Favorite Poets

[ysabetwordsmith]

I have always enjoyed poetry. Over the years, I've built up a long list of favorite poets. This is one of the few areas where I lean towards the classics. I'm not impressed by a lot of modern poetry, although there are some that meet my standards. Most of what I like isn't considered fashionable these days. I like both rhyme and meter, though I don't require either, and I love different forms. I also prefer for poetry to make sense, especially if it tells a story, although it can be subtle or wacky rather than obvious.

I like poets who have something in common with me. I also like poets who are very different. So my reading spans quite a variety of time periods, languages, ethnic groups, religions, and other categories.


Black Poets
Robert Hayden
Langston Hughes
Alice Walker
Phillis Wheatley

Hispanic Poets
Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa
Lorna Dee Cervantes
Sandra Cisneros
Luis A. López
William Carlos Williams

Native American Poets
Paula Gunn Allen
Gloria Bird
Joy Harjo
Leslie Marmon Silko
Luci Tapahonso

Pagan Poets
Doreen Valiente
Enheduanna
Starhawk

Queer Poets
John Ashbery
Allen Ginsberg
Adrienne Rich
Sappho

Speculative Poets
Bruce Boston
Suzette Haden Elgin
David Kopaska-Merkel
Anne McCaffrey
Marge Simon
J.R.R. Tolkien

Women Poets
Margaret Atwood
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Emily Dickenson

Miscellaneous Poets
Matsuo Basho
Lewis Carroll
e e cummings
T.S. Eliot
Robert Frost
John Keats
Rudyard Kipling
Vachel Lindsey
Edgar Allen Poe
Jelaluddin Rumi
Dylan Thomas
Henry David Thoreau
Walt Whitman
William Butler Yeats


Who are some of your favorite poets?

Comments

[jjhunter]

Oh, that's a wonderful list! and neat to see it laid out in groups. In addition to several familiar names already mentioned (why hello there, Emily Dickinson!), I'm very fond of Billy Collins, Catullus, Homer, the Beowulf poet, Seamus Heaney (for his translation of the previous), Virgil, Shakespeare, and Dante. There are other poets whose poetry I very much enjoy (see poetry), but I grew up strongly steeped in the dead white man tradition, and those are the ones that rush eager to my mind when I whisper 'poetry'.

[herlander_refugee]

Oh, I do like Heaney's "Beowulf"! But why does it always send me scrambling to re-read prose by Gardner? His "Grendel" still fascinates me.

[jjhunter]

I think many stories in the last few centuries (e.g. those penned by Gardner, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Pixar's 'Monsters, Inc.', etc.) have primed us to question whether 'monsters', or more generally, Others, are absolutely alien or evil. There is no such questioning in 'Beowulf': a monster is a monster is a monster, and the monstrous Other is firmly embedded in the worldview of the protagonists.

If you like Gardner's "Grendel", you might enjoy my poem Mother-Tongue, which weaves together the stories and perspectives of Beowulf's mother and Grendel's mother. It's one of the poems I'm considering sharing next week when I'm the Poetry Host; if I do, I'll probably write up that commentary post I've been planning since, oh, last December or so.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

I liked "Beowulf" -- after we watched the movie version, my partner got me a bilingual copy of the original poem, with its historic and modern translated versions on facing pages. Much fun.

I think "Mother-Tongue" would be a good poem to share. You certainly captured the style!

[herlander_refugee]

Oh, thank you! I read just about the first half-page worth and it is like dancing in my mind. I may have to pour myself a cup of mead and enjoy this at my leisure later!

(Because, yes, we brew our own mead here. I have a batch from thistle honey that is divine!)

[jjhunter]

Having never tasted mead, I am intensely curious about it. Is it anything like ice wine? (I got to sip that once, and it glows in my memory like the nectar of the gods.)

Hmm...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Mead is almost more of a texture than a flavor, warm and light and golden. The closest I can compare it to is 12-year-old scotch, but it's a lot milder than that.

Re: Hmm...

[herlander_refugee]

Yes, specially some of the tannin rich, almost smoky tea augmented meads! But mild to the taste, yes....but drinking too much is oh-so-terrible.

[herlander_refugee]

Some meads might conceivably resemble the ice wines. Mead, like wine, can be sweet or dry.
Most meads sold in stores tend to the sweeter side, my family prefers dry meads.

Unlike wine, mead is not made from fermenting grapes or other fruit, it really is made of honey and water! Of course, you can flavor meads....we sometimes add spices, or tannic tangs from TEA, or even make fruit or berry meads. My personal favorites are nectar-rich flower meads!

We use varietal honey in this house for the utterly simply plain and unadorned meads. Thistle has a touch of spice, somewhat as if the nicest chrysanthemums were distilled into a bottle. If we make a winter mead, if would be the orange and cranberry mead....we cook the fruit in the water and then remove it all, add the honey and boil again. Then yeast in the carboy....and time!

In springtime, I make heather flower mead or the slightly dangerous (to some minds) andromeda mead. Andromeda flowers have a toxin, reputedly psychedelic. It is pretty much destroyed by the high cooking temps...but we do note drinking Andromeda mead is slightly different than others. It is my favorite ritual mead!

I have cooked a boxful of tea bags that had tea and black currant essence into a mead pot and it was simply divine! I have more ideas for mead than I can possibly drink, lol...being terribly light-weight at the cups now. Mead goes down with frightful ease, and the unwary find themselves suddenly very, very drunk. And the next day they beg to be euthanized...

You're welcome!

[ysabetwordsmith]

I'm glad you found this list intriguing. I've always had access to a diverse array of poetry, and I'm glad for that. I also managed to get into a few college classes that helped: Chicana Literature, Japanese Culture, Japanese Language, Native American Literature, one on African-American stuff, etc.

I enjoy sorting poets into different groups to highlight the mix. A lot of them fall into multiple categories though: Sappho was a woman, a Lesbian, and a Pagan.

[syntaxofthings]

I read one of Alice Walker's books of poetry and decided I liked her fiction better. I just didn't really get it, I guess. It's a little sad that I've heard of a lot of these, but not actually read their poems. Must remedy that soon.

My favorite modern/female poet has been Louise Glück for the past few years. A lot of her poems make me feel like she's looking at the world through a telescope, which is how I've felt for a long time: too distant.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>I read one of Alice Walker's books of poetry and decided I liked her fiction better. I just didn't really get it, I guess.<<

Some of the poets made my list for aesthetic or technical finesse, others for the scope of their contributions that got me thinking even if I wasn't all that thrilled by their poems.

>>It's a little sad that I've heard of a lot of these, but not actually read their poems. Must remedy that soon.<<

Go for it!

>>A lot of her poems make me feel like she's looking at the world through a telescope, which is how I've felt for a long time: too distant.<<

I've never had an affinity for the modern mainstream culture. That's a key reason why I enjoy poetry that takes some kind of outside perspective.

Re: Thoughts

[jjhunter]

I've been thinking about whether the listening-to-self that so frequently characterizes good writers changes the degree to which one practices listening-to-others for cues on the 'right' or 'correct' way to see the world and the speed with which or degree to which one internalizes others' worldviews. In other words, if you're relying more on yourself to form opinions, it naturally puts you a little out of step with how other members of the groups you might inhabit form their opinions communally--and that difference, that distance, that potential dissonance between self's intuition and outside messages, I think that enables one to think critically and see more clearly. If there is no difference between self and other (present or imagined), then how can the world be any other than how seems presently?

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

Well, I've always been social teflon, so it's kind of hard to tell. I suspect the effect can go either way: being on the outside may incline people to write about their experiences, and writing may encourage people to view culture as an example rather than the One True Way.

Re: Thoughts

[jjhunter]

Well, I've always been social teflon

I'm not entirely sure I follow your metaphor here: are you saying that culture doesn't stick to you? *is bemused*

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

Basically yes. Peer pressure has little effect on me. Other people's expectations have little effect on me, and I rarely care what they think. My tastes and feelings and choices are primarily based on internal parameters, not on external ones. Only people who are very close to me, or whom I respect a great deal, have much influence.

Most people are contextual, and they'll follow closely whatever other people are doing around them. Me, I've got an internal compass that distinguishes flawlessly between Me and Not-Me. I don't care what messed-up things people have declared to be okay or fashionable. I have my own standards. I'll pick and choose what aspects I like from any culture, but most of what I am, I brought into this life with me rather than picked up after I got here.

It doesn't make me popular. But it's very helpful for writing and for studying such things as history, anthropology, and linguistics.

[herlander_refugee]

I feel very under-read now! But then, in rather sorry self-defense, I will say I have neglected my poetry library. I've read one or two from each category except the very last one. i have read some bits of almost all of these, but not in years and years.

Welllll....suddenly, my winter's reading (usually non-fiction) opens into a forgotten field. Thank you for the mental shaking of cobwebs.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>I feel very under-read now! <<

You may simply have read different poets in some of those categories than the poets I have read. Most of the lists had a handful or two of names I recognized, until I hit the classics where I'd read something by most of the poets.

>>Welllll....suddenly, my winter's reading (usually non-fiction) opens into a forgotten field. Thank you for the mental shaking of cobwebs.<<

Yay! That's my goal with the meta posts.

Re: Thoughts

[herlander_refugee]

"That's my goal with the meta posts."

Well, mission accomplished.

Which brings me to another topic....I am subscribed here, but not "joined". I am honestly a bit confused still on DW as to the difference.

Should I not post as a mere subscriber? I don't want to step on toes and I don't know how long it would take me to gain the courage to post a poem here...

Re: Thoughts

[jjhunter]

I can answer that. What Dreamwidth has done is separate whether you want to read community posts on your Reading Page from whether you identify as a member of a particular community. (Note, however, that often ability to post to a comm is restricted to members of that community.) This allows people to choose, e.g., to be a member of a high volume community without having their Reading Page flooded with posts, or to subscribe to a community they're interested in maybe one day joining but not right now.

In the case of poetree, you can post directly to the comm if you're a Dreamwidth user, or indirectly through me if you're not. You're welcome to post others' poetry at any time as long as you abide by comm guidelines on licenses and permissions (see the comm profile); if you're interested in eventually posting some of your own poetry, introducing topics for discussion, or sharing some of your thoughts/experiences re: poetry at greater length, I encourage you to sign up to be a Poetry Host. Worse comes to worse, if your week comes and you don't feel ready, I can always skip over you and come back latter.

Re: Thoughts

[herlander_refugee]

Let me follow and settle for a bit; my year has been beyond hectic and I am rather exhausted and very unambitious just now! Give me a bit of rest, and perhaps I will get the courage to join and be a host!

Re: Thoughts

[jjhunter]

:o)

Just to be clear, you don't have to sign up to be a host in order to join: membership is open to all.

Re: Thoughts

[herlander_refugee]

Oh, I know! I'm just trying to get a grip on all commitments just now....before I GET commited!

Re: Thoughts

[jjhunter]

Very understandable, and I wish you luck with meeting your current commitments.

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

Fair enough. You could also post favorite poems by other writers, though -- that's open to members anytime.