The Next Best Book Club discussion

i'm looking to get into poetry again.
when i was younger (like, elementary school) poems were some of my favorite things to read.
back then, i read a lot of shel silverstein and jack prelutsky.
i'm now looking for more adult-type poetry books.
what do you love?

My favorite poet is Mary Oliver.

Billy Collins has a lot of humor in his poetry.

I second the recommendation for Mary Oliver.

Pablo Neruda
H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)
Stephen Dobyns

I always liked Stephen Crane's poems...most of them have a nice little twist to them.

e.e. cummings is like a logic puzzle.

My favorite is Rod McKuen. I also like Robert Frost, Walt Whitman, Edgar A. Guest, Alfred Lord Tenniyson and Carl Sandburg.

I remember that I liked some of the Pblo Neruda poetry when I was studying for translator and spanish was one of the languages.

I don't have a favorite poet, but I do have a few favorite poems:

The Ballad of Billy Rose
A Girl's Song
(Both by Leslie Norris)

Death of a Naturalist
Personal Helicon
(Both by Seamus Heany)

The Blue Flannel Suit
(By Ted Hughes)

Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon
Al Purdy
Jim Harrison
Keith Douglas

I like Auden, ee cummings, ts eliot, Whitman, and Keats.

I don't read a lot of poetry but I recently finished reading a collection of poems by Federico Garcia Lorca and absolutely loved it. His poetry is haunting and wonderful, I highly recommend his work :)

Heidi wrote: "My favorite poet is Mary Oliver. "

Me too Heidi! I love Mary Oliver and just got her newest book; Red Bird! Great poetry as usual.

I just got a wonderful book by a Polish poet named Wistawa Szymborska. I'm serious. But you can find it on Amazon and I just love it! I got her name by reading an interview with the woman who wrote LOVELY BONES. Can't think of her name, but she said this poet was her favorite. i can see why!

Pablo Neruda

Walt Whitman

Tagore Rabindraneth

So many great suggestions here. Too much to read, not enough hours in the day!

Em, my favourite poets are W. B. Yeats (check him out!) and William Wordsworth.

Yeats- He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Elizabeth Bisop- One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

I have a number of favorites, depending on what you like.

Wislawa Szymborska
Walt Whitman
Pablo Neruda
Adrienne Rich
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Allen Ginsberg

Sandra Cisneros writes some pretty good stuff. And I just love haiku. My favorite is Issa (Kobayashi is his first name I think).

"Au bois il y a un oiseau, son chant vous arrête et vous fait rougir.
Il y a une horloge qui ne sonne pas.
Il y a une fondrière avec un nid de bêtes blanches.
Il y a une cathédrale qui descend et un lac qui monte.
Il y a une petite voiture abandonnée dans le taillis, ou qui descend le sentier en courant, enrubannée.
Il y a une troupe de petits comédiens en costumes, aperçus sur la route à travers la lisière du bois.
Il y a enfin, quand l'on a faim et soif, quelqu'un qui vous chasse."

From Illuminations by Arthur Rimbaud.
There are some poems I love so much that I have committed them to memory.

Rough english translation--

"In the woods there is a bird, his song stops you and makes you blush.
There is a clock that never strikes.
There is a hollow with a nest of white beasts.
There is a cathedral that goes down and a lake that goes up.
There is a little carriage abandoned in the copse, or that goes running down the lane beribboned.
There is a troup of little actors glimpsed on the road through the border of the wood.
And then, when you are hungry and afraid, there is someone who chases you away."

Poets I love:

Arthur Rimbaud
Pablo Neruda
Rabindranath Tagore
Gary Snyder

And of course, "Smokey the Bear Sutra" by Gary Snyder

http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/bear.htm

Oh wow. I love poetry so much. I write it and read alot of it too. You should check out my faveroite poets:

Emily Dickinson
Edgar Allan Poe
William Shakespeare
Gwendolyn Brooks
Percy Bysshe Shelley

In fact, I think I have a book called The Best Poems Ever: A Collection of Poetry's Greatest Voices that features all of them or all but one of them. I recomend you read this book.

William Wordsworth is my favorite. I like the romantic poets. Would you consider haiku poetry? I like that a great deal.

I go for older poetry writers. I like Edgar Allan Poe and William Shakespeare the best.

I also like Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Perpendicularandi wrote: "I go for older poetry writers. I like Edgar Allan Poe and William Shakespeare the best."

Perpendicularandi wrote: "I go for older poetry writers. I like Edgar Allan Poe and William Shakespeare the best."
I have trouble with the old English in Shakespeare. I know I am missing out.Edgar Allan Poe is great.