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Who is your favorite poet and why?

Hmmmmmm I love Maya Angelou, her works really touch me. Sylvia Plath is also a favorite. Her things are a little darker in nature at times. I just found a book of her journals. Now I know why some of poetry is the way it is. I also like the classics like Robert Frost, Edgar Alan Poe.

Hello Jordan from new Short Stories editor,Siobhain.

Poetry is one of my other addictions! The Longfellow article will make me look at my hymnal in a new light! It had never occured to me before that some hymns we know and love may have been 'censored' - is this fact pointed out to the potential singers ? Not like nowadays when copyright etc is taken so seriously!

Makes you think!

PS - some of my favourite poets are the nature poets and Hopkins, Yeats, Wordsworth prelude, and- contrasting interestingly with DV editor - Ted Hughes!!

Do pop in and see me on my Forum too, both, Id love to see you!

Siobhain

This is terrible, but I still love Robert Frost. I guess I was ruined in middle school.

Hi Jordan (and all here)

Just wanted to say I loved your Burns Supper article! (But then I am a big fan of his and all nature poets - Charity, in fact I am reading Robert Frost Bio this weekend as I am tutoring on his poetry at the moment!)

The Burns supper background was fascinating.

Here in England, particularly in London, Storytelling is being added to the repertoire for the evening too! I am ordering the latest book about Burns - sigh..... I wonder if I'll ever get time to read any of it. I can only justify reading time for authors I am actually tutoring!

I really W.B. Yeats because his poetry is so very magical. I've even set some to music.

Though I have to admit, though I love poetry, and I love to write poetry, I don't know much about modern poets.

I've read a couple by Ralph Waldo Emerson that I really liked too!

I'm a huge Elizabeth Bishop fan. I also love Lucia Perillo.

My favorite poet is Adelaide Crapsey. You can read her complete works online here in about 30 minutes.


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I love Robert Frost, I have several of his poems memorized. I live in New England so the imagery is very powerful for me.

I'll have to track down some of the others mentioned here!

Whenever I think of Robert Frost I think of the Outsiders:

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

See it's odd, whenever I hear that poem I always think of gold as a fall color, that it's talking about death - not about the loss of youth That's what comes from living in New England

I don't think it's odd at all. I can definitely see it as a fall color.

I see it as, being able to see nature is as worthy if not more so as gold.

I love how the words flow.

Robert Frost, without a doubt.

T.S.Elliot and Edward Lear. I love the Possums book of cats. Especially Macavity, Gus is the cat at the theare door and Bustaper Jones. And Edward Lear's: The Jumblelies

Saying that tho, the poem about Bilbo Baggins plates 'Crack the plates and bend the forks........ thats what Bilbo baggins hates....etc by J.R.R.Tolkien is very funny. I am going to pin it in my kitchen!

When I write poetry, I usually do not use rhyme, but I love the style of Robert Frost. When I try to rhyme, to me it sounds like a child writing, that is why I do not use it. I think I will take some more lit classes and focus on poetry.

I do rhyme often, when I write poetry. Its such fun. Another thing I love to do that drives my brother to distraction is change the words to famous hymns and make loads of new verses, it is such fun, I'm sure God don't mind, in fact some I am sure he finds as funny as me! LOL!

I'm not fond of rhymed poetry unles it's tremendously effective and suited to the content. Robert Frost comes to mind as being someone whose rhyme and meter I quite fancy .

As far as favourite poets are concerned: I'm partial to metaphysical poets such as Rumi and Blake, with a penchant for Rimbaud and Baudelaire on the more windswept, thundery days.

Frost, Frost, Frost! Poe. Blake and Keats. Burns.

Pablo Neruda for sure. Robert Service's Yukon stuff is great fun. Lewis Carrol.

I also enjoy Tolkien's poetry in LOTR.

Nathaniel Parker Willis for his poem April (my favorite). I like Emma Wilcox as well.

"I'm not fond of rhymed poetry unless it's tremendously effective and suited to the content"

So then you will be satisfied with non-rhyming poetry that is not especially effective? Interesting. Discriminating and non-discriminating at the same time.

Har! A clever twisting of my words, but Lo I am not so easily pegged as that!

On the whole, I don't care for rhymed meter. It's an distraction from the start. When it's effectively suited to the content, or done exceedingly well, then it's an exception to my own rule.

Non-rhyming poetry that is well-metered is a personal preference. Of course if the poem itself is a simpering pile of doggerel, then that's another post entirely.

Quality precluding form, in every event.

"On the whole, I don't care for rhymed meter. It's an distraction from the start"

That's a shame.

Did you develop this dislike as an adult or were you able to enjoy rhymes as a child?

How about songs? Do you find songs to be less distracting than intended because of the inherent distraction (to you) of their form?

I'm looking around and paradoxically hope to find my poor defense of rhyming poetry presented as rhyming poetry.

Obviously each has their own preference - but in the end, it's how the work stands on its own that matters most.

Nursery rhymes are wonderful and a good example of something that lends itself well to rhyming. Songs are a completely different animal but somewhere else where rhyme has a place - greeting cards also come to mind. I note that none of these necessarily make exceptional poems.

In any event, movements of poetry depend greatly on inspired change so who knows? Someone may come along and reinvent rhyme in such a way that makes it exciting and inspirational, even to me.

Perhaps that will be you.