Who is your favorite published poet?

Question

For those of you who read poetry, who's work to you really admire? What about their work or their style draws you to them?

I personally like E.E. Cummings a lot, some E.A. Poe, and Alfred Tennyson, and few more recent poets whose names I can never seem to remember. Cummings makes a good points that a person can really think about and the other two metioned have some enjoyable story poems.

Answer 1

I adore Yeats, especially "The Second Coming" and "Easter 1916." He is one of the only really good (in my opinion) 20th century poets who used traditional verse forms. There is a lot of mysticism and sadness in his poems that give them an almost haunting quality.

Another mystical, occasionally surreal poet is William Blake. Although some of his poetry is best understood while under the influence of an illicit substance, others are so beautiful that they raise goosebumps. Blake was also an extraordinarily talented illustrator/print-maker. His book of poetry, "Songs of Innocence and Experience," includes an illuminated plate with each poem. Here is "the Chimney Sweeper" in Wiki (w/ plate):
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Chimney_Sweeper_%28Blake%2C_1789%29

Then, of course, there is Emily Dickinson. How can you not love someone who wrote:
"I died for Beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for Truth was lain
In an adjoining room.
He questioned softly why I failed?
"For Beauty," I replied.
"And I for Truth, —the two are one;
We brethren are," he said."

Answer 2

W. B. Yeats, Elizabeth Bishop, and Adrienne Rich. T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland is pretty amazing, too. A lot of Bishop's poems tell stories (like "In the Waiting Room").

Answer 3

Edgar Allen Poe
Thomas Paine

Answer 4

Rudyard Kipling. I've liked him since I read "If" when I was in the 5th grade. Perhaps I'm just not as smart as I'd like to think I am, but what I really appreciated about him was the fact that he isn't very cryptic in his poems. He is not without a certain depth and meaning but you don't have to try to figure out what he's saying. I also really like Sage Francis. A line like "I noticed that the Swoosh symbol was nothing but a whip in mid swing," speaks volumes about the fashion industry and the strangle hold it has on our minds. At least, to me it does.

Answer 5

Billy Collins and Langston Hughes are my two favorite poets.

I also adore W.H. Auden, Mary Oliver and Phillip Larkin.

I adore poetry in general actually.

cummings and poe and tennyson are all good too.

Answer 6

Poe and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. And of course Shakespeare.

Answer 7

Dylan Thomas

Answer 8

I love early poetry by T.S. Eliot--I am a huge fan of Modernism. There is nothing better than reading poetry about isolation and despair!
"Life is very long"(The Hollow Men)

Answer 9

Robert Service, Henry Longfellow, me.

Answer 10

nicely there are 3 i think of , mc hollow area the secret cat via ts elliott, the female of shallot, alfred lord tennyson, and oh to be in england, robert browning. i cant decide for between them