Classic Poets To Read

I have been wanting to read some classics again. I remember while in school I would find a list of classic books and read them all. Perfect timing found me doing a crossword puzzle of classic poets. So now I have a list of poets to read. Some I know well, but some I don't know at all. I love reading lists like this. Here it is!

• Dante Alighieri
• William Blake
• William Cullen Bryant
• Robert Burns
• Geoffrey Chaucer
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• e.e. Cummings
• Emily Dickinson
• John Donne
• T.S. Eliot
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Robert Frost
• Kahlil Gibran
• Johann von Goethe
• Thomas Hardy
• Seamus Heaney
• Langston Hughes
• Victor Hugo
• John Keats
• Rudyard Kipling
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• Christopher Marlowe
• A.A. Milne
• John Milton
• Thomas Moore
• Pablo Neruda
• Boris Pasternak
• Charles Perrault
• Sylvia Plath
• Edgar Allan Poe
• Ezra Pound
• Alexander Pushkin
• Christina Rossetti
• Carl Sandburg
• George Santayana
• Johann Schiller
• William Shakespeare
• Percy Bysshe Shelley
• Edmund Spenser
• Rabindranath Tagore
• Dylan Thomas
• John Updike
• Phillis Wheatley
• Walt Whitman
• Oscar Wilde
• William Wordsworth
• William Butler Yeats

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray

"I will tell you the story of how we found ourselves in a realm where dreams are formed, destiny is chosen, and magic is as real as a hand print in the snow."

"There are no safe choices. Only other choices."

"Because you don't notice the light without a bit of shadow. Everything has both dark and light. You have to play with it till you get it exactly right."

I run after her, not really giving chase. I'm running because I can, because I must. Because I want to see how far I can go before I have to stop."

"In every end, there is also a beginning."

"Felicity ignores us. She walks out to them, an apparition in white and blue velvet, her head held high as they stare in awe at her, the goddess. I don't know yet what power feels like. But his is surely what it looks like, and I think I'm beginning to understand why those ancient women had to hide in caves. Why our parents and suitors want us to behave properly and predictably. It's not that they want to protect us; it's that they fear us."

"There's a lot about discovering who you are and how difficult that is. And it never stops."

"No one asks how or what I am doing. They could not care less. We're all looking glasses, we girls, existing only to reflect their images back to them as they'd like to be seen. Hollow vessels of girls to be rinsed of our own ambitions, wants, and opinions, just waiting to be filled with the cool, tepid water of gracious compliance. A fissure forms in the vessel. I'm cracking open."

"What happens if your choice is misguided?"
"You must try to correct it."
"But what if it is too late? What if you can't?"
"Then you must find a way to live with it."

"We can't live in the light all of the time. You have to take whatever light you can hold into the dark with you."

"But forgiveness...I'll hold on to that fragile slice of hope and keep it close, remembering that in each of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain, choice and regret, cruelty and sacrifice. We're each of us our own chiaroscuro, our own bit of illusion fighting to emerge into something solid, something real. We've got to forgive ourselves that. I must remember to forgive myself. Because there's an awful lot of gray to work with. No one can live in the light all the time."

"I changed the world; the world changed me. Everything you do comes back to you. When you affect a situation, you are also affected."

"May I suggest that you all read? And often. Believe me, it's nice to have something to talk about other than the weather and the Queen's health. Your mind is not a cage. It's a garden. And it requires cultivating."

"Women who have power are always feared."

"I can see his pain, see it in the way he runs his fingers through his hair, over and over, and I understand what it costs him to hide it all."

"And now I understand that truth casts a spell of its own, one I'm not sure of how to hold on to, though I'm desperate to try."

"We are all unkind from time to time. We all do things we desperately wish we could undo. Those regrets just become part of who we are, along with everything else. To spend time trying to change that, well, it's like chasing clouds."

"I've heard it said that God is in the details. It's the same with the truth. Leave out the details, the crucial heart, and you can damn someone with the bare bones of it."

"You can never really know someone completely. That's why it's the most terrifying thing in the world, really - taking someone on faith, hoping they'll take you on faith too. It's such a precarious balance, it's a wonder we do it at all."

"Things aren't good or bad in and of themselves. It's what we do with them that makes them so."

"One can never go back. One always has to move forward."

"Reality is a state of mind. To the banker, the money in his ledger book is all very real, though he doesn't actually see it or touch it. But to the Brahma, it simply doesn't exist the way the air and the earth, pain and loss do. To him, the banker's reality is folly. To the banker, the Brahma's ideas are as inconsequential as dust."

"People see what they want to see when they need to."

"It's strange how deliberate people are after a death. All the indecision suddenly vanishes into clear, defined moments -- changing the linens, choosing a dress or a hymn, the washing up, the muttering of prayers. All the small, simple, conscious acts of living a sudden defense against the dying we do every day."

"There's no time to be modest. Reason will not work here. Without warning, I kiss Kartik. His lips, pressed against mine, are a surprise. They are warm, light as breath, firm as the give of a peach against my mouth. A scent like scorched cinnamon hangs in the air, but I'm not falling into any vision. It's his smell in me. A smell that makes my stomach drop through my feet. A smell that pushes all thought out of my head and replaces it with an overpowering hunger for more."

"They see her differently now, as somebody. And isn't that what everyone wants? To be seen?"

"We're never prepared for how much we love our children, for how much we wish we could protect them by being perfect."

City of Fallen Angels

By Cassandra Clare

I could not put this book down. "City of Fallen Angels" is the fourth book in "The Mortal Instruments" series. Clare creates a unique and intriguing world full of Shadowhunters, vampires and werewolves. The entire series gripped my attention. All four books are easy to read, light, fun, adventurous and leaves you hanging just enough to not ever want to put it down.

It is hard to talk about a book within a series because even to explain the plot points of the fourth book would be to give a away a big mystery surrounding the first three. But I can say that Clare does not disappoint in developing the characters or continuing her story. Even though I hadn't read the first three books for about a year, I was immediately drawn back into the characters and story like I had just finished them.

One thing I can say about "City of Fallen Angels" is that there is very little lull, it is plot point on top of plot point until it is a swirling vortex of excitement that I think about even now that I have finished the book. I didn't want to stop reading and I still want more, I can't wait to read her next novel in the series, "City of Lost Souls."

There is a power of self that Clare explores in her novels. These characters are teenagers still discovering themselves and their relationships with others romantically and as friendship. The love expressed in "City of fallen angels" is beautiful and pure. I love Clare's writing style as each adventure brings them closer together with even a little more knowledge about themselves.

This is a wonderful story that I would recommend to any supernatural lover. I give "City of Fallen Angels" five out of five stars for a creative and compelling adventure.

A Dance with Dragons

By George R.R. Martin

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If you are reading Martin's "A Dance with Dragons," then you are most likely familiar with his writing style from the previous novels in the "Song of Ice and Fire" series. In one world: Amazing!

Martin has a way of storytelling that brings his magical world to life. No character is sacred no matter how big or small. The good people sometimes do bad things and the bad people sometimes do good things. Martin's world is the most intriguing of all the fantasy stories out there because the good guys don't always win, so you are constantly on the edge of your seat.

I enjoy fantasy, but no other author has gripped me like Martin. I usually get lost in the journey, but Martin weaves a complex story with lots of action that keeps me always wanting more.

"A Dance with Dragons" is the much anticipated fifth installment of the "Song of Ice and Fire" series. There is so much that happens it is hard to talk of any of it without giving something fantastic away.

There is so much to say about this novel and Martin's world, but you have to read the books to understand. I give "A Dance with Dragons" five out of five stars, it is fantastic. If you enjoy a quest, kings, queens, love, betrayal, magic and adventure--you will hands down love Martin's books.