Poems of Rome #

Karl Kirchwey (Editor) #

December 26, 2021

3/5

This’ll be the first ever full book of poetry I’ve read, and the first time I’ve really considered the poetry I’m reading since high school English. Sure, I have read a fair bit of poetry since then, but I haven’t really taken the time to analyze it like I used to.

Overall, this book was enjoyable. There were certainly poems I enjoyed, and the book did introduce me to Rainer Maria Rilke’s work, which I will certainly have to read more in the future, but there were also poems I just read for the sake of completion. While poems are certainly quite subjective, and I understand that my tastes may not match everyone else’s, I am still not a fan of having to churn through writing. Still though, of the poems I enjoyed, they were fantastically descriptive and lovely to read. I imagine that on a second read through of this book, I will feel more kindly to it (this isn’t to say that I hate it now - I don’t, I did enjoy it).

On the plus side, this is a book of poems, each one isn’t related to the other like a story (of course), so you can skip the one’s you do not like. You can read it at your leisure or at a very slow pace, even more so than with other books.

I imagine that the best case reading scenario of this book would be to read it while on vacation in Rome. I googled many of the locations listed so I could understand what they looked like as I read it, but I imagine that reading each poem in their listed location would be far more gratifying than reading it in bed, like I did.

I would recommend this to anyone who likes Rome (or is currently in Rome, be it living there or just visiting), maybe they have never been or perhaps they just want to visit it on a night in at home, or to anybody who is interested in Roman history, and would like to go more into depth in the literary history of it.