Favorite Poet

[Lawkheart]

I've recently gotten back into poetry but I've already read most of Edgar Allen Poe. My newest favorite is Rod McKuen, which I highly recommend reading some of his poems.

So who are some of your guys favorite poets? Your favorite poems? If you don't like to read poetry, do you read other kinds of literature?

 

[Pahn]

I think my favourite poet is Robert Frost. I love French poets most though, like Beaudelair, Émile Nelligan, and Gaston Miron.

Here are two of my favourite from Frost:

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.


Nothing Gold Can Stay


Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.

 

[Lawkheart]

I think my favourite poet is Robert Frost. I love French poets most though, like Beaudelair, Émile Nelligan, and Gaston Miron.

Here are two of my favourite from Frost:

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.


Nothing Gold Can Stay


Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.

I haven't read much of Frost, I'll need to remedy that.

My favorite poet of ALL is Edgar Allen Poe, hands down.

 

[Kitti]

Poe is one of my favorites.
I am also fond of e.e cummings, who writes some of my favorite "cutesy" poems.

if i believe
in death be sure
of this
it is

because you have loved me,
moon and sunset
stars and flowers
gold crescendo and silver muting

-The first quarter of If I Believe.

 

[Arcadia]

Be warned, lot's of swearing, but he's my favourite poem bar Seamus Heaney.

 

[Poe Dameron]

I've recently gotten back into poetry but I've already read most of Edgar Allen Poe. My newest favorite is Rod McKuen, which I highly recommend reading some of his poems.

So who are some of your guys favorite poets? Your favorite poems? If you don't like to read poetry, do you read other kinds of literature?

Edgar Allan Poe is my favorite. Three years ago I was able to visit his home and grave in Baltimore, while on a work trip in DC.

 

[Dark_Psycho]

I think my favourite poet is Robert Frost. I love French poets most though, like Beaudelair, Émile Nelligan, and Gaston Miron.

Here are two of my favourite from Frost:

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.


Nothing Gold Can Stay


Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.

was just going to osteoporosis this lol

I would also say shell silvertine love that man and his poems

Edgar Allan Poe is my favorite. Three years ago I was able to visit his home and grave in Baltimore, while on a work trip in DC.

also another favorite

 

[Touch of Insanity]

Soooo I don't really read poetry. BUT when I was younger I adored this poet, Shel Silverstein mainly his book Where the Sidewalk Ends. Even had it on audio and would listen to him read his own poems as I went to sleep.

This wasn't my favorite from the book but I don't have the book on me, I let my little sister keep it when I moved out. So here is the title of the book's poem.

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

 

[Minerva]

Let's see, I haven't read a lot of their poetry, but two of my favorite poems are Shelley's Ozymandias:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

And Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade"
1
Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!
"Charge for the guns!" he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

2
"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

3
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

4
Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel'd from the sabre stroke
Shatter'd and sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

5
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

6
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honour the charge they made,
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred.

 

[Icystorm]

I don't read a lot of poetry, but my favorite is Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came by Robert Browning.
Not going to post it since it is a long poem

 

[Autarch]

Shane Koyczan. I have to pause the video and leave the computer whenever I listen to his work. If poetry is intended to incite emotion, the personal connections he makes hits home.

 

[Fox of Spades]

If you loved Poe, you might like Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson :D

 

[Indabayou]

I just finished a workshop course on poetry, so I have so many new favorites it's not even funny. Half of these favorites are now my classmates (darn them and their beautiful writing!) but here are some I can actually share:

Caitlyn Siehl - she's a young adult with her poetry based mainly on her tumblr, but she recently got her own book of poetry published. My favorite of hers have got to be Turning 20 and small, which can be found here (WARNING: NSFW LANGUAGE)

Billy Collins- He has such a way of making the mundane into something magical and touching. The Lanyard breaks my heart every time:

Spoiler

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that's what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I , in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Margaret Atwood, William Carlos Williams, Stephen Crane (and maybe even Harryette Mullen and Alice Notley) are also favorites of mine and definitely worth checking out.

 

[Lawkheart]

Awesome, now I've got a list of poets to read up ^_^

EVERYONE GETS RAINBOWS!

 

[Lyric]

Shane Koyczan. I have to pause the video and leave the computer whenever I listen to his work. If poetry is intended to incite emotion, the personal connections he makes hits home.

You just made my top ten favorite people on this site.

Definitely Shane Koyzcan. I discovered him several years after I started writing poetry myself, and though I'd always liked Poe and have a rather dark writing style myself, I'd constantly been searching for music or poetry that embodied what it was that I truly felt, and what I was trying to write out. Then, I stumbled upon this.

Shane's style is beautiful, and the subjects of his writing are impossible to just shrug off. His writing since has inspired me to push myself even harder to write well enough to move others like he moves me. I would also highly recommend this one.

 

[Indabayou]

Can't believe I forgot to add this to my list.