Fav Poets

[RainbowGurl]

I wonder who your fav poets are? I know Ashlea already said but maybe she will be kind enough as to repeat it here!!!

My fav poets are: Percy Bysshe Shelley, W.H Auden, Dylan Thomas, Shakespear, Byron, Pablo Neruda and Yeats.

What about yours?

Regards
SillyWabbit

I think shakespere was a good poet and I like some poems that i write myself

 

[Irene Wilde]

I can't really add anyone new to the others that have been listed, most of which I've read and loved.

I just liked seeing a thread on poetry here.

Irene Wilde

 

[Wabbit]

Who would you say is your fav poet though?

 

[Irene Wilde]

Fav has got to be Mr. Thomas, but Pablo Neruda is way up there, too. So are Billy Collins, ee cummings, rimbaud, and Charles Bukowski.

Irene Wilde

 

[lies]

I have Winnie Ille Pu, the Latin version.

Hehe, that should be fun.

Up until fairly recently I abhorred poetry (primarily due to repeated exposure to the dire anthologies selected for school study, and the analysing-to-death associated with it), but having found a few superb selections I have developed quite a taste, if a refined and sometimes peculiar one, for it.

I've never been much of a poetry gal myself, but I do like some poems by Poe or Van Ostaijen, or whoever. I don't really have a favourite poet, but sometimes I'll come across something I like.

 

[Wabbit]

Fav has got to be Mr. Thomas, but Pablo Neruda is way up there, too. So are Billy Collins, ee cummings, rimbaud, and Charles Bukowski.

Irene Wilde

I want to get read some books of poetry Pabloe Neruda before I die Must get some soon. ( note to self: Must check Ebay! )

 

[funes]

I'm surprised to see so people many mention Bukowski. Which isn't to say that he wasn't a great poet. He certainly could be when he was "right". And, he had a real gift for book titles. Have any of you read any the volumes of collected letters (Screams from the Balcony, etc.)? They're quite marvelous.

 

[Irene Wilde]

How could I not read a book entitled, "You Get so Alone at Times that it Just Makes Sense." The book contains a wonderful, thoughtful poem called "My Vanishing Act." Bukowski was certainly "right" the day he wrote that one.

Irene Wilde

 

[funes]

Yeah. I've always liked The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hill for a title; but, my favorite poem is "The Night I F**ked My Alarm Clock" in Love is a Dog from Hell.

 

[novella]

I too am surprised at the many mentions of Bukowski. As with so much fiction discussion here, I can't help notice the enormous gap in the interests of board users, who seem to revere the accepted canon (Yeats, Shakespeare, Wordsworth--all deserving, no doubt) and then jump somehow to a few very recent writers whose work is, IMO, of dubious merit.

Dylan Thomas is the one exception, and I wonder why only him? Why not any of his contemporaries, the poets he hung with and loved?

What happened to the entire 20th century, gang?

What about Hart Crane, Walt Whitman, Robert Lowell, Theodore Roethke, Seamus Heaney?? What about Elizabeth Bishop, Carolyn Forche, Maxine Kumin, Anne Sexton? To me, these poets, among many others of their generation(s), are the meat and potatoes of modern poetry, yet nobody has mentioned them. They each in their own way take the art and craft of Wordsworth, Keats, and Yeats and bring them into the contemporary realm.

Has anyone else noticed this enormous gap? Is it an age-related anomoly? I guess if many of the posters here are in their teens or 20s and only recently discovered poetry that would explain it? No offense intended, I'm just amazed.

Novella

 

[Wabbit]

The simple anwser is people like what they like Does their have to be a reason?

*shrugs*

 

[novella]

The point is, there IS a reason for this huge gap--is it in taste or knowledge or correlative experience? I just wonder what that reason is.

It's easy to be simplistic and say, oh that's just my taste. But if something is the only example of quality that you've ever tasted, wouldn't that limit your so-called likes and dislikes? What is the reason behind this limitation?

 

[Irene Wilde]

novella,

I can only answer for myself, but here is my answer -- knowledge and experience. After the nightmare of suffering through one unit of "poetry" each year in high school English, I was so turned off by the idea of poetry that I spent years avoiding it. I can only hope they have improved the process of introducing young minds to poetry in the ensuing 20+ years.

However, as I grew older I was exposed to the poetry not taught in high school (nothing against "Ode to a Grecian Urn") and so, when I stumble across a line I like, or someone recommends a particular poet, I will sample the writer and see if it is something I like. I am not authority on what is "good" and what is "bad," only what I can relate given my experience.

I'm sure there's a wealth of poets I've yet to discover and many will have something to offer me.

Does that help at all?

Irene Wilde

 

[Wabbit]

The point is, there IS a reason for this huge gap--is it in taste or knowledge or correlative experience? I just wonder what that reason is.

It's easy to be simplistic and say, oh that's just my taste. But if something is the only example of quality that you've ever tasted, wouldn't that limit your so-called likes and dislikes? What is the reason behind this limitation?

Ah, but see, there is the problem. They are YOUR tastes and YOUR idea of quality.

Somtimes the simple reason IS the reason, and somtimes there is no other reason that simply because. As Churchil said, "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." As the famous Occam's razor says, "one should not make more assumptions than the minimum needed"

You are making assumsions that people do not know other poets. You are making many assumations. Not to mention you are using YOUR idea of quality for a baseline. Maybe it is just as simple as the people here like certain poets. Just as in a room of people you may get a large number love to watch cop shows. There is not ALWAYS a reason.

As for me. I am 32 years of age. I have read poetry for about 10 years. My bookshelf is FULL of poetry books. I mainly like the poets from the romantic era, the ones you listed, simply because I like them.

 

[liv]

One thing I think needs to be taken into account, also, is that people are going to like the poetry they can relate to, or that has meaning to them; that has touched them in some way. Just because someone doesn't mention a certain poet when they are listing their favorites doesn't mean that they don't absolutely love that work either. Maybe they forgot, or maybe they just didn't list them because they aren't a favorite. It doesn't mean that that person doesn't admire the poet, it just goes along with taste. People also interpret poetry differently, coming from different backgrounds and thinking individually. There are so many different facets that go into making a poet a favorite that one can't criticize why anyone doesn't like a certain one, or why they do like another one. It just can't be argued.

 

[Wabbit]

good point and well said!

 

[funes]

Yeah. It seems to me that poetry is such a personal thing, such a subjective thing (far more than prose), that peoples' responses are also bound to be highly individual. There are plenty of other poets I might have mentioned; ones who, at one time or another, strictly by chance, managed to write something that struck me (Ernest Dowson, Gerald Manley Hopkins, Eliot, Poe, etc.).
For that matter, I'll be the first to say that Bukowski is wildly variable. I find some of his poems amazing, some absolutely boring and lifeless. I was only surprised to see him mentioned here because I didn't really think he was all that well known. I also supposed, for some reason, that women wouldn't find his work all that appealling either.

 

[Ashlea]

I did mention Seamus Heaney. But I would guess a lot of it is a matter of exposure. We all got a healthy dose of Wordworth (I'm personally not a big fan) et al. in school, so they are more likely to be known. I would guess Bukowski shows up so often as he is just the sort of thing you can recommend, knowing that he'll provoke some sort of reaction. Most poetry is related to on such a personal level that it's hard to recommend it to another person. Most poets I've read I discovered by chance, either found something I liked in an anthology and checked out the poet's other work or else picked thru something at random in the bookstore.

 

[Thea]

I did not mention Bukowski because I want to provoke a reaction or because I have not read other poets of "better quality" - whatever that means. I mentioned Bukowski because he is the poet I most relate to, and the one whose poetry has most meaning and beauty in it to my eyes, and he gets a very hard time from people who either don't understand what he was trying to say or haven't read more than a few poems and have already made up their minds. Bukowski was the most prolific poet I've heard of (if you can name a more prolific poet, let me know) who churned out about 250 poems a year, all different styles and subjects, so of course nobody is going to like everything of his that they read, but I do think there is something there for everyone.

If you don't like him, that's fine. You have your own tastes. I just get sick of hearing people talk about what a horrible person he was because he drank and had lots of sex. He also wrote about society, philosophy, spirituality, and so on, but those are less noticeable and less newsworthy than the sex and drinking poems, so that's what everyone focuses their attention on. God knows we've all had our moments. I've been known to get drunk and puke all over the place, and also to scream as loud as I can for no reason, and break things in fits of anger. But I am also a very quiet, thoughtful person. There are no black and white personalities in this world.

I don't understand what is meant by a gap in taste. I don't consider myself to have a set identity that is defined by the things I like and dislike. I enjoy many different writers and artists and filmmakers and so on from all different kinds of styles and periods. Is a person not supposed to enjoy both Moby Dick and Bridget Jones's Diary? Would such a person be seen as wishy-washy and unintelligent by the Melville fans, or as an over-intellectual geek by Helen Fielding Fans? How about considering that person a human being, and not trying to categorize them according to the things they enjoy? Sounds good to me.

 

[Thea]

Actually, no, I'm wrong. There isn't something for everyone in Bukowski's poetry, certainly not much for academics to sink their analytical teeth into. Bukowski made his poetry accessible to the common person for a reason. He was trying to communicate, not trying to create the most abstract piece of art in history, ripe for your dissection.

The idea of Quality is discussed in Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance. Quality should be defined personally, but for some reason we seem to think that writers like Shakespeare, Dickens, Tolstoy, Melville, etc are objectively "good". What makes them good? What exactly is "good" anyway?

Has anyone else noticed this enormous gap? Is it an age-related anomoly? I guess if many of the posters here are in their teens or 20s and only recently discovered poetry that would explain it? No offense intended, I'm just amazed.

No offense intended, I'm sure.