Are there any writers or poets you feel are under-rated?

Me.

Alice Hoffman.

I think most people think of her as an author that just makes book after book of popular fiction.

She's actually a very talented writer. Her book Practical Magic makes me dream in poems.

Cannot think of any right now

Hey me too. Let's form a self-congratulatory group where we all pat each other on the back and over-rate each other.

William Blake doesn't get the attention he deserves, I think. He enjoyed a spate of popularity in the 60s, largely because of his psychedelic imagery. Most modern readers dismiss him as a madman, and he was, to be sure. One of his most powerful pieces is this one, found near the beginning of Songs of Experience:

The Clod and the Pebble

Love seeketh not Itself to please,
Nor for Itself hath any care
But for Another gives its ease
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair

So sang a little clod of clay,
Trodden with the cattle's feet.
But a pebble of the brook
Warbled out these metres meet;

Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind Another to its delight,
Joys in Another's loss of ease
And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite.

This piece to me forms a perfect bridge from the kind of simpering, simplistic sappiness of Songs of Innocence to the darker, more visceral rhythms and images of Songs of Experience. Despite his madness, or perhaps, because of it, Blake was able not only to see but also distill into simple, clear yet powerful language the essential contradictions in the human soul that permits humanity to produce an Adolf Hitler and an Albert Schweitzer, a Josef Stalin and a Mohandas Ghandi, a Susan Smith and a Mother Theresa.

I love it.

I think most of the writers I like fall into this category. 'Cept for J.K. Rowling.

Leonard Cohen doesn't get the recognition he deserves for his novels, which really are quite innovative. The elitists want to keep Beckett for themselves, which is pissing annoying. George Herbert was seriously ace, but people always wank over Donne. Which, credit and whatnot, but really, there's more to the metaphysical poets than stiff twin compasses. Really, I want people to get over samey-postmodernism and get back to its roots

None that spring to mind.

Shakespear

I can think of many more who are overrated.

Most of the classical authors.

I'd have an easier time listing authors I feel are overrated.

> I can think of many more who are overrated.

The over-rated one that springs to my mind immediately is e.e. cummings. The first time I was exposed to him in English Lit in High School, all I could think was if I handed in an assignment like this, I would get an F. I've read more of e.e. cummings than I could really stand, and I can't remember a single one of his "poems". A very forgettable poet for me.

I'll have to look into her sometime.

Now there's all this pressure!

If you are going to do it... do it with Practical Magic.

I like e.e. cummings, but I can see how he's really not for everyone. One of the more recent books I thought was completely overrated was The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini. I also think Nicholas Sparks writes complete crap, although I don't know how much he's considered to be good, versus just popular. Also Robert Heinlein and Jane Austen.

> Now there's all this pressure!
>

Pressure?? What pressure?

Don't know any anyhow. Poetry is boring.

> Also Robert Heinlein and Jane Austen.

Robert Heinlein????
Lady, them's fightin' words....

I thought Stranger in a Strange Land was terrible.

> I thought Stranger in a Strange Land was terrible.

Well, it was originally published in 1960, I believe. Interestingly enough, it was regarded as something of a "prophetic" work by Timothy Leary and his group of acidheads in the League for Spiritual Development (LSD, pun intended).

Later in the 60s, some entrepeneur applied for a patent on the waterbed. He was denied a patent because the patent office found the idea was already in the public domain, having been fully described in Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" and other works. The first company to commercially manufacture and sell waterbeds in the US was called Sharewater, Inc. If you've read "Stranger", you know where the name came from.

Anyway, for the time the novel was published, it was pretty radical. You may not fully realize that, having been born over a decade later, so it probably didn't have the impact on you that it had on the previous generation or two.

Not that I can think of, but I do feel many authors are overrated.

No, I understand just how radical it was. I still thought it was terrible.

Yeah Myself..

I think John Ciardi is a brilliant poet.