There are certain poet's and poems that I always go back to read again and again. Some I know by heart and will recite. (but only if I'm alone). Elizabeth Bishop has always helped me out. I love that she is a true master of complex forma of poetry and how her words seem to bend and work those words she chooses flawlessly. I'm sure such work took many drafts and multiple revisions. The final products are perfect my mind. After reading her works I was inspired to try my hand at a few sestinas and other forms. I don't think I would have tried to really learn and understand the structure of such complex poetry if she hadn't made it look so easy and feel so important. Who are your favorite poets? And what about their poetry calls for you to come back and read it again? I think it would be cool to share are go-to poets and maybe introduced to some others we might be less familiar with if at all. Let's talk about the poetry we like to read and the ways it helps us and our writing?
I don't know a lot about poetry or poets, but a few of the ones I like are Alfred Lord Tennyson, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Robert Frost, and Walt Whitman. Tennysson—when I was learning about meter and foot in poetry I ran across a website that used lines from his Idyls of the King (about King Arthur) as examples and I really liked them. Mostly for those elements. The rhythms of it were just really satisfying. Shelley mostly for his Ode to the West Wind. Hard to explain why exactly, it just hit me inside in some way that I coudn't ignore. In fact I'm gonna let it go at that for the rest as well—trying to explain what you like about a poem is sort of like dancing about architecture.
Roger Mcgough and Mark Van Doren usually have some fun stuff. I like simple structure/schemes, because I'm a simple person. Ella Wheeler Wilcox is nice too, actually.
I’m not particularly well read, but William Carlos Williams has probably inspired me more than any other. Although to be fair that is very very few.
I don’t know a lot about poetry. There are poems I like by Tennyson, Dickinson, and (particularly) Cummings. Beowulf, if that counts
Robert Browning, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Sidney Keyes, Robert Frost I suppose I just pinch scenery from them. They're well-known enough that some readers might notice, and they're the poetic fore-runners of 'new-weird': their scenery is tricky; it's up to stuff.
And another vote here for Roger! I'm also partial to Billy Collins for contemporary stuff. And I have a soft spot for this poem, which I recite from memory: https://allpoetry.com/poem/8530385-Love-Poem-by-John-Frederick-Nims Among the classics, Gerard Manley Hopkins, W. B. Yeats, and Sara Teasdale, and Rainer Maria Rilke are poets whose work I can also recite from memory. Among translations, I like John Ciardi's translation of the Divine Comedy and Seamus Heaney's Beowulf. They seem to invoke the spirit of the originals better than word-for-word translations.
@JLT I like Heaney's translation of Beowulf but try, also, the new translation by Maria Headley. The narration of the Audible version is particularly good.
The first poets I loved were probably the English romantics, particularly Shelley and Blake. I can recite some Blake poems by heart, and parts of Shelley's To A Skylark which is one of the most beautiful things in the language IMO. I can also recite bits of Paradise Lost by heart. Moving later, I like Yeats' early poems (Song of the Wandering Aengus is another one I memorized) and Wallace Stevens. I tend to prefer extravagant image-laden stuff, so in modern poetry most of my favorites are surrealists- Andre Breton, Joyce Mansour, Benjamin Peret, Lawrence Weisberg, Penelope Rosemont. Among the classical Chinese poets I am particularly fond of Li He, who is not without justification compared to the French symbolist and decadent poets.
A wonderful poem, and a wonderful song. I perform it once in a while, accompanying myself on an Irish harp. That's the only way to do it, IMO.
I have a few Robert Frost, Seamus Heaney, Dante, Catullus and Elizabeth Bishop are ones I always find myself going back to whenever I want something comforting and inspires me to write. My Italian just isn't good enough to read Dante in the original yet, I do have it, but my trusty bilingual edition of Catullus is filled with notes and edits after years of reading and rereading.
What is your favorite Bishop poem? Mine is probably One Art, though, I love Sestina and many others. But One Art, wow, just wow! And the way she works this complex form is quite amazing.
Questions of Travel, the collection and that poem is one I like the most. Don't know why but I've always been collections minded rather than thinking of individual poems. I just love her ability to describe things, and make you feel the warmth of the setting when she's writing about Brazil.
William Blake's anarchic and visionary content speaks to me. I'd upvote him purely on London but he has a strong body of work generally. I also love Leonard Cohen. Very reliable.
I dont have "go to" poets.... But i have memorized a few favorite poems. "I am nobody" by dickinson and "we wear the mask" by paul laurence dunbar for example (ive been know to quote a few sonnets from Shakespeare too) Yesterday, i was reading through some poems of Thomas Hardy and gravitated to "The Dead Man Walking". I cant get it out of my head. So ill probably obsessively read it again and again until its committed to memory. my favorite stanza is "I am but a shape that stands here, A pulseless mould, A pale past picture, screening Ashes gone cold."
I havent heard anyone talk about Catullus since high school! Lol, i took Latin all four years. For my final, i translated one of his poems. I remember liking his poetry... But i cant remember poem names. I just know his obsession with Lesbia was humorous and sad
His poems didn't have names, just numbers. He's very fun and pretty light, but he was also pretty skilled as a lyricist and could be pretty 'deep' when he waited to do that, and not complaining about Lesbia or calling people names, or something. And funny too. I like the one basically saying "Sure, we can have the party at my house. So long as you bring all the food, the wine, the music, and everything else", haha.
Edgar Allen Poe is my favorite poet. Dream within a dream and Annabelle Lee are my favorite poems, along with Rudyard Kiplings 'if'. Besides Poe, theres Kipling, Robert Frost. Lord Tennyson. I also recently got the complete works of Li Qingzhao. A chinese woman who was a poet during the Song dynasty. Some of her free verse is some of the best poetry I've ever read. And I'm much more inclined towards traditional verse.
Stephen Spender, Gary Snyder, Ted Kooser, Poe, Dylan Thomas, William Carlos Williams, Kenneth Rexroth, myriad ancient Chinese poets.
Also I forgot to mention Simon Armitage because I’m going to see him perform in the 13 th of next month! Woo.
The ones I keep going to are the same ones who are my main influences. Poets of the past: William Wordsworth, Robert Frost, Georges Brassens Living poets: Susan Jarvis Bryant, Brian Yapko