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.