Part Two

Housman- A Shropshire Lad (1896). You could say that
Housman is essentially a trivial writer, but in this age of
egregious untidiness it is good to remember that perfect
poems can & have been written. [More Poems & Last
Poems also contain many necessary lyrics.]

Mallarmé- Poésies (1898). If you only learn one
foreign language & only a bit of that, do try to scope out
Mallarmé in the original. Untranslatable, the inventor of
Modernism & the culmination of the literary tradition,
what can i say? Yet he wears it very lightly... His best
poems are about little things, flickers or the wave of
a fan, & thus connect with the Japanese poetic tradition.
Weinfeld's Collected Poems (1994) is bilingual &
includes the prose poems.

Stein- Tender Buttons (1914). I can't add anything
to my Amazon review.

Stevens- Harmonium (1923). Most of Stevens's best
poems. It is worth a concentrated study to inquire how much
of French Symbolism has been captured & how much lost;
he also, without even trying, spares you the necessity of
reading any Imagism.

Jeffers- The Roan Stallion (1924). A lot of people don't
like Jeffers, but he can't be ignored. There isn't another
such vatic writer in modern times; & his eye is always on
the land--something too easily lost in 20c verse.

Auden- Poems (1930) & The Orators (1932). You'd've
thought T S Eliot had said the last word in Modernism, & suddenly
this guy drags in Anglo-Saxon meters & the best imitation of
schiz-lit this side of Finnegans Wake. He also sets the
bar for a unified collection very high with the latter work--&
people are still arguing over what it means.