Who's Your Favorite Poet?

Tiktaalik said:
I'm guessing maybe Robert Service, he who wrote "The Cremation of Sam McGee", "The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill", "Rhymes of a Red Cross Man" (a book of verse centered around WWI), "Ballad of a Cheechako" (about the Yukon gold rush) and many others...

"There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold..."
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I doubt he's remembering Service as a war poet.

More likely Auden.
 
No mention of Blake, yet. (Has it become hackneyed to say you like William Blake? He was the darling of the schizo set for so many years, but I still think some of his stronger works from Songs of Experience are quite brilliant. So what if he was a few bricks short of a full load?)

Whitman and Dickinson... great stuff. Put America on the poetry map (betcha didn't know there was a poetry map, huh?) and made up for how rotten Poe was.

Eliot's my favorite poet of the first half of the 20th century. (But I was enrapt with e e cummings during my younger years and have recently learned that I like Wallace Stevens and W.H. Auden a whole lot, too.)

Ferlinghetti edges out Ginsberg as my favorite of the second half of the 20th century, but Leonard Cohen's rising rapidly. (And I can take his pained and painful singing... )
 
Pablo Neruda. Yow!

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.


http://poems.vox.com/library/post/i-crave-your-mouth-your-voice-your-hair-by-pablo-neruda.html
 
No mention for John Ashbery yet? ‘Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror’ is just devastatingly good.

Used to love Paul Muldoon, but I think he’s gone way off the boil right now.

Stephen Dobyns got a mention earlier, I’ve recently discovered and fallen utterly in love with Bob Hicok. There’s a newish English guy called Luke Kennard (published by Salt) who is utterly brilliant.

The finest modern poet that Britain has ever produced, however, is quite clearly Mark E Smith. Drink the long draught down/ for the Hip Priest…
 
Wallace Stevens

"Sunday Morning", "The Idea of Order at Key West", "The Snow Man" and "The Emperor of Ice Cream"

As unique and profound as anything written in American literary history.
 
Robert Service and William Carlos Williams.
 
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RedIbis said:
Wallace Stevens

"Sunday Morning", "The Idea of Order at Key West", "The Snow Man" and "The Emperor of Ice Cream"

As unique and profound as anything written in American literary history.
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I'm with you up til the last one there.

The first 3 are works of genius.

The last... for my money it's a throwaway.
 
Shel Silverstein


Piggy said:
Too many to mention, but for my money, the cream of the crop....

Theodor Geisel....
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Damn, you beat me to it.


When I was in 11th grade, we had to do a poetry reading, in front of the class. I hated public speaking. I was incredibly shy. We were to pick our favorite poet, select a poem, and do a serious, formal presentation. There were many who did Dickinson, Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, those having been the big ones we studied that year. I figured, since people were probably going to laugh at me anyway, I may as well do it right.

I put on a suit and tie, strode to the front of the class, and gave a formal reading of Fox in Socks, by Dr. Seuss.

And I did it with a fake British accent. And without grinning.

The class was roaring. In the back of the room, the teacher was trying unsuccessfully to keep a straight face.

I got an A.
 
Izumi Shikibu
Rumi
Shakespeare
Wordsworth
Keats
Whitman
Hopkins
Yeats
Rilke
Masters
W. Stevens
D. Thomas
W.C. Williams
Ginsberg
Sexton
Neruda
Ashbery
Merrill
 
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Ooh, Rilke.

How could I have forgotten?

Thanks, Gravy.
 
A. E. Housman

and Jimmy Buffett:

My head hurts, my feet stink, and I don’t love jesus (oh my lordy it’s that...)
It’s that kind of mornin’
Really was that kind of night
Tryin’ to tell myself that my condition is improvin’
And if I don’t die by thursday I’ll be roarin’ friday night
 
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