Who Is Your Favorite Poet?

[Safe_Bet]

Quoted from Senna Jawa -
Much more than from comments about your own texts you will gain from two other sources:

from comments about the poems by other authors;
from intensive thinking about great poems (this may be difficult, since some poems by recognized poets are considered to be great while they are not so--life's not simple).

Okay, I listened to Senna Jawa when he told me this and I have been reading many of my favorite poems.

Now, ya'll need to give me a hand - let me know who you think are 'truely' great poets and which are their great poems. If you have the time and the inclination, please tell me why you believe as you do.

Thanks, in advance, for your feedback.

 

[WickedEve]

We've had a few threads about favorite poets and threads with titles something like, Who Do You Read.
I've only found one, so far. But you may find it interesting: http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=493903&highlight=favorite+poet

 

[Angeline]

Thanks Eve for saving me from looking up that old thread--which actually would have been easier than posting links to specific poems.

SB, it's a great question although we're each of us choosing based on (obviously) who who we have (and haven't) read. My favorites tend to be Eurocentric because that's what I've been mainly exposed to in school and even reading on my own. I'd be very interested to hear who people who have read a lot of non-Western poetry consider their favorites.

I think the reason I like the poets I do is that they're really good at imagery, at showing rather than telling. I could go on and on about individual poets, but for me that's what it really boils down to meaning. When I read a poem and the imagery is so strong that I'm transported into the world of that poem (sort of like the concept of the suspension of disbelief in drama), I feel I've read something really good.

 

[sassynyc]

SB, Langston Hughes is one of my favorites. I love his poems because they remind me of music. Reading his poetry is like feeling the blues, or jazz, without the music. It evokes the same emotions for me, as that music would.

You might find this link useful, because in addition to Hughes, you can look up many other poets on this site. Edgar Allen Poe and Audre Lord are also poets I like. You can read some of their poetry there also. I've loved Poe since I was a kid. His poetry is very dark, which I can relate to.

Maya Angelou is also a poet that I've loved since childhood. I love her writing in general. Her writing is personal and engaging. She addresses her readers, and makes you feel like you've been inside her experience.

Hope this helps.

 

[Senna Jawa]

[...]who you think are 'truely' great poets and which are their great poems.

China, Japan and Iceland are poetically especially important to me.

When it comes to individual poets, first there was Du Fu, then Bolesław Leśmian (but I don't know if there are any good translations of him; there were multiple, triple and quadruple translations of three of his short poems but they are gone). Du Fu is the wonderful culmination of the greatest development in poetry. The critics write that he has absorbed in a creative way about twelve hundred or two thousand years of the Chinese poetic evolution, and created also new types of poems. Elsewhere I've written about the robust and fragile features of poetry. Du Fu's poetry had them both, perhaps in roughly half and half proportion. Thus, thanks to the robust features, his poetry can be translated and is impressive after over twelve centuries. It even feels modern. There were other great Chinese poets at the time too: Li Bai, Wang Wei, and others. It is called the Gold Age of Chinese poetry--actually, of the world poetry.

Leśmian's poetry is based more on the fragile effects. No wonder that it is next to impossible to translate him. Polish poetry is strong: the Renaissance Jan Kochanowski, the late romantic Cyprian Norwid (actually a high class true thinker rather than romantic), Julian Tuwim, Konstanty Gałczyński, Kamil Baczyński... Also the Noble prize winners Czesław Miłosz and Wisława Szymborska, while Zbigniew Herbert enjoys still more respect in Poland, ... and there were the wieszcz poets (of the romantic era): Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Słowacki.

Anyway, in addition to the two poets mentioned above (Du Fu and Lesmian), there were several other, e.g. Russians: Pushkin, Tutchev, Lermontov, Yesenin, Osip Mandelstam, Marina Tsvetaeva, Anna Akhmatova, Joseph Brodsky, ...

I'll stop this incomplete list now. Best regards,

 

[Senna Jawa]

We've had a few threads about favorite poets and threads with titles something like, Who Do You Read.
I've only found one, so far. But you may find it interesting: http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=493903&highlight=favorite+poet

Bogusbrig liked "September 1, 1939" by W.H.Auden, while to me that poem is artistic garbage, which has nothing to do with poetry.

 

[WickedEve]

Bogusbrig liked "September 1, 1939" by W.H.Auden, while to me that poem is artistic garbage, which has nothing to do with poetry.

Why is it artistic garbage?
I read part of it and got bored. Too wordy for me and not very interesting. Or perhaps I'm just ignorant, which is very possible.

 

[Senna Jawa]

[...] and which are their great poems.

Check:

• Epitaph by Primo Levi;
• TO HIS WIFE by general Su WU, translated from Chinese by Arthur Waley.

 

[Noor]

Gosh, there are so many to choose from some of whom have already been named Hughes, Puskin, Lemontof

I think my favorite is Lewis Carroll for the Jabberwocky and The Walrus and the Carpenter though Edward Lear comes close with the Owl and the Pussycat.

I think I could name my favorite poems more easily. A more modern one is this:

In Response to a Rumor That the Oldest Whorehouse in Wheeling, West Virginia, Has Been Condemned -James Wright

I will grieve alone,
As I strolled alone, years ago, down along
The Ohio shore.
I hid in the hobo jungle weeds
Upstream from the sewer main,
Pondering, gazing.

I saw, down river,
At Twenty-third and Water Streets
By the vinegar works,
The doors open in early evening.
Swinging their purses, the women
Poured down the long street to the river
And into the river.

I do not know how it was
They could drown every evening.
What time near dawn did they climb up the other shore,
Drying their wings?

For the river at Wheeling, West Virginia,
Has only two shores:
The one in hell, the other
In Bridgeport, Ohio.

And nobody would commit suicide, only
To find beyond death
Bridgeport, Ohio.

 

[Anschul]

I am desperately stuck between (among?) William Shakespeare, Kipling, and Shel Silverstein. Depends on my mood. I'll get back to you with citations of my faves.


..and, oh yeah, Angeline.

 

[Angeline]

I am desperately stuck between (among?) William Shakespeare, Kipling, and Shel Silverstein. Depends on my mood. I'll get back to you with citations of my faves.


..and, oh yeah, Angeline.

I don't know if I'm more impressed to be in the company of Shakespeare or Shel Silverstein. Thank you bro.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Here are a few whose bathwater I would gleefully drink:

Richard Brautigan

Rumi

Dylan Thomas

Mervyn Peake

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Chocolate Waters

Walt Whitman

George Gordon Lord Byron

Gertrude Stein

Ranier Maria Rilke

 

[ivantheterrible]

a tie between john trudell and jim morrison

 

[The_Frank_Black]

You may call me boring, and you may very well be right, but I have always loved Robert Frost. There are too many "good" ones to actually choose, but RF is consistent if I want to read something soothing or makes me ponder my own existence.

 

[Equinoxe]

Bear with me, this is long, but it's mostly poetry.

Most of my favourite poets wrote in languages I can't really understand, which raises a number of questions for me—on the negative side, how can I be certain of any of their poetic quality? on the positive, if I find assorted translations of Li Bai better than most poems originally written in English, how much better must he be in Classical Chinese?

As I have mentioned many times before (and shall no doubt mention many times again), I am inordinately fond of Chinese and Japanese poets.

Regarding Chinese poets, there are so many worthy of admiration, particularly of course those of the Tang Dynasty when Chinese poetry was at its peak. There are many poets of that time and place that I absolutely love: Li Bai, Du Fu, Wang Wei, Bai Juyi, Yu Xuanji, etc.

Li Bai has always been one of my favourite poets and I was blessed to have been introduced to him at a very young age. There are many poems by him that I adore, though perhaps his most famous is this:

Amongst the flowers is a pot of wine
I pour alone but with no friend at hand
So I lift the cup to invite the shining moon,
Along with my shadow we become party of three

The moon although understands none of drinking, and
The shadow just follows my body vainly
Still I make the moon and the shadow my company
To enjoy the springtime before too late

The moon lingers while I am singing
The shadow scatters while I am dancing
We cheer in delight when being awake
We separate apart after getting drunk

Forever will we keep this unfettered friendship
Till we meet again far in the Milky Way​

(31 other translations are available at this site.)

I must admit to not being as fond of Du Fu as I perhaps ought to be, though much of his technical brilliance is impossible to translate into English (the tonal patterns required in jintishi have no ready English analogue). I know that he is a genius, but he is not always personally striking to me. Nevertheless, there are some poems by him that have absolutely amazed me, such as this one on a dream he had about Li Bai:

There are sobs when death is the cause of parting;
But life has its partings again and again.
From the poisonous damps of the southern river
You had sent me not one sign from your exile –
Till you came to me last night in a dream,
Because I am always thinking of you.
I wondered if it were really you,
Venturing so long a journey.
You came to me through the green of a forest,
You disappeared by a shadowy fortress.
Yet out of the midmost mesh of your snare,
How could you lift your wings and use them?
I woke, and the low moon's glimmer on a rafter
Seemed to be your face, still floating in the air.
There were waters to cross, they were wild and tossing;
If you fell, there were dragons and rivermonsters.​

(Translation by Witter Bynner)

Bai Juyi is another poet, a bit later than Li Bai, Du Fu, and Wang Wei, and not considered as good as any of them (Li Bai is considered the Great Taoist Poet, Du Fu is considered the Great Confucian Poet, and Wang Wei is considered the Great Buddhist Poet), but he was a prolific poet, known for his simple use of language and he produced many lovely poems, such as this one (translated by Witter Bynner):

Her tears are spent, but no dreams come.
She can hear the others singing through the night.
She has lost his love. Alone with her beauty,
She leans till dawn on her incense-pillow.​

Wang Wei was a poet and painter and, as mentioned, considered the Great Buddhist poet of the Tang Dynasty. He was specifically a Chan Buddhist (that is, a Zen Buddhist), which perhaps shows in many of his poems, such as this famous poem of his (translated in a very minimalist way by Burton Watson):

Empty hills, no one in sight,
only the sound of someone talking;
late sunlight enters the deep wood,
shining over the green moss again.​

Lastly, Yu Xuanji, who was a poetess, courtesan, and later Taoist nun in the later Tang Dynasty, notable for breaking conventions about female poets in China and for her varied interests in poetical topics (from personal matters to spiritual concerns to political issues). She was eventually executed for (one assumes accidentally) beating a novice nun to death. An example poem of hers (the first that I had ever read in fact):

She weeps silently, with her hands full of weeds.
They say her neighbor's husband is back home.
Only recently did swans and geese migrate north.
This morning they returned, now migrating south.
Spring comes. Autumn goes ... Sorrow remains.
Autumn goes. Spring comes ... Still no letter ...
Click. She slides back the bolt. No one has come.
The sound of laundry pounding. When shall she wash the curtains?​

(Translated impromptu, according to the translator, by R.F. Hahn.)


As for Japanese poetry (waka wa...), I am particularly enamoured of many of the Heian period poets, especially Ono no Komachi and Lady Ise, but also Ki no Tsurayuki, Ariwara no Narihira, and many others.

Ono no Komachi (a poetess in the 9th century who was admired as one of the greatest poets in Japan in her lifetime and whose reputation has generally remained high in Japanese culture—she was listed by later Heian period authors amongst the Six Greatest Poets and the Thirty-Six Poetry Immortals):

This body
grown fragile, floating,
a reed cut from its roots...
If a stream would ask me
to follow, I'd go, I think.​

(Translation by Jane Hirschfield and Aratani Mariko—this may be my absolute favourite poem.)

Lady Ise (another major female poet of the Heian period, she lived a bit later than Ono no Komachi and is not generally as well regarded, but I generally adore her poetry as well):

Destined to fall soon
The cherry-blossom
Is short-lived.
Yet it makes one wait
Such a long, long time.​

(This particular poem, translated here by Ito Setsuko, won an Imperial poetry competition in 913.)

Ki no Tsurayuki (who was the lead compiler of Kokinwakashu, the first Imperial Poetry Anthology, and he is also notable for his influence in creating the poetic diary genre in Japan):

The depths of the hearts
Of humankind cannot be known.
But in my birthplace
The plum blossoms smell the same
As in the years gone by.​

Ariwara no Narihira (an important poet and minor nobleman, he is also the presumed protagonist of Ise Monogatari and subsequently an important person in the Noh play Izutsu—which is one of my favourite Noh plays):

Even when the gods
Held sway in the ancient days,
I have never heard
That water gleamed with autumn red
As it does in Tatta's stream​

(The Ki no Tsurayuki poem and the Ariwara no Narihira poem both come from Hyakunin Isshu and are revised versions of Clay MacCauley's 1917 translation).

I have finally gotten around to reading Fujiwara no Sadaie recently (he is traditionally considered the greatest and most influential poet in the courtly waka tradition) and his reputation is decidedly not undeserved. He truly is brilliant and his writings on poetry are quite elucidating as well. Furthermore, he also compiled anthologies of poems, including Hyakunin Isshu. An example poem by Fujiwara no Sadaie (as translated by Donald Keene):

Another year gone by
And still no spring warms my heart,
It's nothing to me
But now I am accustomed
To stare at the sky at dawn.​

There are other poems that I have occasionally come across in old anthologies of poems, but I am unable to find out much about the poets—such as Harumichi no Tsuraki with this poem from Hyakunin Isshu:

In a mountain stream
There is a wattled barrier
Built by the busy wind.
Yet it's only maple leaves,
Powerless to flow away.​

(Also a revised version of Clay MacCauley's translation.)

 

[Angeline]

Most of my favourite poets wrote in languages I can't really understand, which raises a number of questions for me—on the negative side, how can I be certain of any of their poetic quality? on the positive, if I find assorted translations of Li Bai better than most poems originally written in English, how much better must he be in Classical Chinese?

As I have mentioned many times before (and shall no doubt mention many times again), I am inordinately fond of Chinese and Japanese poets.

<snip>

Thanks Equi. Some very beautiful poetry here, and a great guide for me of poets to explore. I'm curious as to how you became familiar with these poets. I went to college in the USA and was exposed to very few non-Western writers. Most of the non-westerners I consider "favorites" (like Forough Farrokhzad, the late Iranian poet, for example), I discovered through my own reading.

 

[Guest]

I respect a lot of poets and their writing, but I've truly admired two I met online the most, smithpeter and peppersdance. I've learned much from them and miss them both, luckily the Internet has captured their writing so I can continue reading/enjoying/learning.

 

[Angeline]

I was reading poetry from the recent issues of Atlantic Monthly and I found this poem by James Reiss, which I think is very good.

The Piano Tuner

says wolf tones on stringed instruments howl
in resonance, like spaces between leptons and quarks,

interstitial loops from which viruses and skyscrapers
are strung. Says a piano must be free

of wolf tones; there must be echoless pure empty space
in a C-sharp minor triad for moonlight to pour

through Beethoven’s sonata hammered out on strings
that tie us to our seats in recital halls.

Says there are at least twenty dimensions, not four
as we’ve been taught. In dreams, entering

the twelfth dimension, says he hears larks
and libraries warbling a ditty he sings

before bed or upon rising at dawn, tuned
to his pulse’s link with Pythagoras and the stars.

 

[Equinoxe]

Thanks Equi. Some very beautiful poetry here, and a great guide for me of poets to explore. I'm curious as to how you became familiar with these poets. I went to college in the USA and was exposed to very few non-Western writers. Most of the non-westerners I consider "favorites" (like Forough Farrokhzad, the late Iranian poet, for example), I discovered through my own reading.

You're very welcome.

I was fortunate to be introduced to a number of non-Western poets by (excellent) elementary school teachers—I remember, in particular, being introduced to Li Bai/Li Po and Omar Khayyam (as well as typical Western poets like Poe and Frost, and in later school years Byron and Shelley—who I still adore, even if they are melodramatic). And when I was in High School, I was introduced to Matsuo Basho (who wasn't mentioned in my earlier and highly incomplete list).

Most of them, though, I discovered through my own reading and some of them quite recently—I finally got around to reading Fujiwara no Sadaie this year, as I mentioned earlier. In fact, many of my favourite poets I've become acquainted with in the past few years (including a number that went unmentioned earlier): I first read Mirza Ghalib three years ago (or rather exegesis of him, because apparently he can be absolutely impossible to translate—there's one well-known couplet of his which has eighteen possible meanings in Urdu) and I first read the poetry of Empress Michiko in January of last year (as well as the poetry of the Emperor, who I also like, just not as much).

I was blessed to have broad-minded teachers at a young age who introduced me to a number of non-Western poets, but I became familiar with most of them by my own pursuits. In fact, that's really been true for most of the non-English language poets that I've become familiar with.

 

[Sqoodd]

Edgar Allan Poe

And

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

 

[Sadean]

My favourite "poet" poet is a tossup between a few:
-Charles Baudelaire
-Charles Bukowski
-T.S. Elliot (though I only really like Prufrock)
-Gordon Downie (known probably only to Canucks)

My favourite "non-poet" poet:
-Richard Terfry, aka Buck 65. Although he is not a poet per-se, he writes verse that is very poetic and could even been seen as poetry; he also worked alongside Bukowski to turn one of his poems into a song that is quite good - channeling Bukowski's emotions very well in his vocals. (song is called "The Floor" and Bukowski's poem is "a smile to remember"

 

[Spaffle]

T. S. Eliot, especially The Waste Land; Alfred Lord Tennyson; Jacques Prevert

 

[ishtat]

I find it almost impossible to name a favourite poet largely because so many great poets push boundaries and obviously they achieve great work by so doing, but they also write poor stuff.

My favourite poetry too tends to vary according to how I am thinking and feeling at the time.

But I am consistent in always disliking the English Romantics.

 

[bflagsst]

favor

Maria Martins. there are only a few of her poems available in public, private collectors hold her journals, which I was lucky enough to view a few years back. She was the wife of some US Emissary in South America, she was known for being a sculptor, but I could care less about that, her poems are sweet and very sensual.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, E.E. Cummings, Maya Angelou, Marilyn Hacker, Stephen Dunn, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Ai, Rumi, Lucille Clifton, Edgar Allen Poe, and Billy Collins spring to mind but also BJ Ward and Renee Ashley who are my two newest discoveries.