Hello, fellow fediverse poetry lovers! Like the title suggests, who are your favorite poets? I figured a post like this could be fun and could help us all discover new poets!
To start things off, I’ll list my top three at the moment:
- William Carlos Williams
- Pablo Neruda
- T.S. Elliot
Happy to elaborate on why I chose any of them or share my recommendations for poems by any of them. More importantly, though, I’d love to hear what you guys think!
There’s a poetry place now? Phenomenal!
Picking a top three is difficult. I pick Eliot, for imagery and mastery of meter and allusions/historical webs of meaning. I love Auden the same.
At the moment I’m really into Safia Elhillo and Matthew Dickman, they’re my favorite contemporary poets.
I credit Shel Silverstein for my earliest love of poetry.
As Scaldart said, I’m unfamiliar with Dickman, so thank you for linking an example! It’ll be a fun read this evening , along with some other new recommendations I’ve gotten here already!
Regarding Shel Silverstein: I think he deserves a lot more credit than he seems to get (at least in my experience). He’s a great balance of accessible to young audiences without becoming too ridiculous or grating. Personally I think he had a great talent. As a fun side note, I learned during a recent Wikipedia rabbit hole descent that he wrote the lyrics to Johnny Cash’s A Boy Named Sue!
I’m not familiar with Dickman. At least, I don’t recognize the name. I’ll have to look him up!
I just read his All-American Poem in April thanks to some librarians’ curated National Poetry Month display. It’s ecstatic, melancholy, silly sometimes. Check out “Grief” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/150394/grief-5d0c057c36f0c
Oh wow. That is wonderful! I’ll have to read it several more times in the morning. Thank you for sharing!
There is a lot to examine in that poem, wow! I love the last five lines-the tonal shift is excellent!