[Sophieness]

I really like allen ginsberg and edgar allen poe. I think edna st. vincent millay is my favorite right now, ever since I wrote a paper on her last year for my english class.
I like robert frost a lot too, and I suppose I should include him because he's some sort of distant relative on my mom's side I guess. but of course he's most people's favorite so it seems to be pretty thoroughly done already.

I want to explore this a bit more in the future- there are many good ones that caught my interest but I never really delved into. In some ways I kind of have limited patience for poetry but I'm starting to appreciate it more as an occasional refined treat - like a cup of tea or a crumpet every once in awhile.

so who are *your* favorites? also post your favorite poems here! I'm sure I'll end up posting a few before too long.

 

[bellicose]

I want to explore this a bit more in the future- there are many good ones that caught my interest but I never really delved into. In some ways I kind of have limited patience for poetry but I'm starting to appreciate it more as an occasional refined treat - like a cup of tea or a crumpet every once in awhile.

Couldn't have said it better. I'll have to look up a couple of the poets you mentioned.

I'm sort of new to poetry, but other than Poe, one of my favorites is Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I won't quote Kubla Khan only because a lot of people already know it.

The Pains of Sleep
(whole thing here)
So two nights passed : the night's dismay
Saddened and stunned the coming day.
Sleep, the wide blessing, seemed to me
Distemper's worst calamity.
The third night, when my own loud scream
Had waked me from the fiendish dream,
O'ercome with sufferings strange and wild,
I wept as I had been a child ;
...

I also enjoy Elizabeth Barrett Browning's style, although a lot of her poems seem to be about love, which sometimes bores me. :stu

Change Upon Change
(whole thing here)
Five months ago the stream did flow,
The lilies bloomed within the sedge,
And we were lingering to and fro,
Where none will track thee in this snow,
Along the stream, beside the hedge.
Ah, Sweet, be free to love and go!
For if I do not hear thy foot,
The frozen river is as mute,
The flowers have dried down to the root:
And why, since these be changed since May,
Shouldst thou change less than they.
...

 

[meggiehamilton]

I like Emily Matthews alot. opcorn

 

[DirkDiggler]

Edgar Allan Poe, definately.
Best known probably for the horror stuff, but writes some beautiful poetry.

 

[glassjoe]

I'll admit that I'm not much of a reader of poetry. But I really like Rumi. I own a few books containing translations of his poetry and I like to read them again every once in awhile.

I also like reading different translations of the Tao Te Ching. I even got pretty far (about 60%) with writing my own version of the Tao Te Ching a couple years ago.

But that's about it for me poetry-wise.

 

[Ebeneezer]

One of the more memorable courses I took in college was an Introduction to Poetry course. If you're into poetry and still in college, might be worth checking out something similar. I have a well-thumbed "Norton Anthology of Poetry" with poems from the 1600's to the present.
Some of what I like may be considered stuffy (I read some of Shakespeare's sonnets and am amazed at their potency after 400 years). Other authors are more modern like Wallace Stevens or TS Eliot (check out TS Eliot's "love song of j alfred prufrock" for a poem relevant to SA). Others are Frost, Yeats, Wordsworth and Coleridge. Good stuff for a romantic imagination.

 

[Pip]

TS Eliot, Allen Ginsberg, WB Yeats, Naomi Shihab Nye, Rumi, Pablo Neruda. I like Dorothy Parker, too. She's amusing.

 

[Sophieness]

that's edgar allen poe lol

 

[conscious]

poe, keats, blake

 

[TruSeeker777]

Henry Rollins

 

[Zephyr]

that's edgar allen poe lol

It's Edgar Allan Poe.

 

[Sophieness]

please, pardon me

 

[Zephyr]

It's misspelled a lot.

Anyone ever hear of William Topaz McGonagall? He's widely considered the worst poet to write in the English language. If you want some funny stuff you should read his. Most of it I think is online.

 

[glassjoe]

Too funny! :lol opcorn :con

So the train sped on with all its might,
And Bonnie Dundee soon hove in sight,
And the passengers' hearts felt light,
Thinking they would enjoy themselves on the New Year,
With their friends at home they lov'd most dear,
And wish them all a happy New Year.

I hope he wasn't taking his poetry too seriously though. I mean, I'd hate to be immortalized as the worst poet, or anything for that matter, who has ever existed. That's got to be rough.

 

[Andre]

I generally dislike all poetry. There are rare exceptions. Here's my favorite poem; one by Kurt Vonnegut, which he wrote as part of his novel Slapstick.

I was those seeds,
I am his meat,
This meat hates pain,
This meat must eat,
This meat must sleep,
This meat must dream,
This meat must laugh,
This meat must scream,
But when, as meat,
It's had its fill,
Please plant it as
A Daffodil.

 

[Caedmon]

TS Eliot, Allen Ginsberg, WB Yeats, Naomi Shihab Nye, Rumi, Pablo Neruda. I like Dorothy Parker, too. She's amusing.

I love Rumi and Neruda

I also like D.H. Lawrence, Rainer Maria Rilke, and a bunch of others I can't think of right now.

(Closet poetry fan....)

 

[enlydiazee]

I memorized (just for the fun of it :stu ) two poems when I was a kid.
The Raven by edgar allen Poe
The Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll ...I like Edna St Vincent Millay too....her poetry is very "clean" almost stark...

I think I liked the Jabberwocky because he used made up words that somehow described what he was saying without you really knowing what the words meant...it starts like this...
"Twas brillig and and slithy toves
did gyre and gimble in the wabe
all mimsy were the borogroves
and the mome raths outgrabe"

of course maybe that is considered cheating, since you can always invent a word that rhymes...if you can't find a real one.

 

[Andre]

I memorized (just for the fun of it :stu ) two poems when I was a kid.
The Raven by edgar allen Poe
The Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll ...I like Edna St Vincent Millay too....her poetry is very "clean" almost stark...

I think I liked the Jabberwocky because he used made up words that somehow described what he was saying without you really knowing what the words meant...it starts like this...
"Twas brillig and and slithy toves
did gyre and gimble in the wabe
all mimsy were the borogroves
and the mome raths outgrabe"

of course maybe that is considered cheating, since you can always invent a word that rhymes...if you can't find a real one.

I love The Jabberwocky... one of my favorites. It's harder than one might think to think up creative nonsense words that sound good.

 

[orwen2000]

I really like allen ginsberg and edgar allen poe. I think edna st. vincent millay is my favorite right now, ever since I wrote a paper on her last year for my english class.
I like robert frost a lot too, and I suppose I should include him because he's some sort of distant relative on my mom's side I guess. but of course he's most people's favorite so it seems to be pretty thoroughly done already.

:nw I love Frost! I still remember The Road Not Taken by heart although it's probably one of the easiest poems to remember.

I memorized (just for the fun of it :stu ) two poems when I was a kid.
The Raven by edgar allen Poe
The Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll ...I like Edna St Vincent Millay too....her poetry is very "clean" almost stark...

Thanks to Sophieness (who first mentioned her) and to you I just got acquainted today with Edna St Vincent Millay's poetry. Thank you both, I really like it.
And I memorized parts of the Jabberwocky too when I was younger, first in my own language (a good translation because the words seem to actually have some real meaning when you first hear them, just like the English source) and when I was older I memorized parts of the original poem when I read Alice.

 

[Barakiel]

Y’all have some great taste, it’s a shame some of you haven’t been on for over a decade now. :um

I always feel like I’ve never read enough of a poet’s work to consider them a favorite (same thing happens with bands and artists I listen to), but I’ve read decent amounts of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, John Keats (the holy trinity), William Blake, Alfred Tennyson, Phyllis Wheatley, Seamus Heaney, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ezra Pound, Langston Hughes, Jorge Luis Borges, Basil Bunting, Dylan Thomas, WH Auden, Allen Ginsberg, and Homer. There are lots of other poets I’ve read from/about but I can’t possibly remember them all :eyes

And though they’re not really known as poets, Tolkien and C.S. Lewis had some really great verse that deserves more love.