The Well-Educated Mind Poetry

Way back in the fall of 2021, I began the poetry section of The Well-Educated Mind Reading Challenge. It is almost fall 2024, which means it took three years to read through these poets. The only book I did not read was Reflections on the Psalms, by C. S. Lewis, because I figured I'm always reading the Psalms. But it would have been a nice read because of the commentary. The only book I bombed out on was The Canterbury Tales, after 111 pages. 

I also did not continue reading after the modernists (see below). I think I experienced enough for a while now. Poetry is my least favorite genre. 

Of the Ancients, my favorite was The Odyssey. 

Of the Medieval poets, I liked Beowulf and Inferno. I read Inferno earlier in the year, following along using Hillsdale College's course, which was necessarily helpful. My most favorite, however, was Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. And then I lost my copy during our move!

Of the Renaissance/Reformation poets, I do not have record of what I rated Shakespeare's sonnets, and I did not review them. No excuse, but we were in the middle of moving. That I do remember. I did enjoy Paradise Lost best of all. 

Finally, of the poets from the 1700s to modern times, my absolute favorite was Paul Laurence Dunbar. My next favorites were Wordsworth, Longfellow, and Tennyson. I also read all of Leaves of Grass by Whitman and enjoyed it immensely. And of the remaining poets, I appreciated Frost, Hughes, and Auden. 

Now I am taking a break from The Well-Educated Mind, but I plan to begin the plays in January 2025. I started a GoodReads group if anyone would like to read them, too. 

poetry

Unk: The Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2000 BC) ⭐⭐

Homer: The Iliad ⭐⭐ / The Odyssey (c. 800 BC) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Greek Lyricists (c. 600 BC) ⭐⭐⭐

Horace: Odes (65-8 BC) ⭐⭐

Unk: Beowulf  (c. 1000) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Alighieri: Inferno (1265-1321) ⭐⭐⭐⭐ [read in 2021]

Unk: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight  (c. 1350) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales (c. 1343-1400) 💣 [read 111 pages and bailed] 

Shakespeare: Sonnets (1564-1616) ?  [read selected]

John Donne (1572-1631) ⭐⭐⭐ [read selected]

King James Bible: Psalms (1611) [did not read]

Milton: Paradise Lost  (1608-1674) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Blake: Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1757-1827) ⭐⭐⭐

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) ⭐⭐⭐

John Keats (1795-1821) ⭐⭐ [read selected]

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) ⭐⭐⭐⭐ [read selected]

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1883) ⭐⭐⭐⭐ [read selected]

Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass (1819-1892) ⭐⭐⭐⭐ [read]

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) ⭐⭐⭐ [read selected]

Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) ⭐⭐⭐ [read selected]

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) ⭐⭐ [read selected]

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) ⭐⭐⭐ [read selected]

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Robert Frost (1874-1963) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) ⭐⭐⭐

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) ⭐⭐⭐

Ezra Pound (1885-1972) ⭐⭐⭐

T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) ⭐⭐⭐

Langston Hughes (1902-1967) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

W. H. Auden (1907-1973) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

After the Modernists:

Philip Larkin

Allen Ginsberg

Sylvia Plath

Mark Strand

Adrienne Rich

Seamus Heaney

Robert Pinsky

Jane Kenyon

Rita Dove