Celestial Reading Made Easier

After a little thought, I’ve decided to go ahead and attempt the reading list. If you care to join me, I’ve pulled together links to purchase or otherwise acquire most of the texts. Some of them are a bit out of print and take some searching, others are beyond acquisition and still others just didn’t make the cut because of my own personal tastes (explained at the bottom of the list).

Be warned. This is a long, long list and I doubt I’ll survive even a third of them, but the trying should be worthwhile. Enjoy.

  1. Sherwood Anderson – Winesburg, Ohio
  2. Antonin Artaud – Anthology
  3. William Blake – Songs of Innocence and Experience
  4. Ray Bremser – Poems of Madness: And Angel
  5. Naked Lunch
  6. Neal Cassady – The First Third
  7. Louis-Ferdinand D. Celine – Journey to the End of the Night
  8. Jean Cocteau – Opium: The Illustrated Diary of His Cure
  9. Gregory Corso – Happy Birthday of Death
  10. Hart Crane – The Complete Poems
  11. Robert Creeley – Collected Poems: 1945-1975
  12. Diane Di Prima – Revolutionary Letters
  13. Fyodor Dostoyevsky – The Idiot
  14. T. S. Eliot – Selected Poems
  15. Lawrence Ferlinghetti – Pictures of the Gone World
  16. Jean Genet – Our Lady of The Flowers
  17. Andre Gide – The Immoralist
  18. Allen Ginsberg – Kaddish and Other Poems, 1958-1960
  19. John Clellon Holmes – Go
  20. Herbert Huncke – The Herbert Huncke Reader
  21. Franz Kafka – Metamorphosis
  22. Bob Kaufman – Solitudes Crowded With Loneliness
  23. John Keats – The Complete Poems
  24. Jack Kerouac – Mexico City Blues
  25. Philip Lamantia – Bed of Sphinxes
  26. Andrew Marvell – The Complete Poems
  27. Michael McClure – Huge Dreams: San Francisco and Beat Poems
  28. Jack Micheline – Sixty-Seven Poems For Downtrodden Saints
  29. John Milton – The Complete Poetry
  30. Frank O’Hara – The Collected Poems
  31. Peter Orlovsky – Beatitude Anthology
  32. Edgar Allan Poe – Poetry and Tales
  33. Ezra Pound – Selected Poems
  34. Marcel Proust – Swann’s Way
  35. Kenneth Rexroth – Selected Poems
  36. Arthur Rimbaud – A Season in Hell and The Drunken Boat
  37. Ed Sanders – Peace Eye
  38. William Shakespeare – (Collected Works)
  39. Percy Bysshe Shelley – The Complete Poems
  40. Christopher Smart – For I Will Consider My Cat, Jeoffrey
  41. Gary Snyder – Turtle Island
  42. Carl Solomon – Mishaps, Perhaps
  43. Henry David Thoreau – Walden
  44. Philip Whalen – Overtime
  45. Walt Whitman – Selected Poems
  46. John Wieners – Selected Poems: 1958-1984
  47. William Carlos Williams – The Collected Poems: 1909-1939
  48. Thomas Wolfe – Look Homeward, Angel
  49. Sir Thomas Wyatt – Collected Poems
  50. William Butler Yeats – The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume I: The Poems

This list is not complete. I will tell you why.

You will note the omission of Emily Dickinson. This is intentional. While I acknowledge her talent, I just can’t read her poetry. Not anymore. The whole of her work was ruined for me many years ago and nothing can save it. Someday, if you want to risk your own Dickinson appreciation, I will be happy to tell you what I know.

Also missing is Herman Melville. For my distaste for Melville, please direct all blame to Dr Cantrell. She attempted to teach American literature at my alma mater. After a semester with her, I can no longer bear more than a few lines from Moby Dick and heaven help anyone who brings me a copy of Billy Budd.

And William Carlos Williams? He almost didn’t make it either. Him and his damned Red Wheelbarrow. But I’m willing to give him one more look before locking him in the celler with Em and Herm.

May 21, 2004 – 9:58 am | By Thomas | Posted in Distractions | Comments (9)
  • pyramid termite

    Emily Dickenson … it wasn’t something Robert Anton Wilson said, was it? It’s still hard not to hear … no, no, I won’t say it.

  • http://www.levity.com/digaland/celestial Steve Silberman

    Williams’ “damned” red wheelbarrow poem makes much more of an impact in its original context as part of the poem-sequence Spring and All, which, read as a whole, still seems very fresh 80 years later. You can’t blame Williams for the hundreds of lazy anthologists who just went on reprinting that one poem-fragment instead of getting deeper into his work. It’s like blaming daVinci for “that gaddamned Mona Lisa.”

    And Melville is just amazing.

  • http://www.levity.com/digaland/celestial Steve Silberman

    I’m glad you liked the Celestial Homework site, by the way [grin].

  • http://www.levity.com/digaland/celestial Steve Silberman

    I can’t help but notice, though, that all your links are Amazon-affiliate links to you, instantly turning my non-commercial site into a commercial one for your benefit.

    Just a thought.

  • http://www.levity.com/digaland/celestial Steve Silberman

    Sorry, that was an overstatement. But are those affiliate links?

  • http://www.levity.com/digaland/celestial Steve Silberman

    Eh, never mind, sorry, I was in a bad mood. I really do appreciate the link and your enthuasiasm.

  • http://www.grabbingsand.org Thomas

    No worries, Steve. And thank you.

    Yes, those are affiliate links, I have to admit. I weighed whether or not to make them so, but decided in the end to go ahead. To be honest, I’ve never made more than a dollar with my rarely used affiliation, thinking of it less as a profitable venture and more as an optimistic attempt to make my blog earn some of its keep.

    If the affiliate links offend, I have no qualms about removing them. Just say the word.

  • Nikki

    I’m afraid I won’t be joining you. My geekified reading goes the other direction. I should make a medieval must-read list.

  • http://www.levity.com/digaland/celestial Steve Silberman

    It’s OK Thomas, no worries, and thanks again for the link!