Poetry Treasures

I started this blog on September 26th 2014, and the first post explains a little bit about my intentions. This page will say this in a slightly different way and with perhaps some more information.

My bookshelves contain quite a number of books of poetry, both works by specific poets and several anthologies containing many different poets. However, despite my love of fine writing, I recently realised that I was neglecting this most rigorous and enriching form of the written word. So as an exercise in getting reacquainted with my favourite poets and rediscovering poems which I had either forgotten or never really knew, I set myself the task of reading a poem every day and writing down my impressions of it. After a few days of entries in a handwritten notebook, I realised that it might be neat to set up a blog and give others the opportunity of sharing my poetic explorations.

My day job is in research and analysis of commodity markets – there is plenty of poetry in that occupation too, but rarely does it rise to the heights which I cna find in the poems selected for his blog, so doing this is a welcome diversion.

My objective is to keep this blog going for a full year, and post a poem every day, together with some comments which come to mind on reading it. I shall select poems which are familiar to me or have a particular connection or resonance to my personal life or experience. Apart from that, there is no real rhyme or reason in the selection.

The poems selected here will be predominantly in English, French and Spanish, the three languages in which I feel competent to appreciate poetry and other fine writing. So you will not find the Italians here – no Petrarch or Dante; no Latins – no Horace or Catullus; no Germans, no Russians either. I might rarely be able to sneak in a Portuguese or Catalan poet, but these will be very exceptional. The poems will be posted in their original language in almost all cases, as I find translations usually unsatisfying (with one huge exception, Fitzgerald’s translation from the Persian of the Rubai’yat of Omar Khayyam).

In my year of poetry treasures I expect to post poems by somewhere more than 50 and less than 100 poets in total, with each poet represented by several poems. They will be taken mainly from the last 600 to 800 years.

I hope readers appreciate this blog. And if anybody would like to comment on entries or give suggestions, please feel free to either post comments or email me directly on poetrytreasures@gmail.com.

Happy reading to poetry lovers everywhere.

 

The Poetry Dude