Books Favorite Poets

[blur92]

Does anyone here read poetry? If so, who are your favorite poets? My top picks are Sylvia Plath, E. E. Cummings, Anne Sexton, and Edgar Allan Poe. The poem "I Am Vertical" as well as "Burning the Letters" are good reads by Sylvia Plath. I would love to check out any recommendations anyone has. If you don't read poetry then maybe you will find some good, introductory material here.

 

[mssbishi]

I really enjoy Sylvia Plath's work too. I like a wide variety of poets and my favorites include Allen Ginsburg, Phillip Larkin and Maya Angelou. Still I Rise, by Angelou is fantastic, I've pasted it below for anyone who cares to take a look.
Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

 

[loonshine]

I love poets from my province of Quebec. Gaston Miron and Roland Giguere, for one. Their language gets me and if I had anything tattooed on my body, it'd be some verses from Miron.
I also really like Pushkin. For a few lines of his. They were beautiful and I carry them with me in my heart.

(something like:
Say, there is a memory of my name,
There is in this world a heart, where I live)