Favorite Poets, I'm sure you all have at least one, maybe two, maybe more! Options

[*superstitious*]

My personal favorite is Dorothy Parker. She has such wit and biting sarcasm and a unique style, especially for her day and age. She was happy in her unhappiness, a total walking contradiction. She was one of the first writers of The New Yorker.

I could really go on for days. She has been a constant source of inspiration, both as a brilliant writer and as a woman of strength and undeniable character.

One of my favorite poems:

Bohemia

Authors and actors and artists and such
Never know nothing, and never know much.
Sculptors and singers and those of their kidney
Tell their affairs from Seattle to Sydney.
Playwrights and poets and such horses' necks
Start off from anywhere, end up at sex.
Diarists, critics, and similar roe
Never say nothing, and never say no.
People Who Do Things exceed my endurance;
God, for a man that solicits insurance!

For more information:
Dorothy Parker Society

List yours if you have favorites (I'm sure someone has to!) If you could, write a little about them. What makes them your favorite? Have they inspired you? Perhaps share a favorite poem.

(I'm sure this has been done before, but a fresh one isn't such a terrible thing, is it?)

[*mzkandi*]

Emily Dickinson

Bless God, he went as soldiers,
His musket on his breast --
Grant God, he charge the bravest
Of all the martial blest!

Please God, might I behold him
In epauletted white --
I should not fear the foe then --
I should not fear the fight!

[dustbunny]

Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins

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.





Missing Father Report by Naomi Lazard

Your help is urgently needed.
If you have any information
regarding the whereabouts
of the following individual
contact us immediately.

Subject is, or was, about 45
at the time of disappearance.
last seen dissolving slowly,
first the back of his neck
then his shoulders went away,
his legs left too. In the end
his face vanished without warning,
the mouth open, still speaking.

We have no indication why
this person, of all people,
should have disappeared.
Reliable witnesses have stated
that not even his eyes endured,
not even the tips of his fingers.

You will know him by certain signs,
by the innocent look of his hair
falling over his forehead
in moments of emotional upheaval,
by his hands which are fine
and arrive like delicate instruments
of mercy.
You will also know him
by his eyes which have an unblinking
quality like those of a horse
or some other friendly, domesticated
animal. You will know him
if you are prepared.

There is no history of mental disease,
no police file. Disappearance was,
for all practical purposes,
voluntary. Subject's last
formal statement, for the record,
was "I love you,"
or something like that.



oops just realized it's POETS not poems..ah well I haven't had much time to delve into poetry so I'm not actually familiar with any poets yet.

[*superstitious*]

oops just realized it's POETS not poems..ah well I haven't had much time to delve into poetry so I'm not actually familiar with any poets yet.

Poems are fine! That's how you discover new poets, by reading poems. =)

I love Emily Dickinson, Kiera. Her poetry is so lyrical. It's also interesting that the majority of her work was published after her death.

[1angel3]

I like Emily Dickinson, I read some of her in school and I like Mya Angelo.

[jesusisthebestth...]

i've always loved Langston Hughes, my favorite of his is Battle of the Landlord

Landlord, landlord,
My roof has sprung a leak.
Don't you 'member I told you about it
Way last week?

Landlord, landlord,
These steps is broken down.
When you come up yourself
It's a wonder you don't fall down.

Ten Bucks you say I owe you?
Ten Bucks you say is due?
Well, that's Ten Bucks more'n I'l pay you
Till you flx this house up new.

What? You gonna get eviction orders?
You gonna cut off my heat?
You gonna take my furniture and
Throw it in the street?

Um-huh! You talking high and mighty.
Talk on-till you get through.
You ain't gonn a be able to say a word
If I land my fist on you.

Police! Police!
Come and get this man!
He's trying to ruin the government
And overturn the land!

Copper's whistle!
Patrol bell!
Arrest.
Precinct Station.
Iron cell.
Headlines in press:
MAN THREATENS LANDLORD
TENANT HELD NO BAIL
JUDGE GIVES NEGRO 90 DAYS IN COUNTY JAIL!

[xoxo_proud]

Sylvia Plath


Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I'm no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind's hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat's. The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.

[*Michelle*]

Sylvia Plath

God, Sylvia Plath is amazing.

I like the poem in the introduction to Valley of the Dolls.

Emily Dickinson is a favorite, as well.

[blacknailpolish]

^^ I agree, Sylvia Plath...incredible.

I also do enjoy e.e. cummings, as you can probably tell from my sig...

but if a living dance upon dead minds
why,it is love;but at the earliest spear
of sun perfectly should disappear
moon's utmost magic,or stones speak or one
name control more incredible splendor than
our merely universe, love's also there:
and being here imprisoned,tortured here
love everywhere exploding maims and blinds
(but surely does not forget,perish, sleep
cannot be photographed,measured;disdains
the trivial labelling of punctual brains...
-Who wields a poem huger than the grave?
from only Whom shall time no refuge keep
though all the weird worlds must be opened?