes Genesis

the books that are essentially CliffsNotes of the rest of the Bible

the couple hundred lines waffling on about geocentrism vs. heliocentrism.

To sum up: parts of Pardise Lost are great and I'm glad I read it, but I won't be revisiting it soon.

There's a dramatization of Paradise Lost streaming on BBC Radio 4 for the next ~3 weeks.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09wlnc3

The November thread is up!

https://www.librarything.com/topic/336274