favourite poet/poets

[turban1]

have you a favourite poet or poets? by that i mean ones that you like to read again and again, rather than ones that the literati declare to be best.

mine?

maulana jalaludin rumi (balkhi) in translation, alas
wb yeats
ts eliot (incidentally, an anagram of 'toilets')
hafiz
frost
a marvell

[theCardiffGiant]

Most of what I read is in Greek or Latin. I've always had a soft spot for Archilochus and Mimnermus. I could read Homer and Vergil all day. Lately Ovid's Ars Amatoria has caught my interest. In English I'm fond of Housman and have at various times been drawn to the poetry of Whitman, William Carlos Williams, & e.e. cummings.

[Coleman]

Walt Whitman
Wallace Stevens
William Carlos Williams
(maybe Ws are the most poetical in my mind)

[NZNorm]

Tristan Tzara
José Emilio Pacheco

[TMMKC]

Robert Frost
ee cummings
T.S. Eliot

[DukeGrad]

Gentlemen

All of them. One I enjoy a great deal is by a black poet. Corine Roosevelt Robinson.
Of course another meandering path that leads to nowhere.
This one on and off seems to inspire and comfort.
For some reason enjoy Donne on and off.
And enjoy some of Flavius Vegetius Renatus , some of this fro Epitoma Rei Militari.

" Let him who desires Peace, prepare for war!

God almighty, am inspired too early this morning

Jimmy

[KennethB]

Richard Hugo
Pablo Neruda

[ajo]

I had a big thing for e e cummings during a particular period of my life.

T S Eliott and I are very well acquainted I have a 1951 Penguin which is very thumbed, one night I actually got up at a dinner party and recited The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock. Particular poems of Black I could recite.

Dylan Thomas, Dante, Edgar Alan Poe, Neruda sigh I could go on I do enjoy the Song of Songs author unknown, once a year just sit down with and find the time to ponder its meaning.

I wish I had more time for such simple pleasures.

[anglophile23]

I had a big thing for e e cummings during a particular period of my life.

T S Eliott and I are very well acquainted I have a 1951 Penguin which is very thumbed, one night I actually got up at a dinner party and recited The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock. Particular poems of Black I could recite.

Dylan Thomas, Dante, Edgar Alan Poe, Neruda sigh I could go on I do enjoy the Song of Songs author unknown, once a year just sit down with and find the time to ponder its meaning.

I wish I had more time for such simple pleasures.

If you don't have time for poetry try this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nTmS...c-HM-fresh+div

[Good Old Sledge]

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Pable Neruda, Vergil, Dante (alas, I can read only in English) are great fireside friends, but somehow Kipling always winds up at the top of the stack for me.

[turban1]

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Pable Neruda, Vergil, Dante (alas, I can read only in English) are great fireside friends, but somehow Kipling always winds up at the top of the stack for me.

sorry, move him to no.2 on my list.

[Liberty Ship]

I always return to Keats.

[ajo]

I always return to Keats.

I know what you mean I have a copy of The Second Coming on my desktop, mind you there are others but there is something particular about that poem which draws me back.

[DCLawyer68]

have you a favourite poet or poets? by that i mean ones that you like to read again and again, rather than ones that the literati declare to be best.

mine?

maulana jalaludin rumi (balkhi) in translation, alas
wb yeats
ts eliot (incidentally, an anagram of 'toilets')
hafiz
frost
a marvell

I would have thought you a Kipling man. I've never been great at verse, but recall liking Longfellow and Wordsworth when we studied English lit in school

[Ekphrastic]

I tend toward the contemporary poets, myself (not to diminish those of yesteryear, of course): Kimberly Johnson, Jay Hopler, Frank Bidart. James Galvin is amazing. Louise Gluck has an elegance and effortlessness to her verse. Galway Kinnell is usually known for his earlier stuff, but his recent stuff isn't bad.

Stop me before I keep going...

[Alligator]

William Earnest Henley

Unfortunately I'm not familiar with many poets.

[Thom Browne's Schooldays]

Auden

[AHS]

My favorites are Dylan Thomas and Frank O'Hara.

AHS

[AscotWithShortSleeves]

ee cummings
Shel Silverstein
Wordsworth
Blake

[Pr B]

Rene Maria Rilke
Mary Oliver
Billy Collins

[Peak and Pine]

Am not familiar with most of those so far cited, but a real favorite of mine is E. A. (Edwin Arlington) Robinson, of Richard Corey and Miniver Cheevy fame, but he wrote much much more. I've a signed 1st ed. and twice a week my drive takees me by the farm house where he wrote much of his stuff (in Head Tide, Maine) and whenever someone's in the truck with me I point and say "That's E.A. Robinson's house" and they almost always say "Who?"

[AscotWithShortSleeves]

I took German for 3 years in high school. The teacher was an actual German immigrant. He made us all memorize Die Lorelei, by Heinrich Heine. I still have it memorized to this day, which, uh, will come in very handy if I ever end up on German Jeopardy.

It is a beautiful poem, however. It even rhymes; imagine that.

[Earl of Ormonde]

John Betjeman
Seamus Heaney
Declan Collinge
Roger McGough
Oscar Wilde
W.B.Yeats
T.S.Eliot
William Blake
Rudyard Kipling
Thomas Gray
Cathal Buí Mac Giolla Ghunna (wrote in Irish)
Stephen Spender
Louis MacNeice
George Barker
Philip Larkin
Cecil Day Lewis
Tim Burton (yes...that Tim Burton)

And of course Sassoon, Graves, Owen, and Rosenberg. I've always loved the British First World War poets, ever since I studied them for O level English literature in the late 70s.

[sjghr]

If I might put forward Shakespeare. Admittedly more renowned as a playwright (though many of his plays were wonderful poetry in their own right) he was, in my opinion, a good poet too. Shakespeare's Sonnets was the first book of poetry which I bought for myself. Well, I say I bought for myself, I got to choose which book (any book) I could have as a school prize, and I picked Shakespeare's Sonnets. Granted, there's a few that aren't quite up to scratch, but the good ones are bloody brilliant.

I also like Wordsworth - as a regular visitor to, and major fan of, the Lake District.

Once visited Dylan Thomas' boat house, though can't claim to be particularly familiar with his work.

One poet who I definitely don't like is Carol Ann Duffy... I had a teacher who made me love Shakespeare, she had not a hope with Duffy. Proof that your teachers can influence you, but they can't make up your mind for you.

Much like music though, I'll generally take each piece as it comes. Some of the best pieces of poetry are often real stand outs in a lifetime's work. These will, I suspect, often be the pieces with most poignancy to the reader and the writer; for example, Binyon's For the Fallen.

[fat paul]

Poe, but I am a very dark person
cheers, fat paul