Poet Help...

[Myles]

I'm currently studying AS English Lit and if I managed to pass my exam I'll be studying A2 English Lit in September. We're given the choice to study any two books and a poet that we wish, as long as they're similar in a way, for a 3000 word essay due for Christmas. I was considering reading 1984 and Catch 22 over the course of the summer, with my coursework title being along the line of "How Are Individuals Against the Government Portrayed in These Texts". Now all I need is a good poet which has a good number of poems dedicated to this. My teacher suggested Sylvia Plath but I was hoping if there was another as I don't personally feel Plath is right for me.

[embonpoint]

Um, I really wouldn't recommend Sylvia Plath for that subject; I've studied her this year for A2 English lit and lang, and yeeeaahh, I've got absolutely no 'individual against the government' from her. She deals a lot with individual identity, but I don't know where the government would come in (but maybe someone who knows her work better would disagree).

As for another suggestion, I'm afraid I don't have one. :/

[Fuck Yeah Dion]

Robert Lowell and Allen Ginsberg. Their works may not always deal directly with the government though.

Edit: Go outside the box. I'm fairly sure Che Guevara was a poet. Also, I'm having real trouble remembering this guy's name, but there was a poet who wrote against the Cuban government who died of AIDS. He might be good.

[onlyaworkingtitle]

Yeats, maybe? His "Easter, 1916" is kind of relevant. As the Encyclopedia Brittanica says:

It commemorates the martyrs of the Easter Rising, an insurrection against the British government in Ireland in 1916, which resulted in the execution of several Irish nationalists whom Yeats knew personally.

The poem examines the nature of heroism and its incongruity with everyday life. Although Yeats questions the fanaticism of the rebels and the necessity of their actions, he admires their steadfast determination. He reluctantly celebrates their martyrdom with the repeated line “A terrible beauty is born.”

[djcarter]

Jun 15, 2011 16:46:38 GMT -5 Fuck Yeah Dion said:

Also, I'm having real trouble remembering this guy's name, but there was a poet who wrote against the Cuban government who died of AIDS. He might be good.

This was Renaldo Arenas, I think. I've never seen any of his poems online, only in an anthology we studied in school.

Anna Akhmatova wrote about Stalin's government, which probably ties in quite nicely with 1984, but again, I've only ever seen her work in the aforementioned anthology, I'm not sure how available it is.

[andreaisabbbw]

Pablo Neruda. My favorite political poem of his is "United Fruit Co."

Here's a link: www.abm-enterprises.net/unitedfruit.html

He has a lot of poems like this and they're fairly easy to find on the web.

[Pencils]

VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE! She was a turn of the century feminist/anarchist, and a lot of her poetry (as well as her essays) are perfect for this.