Modern Poetry Recommendations!

[Nossa]

I was wondering if you guys can recommend certain modern poets/poems that I can read during summer?!
Thanks a lot in advance :D

[motherhubbard]

Ted Kooser. He's so wonderful. He was America’s 14th poet laurite. I'll get something out and post it later

[Bii]

You could try pretty much anything published either by Carcenet or Bloodaxe. I borrowed a really good Bloodaxe anthology from my library called "New Blood" which has selections from the more recent publications. I particularly enjoyed the works of Elizabeth Garrett and Pauline Stainer.

[Mortis Anarchy]

William Carlos Williams. He is amazing. Hilda Doolittle, Gertrude Stein...and thats all I got...for now.

[Nossa]

Thank you ALL so much :D
I'm gonna check out all those poets.

[motherhubbard]

I said I would post one of Ted Kooser’s poems. I can’t choose because I think he is so wonderful. I’m going with this one because it’s not too long to type and I like the sound of it. Not just the sound of the poem, but of the shoes and chickens and the whole setting.

Dishwater

Slap of the screen door, flat knock
of my grandmother’s boxy black shoes
on the wooden stoop, the hush and sweep
of her knob-kneed, cotton-aproned stride
out to the edge and then, toed in
with a furious twist and heave,
a bridge that leaps from her hot red hands
and hangs there shining for fifty years
over the mystified chickens
over the swaying nettles, the ragweed,
the clay slope down to the creek,
over the redwing blackbirds in the tops
of the willows, a glorious rainbow
with an empty dishpan swinging at one end.

[Virgil]

Nossa, I'm not sure at what level of poetry reading you're at. I can recommend William Butler Yeats, T.S. Elliot, Wallace Stevens, but they are difficult without some help. Robert Frost might be a good place to start. You might like Sylvia Plath. D.H. Lawrence is fun and William Carlos Williams was mentioned already. Although not quite modernist, Emily Dickenson prefigured much of modernism. There are others too but perhpas that is enough for now. Let me know what you decide.

[Janine]

Hi Nossa, when I was in college, way back when, but in this century:lol: - my classroon used a book called "Naked Poetry". I still retain the book, although the outside cover fell off. I can't seem to locate it presently, but I will find it later today hopefully. In the meantime I see it is available on Amazon. If you go to this page link:http://www.amazon.com/Naked-Poetry-Recent-American-

You can check out reviews and the book prices, availability, etc. It is a good collection of modernistic poets. One of my professors from college has a few poems in it, if I recall correctly. One reviewer says that it contains poets such as elliot, biship, and pound, i.e merwin, bly, snyder ...to name a few. He also sites the fact that the book is invaluable in that it has accompanying essays and commentary about the poems from the various poets. If I remember correctly it has some Plath, also Denise Levertov, who I always enjoyed. It is basically freeform poetry.
Both of the reviewers say they love this book and were happy to find it.

Hope this helps and you can find the book, if you find this of interest. Can you buy from Amazon where you live?

[kilted exile]

I think it would also be useful to know what you mean by modern. As an example to me modern would be published at the earliest in the 70's, and still writing currently.

[Virgil]

I think it would also be useful to know what you mean by modern. As an example to me modern would be published at the earliest in the 70's, and still writing currently.

Hmm. Actually I'm not sure what Nossa means. Modernism is usually regarded by scholars as the beginning of the 20th century to WWII or mid century. After WWII era tends to be called post modern. Writers writing today are typically referred to as contemporary.

[motherhubbard]

Virgil- I didn't know that, thanks for sharing!

[Nossa]

Thank you ALL so much.
First, I'm sorry I didn't specify what I meant by modern. I meant anything moder, post-modern, or new age...just anything that was written from the beginging of the 20th century to our present days.
As for the level of reading, well, I can't really tell, but I read anything and everything...I don't mind difficult language either..so all is good..lol
@Virgil: You mentioned two of my favorite poets, W.B.Yeats and T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost was also a reommendation from my poetry professor :D and I'm going to check out the rest now :D
@Janine: I'm not sure if I can buy the book from Amazon.com, cuz the shipping might not include Egypt in it...but I know a guy who knows a guy who can get me the book :lol:. I just found out that I have a book that has a collection of Ezra Pound's works, so now that you mentioned it, I'll sure check it out later today:) Thank you for the recommendation :D

[Nossa]

I said I would post one of Ted Kooser’s poems. I can’t choose because I think he is so wonderful. I’m going with this one because it’s not too long to type and I like the sound of it. Not just the sound of the poem, but of the shoes and chickens and the whole setting.

Dishwater

Slap of the screen door, flat knock
of my grandmother’s boxy black shoes
on the wooden stoop, the hush and sweep
of her knob-kneed, cotton-aproned stride
out to the edge and then, toed in
with a furious twist and heave,
a bridge that leaps from her hot red hands
and hangs there shining for fifty years
over the mystified chickens
over the swaying nettles, the ragweed,
the clay slope down to the creek,
over the redwing blackbirds in the tops
of the willows, a glorious rainbow
with an empty dishpan swinging at one end.

Thank you so much motherhubbard :D I loved the poem so much, and the language isn't even difficult. I'll sure check out more of his works :)

[stlukesguild]

Almost all of the recommendations were Anglo/American. Certainly I would second Stevens, Eliott, Yeats (and I should add Hart Crane), but what of non-English poetry? Surely you might wish to check out Ranier Maria Rilke, Boris Pasternak (a great poet sadly known only for his novel, Dr. Zhivago), Eugenio Montale... I'm especially fond of modern Spanish and Latin-American poets such as Federico Garcia Lorca, Rafael Alberti, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz and J.L. Borges (yes, Borges was a poet as well as a writer of short fictions and non-fictions). Also check out the Portuguese Fernnando Pessoa.

[Nossa]

Thanks a lot...I love reading non-english works as well :D

[blp]

Wallace Stevens, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, Lorine Niedecker.

If you want a really broad-ranging, international survey of 20th Century modernist and post modernist poetry, you could splash out on both volumes of POEMS FOR THE MILLENNIUM, THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BOOK OF MODERN & POSTMODERN POETRY (Pierre Joris and Jerome Rothenberg eds.)

[Nossa]

Thank you for the recommendation :D Is it found online?!

[k_krishy20]

there are a lot of poems on this site
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/home.html

[uranderson]

Hi Nossa, when I was in college, way back when, but in this century:lol: - my classroon used a book called "Naked Poetry". I still retain the book, although the outside cover fell off. I can't seem to locate it presently, but I will find it later today hopefully. In the meantime I see it is available on Amazon. If you go to this page link:http://www.amazon.com/Naked-Poetry-Recent-American-

Hah, I have that book and my cover fell off too. One of my all-time favorites. :)

I would also highly recommend it to anyone who wants a good introduction to modern American poetry.

[quasimodo1]

Camouflaging The Chimera
By Yusef Komunyakaa

We tied branches to our helmets.
We painted our faces & rifles
with mud from a riverbank,

blades of grass hung from the pockets
of our tiger suits. We wove
ourselves into the terrain,
content to be a hummingbird's target.

We hugged bamboo & leaned
against a breeze off the river,
slow-dragging with ghosts

from Saigon to Bangkok,
with women left in doorways
reaching in from America.
We aimed at dark-hearted songbirds.

In our way station of shadows
rock apes tried to blow our cover
throwing stones at the sunset. Chameleons

crawled our spines, changing from day
to night: green to gold,
gold to black. But we waited
till the moon touched metal,

till something almost broke
inside us. VC struggled
with the hillside, like black silk

wrestling iron through grass.
We weren't there. The river ran
through our bones. Small animals took refuge
against our bodies; we held our breath,

ready to spring the L-shaped
ambush, as a world revolved
under each man's eyelid.
(If Vietnam can make a contemporary poet, then here is one example. quasimodo1)

[quasimodo1]

“God, A Poem.”

“I didn’t exist at the Flood,
And I won’t be around for Salvation
To sort out the sheep from the cud —

“Or whatever the phrase is. The fact is
In soteriological terms
I’m a crude existential malpractice
And you are a diet of worms.”
From selected poems by James Fenton

[quasimodo1]

“AFTER A WHILE”
After a while you learn the subtle difference
between holding a hand and chaining a soul
And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning
and company doesn’t always mean security
And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts
and presents aren’t promises
And you begin to accept your defeats
with your head up and your eyes ahead
with the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child
And you learn to build all of your roads on today
because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans
and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.
After a while you learn that even sunshine burns
if you get too much.
So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul
instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure
that you really are strong
and you really do have worth
And you learn and you learn
with every goodbye you learn.

By Veronica A. Shoffstall NY

[stlukesguild]

Among those poets still living I find the following (among others) to be quite worth reading:

Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Bella Akhmadulina
Wisława Szymborska
Charles Simic
John Ashberry
Yehuda Amichai
W.S. Merwin
Anne Carson
Geoffrey Hill
Seamus Heaney
Charles Wright

I'm currently reading Chrales Wright again. Perhaps I'll post a few favorites with time.