Poetry News

Leland Hickman’s Poetry Study List to Harry E. Northup

By Harriet Staff

Here’s a hot tip courtesy of Ron Silliman—a poetry study list drawn up by Leland Hickman and passed off to Harry E. Northup. As Northup explains: “Shortly before Dec. 18, 1971, Lee Hickman told me the following lists of books & poems & prose writings to read to learn to be a good poet. He did this without notes…” The study list is divided into four parts. Here’s a taste from list #2: [Ed. Note: for proper formatting see original post.]

List II
Works that I should be aware of
as a poet

English Metaphysical Poets
John Donne

Elizabethan Lyricists

T.S. Eliot (caution) Lorca

Thom Gunn Three Lives
“Yes Is for a Very Young Man”
Ted Hughes The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Gertrude Stein
Hugh MacDiarmid

W.H. Auden Native Son
Richard Wright
Stephen Spender

Christopher Isherwood

Christopher Fry

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Virginia Woolf

Marianne Moore

Elizabeth Bishop

German language
Rainer Maria Rilke

France
Vallery
Bauderlaire
Mallarme
Verlaine
Saint-John Perse

Modern French Novels
Alain Robbe-Grillet

America
Robert Duncan
Robert Kelly
Wallace Stevens
Theodore Roethke
Robert Lowell
James Dickey
John Berryman

This would make a fantastic syllabus, for sure! Make the jump to read the rest.

Tags: Harry E. Northup, Leland Hickman
Posted in Poetry News on Friday, December 21st, 2012 by Harriet Staff.