First of all, I want to say sorry to all participants of this long quiet challenge. As you can see from the number of posts I could manage to write lately, I've been occupied with my new job(s). It's crazy. Before I realised what happened, it's December already and I haven't made any wrap-up post for this challenge.
It has been a great challenge for me, greater than what I have thought before. I thought Narrative poems would be like any other book and I would be able to read them easily but I was wrong. From the number of participants and the poems they managed to read, I have a feeling that you guys feel the same too.
"How was the challenge feel like? Did you enjoy it? Is it too much for you? What's so amazing/boring with narrative poems?" I hope you will gladly share your opinions in your wrap-up post.
I managed to read and to finish Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, which is brilliant and sweet. I managed to finished the first book of Spenser's Faerie Qveene, and I almost finished Shakespeare's Lucrece. Going through pages and pages of Spenser was (I must admit) tedious. The language is beautiful, but I had to force myself through each stanza, partly because the spelling had not been modernized. I don't give up. I'm going to give it another go next year. Shakespeare is better. (I know this is a biased view.) Lucrece is beautiful. I'm going to finish it next year, I hope, and I will write about how it so subtly talks about what happened between Lucrece and the rapist (wait, I don't remember his name).
I generally love narrative poems. It's just Spenser's I find hard to deal with. I still have Eugene Onegin in my list and several other I haven't put in it. I don't think I'm going to host another NPRC next year. Maybe the year after, I still don't know, but I will certainly host something for tribute to Poe maybe in October. Let's see.
How was the challenge for you?
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I could only manage to read two of three narrative poems I've expected: Dante's Inferno adn Purgatorio. I failed with Paradiso, as I couldn't understand it from the beginning. I think Paradiso is much too teological for me. While I quite enjoyed Infero (it's really interesting), I was a bit struugling with Purgatorio, but could get through it anyway by reading analysises on the internet.
ReplyDeleteThanks for hosting this challenge, Listra, or otherwise I would not have read any narrative poem in my life! But still, I prefer plays from poem, and novel much more from either. :)
I loved it, and I'm most grateful to you for hosting it.
ReplyDeleteI managed The Canterbury Tales, Paradise Lost and Found, The Faerie Queene, and Beowulf.
That's very amazing. I read your post on Faerie Queene and thought, "Goodness, how did you do that?" Thanks for participating. :D
ReplyDeleteI mostly failed at reading long narrative poems, but I did read short ones! I read "Besed," by Solzhenitsyn, three story-poems from the Ingoldsby Legend, and Tolkien's "Fall of Arthur," which inspired my Arthurian Lit challenge for 2014, so you had a hand in that. :) Thank you for doing this, Listra!
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