I fear I have not posted anything in quite some time; the reason for this is that I have been busy of late, and have not made much progress in the books that I am reading. However, I thought that it was high time I posted something, so I shall give a brief review of some of the poetry of Romantic poet Robert Burns.
I'm not very fond of poetry; some of it is tolerable, but in most cases I'd much rather have a good novel than the best poem ever written. I do enjoy "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", Dante's "Inferno"(translation by Robert Pinsky), and the Tolkien translations of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and "Sir Orfeo" (all of which are stories, and good ones, which doubtless has something to do with my enjoyment of them), as well as most of the alliterative verse that I have seen, but most other poetry is frankly not my cup of tea. However, when I first came across some the poetry of Robert Burns, I found myself, quite to my surprise, enjoying it immensely.
The vast majority of Burns' poems are written in the Scottish Dialect, as he called it. It is rather hard to understand, and I highly recommend finding an edition of his poetry that includes a glossary if you intend to read much of it. Yet it has a certain kind of simple, quaint, charming beauty to it; it seems to be a remnant of a forgotten time. Indeed, at times it seems almost to be another language, not unlike English, but certainly not the same language that most of us speak on a day-to-day basis.
Burns also wrote most of his poems using traditional rhyming. I usually tire easily of this kind of rhyme in poetry (excepting, of course, poetry written for children), but in Burns' work it fits perfectly. Together with the Scottish dialect that is used, it gives the poetry a certain charm and appeal.
In conclusion, I have very much enjoyed all of the Robert Burns poetry that I have read so far, and I recommend highly. Burns is a highly versatile poet, and he is able to lend to all his poetry the very essence of Scotland and all its traditions and charms; every poem has this feel, whether it be a letter, a song, a lament, an epitaph, or an Address to a Haggis.
