Must read English poets?

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Writer_for_God

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Hi,
I am not sure if this would be best in this forum or in the Popular Media forum, but I chose this one, because I consider studying, reading and writing poetry to be a spiritual exercise. I recently started reading some of my friends poetry, as well as other English writing poets. I am considering doing some intensive study and reading of the major English speaking poets. Keats and Shelley come to mind, but I believe they were either atheists or pagans, I am not sure which. I am looking for suggestions or a list of all the must read poets of the English language. I am specifically focusing on English, because that is my native language. But I want to master the craft of poetry and learn my native language and its history and development as best I can, and eventually I would like to learn other languages and study their poetry, language, and history. But I really want to get as best a grip of the English language as I can, and then move on to learning other languages, so I can read other authors in their original language, and not in translations. I would like to read St. John of the Cross, and St. Therese of Lisieux and their poetry in the original. But are there English writing saints or other Catholics who have written good poetry? Also, any other English speaking poets who are not Catholic are appreciated. I would like to set up a kind of curriculum for myself of all the poets I want to read. LEt me know if you can think of any specific English poets (not necessarily from England , for example American English speaking poets count too). Or if you know of any lists of major English speaking poets that would help as well. Maybe if anyone is interested, could start a poetry group or reading club or something.

Thank you for any suggestions. God bless you all. Amen.
 
Writer for God

John Henry Newman
Gerard Manley Hopkins
G. K. Chesterton
Hilaire Belloc

Four to start with.

There is a “Poems and Reflections” group right here on Catholic Answers
Just look in the group sections on the side and click the group.
All are welcome to join in.

Hope this helps.
Pete.
:tiphat:
 
If you have access to the 4-volume Liturgy of the Hours, the appendix has a poetry section from a variety of writers including John Donne and Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Dave 🙂
 
W. Shakespeare. (sonnets, etc.)

He is said to have been a crypto Catholic.

ICXC NIKA
 
My favorite major, influential English poets who wrote both distinctly religious and devotionly-informed poetry: Gerard Manley Hopkins and John Donne, as mentioned; and George Herbert and William Cowper.

For less overtly religious English poets, my favorites are Dylan Thomas and Robert Frost.
 
Purgatory_Pete said:
Writer for God

John Henry Newman
Gerard Manley Hopkins
G. K. Chesterton
Hilaire Belloc

Four to start with.

There is a “Poems and Reflections” group right here on Catholic Answers
Just look in the group sections on the side and click the group.
All are welcome to join in.

Hope this helps.
Pete.
:tiphat:
Click to expand...
👍

I’d also add Milton and T. S. Eliot. Sure, they were Protestants, but works like “Paradise Lost” and “The Waste Land” should not be missed. 🙂
 
Rhubarb said:
I really like Kipling.
Click to expand...
Yeah, Kipling:

"TAKE up the White Man’s burden -
Send forth the best ye breed -
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild -
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.
Take up the White Man’s burden -
In patience to abide
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain,
To seek another’s profit,
And work another’s gain.

Take up the White Man’s burden -
The savage wars of peace -
Fill full the mouth of famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch Sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man’s burden -
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper -
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go make them with your living,
And mark them with your dead !

Take up the White Man’s burden -
And reap his old reward,
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard -
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah slowly !) towards the light:-
"Why brought ye us from bondage,
“Our loved Egyptian night ?”

Take up the White Man’s burden -
Ye dare not stoop to less -
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent sullen peoples
Shall weigh your Gods and you.

Take up the White Man’s burden -
Have done with childish days -
The lightly proffered laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgement of your peers."

I hope Kipling is doing good time in Purgatory for pulling stuff like that. Even Chesterton (no apostle of political correctness!), in his book “Heretics”, explained clearly why Kipling was full of it. :mad::rolleyes:

But then, I’m only “half devil and half child”, so what would I know? 🤷
 
Chaucer. Even though he wrote in Middle English, and thus the spellings are much different than today’s English, the pronunciations are similar. His Canterbury Tales show the broadness of culture in 1300’s England. Some of the tales are raunchy, for sure, but others teach important religious and moral lessons, most notably, the Knights Tale and the Pardoner’s Tale (even though the Pardoner himself tells the tale to try to fleece his listeners of their money). And it ends with a long sermon from the Parson. It’s quite apparent that Chaucer believed in the Truth of the Church during his time, though he had no problem calling out people in the Church for corruption and preying on their flocks.

Also, the anonymous “Gawain and the Green Knight” is a great story, filled with religious overtones.
 
Hopkins.
My favorite poem:

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; 1
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

.
 
GK Chesterton, the last great epic poet to write in English. Read Lepanto to get your blood up, and The Ballad Of The White Horse to understand the nature of Christianity.
 
Francis Thompson’s The Hound of Heaven is a wonderful Christian poem. Christopher Brennan, an Australian poet, a Catholic scholar who died penniless and a drunkard after an academic career was ruined by a sexual affair. His poems of despair and pain are a wonderful analogy to his ruined life.
Under a sky of uncreated mud . .]
Under a sky of uncreated mud
or sunk beneath the accursed streets, my life
is added up of cupboard-musty weeks
and ring’d about with walls of ugliness:
some narrow world of ever-streaming air.

My days of azure have forgotten me.

Nought stirs, in garret-chambers of my brain,
except the squirming brood of miseries
older than memory, while, far out of sight
behind the dun blind of the rain, my dreams
of sun on leaves and waters drip thro’ years
nor stir the slumbers of some sullen well,
beneath whose corpse-fed weeds I too shall sink
Oscar Wilde’s poems and short stories are full of Christian morality. Another great mind, reputation, and life destroyed by public sin. Pain makes the very best poetry.
 
Petaro said:
Francis Thompson’s The Hound of Heaven is a wonderful Christian poem. Christopher Brennan, an Australian poet, a Catholic scholar who died penniless and a drunkard after an academic career was ruined by a sexual affair. His poems of despair and pain are a wonderful analogy to his ruined life.
Under a sky of uncreated mud . .]
Under a sky of uncreated mud
or sunk beneath the accursed streets, my life
is added up of cupboard-musty weeks
and ring’d about with walls of ugliness:
some narrow world of ever-streaming air.

My days of azure have forgotten me.

Nought stirs, in garret-chambers of my brain,
except the squirming brood of miseries
older than memory, while, far out of sight
behind the dun blind of the rain, my dreams
of sun on leaves and waters drip thro’ years
nor stir the slumbers of some sullen well,
beneath whose corpse-fed weeds I too shall sink
Oscar Wilde’s poems and short stories are full of Christian morality. Another great mind, reputation, and life destroyed by public sin. Pain makes the very best poetry.
Click to expand...
👍 Great recommendations!
 
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