i'm looking to get into poetry again.
when i was younger (like, elementary school) poems were some of my favorite things to read.
back then, i read a lot of shel silverstein and jack prelutsky.
i'm now looking for more adult-type poetry books.
what do you love?

There's a thread about poetry in the general section somewhere Allison where a lot of my favourites are listed.

http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/7542...

I don't really like all poetry so I can't say what poets I do like but I like some poems.

Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen - though I do like Owen as well as a poet, I have a collection of his works. I like war poetry.

Auden's Stop all the Clocks is another one - I seem to like sad poetry!

St Francis' prayer:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy;

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

The English Are So Nice - D.H. Lawrence

The English are so nice
so awfully nice
they are the nicest people in the world.

And what's more, they're very nice about being nice
about your being nice as well!
If you're not nice they soon make you feel it.

Americans and French and Germans and so on
they're all very well
but they're not really nice, you know.
They're not nice in our sense of the word, are they now?

That's why one doesn't have to take them seriously.
We must be nice to them, of course,
of course, naturally.
But it doesn't really matter what you say to them,
they don't really understand
you can just say anything to them:
be nice, you know, just nice
but you must never take them seriously, they wouldn't understand,
just be nice, you know! Oh, fairly nice,
not too nice of course, they take advantage
but nice enough, just nice enough
to let them feel they're not quite as nice as they might be.

Revenge - Luis Enriqu Mejia Godoy

My personal revenge will be your children's
right to schooling and to flowers.
My personal revenge will be this song bursting for you with no more fears.
My personal revenge will be to make you see
the goodness in my people's eyes,
implacable in combat always
generous and firm in victory.

My personal revenge will be to greet you
'Good morning!' in streets with no beggars,
when instead of locking you inside
they say, 'Don't look so sad.'
When you, the torturer,
daren't lift your head,
My personal revenge will be to give you
these hands you once ill-treated
with all their tenderness intact.

Those are my favourite all time poems. D H laurence has us English down to a tea!

My favorite poet is Mary Oliver.

Billy Collins has a lot of humor in his poetry.

I second the recommendation for Mary Oliver.

Pablo Neruda
H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)
Stephen Dobyns

I always liked Stephen Crane's poems...most of them have a nice little twist to them.

e.e. cummings is like a logic puzzle.

My favorite is Rod McKuen. I also like Robert Frost, Walt Whitman, Edgar A. Guest, Alfred Lord Tenniyson and Carl Sandburg.

I remember that I liked some of the Pblo Neruda poetry when I was studying for translator and spanish was one of the languages.

I don't have a favorite poet, but I do have a few favorite poems:

The Ballad of Billy Rose
A Girl's Song
(Both by Leslie Norris)

Death of a Naturalist
Personal Helicon
(Both by Seamus Heany)

The Blue Flannel Suit
(By Ted Hughes)

Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon
Al Purdy
Jim Harrison
Keith Douglas

I like Auden, ee cummings, ts eliot, Whitman, and Keats.

I don't read a lot of poetry but I recently finished reading a collection of poems by Federico Garcia Lorca and absolutely loved it. His poetry is haunting and wonderful, I highly recommend his work :)

Heidi wrote: "My favorite poet is Mary Oliver. "

Me too Heidi! I love Mary Oliver and just got her newest book; Red Bird! Great poetry as usual.

I just got a wonderful book by a Polish poet named Wistawa Szymborska. I'm serious. But you can find it on Amazon and I just love it! I got her name by reading an interview with the woman who wrote LOVELY BONES. Can't think of her name, but she said this poet was her favorite. i can see why!

Pablo Neruda

Walt Whitman

Tagore Rabindraneth

So many great suggestions here. Too much to read, not enough hours in the day!

Em, my favourite poets are W. B. Yeats (check him out!) and William Wordsworth.

Yeats- He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Elizabeth Bisop- One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

I have a number of favorites, depending on what you like.

Wislawa Szymborska
Walt Whitman
Pablo Neruda
Adrienne Rich
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Allen Ginsberg

Sandra Cisneros writes some pretty good stuff. And I just love haiku. My favorite is Issa (Kobayashi is his first name I think).

"Au bois il y a un oiseau, son chant vous arrête et vous fait rougir.
Il y a une horloge qui ne sonne pas.
Il y a une fondrière avec un nid de bêtes blanches.
Il y a une cathédrale qui descend et un lac qui monte.
Il y a une petite voiture abandonnée dans le taillis, ou qui descend le sentier en courant, enrubannée.
Il y a une troupe de petits comédiens en costumes, aperçus sur la route à travers la lisière du bois.
Il y a enfin, quand l'on a faim et soif, quelqu'un qui vous chasse."

From Illuminations by Arthur Rimbaud.
There are some poems I love so much that I have committed them to memory.

Rough english translation--

"In the woods there is a bird, his song stops you and makes you blush.
There is a clock that never strikes.
There is a hollow with a nest of white beasts.
There is a cathedral that goes down and a lake that goes up.
There is a little carriage abandoned in the copse, or that goes running down the lane beribboned.
There is a troup of little actors glimpsed on the road through the border of the wood.
And then, when you are hungry and afraid, there is someone who chases you away."

Poets I love:

Arthur Rimbaud
Pablo Neruda
Rabindranath Tagore
Gary Snyder

And of course, "Smokey the Bear Sutra" by Gary Snyder

http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/bear.htm

Oh wow. I love poetry so much. I write it and read alot of it too. You should check out my faveroite poets:

Emily Dickinson
Edgar Allan Poe
William Shakespeare
Gwendolyn Brooks
Percy Bysshe Shelley

In fact, I think I have a book called The Best Poems Ever: A Collection of Poetry's Greatest Voices that features all of them or all but one of them. I recomend you read this book.

William Wordsworth is my favorite. I like the romantic poets. Would you consider haiku poetry? I like that a great deal.

I go for older poetry writers. I like Edgar Allan Poe and William Shakespeare the best.

I also like Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Perpendicularandi wrote: "I go for older poetry writers. I like Edgar Allan Poe and William Shakespeare the best."

Perpendicularandi wrote: "I go for older poetry writers. I like Edgar Allan Poe and William Shakespeare the best."
I have trouble with the old English in Shakespeare. I know I am missing out.Edgar Allan Poe is great.