Top Five Books of Poetry

When Kirk Ramdath is dead, he hopes people will continue to read his poetry (his first collection, Love In A Handful of Dust, was published this year by Frontenac House). So by hosting Revive, an evening devoted to the reading of dead poets' work, he's really being his own advocate. The Trinidad-born Ramdath gives a list of his favourite works by dead poets. 

Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg

"I rediscovered it after my mid-20s, after being out in the working world and getting some life experience.
I was finally able to really appreciate the power of the words. It's sort of a caption to this struggle of human existence that is not always represented in your day-to-day life. There's a human struggle and a defiance and a declaration about what it means to be a thinking, feeling person in the face of all these technological, social forces that are telling you to be one way."

 T.S. Eliot Selected Poems 

"(The Waste Land, included in the collection) was very much influenced by the great despair the entire world was feeling following the events of World War I. There's a line in The Waste Land where he says, 'I will show you fear in a handful of dust.' It can be compared to Howl, which I think acknowledges the difficulties of life, but refuses to allow despair to reduce human experience to something that is not worthwhile."

Rimbaud Complete by Arthur Rimbaud

"The French symbolist poets (like Rimbaud) had a great influence on writers such as William Carlos Williams and Ernest Hemingway. Most of the important poets and writers of the early 20th century in English were influenced by the French symbolist poets. That's why they all went to Paris and had experiences there. Those poets in turn had a huge effect on the future of poetry and writing and even the current state today. You can say that Rimbaud is one of the most influential poets ever."

Residence on Earth by Pablo Neruda

"This work is sprawling. It took him 20 years to write and he wrote a lot of it while he was in exile. There's a lot of sadness. It's also historically important because one of the sections of the book, called "Spain in My Heart," which was a text that was reproduced during the Spanish Civil War and the soldiers distributed it amongst themselves as something to remind them what they were fighting for."

Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"There's a lot of passages where she plays with paradox and sort of seems to alter the space-time continuum, and, honestly, I don't even know if that concept existed at the time. Not only are they delightful love poems, she really attempts to penetrate the layer that separates reality and fantasy. In doing so, she demonstrates the power of love."