largely irrelevant rambling
R.W. Emerson, E.E. Cummings, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman. All of these for various reasons, but Cummings, in particular for the convoluted interconnection of ideas that eventually lead you back to the point. Some of his work makes you think so hard that your brain is tied in a metaphysical knot at the end, but most of life's intricacies are so stultifying that my thinking absolutely needs the exercise.
Emerson is more of a vague memory than a favorite, but I do remember being moved by his work when I read some of it in high school.
Whitman's
Leaves of Grass has similar fond memories; "I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference." Please forgive me if I'm misremembering the source.
I like Dickinson because of a poem that I wrote in tenth grade that I was told reminded my teacher of Dickinson. It just sort of leapt out of me over the course of about fifteen minutes, and I felt really good about it. I read a few of her works after that, and I really got the sense that she was struggling to come out of herself and try and be with the world, and I don't know many teenagers who couldn't relate to that.
Anyway, that's my five dollars, and eighty cents.
