Your Daily Penguin: Byron's Poetry!

[@ThatReadingGuy28]

In my Romantic Literature class, we spent two weeks on Byron's poetry. My Professor loves his work.

[@Gagging4Lit]

Lol I'm at uni and though I didn't do a Romantic module I sat in on the lectures from time to time. I don't remember anyone being that adverse to Byron. People found him interesting from what I remember. But he doesn't get looked at anywhere near as much as he should be. I was acquainted with Byron in secondary school...Do you read much contemporary poetry lol?

[@pennygraham3767]

This the saddest thing I have ever heard. Thank heavens I’m away from all that. Give me Byron any day. His life and his poetry. I had forgotten the ghost and mrs Muir. That is fantastic. Thanks!

[@garbagerat4700]

Hi, does anyone know of any good Byron biographies?

[@JerSingsandReads]

How do you really feel, Steve? 😂 I love your rants. I will definitely read some Byron soon. Not just because you recommend him, but just to spite 2020!

[@anthonysuppa1118]

Steve is extra rant-y today!

[@noddingpolitely8485]

Pretty sure Byron wrote the Vision of Judgment because Southey was gatekeeping "good poetry". Makes this video kind of ironic and its own kind of "petty sphere" (Byron's words, not mine). Great that people appreciate the timeless genius though and I love your enthusiasm... I just think a less extreme version of events is that people are working to expand the canon to appreciate overlooked writers and events, not to deconstruct it. Appreciating that there is still so much more for us to learn about the period shouldn't be outrageous or scary. It's like every new voice we uncover is like an undiscovered artifact. It should be exciting!

[@Tolstoy111]

Nobody is opposed to discovering great work we didn’t know about. But the elevation of mediocrities because they fit identity categories is something else.

[@michaelfeeney6108]

I have to take exception to this mysterious ‘East’ Philadelphia you referenced. As a resident of Northeast Philadelphia for the first two decades of life, East Philadelphia is the Delaware River and maaaaybe parts of New Jersey!

[@Tolstoy111]

Percy Shelley is also severely on the outs because of how he treated Mary.

[@Nounboy1066]

When I majored in English and Philosophy for my BA, we never studied Byron nor Shelley. At the time I thought it was due to lack of time - In only 12 months( the Second year of my degree), we had to read Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth and Keats ( and read a truck load of novels - Dickens, Austen, Eliot, Hardy, etc). The course still taught the canon - thank God! - and deconstruction and French semiotics had not yet gutted the humanities. But I can see why Byron and Shelley would be frowned upon - Byron is unfashionable because of sexual politics, and Shelley because he was a rambling and woolly thinker. But both were supremely talented.

[@gaildoughty6799]

I’m saddened (yet again in this dreadful, dreadful year) that Byron and Shelley aren’t studied in today’s classrooms. What a loss in general, and what a shameful disservice to the students.

[@vilstef6988]

Great description on why modern poetry is really dead, and certainly not funny. If it's about the 'you' of the poet, they are certainly dull, monotone reading gasbags.

[@czgibson3086]

Try Brian Bilston.