Quote:
Originally Posted by ganbaru
It would be easier to name the one than I didn't like (the very long one like the ''Don Juan '' and ''Childe Harold's Pilgrimage'' by Lord Byron)
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Then it'll be equally easy for me to dissuade you from trying
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
Edgar Allan Poe isn't technically an "English" poet. He's an American poet/writer and it usually makes more sense to read him in conjunction with other American contemporaries. Unfortunately, I've never really studied American poets, so I can't really tell you much other than the few names you've probably already heard of, like the
Transcendalist poets
Nathaniel Hawthorne and
Ralph Waldo Emerson.
As for why academics distinguish between English and American literature, well, it's too hard for me to explain. Suffice to say that there are subtle differences in style and philosophies behind the English-language poems and novels of the two realms. Try comparing the poems of
Robert Frost (American, famous for his poems inspired by rural New England) to those by
Williams Woodsworth (English, generally known for his poems inspired by England's Lake District), or even those by
Robert Burns (Scotland's "favourite son", also a
Romance poet like Woodsworth), and you'd see what I mean: American poetry tends to be more prosaic, more terse, more matter-of-fact, more down-to-earth, compared to the romanticism of contemporary English poems, which typically feature more lyrical flourishes.
Since you appear to be tending towards the Romance poets, I would also recommend the works of
Percy Bysshe Shelly, famous for
Ozymandias, among other poems. You may also enjoy the works of Welsh poet
Dylan Thomas (
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night), although he isn't actually a Romance poet, being a more modern writer who was born in Wales and lived in the United States.
There's also
Lord Alfred Tennyson, England's Poet Laurete during the reign of Queen Victoria, well-known for the
The Charge of the Light Brigade. I don't enjoy his works, but I can see why the English found it appealing in that era.
That said, I generally prefer English poetry to American poetry. On the other hand, I prefer American novels in the style of
Ernest Hemmingway over that of modern English novels. How to put it? Hemmingway is more macho — I like. I identify with the sentiment more easily than I do with the post-war, post-Imperialism angst of English writers like
George Orwell, even though I do enjoy Orwell's short stories like
Shooting an Elephant.
Hopefully, the above gives you a good starting point. I'd suggest borrowing an anthology of poems from your local library to sample a broad range of poetry from different eras. From there, you'd get a better idea of what kinds of poems you enjoy.