Favorite poets?

Hey, since there's a bad poetry topic I figured I might as well pose the question... who are your favorite poets?

My current and longtime favorite is Sharon Olds.

So?

ooooh, good topic!

My favorite poet is by far William Carlos Williams. I've always liked his short stuff, and then I started reading his longer works. "Paterson" is probably my favorite thing to read right now. It really does have just about everything in it (including a lot more humor than one would expect).

Honestly, I like just about all of the Modernists (Eliot, Cummings, Pound's short stuff, Ginsberg, Whitman, etc.)

I'm also pretty big on Blake, and I like what I've read of Baudelaire.

As for contemporary people, I'm starting to get into John Ashbery (I managed to find a bunch of his stuff at half-priced-books in Columbus last week :D Brenda Hillman's really good too. Oh, and Sherman Alexie's too.



I should also throw Shel Silverstein in, since he was the only person to get notice on the other post ;) Oh, and in that direction, don't forget Edward Lear...


Ok, did I name enough people here? ;)

It's hard to pick a favourite but I guess I'll go with Coleridge, Kubla Khan might be my favourite poem.

Of course I'm a sucker for epic poetry so Homer, Dante, and Milton are possibilities.

OOO Shel Silverstein! And how about Lewis Carroll? I'll take him over Lear. They are both great though.

A mewho with an exactlywhat?

-- Pauley

Yay for liking T.S. Eliot -- he's pretty much always top of my list.

Out of random curiosity, what's your favorite poem(s) by Eliot? I usually go back and forth between The Hollow Men and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, but lately Little Gidding's been in the top spot.

I'm rambling now. I'll shut up. Really. *nods*

yeats, especially his more romantic/nationalistic stuff. i'm 100% irish; i can't help it. i'm also a sucker for the romantic poets in general. epic poetry has never done anything for me but put me to sleep.

Shel Silverstein, Roald Dahl and Dr. Seuss.

Definitely.

I love the Romantics and the epics. Coleridge was both.

I'm actually surprised Yeats never wrote an Irish Epic. He wrote the Cuchulain cycle of plays. That's great material for an epic.

how about billy collins, our current (2-year-so-far) poet laureate! he's FANTASTIC!!!! check him out. you can read some stuff at his old page, www.bigsnap.com .

or how about pablo neruda? to quote poet sean patrick doherty, "in the end, there's only neruda." :) he said that to me while we were listening to a reading once. he's a great poet himself, as well!

and yes, give me silverstein any day! :)

Jacques Pr�vert.  Lewis Carroll.  Bertolt Brecht.  Roald Dahl.  Dr. Seuss.  Rudyard Kipling.

Ya.

Charles Bukowski!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

other than the bell jar, his is the only poetry i really have enjoyed. in particular Love is a Dog From Hell, preach it, amen, brothers and sista's give me a hells yeah!

  For a long time I leaned toward Romantic and Victorian poetry- especially Blake, Dickinson, and Browning. And while I still love those poems, taking part in poetry writing seminars has allowed me to develop an intense appreciation of contemporary poets. We study the works of those writing now in order to understand what it means to be a poet today. So, in addition to the classics, I also like Naomi Shihab Nye, Lucille Clifton, Frank O'Hara (although he's not precisely contemporary), and W.S. Merwin.

My current favorite? Elizabeth Bishop. Her powers of description astound me.

I think O'Hara counts as contemporary if you're talking about periods. Modernist tends to end with WWII, and anything after that is "contemporary".

Of course, he's not a contemporary of mine. Which is one of the reasons I think that naming time periods like artistic movements, and the keeping the name, is silly ;)

*nods*  It's such an arbitrary classification really. I had a prof last year who was really pissed that our Contemporary American Poetry book had a section devoted to Sylvia Plath, not because she was opposed to Plath, but because she felt like Plath shouldn't be listed among poets writing today since she died in 1963. I'm inclined to agree with her. I mean, Plath  was a great poet, but the world has gone through so many volatile changes since her death. I think she and Frank O'Hara have a contemporary type voice and that their style is still relevant and being used to this day and yet I hesitate to describe either of them as contemporary.  Post modern? I don't know-- what would you call the period between WWII and the sexual revolution?

I like billy collins. I like the one about the wet dog, I hope that's on his web page. I find it fascinating that the states has such a fresh, light-hearted poet laureate.

My favourite poets right now are my friends. All of them. They're about the only people I'm really interested in reading :) And, you know, they're like brilliant and stuff.

That's nothing. My Modern Poetry anthology (norton, 2nd edition) has a lot of people who weren't even born until after WWII, and are very much alive today.

OK, I noticed it's not anywhere on his site, or plagiarist.com for that matter, so here it is taking up room in this post :)

To a Stranger Born in Some Distant Country Hundreds of Years from Now

"I write poems for a stranger who will be born in some distant country hundreds of years from now." - Mary Oliver

Nobody here likes a wet dog.
No one wants anything to do with a dog
that is wet from being out in the rain
or retrieving a stick from a lake.
Look how she wanders around the crowded pub tonight
going from one person to another
hoping for a pat on the head, a rub behind the ears,
something that could be given with one hand
without even wrinkling the conversation.

But everyone pushes her away,
some with a knee, others with the sole of a boot.
Even the children, who don't realize she is wet
until they go to pet her,
push her away
then wipe their hands on their clothes.
And whenever she heads toward me,
I show her my palm, and she turns aside.

O stranger of the future!
O inconceivable being!
whatever the shape of your house,
however you scoot from place to place,
no matter how strange and colorless the clothes you may wear,
I bet nobody there likes a wet dog either.
I bet everyone in your pub,
even the children, pushes her away.

Wow somebody else liked Rudyard Kipling. I thought I was the only one.

The most biggest selling post card of all time had this on it.

Do you like Kipling?
I don't know I never Kipled

"do you like kipling, miss scarlet?" "sure, i'll eat anything." jaci, at least, will get that one. :)

looooove shakespeare. so not original, but there you go. :)

The reason he isn't original is because he's great. Nothing wrong with that.

T.S. Eliot is pretty great. For those who are T.S. Eliot fans, or not, I  guess, have you seen "Tom and Viv" yet? It's very good, AND!! It has Willem Dafoe!

Amen.  :)
I'm not that much of a poetry person, but I love Pr�vert.  (Not that I'm opposed to poetry...I'm just more comfortable with prose.  *Shrug.)