Who is your favorite poet?
Mine is Edgar Allan Poe, but I also like Baudelaire very much. And many other poets, of course (like Kavvadias, Cavafy, Elytis, and many others).
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My all time favorite is Walt Whitman, but I also enjoy William Blake, William Wordsworth, Alfred Lord Tennyson, John Donne, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Dickinson, Allen Ginsburg, Maya Angelou, and many more. My most modern favorites are Pia Taavila and John Lee Clark.
… and Shakespeare ;D
Hermann Hesse by far takes the cake. I feel that he has captured so much in the little that he wrote in the way of poetry.
Byron. Yeats. Blake. Coleridge. Pope. Kipling. Tennyson. Can’t choose just one.
Rilke, Yeats, Kavanagh, Li Shang Yin, Tennyson and Keats come to mind but lots of others have written wonderful poems.
Emily Dickinson, without hesitation or question. There are countless poets whose works impress, enchant, and move me, but I instantly connected with Emily’s words.
Zinayida Gippius, Larry Levis, Doris Ferleger, Wallace Stevens, John Ashberry, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost.
A.A. Milne.
When I was One,
I had just begun.
When I was Two,
I was hardly new.
When I was Three,
I was barely me.
When I was Four,
I was not much more.
When I was Five,
I was just alive.
But now I am Six, I’m as clever as clever.
So I think I’ll be Six now forever and ever.
T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Mary Oliver, May Swenson and Dylan Thomas
@Rarebear My Dad had me memorize that poem when I was 5 so I could recite it on my 6th birthday. Amazing how these things get tucked away—at 52, I can still recite it! I do think that it says “when I was 2, I was nearly new” though .. . .
I’m a fan of the early romantics: William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
My favorite poet is Dean Young.
How I Get My Ideas
Sometimes you just have to wait
15 seconds then beat the prevailing nuance
from the air. If that doesn’t work,
try to remember how many times
you’ve wakened in the body of an animal,
two arms, two legs, willowy antennae.
Try thinking what it would be like
to never see your dearest again.
Stroke her gloves, sniff his overcoat.
If that’s a no-go, call Joe
who’s never home but keeps changing
the melody of his message.
Cactus at night emits its own light,
the river flows under the sea.
Dear face I always recognize but never
know, everything has a purpose
from which it must be freed,
maybe with crowbars, maybe the gentlest breeze.
Always turn in the direction of the skid.
If it’s raining, use the rain
to lash the windowpanes or,
in a calmer mode, deepen the new greens
nearly to a violet. I can’t live
without violet although it’s red
I most often resort to.
Sometimes people become angelic when they cry,
sometimes only ravaged.
Technically, Mary still owes me a letter,
her last was just porcupine quills and tears,
tears that left a whitish residue
on black construction paper.
Sometimes I look at used art books at Moe’s
just to see women without their clothes.
How can someone so rich,
who can have fish whenever he wants,
go to baseball games,
still feel such desperation?
I’m afraid I must insist
on desperation. By the fourth week
the embryo has nearly turned itself
inside out. If that doesn’t help,
you’ll just have to wait which
may involve sleeping which may involve
dreaming and sometimes dreaming works.
Father, why have you returned,
dirt on your morning vest?
You cannot control your laughter.
You cannot control your love.
You know not to hit the brakes on ice
but do anyway. You bend the nail
but keep hammering because
hammering makes the world.
—from Skid (2002)
Rimbaud, Whitman, Diane DiPrima, Ginsburg, Philip Whalen, Bob Kaufman…
and I really like the silly poems that Lewis Carroll wrote too…but the serious ones are pretty tiresome.
Alfred Lord Tennyson, Robert Frost, Emily Dickenson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edgar Allen Poe…
I love them all, and could not choose between.
Lewis Carroll. The wonderful world of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.
Thanks @Symbeline
One’s art is next to worthless.
That is unless one kills oneself.
Pretty hard to pick an absolute favourite but Pablo Neruda is hard to look past…
@Kayak8 Bah! I hate when I do that. You’re right. I copy and pasted it online.
The correct poem is:
When I wa One,
I had just begun.
When I was Two,
I was nearly new.
When I was Three,
I was hardly Me
When I was Four,
I was not much more
When I was Five,
I was just alive.
But now I am Six, I’m as clever as clever.
So I think I’ll be six now for ever and ever.
For all the Whitman fans, this is one of my favorites by him:
Recorders Ages Hence
RECORDERS ages hence,
Come, I will take you down underneath this impassive exterior, I
will tell you what to say of me,
Publish my name and hang up my picture as that of the tenderest
lover,
The friend the lover’s portrait, of whom his friend his lover was
fondest,
Who was not proud of his songs, but of the measureless ocean of love
within him, and freely pour’d it forth,
Who often walk’d lonesome walks thinking of his dear friends, his
lovers,
Who pensive away from one he lov’d often lay sleepless and
dissatisfied at night,
Who knew too well the sick, sick dread lest the one he lov’d might
secretly be indifferent to him,
Whose happiest days were far away through fields, in woods, on
hills, he and another wandering hand in hand, they twain apart
from other men,
Who oft as he saunter’d the streets curv’d with his arm the shoulder
of his friend, while the arm of his friend rested upon him also.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Not the most accessible nor well known poet but quite memorable.
His use of a technique called “sprung rhythm” combined with a melodic imagery unlike typical rhyming poetry makes him quite unique in a category all his own. His nature poetry is so beautiful and unique. One of the most memorable of those is “Walking by the Sea” later re-titled “The Sea and the Skylark”.
“Inversnaid” is a also quite beautiful. He does use a lot of atypical word combinations and most of his poems are far better suited to reading aloud and letting the euphonius phrasing just fall upon the ear without trying to overthink it too much.
Because much of his poetry is kind of dense, people find it a bit off-putting but his uniquely beautiful phraseology kind of grows on you when read aloud Give it a little time and you’ll see what I mean.
Most of his poems can be found at Bartleby.com by just putting his name into the search.
It’s also a great all-around site, useful in many ways for quotes and all things literary.
I love that one too. He was quite ahead of his time in respect for nature and preserving natural resources.
Elizabeth Barett Browning.
a rare moment of pure narcissism… Myself. I like my own poems :D
@Crashsequence2012 Sadly I don’t know much about GG Allin, other than all the antiques and stories I heard. But he must have become popular beforehand for his songs, I’ll have to assume.
G G Allin was one of those true artists that understood that eventually the only way to top your greatest work is to kill yourself.
Wendy O Williams, Vincent Van Gogh…..
Maybe, I denno. I’m not sure that guy was one to be careful about shit much.
W.B. Yeats. Hands down. All day long.
I don’t have a particular favorite, but I do like the body of work from these poets: W.B. Yeats, Dylan Thomas, Langston Hughes, Ogden Nash, ee cummings, Lewis Carroll, Oscar Wilde, and of course, Dr. Seuss. Also like individual poems by many other poets as well.
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