Favorite poets/poem?

Certain poems have changed me somehow. I can't explain the ways they affect me, but it's almost a kind of arrest, or seizure of the senses, or vivid memories, suddenly recalled, of a place I never knew.

Eliot, of course, especially _The Waste Land_. Yeats, especially the "Crazy Jane" series. Just about anything by Mina Loy.

There are also epiphanies to be had puzzling out John Ashbery's beautiful ciphers, and lines from Robert Frost tend to stick in my head.

There was a performance artist in Seattle called Stephen Jesse Bernstein. He's dead now, died too young like a lot of brilliant people, and he's relatively unknown outside of Seattle, but his spoken word/rant/poem "Come Out Tonight" is, I think, perfect both technically and emotionally. You can hear it on the first SubPop compilation.

Brautigan indeed! Nice to see that name still pops up in the world from time to time...

> Yeats- tied with.... Rilke

Wow. Now there's a scene.

I wonder if anybody has tried writing slash poetry.

Which one would top? Rilke, I think.

Langston Hughes and Pablo Neruda were my first poet loves.

John Updike's poem "Dog's Death" for the deft and powerful expression of something that in other hands may not have been anything quite so incredible. The second poem I'll post as I've only seen it once: in an independent poetry paper on a ledge in a coffeehouse in Seattle 10 years ago. A decade later, it never fails to impress me.

"Consider the process of walking"
-Dirk Meyer

Consider the process of walking;
to throw ourselves off-balance by
falling forward and then to catch
ourselves with the other leg;
thus the journey begins;

fall and step;
everything in balance, but nothing at rest;
rise and fall of night-day
wax and wane of winter-spring
the life and death of a balance
which is always in motion
moving as the leaves move
through their own decay to become again
the life of earth
moving as the threads of warp and woof
move into the patterns of the cloth
and of those ancient textures
and of those threads of fabric
is man
neither separate nor above
but intricately and always interwoven
enmeshed is he
within the fabric of earth=s thin cloak of air
within the mantle of the fragile soils
within the veils of mists and flowing water
always in motion
always becoming something else
not a thing, but a process
itself in procession out of the sun
around the sun
under the sun
without whose terrible radiance
there is no alternative
and man is the walker again
fall forward
and by pushing away once more
becomes the space walker
the upright creature with a superior view
looking down on earth
and from that height forgets his
breathing is older than his science
and is part of the process
forgets that the ripened fruits of earth
do not intend their shape or flavor
for him alone

forgets that this flesh and blood and bone
can never be free from soil and sun and rain
but are part of the process

and still there persists
the illusion of dominance
forgetting that humility means
a closeness with earth
a kinship with soil
and this is the reality from which
there is no escape

perhaps it must come to this
after the forests are destroyed
after the soils are washed away
or blown to dust
after the air and water are thick with
the poisons of man's growth
after this and so much more
will he plant his plastic flowers
in some desert to
celebrate his reverence for life

perhaps it is only through creating
the flowers that cannot die
that he will remember his own immortality
and earth's own limit

and this too is part of the process
to discover
to forget
and then to rediscover that what is enough
can only be measured against what is too much

and thus catch ourselves before
we fall, as in walking
consider then,
the process of living.

Wow, I've never read that one before. I love it. Thanks for posting, I'll have to look up some more of Bukowski's poetry.

Aimee - I just wanted to say thank you for posting that Charles Bukowski poem - I think it just usurped 'Her Kind' by Anne Sexton as my favourite of all time. I also love 'Dialogue' by Adrienne Rich, and, naturally, 'The Wasteland' although there are parts of it that move me much less than others, and therefore leave me a little cold.

April is the cruellest month (at least here in Britain). Bring it on.

That's a great poem. Thank you also. I like writers who trust that they can be themselves and we will get it. I love his honesty.

Poe
Baudelaire
Clark Ashton Smith
Mayakovsky
Wallace Stevens
ee cummings
Sylvia Plath
Gregory Corso
Jack Spicer

Joel Brouwer
Stephen Dobyns
Cesar Vallejo
Anne Sexton
Emily Dickinson
Lucille Clifton

"why some people be mad at me sometimes" (LC)
they ask me to remember
but they want me to remember
their memories
and I keep on remembering
mine

Anna Akhmatova, translated by Jane Kenyon

"Twenty-first. Night. Monday."

Twenty-first. Night. Monday.
Silhouette of the capitol in darkness.
Some good-for-nothing -- who knows why --
made up the tale that love exists on earth.

People believe it, maybe from laziness
or boredom, and live accordingly:
they wait eagerly for meetings, fear parting,
and when they sing, they sing about love.

But the secret reveals itself to some,
and on them silence settles down...
I found this out by accident
and now it seems I'm sick all the time.

Suess, Ogden Nash and Shel Silverstein. All for kids.

snippet of Nash:
God made the fly, then forgot to tell us why

Silverstein:
*omitted for the comfort of those who hate the Giving Tree*

I love this. Thanks.

John Milton of course! and Wallace Stevens!