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T. W. Mayheart
New member
Username: wookinpanub

Post Number: 9
Registered: 05-2009
Posted on Wednesday, June 03, 2009 - 5:24 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

I'm just getting into poetry, so I have read some basic authors. I joined here looking for some recommendations based on what I have enjoyed the most. I have liked Mary Oliver, Billy Collins and later Charles Bukowski. I haven't found much Allen Ginsberg, Charles Simic, or pre-moden poetry to my taste. I will probably check out each recommendation online and I buy books, so thank you.
M
Board Administrator
Username: mjm

Post Number: 34350
Registered: 11-1998
Posted on Wednesday, June 03, 2009 - 9:07 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

Welcome to Wild, T.W. Congrats on joining those who enjoy poetry.

As to recommendations, you might want to take a stroll through our BookShop:

WPF Bookshop

We've compiled a basic list of many great poets in there, no matter what your tastes.

I also often recommend poetry books. You can find them in the WPF Library forum under "Admin's Five-Star Book Picks":

NATUROPATHY, Recommended Reads and Views

That should get you started. I'm sure others will be along to make further recommendations on their favorite poets.

Best,
M (Administrator)
Fred Longworth
Senior Member
Username: sandiegopoet

Post Number: 6194
Registered: 05-2006
Posted on Wednesday, June 03, 2009 - 9:49 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

Philip Levine.
Kim Addonizio.
Denise Duhamel.
YOUR FOOTNOTE ADVERTISEMENT HERE. Call 1-555-555-5555 and ask for Fred. 10% discount if you mention Wild Poetry Forum.
Dan Tompsett
Intermediate Member
Username: db_tompsett

Post Number: 611
Registered: 07-2007
Posted on Wednesday, June 03, 2009 - 9:58 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

The Force That Through The Green Fuse Drives The Flower by Dylan Thomas

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.
----------------------------------
All All And All The Dry Worlds Lever, by Dylan Thomas


I

All all and all the dry worlds lever,
Stage of the ice, the solid ocean,
All from the oil, the pound of lava.
City of spring, the governed flower,
Turns in the earth that turns the ashen
Towns around on a wheel of fire.

How now my flesh, my naked fellow,
Dug of the sea, the glanded morrow,
Worm in the scalp, the staked and fallow.
All all and all, the corpse's lover,
Skinny as sin, the foaming marrow,
All of the flesh, the dry worlds lever.


II

Fear not the waking world, my mortal,
Fear not the flat, synthetic blood,
Nor the heart in the ribbing metal.
Fear not the tread, the seeded milling,
The trigger and scythe, the bridal blade,
Nor the flint in the lover's mauling.

Man of my flesh, the jawbone riven,
Know now the flesh's lock and vice,
And the cage for the scythe-eyed raver.
Know, O my bone, the jointed lever,
Fear not the screws that turn the voice,
And the face to the driven lover.


III

All all and all the dry worlds couple,
Ghost with her ghost, contagious man
With the womb of his shapeless people.
All that shapes from the caul and suckle,
Stroke of mechanical flesh on mine,
Square in these worlds the mortal circle.

Flower, flower the people's fusion,
O light in zenith, the coupled bud,
And the flame in the flesh's vision.
Out of the sea, the drive of oil,
Socket and grave, the brassy blood,
Flower, flower, all all and all.

Dylan Thomas





(Message edited by db_tompsett on June 03, 2009)
"People who believe a lot of crap are better off." Charles Bukowski
Dan Tompsett
Intermediate Member
Username: db_tompsett

Post Number: 612
Registered: 07-2007
Posted on Wednesday, June 03, 2009 - 10:17 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

Underwater Autumn, by Richard Hugo

Now the summer perch flips twice and glides
a lateral fathom at the first cold rain,
the surface near to silver from a frosty hill.
Along the weed and grain of log he slides his tail.

Nervously the trout (his stream-toned heart
locked in the lake, his poise and nerve disgraced)
above the stirring catfish, curves in bluegill dreams
and curves beyond the sudden thrust of bass.

Surface calm and calm act mask the detonating fear,
the moving crayfish claw, the stare
of sunfish hovering above the cloud-stained sand,
a sucker nudging cans, the grinning maskinonge.

How do carp resolve the eel and terror here?
They face so many times this brown-ribbed fall of leaves
predicting weather foreign as a shark or prawn
and floating still above them in the paling sun.

Richard Hugo
"People who believe a lot of crap are better off." Charles Bukowski
Dan Tompsett
Intermediate Member
Username: db_tompsett

Post Number: 613
Registered: 07-2007
Posted on Wednesday, June 03, 2009 - 10:20 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

Danse Russe, by William Carlos Williams

If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,—
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
"I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!"
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades,—

Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?

William Carlos Williams
"People who believe a lot of crap are better off." Charles Bukowski
Dan Tompsett
Intermediate Member
Username: db_tompsett

Post Number: 614
Registered: 07-2007
Posted on Wednesday, June 03, 2009 - 10:22 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

The Friend, by Marge Piercy

We sat across the table.
he said, cut off your hands.
they are always poking at things.
they might touch me.
I said yes.

Food grew cold on the table.
he said, burn your body.
it is not clean and smells like sex.
it rubs my mind sore.
I said yes.

I love you, I said.
That's very nice, he said
I like to be loved,
that makes me happy.
Have you cut off your hands yet?

Marge Piercy
"People who believe a lot of crap are better off." Charles Bukowski
Judy Thompson
Advanced Member
Username: judyt54

Post Number: 1611
Registered: 11-2007
Posted on Wednesday, June 03, 2009 - 10:58 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

Jack Gilbert
Anne Sexton "Love Poems'
Yeats
W.S. Merwin
Richard Jackson
Albert Goldbarth

(the last two can be found, samples, at least, on google)
Afraid of the Dark
W.F. Roby
Intermediate Member
Username: wfroby

Post Number: 800
Registered: 03-2008
Posted on Wednesday, June 03, 2009 - 12:16 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

T.S. Eliot

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question . . .
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
[They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:--
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all--
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . .

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

. . . . .

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, (5)
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"--
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all."

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the
floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."

. . . . .

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old . . .I grow old . . .
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.


---------


Teaching the Ape to Write Poems

James Tate

They didn't have much trouble
teaching the ape to write poems:
first they strapped him into the chair,
then tied the pencil around his hand
(the paper had already been nailed down).
Then Dr. Bluespire leaned over his shoulder
and whispered into his ear:
"You look like a god sitting there.
Why don't you try writing something?"


---------------

from Leaves of Grass

Walt Whitman

(by the way, this great American poem was self published, for those of you who boohoo Xerox poets)

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more
than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green
stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see
and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the
vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I
receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
Dan Tompsett
Intermediate Member
Username: db_tompsett

Post Number: 617
Registered: 07-2007
Posted on Wednesday, June 03, 2009 - 5:12 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

The Black Swan, by James Merrill

Black on flat water past jonquil lawns
Riding, the black swan draws
A private chaos warbling in its wake,
Assuming, like a fourth dimension, splendor
That calls the child with white ideas of swans
Nearer to that green lake
Where every paradox means wonder.

Although the black neck arches not unlike
A question mark on the lake,
The swan outlaws all easy questioning:
A thing in its self, equivocal, foreknown,
Like pain, or women singing as we wake;
And the swan song it sings
Is the huge silence of the swan.

Illusion: the black swan knows how to break
Through expectation, beak
Aimed now at its own breast, now at its image,
And move across our lives, if the lake is life,
And by the gentlest turning of its neck
Transform, in time, time's damage;
To less than a black plume, time's grief.

Enchanter: the black swan has learned to enter
Sorrow's lost secret center
Where, like a May fete, separate tragedies
Are wound in ribbons round the pole to share
A hollowness, a marrow of pure winter
That does not change but is
Always brilliant ice and air.

Always the black swan moves on the lake. Always
The moment comes to gaze
As the tall emblem pivots and rides out
To the opposite side, always. The blond child on
The bank, hands full of difficult marvels, stays
Now in bliss, now in doubt.
His lips move: I love the black swan.
"People who believe a lot of crap are better off." Charles Bukowski
Gary Blankenship
Moderator
Username: garydawg

Post Number: 28309
Registered: 07-2001
Posted on Wednesday, June 03, 2009 - 7:03 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

William Carlos Williams
HD
Frost
Dame Edith Sitwell
Wallace

The Poet's Companion
A good antho for the first 60 years of the 20th C
and for English prior to that
an Eastern antho
a volume of outlaw poetry

Good luck.

Smiles.

Gary
Celebrate Walt with Gary:
http://www.poetrykit.org/pkl/tw10/tw4conte.htm


Zefuyn
Advanced Member
Username: zefuyn

Post Number: 1236
Registered: 12-2006
Posted on Sunday, June 07, 2009 - 7:42 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

Philip Salom: The Rome Air, Naked
Billy Jones: Wren Lines
Tess Gallagher: Moon Crossing Bridge
Charles Simic: That Little Something
Sylvia Plath: Ariel
Catie Rosemurgy: My Favorite Apocalypse
David Malouf: Selected Poems
Tess Gallagher: Dear Ghosts
Ted Hughes: Moortown Diary
MTC Cronin: the flower, the thing
and anything Octavio Paz.

and pretty much anything released by Grey Wolf Press or Salt Publishing.

Melanie
Melanie G. Firth, 2009
Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats. H. L. Mencken
Meriall Blackwood
New member
Username: merblackwood

Post Number: 11
Registered: 05-2009
Posted on Sunday, June 07, 2009 - 5:16 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

Emily Dickinson. Byron. Shakespeare. William Blake. The Romantic poets. William Morris' Sigurd the Volsung. G.K. Chesterton's The Ballad of the White Horse. Gerald Manley Hopkins.

(Message edited by merblackwood on June 07, 2009)
Fantasy Poetry
Jennifer VanBuren
Valued Member
Username: jkvanburen

Post Number: 254
Registered: 04-2009
Posted on Sunday, June 07, 2009 - 8:19 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

www.mannequinenvy.com

"To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness." Bertrand Russell