Does anyone know any good poets?

Question

i'm looking for published poets that are really cool or interesting.

Answer 1

My favorite living poet is Billy Collins. OK, he teaches at a university and has won awards/recognition from all the big names, but he personally believes that poetry should be ACCESSIBLE, understandable to all readers, not just the academic elite. Here's what he says, "As I'm writing, I'm always reader conscious. I have one reader in mind, someone who is in the room with me, and who I'm talking to, and I want to make sure I don't talk too fast, or too glibly. Usually I try to create a hospitable tone at the beginning of a poem. Stepping from the title to the first lines is like stepping into a canoe. A lot of things can go wrong." (See Wikipedia.)

Any of his books are fresh and engaging; for example, TheTrouble with Poetry; Nine Horses; Sailing Alone Around the Room; Picnic, Lightning; The Art of Drowning.

When he was Poet Laureate (one of our best), he was determined to bring accessible poetry to the attention of everyone, so he put together a collection of poems by many contemporary poets, entitled 180 Poems, one brief poem to be read aloud each day of the school year (over a school intercom, for example). It was so popular that he did another one, 180 More Poems. These collections, like Garrison Keillor's Good Poems, have something for everybody, whether they consider themselves readers of poetry or not.

My other favorite living poets, among others, are Wendell Berry, Mary Oliver, Lucille Clifton, Ted Kooser (our most recent Poet Laureate), and sometimes Sharon Olds (sometimes not). But Billy Collins is the one I keep coming back to--for what he says, the clever way he says it, and his easy, apparently effortless, but oh-so skillful use of language.

Of course, you can't beat the old-timers, like Emily Dickenson, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, e.e. cummings, Howard Nemerov, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Moore, and A. R. Ammons.

Then if you want to put on your thinking cap and wrestle with some of the most interesting, challenging classics, my all-time favorites are John Keats, William Blake, some of Coleridge and Wordsworth, good ole Walt Whitman, Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Butler Yeats, and (fasten your seat belt) T. S. Eliot.

But for modern poetry, I'd tell anyone to start with Collins and then work backward (and forward).

Enjoy!!!

Answer 2

Pablo Neruda
Federico Garcia Lorca
Billy Collins
Lord Byron

Will Shakespeare...especially Venus and Adonis

Geoffrey Chaucer - Canterbury Tales is mostly in poem form.

Walt Whitman
Norman MacCaig

For More Suggestions, just ask!

Answer 3

Carl Dennis is a brilliant contemporary poet; his 2004 collection, "Practical Gods," won the Pulitzer and is clearly one of his best. I also really enjoy Elizabeth Edwards and Dennis Sampson, two other poets who are still alive and kicking. The best thing I think I did to get a sense of some of the more interesting poetry out there is start tearing through the Carnegie Mellon Poetry Series. It's been a great starting point.

Answer 4

Edgar Allen Poe, Maya Angelou, T.S. Elliot, Shakespeare, William Butler Yates, etc.

Answer 5

Well, there's Emily Dickenson, Robert Frost, Edgar Allen Poe, and Walt Whitman to name a few.

Answer 6

There is a new book out now, called The Truth Or Not? The book is published by iUniverse by Lonnie E Pruitt. The book has a lot of poems and inspirational messages, it hits on things we encounter in everyday living. Check it out

Answer 7

JACK KEROUAC. Go to www.poets.org for more modern writers, they have a truly great site with samples of writer's work. See also, Allen Ginsburg, Louise Gluck, John Keats, e.e.cummings, WALT WHITMAN

Answer 8

The American poet, Robert Frost.

Answer 9

oh do i um edgar allen poe mathew arnold [dover beach] um look up classical american poets i know a whole bunch but i cant rember them well i would like to tell you mabey you wold like books lik e poetry like nicklos sparks

Answer 10

me!

Seriously--Maya Angelou, Robert Frost (!!), Emily Dickinson, e.e. cummings...those are all the really famous ones.

*oh yes, William Carlos Williams (so much depends upon a red wheelbarrow)