Who is your favorite poet still living?

Answer 1

Ted Kooser. This quote from Kooser explains why: ""I would like to show average people, with a high school education or just a couple years of college, that they can understand poems. They are not to be afraid or feel they are being tricked by them. I'm trying to do that by example."

Answer 2

Billy Collins - He's just so straightfoward. I just love his point of view on everything. Here is one of my favorites.

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.


Billy Collins

The Apple that Astonished Paris
University of Arkansas Press
Copyright © 1988 by Billy Collins.
All rights reserved.

Answer 3

Shel Silverstine

Answer 4

Louise Gluck.

Answer 5

Don't have one. All mind are die.