Prose works by poets

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51d6UInWOWL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

^haven't had a chance to read yet: but includes diaries, letters, reminiscences of fellow poets, her writings on pushkin (100+ pages in all), criticism, etc.

Excellent - not mad about Akhmatova's poetry but I'll keep an eye out for this.

Chased down the Celan vol I mentioned in my last update. Its good, mostly enigmatic things on the page to a couple of more 'restrained' speeches when accepting prizes. The volume collecting Celan's correspondence with Bachmann is something of a classic too (on Seagull books). I gave Malina a re-read this year too.

I've also read lots of Plath's prose and poems: The Bell Jar is a nice enough debut, but Letters Home (her correspondence with her mother) is where I find the heart breaking. The strangeness of shape isn't there so much and that's what prompted this thread but often a poet does write like a novelist, although we will never know how Plath would have developed.

Earlier this year NYRB put out a re-issue of Tsvetaeva's Earthy Signs, which is mostly great: https://www.nyrb.com/products/earthly-signs?variant=41949729159

This is an edition of Vallejo's writings in English. Maybe one day: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Selected-Writings-Vallejo-Wesleyan-Poetry/dp/0819574848

Some good stuff here: novels written by poets Maybe Bukowski's collected stories too? Not that familiar with his poetry or prose (although Lester Bangs got him to write a shrewd take on a Stones concert for Creem).

Not only novels on that thread. also for inst Lowell's plays. I've got Larkin's A Girl In Winter but haven't read it---good?

Heinrich Heine - Travel Pictures
Bei Dao - City Gate, Open Up

Back to reading prose by poets. The Heine is great. Its meant to be an account of journeys around mountains but the poet -- who is so often meant to be focused on a thing, if I were to make this huge assumption -- is relishing the space to not be a poet, to not focus, to let fly. Yet its just about anchored on a concrete reality. Little imagination, just these thought flights.

That said the Dao is structured with chapters titles "Smells", "Sounds"...which allows for something more focused. Really devouring this one.

"Donne's sermons are the only religious prose I really like."

I reread the above and actually there is a sermon by Manley Hopkins that is a really intense bit of writing. The love for God has led to powerful writing and I quite like to explore it. I would do a thread on it if I assemble enough material.

A couple of weeks ago I came across talk of these Baroque Sermona from Padre Antonio Vieira, who is someone Pessoa talked about re-reading in The Book of Disquiet.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ant%C3%B3nio-Vieira-M%C3%B3nica-Leal-Silva-ebook/dp/B079Z9DV5F/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=3BV8ZB3NWHFZT&keywords=antonio+vieira+sermons+english&qid=1669893057&s=books&sprefix=antonio+vieira+sermons+english%2Caps%2C106&sr=1-1