Announcing The Vintage Poetry Collection

Welcome to the initial publication of The Vintage Poetry Collection. This is intended to be an exploration of poetry that has gone before.

The poetry available here is freely available elsewhere so the content is not unique. So why am I working on this site? I have several ideas for this project, but the initial goal is just to present in a nice, readable way that poetry that has gone before us.

I am not some strict traditionalist that only finds the old valuable. Rather I am one that wants to look for the value of every word and every line whether it was written yesterday or two hundred years ago. Or two thousand years. A lot of poetry that was written 100 to 200 years ago tends to slowly fade away from the general consciousness. It is as if as it becomes more freely available, the less treasured it seems to be. I am not saying we are missing out on some great poetry. I am sure as I continue my exploration some will be good, some will be just ok, some will be problematic, and there may be some great gems.

The first two poetry books being presented (from Longfellow and Masters) may be seen as significant works of the cannon that are unlikely to be overlooked. They are just the starting point and the exploration is intended to be as comprehensive and as diverse as possible. The only limitation at the moment is to works that re available in the public domain and available in English (either as the original language or as an English translation available in the public domain). The English limitation is simply because English is currently the only language I any skills with which to work on a project like this. At some point in the future I would be interested in expanding beyond, but in reality I will have my hands full as it is for some time to come.

Thank you for exploring with me. Hopefully it will have value to others than just myself, but if not, I will still enjoy working on it.