Explaining the Explanation

I chose the entries in my Top Ten the following way:

-- Each one had to be a book-length poem, and complete. So, The Canterbury Tales and Don Juan, for instance, were out. Each one could be a book of shorter poems in series, though. So, Shake-speare's Sonnets and Idylls of the King were in.

-- Each one had to be a significant part of the development of the English long-poem, but they could stand up as individual works, also.

-- Each one had to have some kind of link, thematically. Idylls matches up with Paradise Lost pretty well in that area. Others seem like more of a stretch. I'll have more to say about this later.

-- And each is a book you could finish with a feeling of satisfaction, or at least accomplishment. More to say about that later, too.

I have asterisked two poems, because I have not read them all the way through or I "read at" them piecemeal so long ago I need to do a more thorough job now. So, I may end up being wrong about those entries, and they may change.

The Where of Why

In "The Art of Definition," I compared writing metrical lyric poems to sculpture. The books in The Top Ten list for "The Instauration" (a word that refers to revival) are more like carpentry or stonemasonry -- they are built, rather than composed.

They are built to do something, to take you somewhere, to provide you with some type of means.

And they take more books to make. We'll delve into that some here, as well.

Til Next Time ... .

And So It Begins (Again)

What is The Top Ten (in the post below)? Is it about some Greatest Books That Must Be Read? Or some How to Read syllabus? Some Golden Treasury?

No to all. I picked the books on this list for a pretty specific purpose, which I've hinted at in the title to this series (For newcomers, this Blogger account was formerly titled "The Art of Definition," and it was a collection of posts about my approach toward writing traditional metrical poetry.).

I suppose this list might be thought of as a set of cultural benchmarks, but, really, I want it to be something more. I'd rather think of it as a process of me suggesting things and you deciding to take me up on all, some, or none of them, and then us seeing what results.

I'm just an instigator, but I hope to be one in a good sense of the term.

Next time.

Note: I used Jack Kerouac's French first name in the list for a particular reason (other than me sounding pompous -- isn't "The Instauration" pompous enough?), one that I hope to get into soon. Also, the name I've used for Shakespeare's sonnets is, according to one source, the actual title of the first edition.

The Top Ten

Troilus and Criseyde by Geoffrey Chaucer

Shake-speares Sonnets by William Shakespeare (Bray, ed.)

Paradise Lost by John Milton

The Satires by Juvenal (Dryden, ed. and trans.)

The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope

Idylls of the King by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

La Vita Nuova by Dante Alighieri (Rossetti, trans.)

*The Ring and the Book by Robert Browning

Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot

Mexico City Blues by Jean-Louis Kerouac

I'll have more to say about this list, what it represents and what my reasons are for choosing these particular items, in upcoming posts.

We're embarking on a new adventure, and I hope you'll stay tuned.

Cheers!