Who is your favorite poet(s) and why?

[Dioltach]

Understandable. I hated everything I had to read for English literature (except I managed to get the teacher to pick "Weirdstone of Brisingamen" from the popular fiction selection, which I'd already read and enjoyed).

The Weirdstone is great. Have you read the sequel, The Moon of Gomrath? I was actually born in the area where the stories take place -- check the references to Macclesfield, my parents lived there shortly before I was born.

Chaucer is good, but I think one of the problems is that his humor is not very accessible to modern readers (like Shakespeare's -- honestly, who really thinks a Shakespeare comedy is funny, except maybe some of the slapstick moments?). Try reading The Book of the Duchess and figuring out the historical references, and you'll definitely appreciate Chaucer's brilliance. Of course, the fact that he is rumoured to have been a secret agent for the King of England only makes him more intriguing ...

On the subject of Middle English poetry, I can also suggest Pearl, if you're very patient, and the Middle English Breton Lays (or even translation of the French lays, like those of Marie de France), which are short and simple stories of love, adventure and magic. In fact, I wrote my Master's thesis on the Middle English Breton Lays, and called it "Of Love and Magic".

(Not to hijack the thread, but speaking of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, isn't "Sword of the Valiant" the worst movie ever?)

 

[barsoomcore]

honestly, who really thinks a Shakespeare comedy is funny, except maybe some of the slapstick moments?

Uh, every single one of the five hundred people watching A Midsummer Night's Dream with me Friday night. The audience was SHRIEKING they were laughing so hard. The entire last hour of the play was uncontrollable howling. A little girl down the row from me fell off her chair onto the floor she was laughing so hard.

Shakespeare's HILARIOUS. Are you kidding me?

 

[Balgus]

If this has not been thrown out yet- I don't know what you guys are waiting for:

Shel Siverstein. Every person I have ever spoken to knows of,or loves his works. I grew up with them and enjoy them immensely. And I canonly hope that my children(when I have children) will love his work as much as I did/do.

Other poets (already mentioned):

1)Robert Frost - He speaks so ernestly and candidely. He writes about things that make you think, as well as things that relate to everyday life. And the read is so effortless and natural that I hardly consider it poetry, but short stories.
My favorite is "Design" a sonnet about chaos and design: "What but design of darkness to appall?/ If design govern in a thing so small."

2) Cooleridge - My first poem analysis was his "Kublai Khan". I can't remember the entire poem, but I remember one line which still has some powerful imagery to me:
"It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice"
And now when I write stories, this cave makes recurring appearance as either the protag's home (superman) or the evil lair (skeletor's snake mountain). Either way, I just love the cold,icy feel of the solitary caves giving pleasure and warmth to the reader.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Uh, every single one of the five hundred people watching A Midsummer Night's Dream with me Friday night. The audience was SHRIEKING they were laughing so hard. The entire last hour of the play was uncontrollable howling. A little girl down the row from me fell off her chair onto the floor she was laughing so hard.

Shakespeare's HILARIOUS. Are you kidding me?

To be fair, I felt the same way till I saw one performed well. They don't come across as funny when you just pick them up and read them -- clever, humourous, but not ROFL funny. And badly performed Shakespeare can be painful. I saw am amateur production of Hamlet in junior high that damn near put me off the Bard for good.

Fortunately, I had a wicked cool English lit teacher in high school that loved performing Macbeth. And one of, if not the, best class I had in college was a 'Shakespeare as Theatre' class, where we looked at the plays as entertainment instead of hoity-toity lit.

 

[the black knight]

I've read nearly every poet on this list and they all had something to say. I found vitality and insight in their words.

 

[Rose Marry]

Hi,
My favorite Poet is William Shakespeare. Because William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright widely regarded as the greatest writer of the English language, as well as one of the greatest in Western literature, and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.

 

[Jones J]

Hi Guys,

I like Robert Frost. Robert Frost was one of the finest of rural New England's 20th century pastoral poets. Some of Frost's best-known poems: "Mending Wall," "The Death of the Hired Man," "Home Burial," "After Apple-Picking," and "The Wood-Pile."

 

[barsoomcore]

I have to say, spambots are getting fascinating.

 

[Land Outcast]

Bukowski: Because taking little sips at caustic soda has it's jist.

Pablo Neruda: Romantic style with realistic grief, he puts the words to dance.

Sigfried Sasoon: Images not, neither scenes, feelings.

Wilfred Owen: Just a bit less than Sasoon (not in quality, I works I have knowledge of).

William Shakespeare: He who encapsulated the essence of human nature in his plays.

Garo Arakelian: Reminds about the undeniable fact that to be alive, one has to live.

 

[morrolan]

Philip Larkin - This Be The Verse

They f*ck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were f*cked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

I like Auden best though:

Musee de Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.