Favorite Poet or Poem

[Idlefellow]

Here is a poem I wrote a year or so ago about pipes and tobacco.

A fine poem; I like it very much!

A few of my favorites: Jane Kenyon, Wendell Berry, Jim Harrison, Kenneth Rexroth. And this, which wasn't written as a poem, but certainly could stand as one:

Now nearly all those I loved
and did not understand when I was young are dead,
but I still reach out to them.
Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman,
and now of course I usually fish the big waters alone,
although some friends think I shouldn’t.
Like many fishermen in Western Montana
where the summer days are almost Arctic in length,
I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening.
Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon,
all existence fades
to a being with my soul and memories
and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River
and a four count rhythm
and the hope that a fish will rise.

Eventually, all things merge into one,
and a river runs through it.
The river was cut by the world’s great floods
and runs over rocks from the basement of time.
On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops.
Under the rocks are the words,
and some of the words are theirs.
I am haunted by waters.

 

[Anonymous]

Idlefellow,
Great poem & the movie ain't bad either.

 

[babysinister]

My favorite lyric poets, among the ones that I read more often, are John Keats (Nightingale, To Autumn, La Belle Dame, etc.) and William Butler Yeats (The Song of Wandering Aengus, Byzantium, Lake Isle of Innisfree, The Second Coming, etc.). I've memorized many poems by both these bards. As a lyric poet, in my opinion, Shakespeare ranks third, although he is peerless as a dramatic/tragic poet. But I think he was not quite to the manner born when it came to the format and meter of the English sonnet of his time. I've also memorized a lot of his stuff - from his plays. One sonnet of his that I do love, however, is "When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes..." I must confess that I have a guilty liking for many poems by "the jingle-jangle man" - Poe, and for his prose too. Among poets born in the 20th century, I like Dylan Thomas, Patrick Kavanagh, and Leonard Cohen. Yeats, Kavanagh and Cohen, curiously enough among poets, just seemed to get better with time.