Most poetry I can think of is sadly Spanish Civil War era poetry (Machado, Miguel Hernandez), which is really good but also I am not sure if there's any good translations around. William Blake may be interesting to read if only a little bit (along with looking at his art), given how deeply influential he would become for the Romantic movement. I find him a bit overbearing at times, but it's at least worth a look just to get a "oh, so work X got things from here".
I've not been reading much when it comes to fiction books, I've been mostly deepening my knowledge in printmaking and carving. It's an interesting journey so far because these are not books I just read and that's it. I read, do some work, go back to the books to make sure that I got things right, back to work, back to books to double check something, back to work...
I know Amos asked me a while ago which one I preferred between Boswell's and Carol's books about woodblock printing. And I am still unsure. Japanese Woodcut has the better quality and all the historical context and different art movements, along with going all the way to tell you what are the actual dyes that were used for old woodblock prints in case you want to replicate. But the actual act of cutting the block, and more importantly, the key block are better explained in Boswell's book. To make matters worse, "Mokuhanga Fundamentals" introduces a different way to do the cutting (used by the Sosaku Hanga art movement) that's not explained in the other two.
I would say for "I only want to get started" scenarios, Laura Boswell's book may be the better one, given she also has a youtube channel where she explains the steps in there too and you can see them in action.
I've been also reading a lot of comics lately, a lot of small indie stuff I got from Shortbox (which used to be a curated periodical box) and things I've gotten from small fairs. It's a lot to just put here without making this post even longer, but I guess I could just post here from time to time when one catches my eye.
Speaking of catching my eye, today out of a whim I reread "Dance of the Gull Catchers" which is the second epilogue of
"From Hell" (you know, the Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's Jack the Ripper comic with the dogshit movie), and it's still my favorite part of the entire comic. It starts as a historical recollection of every Jack the Ripper expert and theory, but as it goes it becomes more clear that Moore is talking about obsession. About the desire to want to fill any unknown, to keep reading theories and threads and posts to get as many trivia and details as possible, never getting outside the circles we put ourselves in. Pretty good, if you ask me!
