Who is your favorite modern poet?

Answer 1

It depends of if you Modernist, or if you mean Contemporary. If you mean Modernest then all of the answers above, except Anne Sexton apply.

If you mean Contemporary, then Anne Sexton applies. And I will throw a few more into the Contemporaries: James Wright, Louise Gluck, Stephen Dunn, Mary Jo Bang, Heather McHugh, Ted Kooser, Mary Oliver, W. S. Merwin, and probably 20 more I can't think of right off the top of my head.

Answer 2

Sylvia Plath

Answer 3

W.B. Yeats

The Valley Of The Black Pig


The dews drop slowly and dreams gather: unknown spears
Suddenly hurtle before my dream-awakened eyes,
And then the clash of fallen horsemen and the cries
Of unknown perishing armies beat about my ears.
We who still labour by the cromlech on the shore,
The grey caim on the hill, when day sinks drowned in dew,
Being weary of the world's empires, bow down to you.
Master of the still stars and of the flaming door.

Answer 4

Anne Sexton

- Comment:
From the joy and anguish of her own experience, Sexton fashioned poems that told truths about the inner lives of men and women. This book comprises Sexton's ten volumes of verse, including the Pulitzer Prize-winner Live or Die, as well as seven poems form her last years.

Answer 5

Langston Hughes

Answer 6

Yeats:

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread upon my dreams.

Answer 7

EJ Priestley

Two:
Chameleon

"eye am ten, raised to the power: minus forty-three
seconds ago
eye am sixteen billion—Big Bang—years of sunsets since
call me Eastern Stardust Time
'fore eye was a cell, a clam, a crayfish
'fore eye was a frog, a turtle duck billed Dodo bird a
Platypus,
a dragon fly, a pollywog
'fore eye was a heron shy, a swallow full of sky, a
trilobite, a fire spark,
a meadowlark, a grain of sand, that grew into a stone,
a breath of air, & 'fore eye was a bone, eye was a
shadow:
a protozoariferacoelenterata,
plathyhelmintheaschelmenthemykindyourdermata
mollusannelidoidanthropodointegumentarychordata,
remember me, my flag it purple flowers fly:
forgetmenots my color
'fore eye was a bone, eye was a shadow,
dangling chromosomes of genus: You Know
oh swarthy Ethiopia, recall my own aunt Lucy
quand nous sommes: mille-huit cent-soixante quartorze
dawn Riot aegyptopithecus,
skull intact two million tears ago
sharper than mosquitoes "petahs"
32 teeth in Miocene Time
one prospector bone jumping Sapien
they never got it right,
but called us by another name
when no tail grew,
thirty thousand years of snow would go
dubbed 'em dignop-ragmop Rasta-Pongid-Missing Link
Big Foot, Yinee shot dice on a gene splice & Neanders
thawed
frostbite feet froze off Ice Age
stone flecks come the Peking man
then dropped like fire sticks
grew me & you & all the shades of them no one has seen
'em since
‘****** dice don't roll’
still Aunt Lucy says to say hello
Eyeball am here to testify: a Sapien,
a sole survivor, sweet Aunt Lucy's kin
come not she your aunt Lucy too
what solar system sky?
please tell me who? as what ? by how?
or whence? from where do your own ancestors fly?
whose jaws with skulls
the carbon dated bones back when?
you see, my friend
we are the spawn of saurs
no count tribes, whose thoughts grew out of grunts old
nods,
hand jive & screams--no word, odd signs,
engirdling tones the bread defined
the mantra said: yo-kee gee-ring-ho yo-mee-nam
our silence sings The Dream Time
to Ghaghaju-griot hearing aids
Sangria gun-gun great uncle juju Bushman kindled fire,

gathered roots his horse who rides me still
up a mountain-down the Belladonna shade
a million five ago & ashes
when the no name Mhamha's
announced us kin to cousin Taung's child
petrified like magma swirls
the garnet gleans a snowball stone
where once eye lay chameleon raw,
preserved in time, a lump of coal,
my jelly shook in oyster shells,
the progeny of apple cores--because:
'fore eye was a cell, a clam, a crayfish,
'fore eye was a frog,
a turtle, duck billed Dodo bird, a Platypus,
a dragon fly, a pollywog,
a trilobite, a heron shy, a meadowlark,
cyanogenic drop of rain, a fire spark,
'fore eye was a grain of sand that grew into a stone,
a breath of air 'fore eye was a bone,
eye was a shadow:
a protozoariferacoelenterata,
plathyhelmintheaschementheyourkindmydermata,
mollusannelidoidanthropodaintegumentarychordata
remember me, my flag, it purple flowers fly:
forgetmenots my color, 'fore eye was a bone eye was a
shadow."
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Answer 8

I'm not a big fan of poets post-T.S. Elliot. Art has attained too lose a definition, everyone's a damn poet now.

Answer 9

me

Answer 10

"Moi"