Poetry for Kindle?

I would like to download some poetry but the customer reviews say that poems are not formatted correctly and read as a book does. Is this correct?

I've bought this: The Seashell Anthology of Great Poetry

Bargin as less than a fiver - a huge collection of poetry, although slightly slanted towards American poets. But still well worth it.

Formatting is fine.

James
Feed the Enemy

A Slender Volume of Poetry by Rebecca Gray
ECSTATIC BEAT

You could give these a go. I liked them both quite a bit, and they're nearly mirror images of each other from a gender standpoint. The latter one is definitely more for men- there's a almost a crime fiction aspect to some of the poems.

The first one's for the ladies. Grown-up ones at least. It's got some funny bits, but also some very sad and contemplative poems.

Also, The Haiku Diary by Neil Schiller (who lurks around here sometimes) is a series of haiku, well formatted, worth getting. I've put a review of it up if you want to know more...

James
Feed the Enemy

DrBookworm, I have had this problem, but so far only with the freebies on this site, and not all of those I should point out. Try a sample before you buy any and see if they look alright, if it does the whole book should be ok. It is really those from the kindle free classics store that you have to keep an eye on.

I have been frustrated while trying to format a small poetry collection on Kindle. With the larger text sizes no poem will work. I am sure this will be fixed in time. What amazed me was just how many classic collections are available for free. It is excellent for the reader. And now for the shameless plug. Quirky English and exceedingly slim poetry collection. Still unread and un-reviewed. Seeks reader, must like the occasional poem, have a sense of humour. Seven day money back guarantee.
It is Called Geek Tragedy by David Rudd Mitchell
Geek Tragedy

I'm sure that I noticed some poetry in the list of freebies that Tim has posted - there's so many of them though that I can't remember the title....

Edit: glanced through list and recognised one of the poetry books Brain Train to Insane - not my sort of thing though so can't comment on it. If I find the other title that I'd noticed, I'll add that one later. :0)

Agree with James, Haiku Diary is super
Michele Brenton's
Alternative Poetry Books - Pink edition
Alternative Poetry Books - Yellow edition
are fantastic

[Deleted by the author on 25 Jun 2011 18:01:35 BDT]

In two threads, no less! Sheesh!

@DrBookworm

Formatting in ebooks is generally good, but occasionally you'll find one that isn't. The best way to find out if an ebook is okay is to download a sample first.

You might find the following search page useful:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/browse.html/ref=sv_b_0/026-2106387-2002057?ie=UTF8&node=125552011

Change "Subject" to Poetry, Drama and Criticism, "Format" to Kindle Books, and then filter (in the first box) by putting in something like the following:

-german, -shakespeare, -criticism, -drama,

You can add other filters by putting a minus in front of the appropriate word as I've shown above. You can sort by relevance, or price etc., but I suggest relevance initially. How relevant the results are will depend on what filters you use, so it will be a learning curve.

Poetry books were pretty badly formatted to start with, but I notice they seem to be improving as time goes on.

[Deleted by the author on 25 Jun 2011 18:01:53 BDT]

Just spotted your lovely post about my poetry books! :) Thank you so much Dan. I think the care my publishers took with the formatting (including some concrete poetry which is notoriously difficult to reproduce on an e-reader) may have contributed to them being ranked as number 1 and number 5 for the best selling English language poetry anthologies with the best average customer approval ratings on UK Amazon Kindle - with Alternative Poetry Books - Yellow edition at number one and Alternative Poetry Books - Pink edition at number five :)

Two Years

A dry patch of dirt,
A tear falls,
No words are spoken.

The hand wavers,
The lips quiver,
A memory flashes,
She smiles back?

A dance, a quiet walk,
Snowflakes fall,
A deep kiss is remembered.

A dinner for two,
A party of four,
A joining of families.

A disturbing mri,
The shine leaves the eyes,
The battle is over.

Another tear,
Another yellow rose,
Another passing memory.

Two years have passed.

Rhyme and Reason
Try this collection

Geek Tragedy It is free today and tomorrow.

Some of the freebies are badly formatted, especially the poetry in the free classics, but it's worth trying samplers, and by no means is all the poetry on Kindle hopeless.

I think that any poetry runs a risk of appearing badly formatted, especially when the 'new' writers, who have no professional help, are creating works.

Yes it can sometimes be annoying, but contemporary poetry is important and we need to help the new authors.

I'd recommend 'Youthful Eyes' by William Wade. His collection has a hint of genius, and despite having one or two long poems (The Soldier's War for example) the rest are succinct, clever, witty and brilliant. And some of them are just plain funny!

I'd recommend you give it a try!

A lot of those comments refer to a previous version of kindle. There has been an update that has helped with this, and more and more video tutorials so the formatting is better and it is less of an issue as writers are gaining some knowledge of how to convert to html properly.

Re poetry for the Kindle

Having performed some research, I would suggest that the Kindle is not necessarily designed for the form.

The reason for this is that poetry is not flowing text, but does rely on the actual position of some text elements in relation to others.

Since position of text is important, perhaps using embedded codes will only approximate to the wishes of the author.

Also it is questionable as to whether poetry needs to be searchable text.

The author of the poem needs the text to be seen in an exact way, no changes, and that may include font.

On this basis, would it make sense for poetry to be uploaded as graphic images, rigid, unchangeable, composed exactly the way the poet wants?

I would be interested in comments on this modest proposal.