Favorite Poet

[Admin]

Who is your favorite poet? Personally I really like John Donne.

This one is one of my favorites:

http://www.online-literature.com/donne/371/

[Admin]

Another one I like is T.S. Eliot. Then also alot of the romantic poets. Keats, Wordsworth, etc.

[Admin]

You're not thinking of Poe are you?

http://www.online-literature.com/poe/335/

[gmhill]

I would like to say Kenneth Slessor is one of my favourite poets, and my favourite poem I forgot the name of >:-(
It is the one with the raven above the door, very interesting...

[gmhill]

Well admin, I spent all day looking for that poem and you had it! Your a genuis!
Only if there were more like you :)

This poem is my favourite and again I thank you for finding it for me :)

[vladline]

My favorite poem is by Rudyard Kipling, titled "If". Click on this link to see it!

http://www.online-literature.com/kipling/836/

Another favorite of mine is "Tichborne's Elegy" by Chidiock Tichborne supposedly written right before he was executed.
Click here to see that poem!

http://slate.msn.com/poem/01-01-02/poem.asp

For me personally these two poems hold a profoundly important message about the value of life and what it can teach us. Enjoy!

[Vinessa]

Sylvia Plath.

[wmchichiri]

Wow favorite poet, that's a hard one.

I love Emily Dickinson for her amazing melodic rhymes.

I love Robert Frost for the story-teller quality he has.

I love T.S. Eliot, who else could turn out something like "burnt-out ends of smokey days" ?

I love Maya Angelou, and have had the pleasure of seeing her read in person. That was phenomenal.

I love Poe's stuff. Specifically City in the Sea.

Sir Walter Scott's Lady of the Lake.

Tolkien's ring poem

you know "one ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them."

[russb]

how about Pablo Neruda? in my darker moments i like Baudelaire also

[Alexis]

Neruda's pretty cool, as are Wordsworth and Frost - I think I usually prefer pictures than deep meanings, altho meanings can be fun too =]

So many poets to chose from! I do like The Ancient Mariner, and Xanadu... and I read the Divine Comedy [translated] last year, which was great. Find a blank verse translation of the Iliad [Lattimore's is best, I think] and you're away...

[FrostyAffairs]

My favorite poet is and always has been Emily Dickenson for many reasons. I think it may be because through her self seclusion, I feel, she expressed seclusion in much of her work. I feel every writer, philosopher, thinker, and genius must experience seclusion. Still, I hold great respect for many other poets. We have been graced with genius much in literature and no one should be forgotten.

[MortalFool]

I'm doing a report on Emily Dickinson right now...... Great stuff.

[bjz34]

Found this just surfing the net. Don't know if he is famous or whatever, but the poetry is very interesting. Some of it is very dark and some is just plain romantic.

http://weeping_angels.tripod.com

[Ahania]

Hello all. I just discovered this forum. I have been hoping to find one for a while now. So hereI am. My favourite poet is William Blake. I find the mythic nature of his work simply breathtaking. I also like Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats as well as the works of Robin Blaser, Jack Spicer and Robert Duncan.

[feign]

percy shelly, poe. a lot of reading though.

[spud]

Favourite poets ???.....
Poe, Keats and T S Elliot. Sylvia Plath sometimes too.

[SirStefan32]

I always prefered prose over poetry, but some poets I really like include Poe, Whittier, Longfellow.

[dharmabum]

hi all, new boy here. i love blake, kerouac (esp. 'mexico city blues'), ginsberg, john wieners, and dylan thomas. but the more i read, the more really interesting authors turn up. the mountain just gets higher! oh, i forgot to mention theodore giesel (dr.seuss). one of the most bizarre, creative minds ever...

[firebreather]

definitely Poe and Frost.
John Donne's "Death Be Not Proud" is my fave,
along with Frost's "The Road Not Taken" and "Fire and Ice".

[Athena]

I really like Frost and Langston Hughes. Also, Maya Angelou is very empowering. "Annabelle Lee" by Poe is beautiful. Oh and of course...Dr. Seuss. :)

[Import]

Maybe I've missed Walt Whitman being mentioned, or did I?
To me Walt Whitman, in "Leaves of Grass" created one of the most powerful pieces of literature of all time. Those of you who haven't read his life's work should really consider doing so. "Song of Myself" had such an affect on me that it literally changed me and the way I look at the world.
Here's a little exerpt:
"Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.

Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,
Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.

Welcome is every organ and attribute of me,
and any man hearty and clean,
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be less familiar than the rest."

Please reply, whether you agree with Whitman's greatness or not.

[Eric, son of Chuck]

Let's see.

http//www.online-literature.com/frost/751/

That's one of my favourites. Oh, and of course Dylan Thomas. Wait a minute... He's not on the list. OUTRAGE! GAH! I'm gonna go and request it!

[andina]

Import!!
I love Whitman´s poetry.......it is very human, full of emotion and live.

[AnneSchjerven]

My favourite poet(s) would be Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, William Shakespeare...and D.H.Lawrence. Also, a very good modern day poet would be Viggo Mortensen.

Anne Schjerven

[Rellehhpesoj]

I like Yeats

[juelco]

He had duende!


El campo
de olivos
se abre y se cierra
como un abanico...


The field
of olive trees
opens and closes
like a fan...

[nixnox]

I like William Blake ("The Tyger"), William Wordsworth ("I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud"), John Keats ("Ode on a Grecian Urn" and "When I have fears"), Samuel Taylor Coleridge ("Rime of the Ancient Mariner"), Robert Burns ("To a Mouse"), Poe ("The Raven"), and Shakespeare. To list a few. :)

[pmpope]

Oh sweet spontaneous or a slice of Seuss would do...[[[Thank you Little Ronnie Howard {{thee Hollywood Hosebag}} for corrupting the good Doctor's work]]]
Let us not forget the Recent Late Greats----> Reverend Deacon lunchbox (outta Atlanta)...
Mr. J. Bernstien (Seattle)... Gregory Corso with his giant BOMB poem...Mssrs Whitman & Frost ((whose woulds i might have happened to be walking through last night, though on this coast, of course... etc&ect...
Let us neither forget the LIVING the Clarice Keegan-sians... the Steven Potter-esque school of working slobs versus verses... i enjoy the sweet Anna's hippie meditations [She's tree sitting in Arcada. If you act organic she may read you something]... Diamond Dave[' DON'T PANIC... STAY..................What?'] there's Wammo in Austin... the whole Milwaukee scene & Mr. Antler with a Factory & a backpack...
but mainly any Poet/ess/es out there ... LIVING ... &... THRIVING... in the art have my undying respect.... POET/ESS/ES LIVE!

pmpope[/i]

[Sam Gamgee]

I just love T.S. Eliot's "Practical Cats"

[Annabell Lee]

I have to say that my favorite poet is Edgar Allan Poe...can ya tell?

[Jay]

My most favorite poets are William Wordsworth, William Butler Yeats and Robert Frost.

[csifreak]

DEFINITALY L Hughes :P

[Hamlet]

Walt Whitman.

I first knew about him thanks to.. the National Geographic Magazine when I was 12 or so, and then I rumbled all over the libraries in town cause in the first years of post-totalitarism in my country it was difficult to find Whitman's works, especially in English.

Later on I have been fascinated by numberous authors, yet Whitman was the one to stay inside of me and root even deeper as years go by, he was the one who let me know that poetry is meant to be read aloud!

[Vronaqueen]

I'm a total girl but I love the romantic poets. Lord Byron and John Donne (even though he was just trying to get some) there still great. Elegy 19, the sun rising is great.

[xkatiex]

i love cummings. the true lord. heh.

also m. doughty, wilfred owen, wallace stevens, and sharon olds.

[subterranean]

My fav poet would be Jim Morrison :)

[avid_reader]

John Donne
Emily Dickinson

[amuse]

Kazuko Shiraishi. After her Richard Brautigan.

*speaking of Edgar, yesterday I realized Poe's name is like poetry for short, and I was really tickled for a few minutes there.

[Stanislaw]

Edgar allan poe and ogden nash.

[verybaddmom]

Originally posted by Vronaqueen
I'm a total girl but I love the romantic poets. Lord Byron and John Donne (even though he was just trying to get some) there still great. Elegy 19, the sun rising is great.

there is so much more to Donne than a guy just trying to get some. Granted, that is not to say that there were not instances in which he was trying to do so ("The Flea" comes to mind) but there were also many that were the most profound attempts to describe his love for his wife, Anne. How bout "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning". Also, he was searching for a faith/religion towards the later days as seen in any of his "Holy Sonnets" from Divine Poems such as 10, 14, or 17?

sorry if i sound defensive but I have spent a lot of time studying John Donne's biography and really really wish that i could have met him, as really....he totally rocked.

[Avalive]

My fav poet is Zhuo. She's not well-known,tho.
Anybody knows a french poet, Rimbaud?

[Rotty1021]

A new favorite poet of mine is Charles Baudelaire. He captures the human spirit in such few words, while making you smile and laugh at his outlooks on life.

[Koa]

Like den, my favourite poems are lyrics... But for the regularly defined poetry, I do like Baudelaire too, but I never had a favourite poem.... Though maybe I found the one whom I can call my favourite poem... Anna Akhmatova. Until I'll find someone else whose poetry I love, and will thgink again that I have no absolute favourite.

[GatsbyTheGreat]

Edgar Allen Poe and Jim Morrison. Had to put my two cents in:D

[simon]

Poe for me, although I am not widely read in the area of poetry, I shall have to delve into some of these works.

[poeboy]

Poe has always been my favorite since high school days. I think its because of his romantic, melancholy dream like quality to his poems and short stories. He also had a plan when he wrote. He had an aesthetic ideal he stroved for and more often then not achieved. The Raven is the best! I almost have it memorized, but my sentimental favorite is Annabel Lee, which I have memorized. When Poe gets rolling his poetry takes off and transcends it into another realm. Example: The last stanza of Annabel Lee along with The Bells, A Dream Within a Dream etc.....

[Lolita]

I quite like Tennyson. I like how he uses medieval myths and legends to present his themes. I think a lot of people get hung up on the stories. Of course they're important, but I think he has a more important role than that.

[Helga]

I love Poe, I bought his collection a while ago and I keep it in my bed every night! there is only one other book I keep in my bed and that is the Shakespeare collection I've had that since I was 15.

Poe writes so great poems, I love Annabell Lee it is my all time favourite poem!

Wordsworth is another faveourite, his Lucy poems are so good

[Xiketa]

How about Pablo Neruda, Luís Cernuda or Konstantinos Kavafis? I love their poems about love and desire...

Body, remember not only how much you were loved
not only the beds you lay on
but also those desires glowing openly
in eyes that looked at you...

Anyway, I like some of the english romantics... Keats, Shelley or Byron... "She walks in beauty" is just so perfect!

:)

[mike401]

wait, i figured it out (you think i would have mentioned him in my favorite poems post, but i had so many others in mind). i've gotta go with w.h. auden. this guy was a master of forms and blended modern with classical so well. some favorites include "but i can't," "ode to terminus," and "in memory of sigmund freud."

[Monica]

My favourite poet is Edgar Allan Poe. "The Raven", "A Dream within a Dream", "The Bells", "Evening Star", "Spirits of the Dead" and many many others are great, full of melancholy and fantasy. I also like Bolesław Leśmian, a Polish poet, who actually drew inspiration from Poe and translated his works into Polish.

[Morganne]

Hello. I'm new to this forum and I think it's great!
My favorite poets are: Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Poe, Hart Crane, Auden, Sylvia Plath and many more!! Somebody has already mentionned Cavafy ; I adore him !!

[emily655321]

I can't believe this thread has kept surfacing and I never noticed it! Well, I might as well put mine down. :D I'm sure I'm leaving a ton out, but these are the people I can think of at 1:45pm on Jul-8-04:

Elizabeth Hollister Frost
Lord Byron
Robert Frost
Emily Dickinson
James Tate
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Lewis Carroll

[anabanana]

Well, thats a hard question, I like the poems by Lord Tennyson specially The Lady of Shalott, I like too the poems by Ana de Rosenzweig I like too te Lady of the lake and I can be all the day saying my favorite poems and authors

[snapplepeaches]

I adore Sylvia Plath! She was so amazing at her poetry! ~Sophia

[Hephzibah]

I think my fave has to be Joyce Kilmer...he is famous for this (among other things)...

Peoms are made by fools like me...

But only God can make a tree.

There is much more to the poem but the end is what has stuck in my head for years...and I mean years :D like 45 ...

....writer ducks the tomatoes and runs for the door.

[Isagel]

No tomatoes, promise Hepzibah. That part of the poem sounds beautiful. I think I´ll look the whole poem.

My favorite right now, apart from TS Eliot, is Tomas Tranströmer. Which is strange since they are said to belong to quite opposite schools of poetry. Robert Bly did some good translation of Tranströmers poems. This is my favorite:

Allegro

After a black day I play Haydn,
and feel a little warmth in my hands.

The keys are ready. Kind hammers fall.
The sound is spirited, green and full of silence.

The sounds says that freedom exists
and someone pays no tax to Caesar.

I shove my hands in my haydnpockets
and act like man who is calm about it all.

I raise my Haydnflag. The signal is
"We do not surrender. But want peace"

The music is a house of glass standing on a slope,
rocks are flying, rocks are rolling.

The rocks roll straight through the house
but every pane of glass is still whole.

[Avalive]

A. Rimbaud.

I love him

[Ark Royal]

...have to be two authors of radically different style: Walt Whitman and Gerard Manley Hopkins.

[amuse]

just saw that someone else did mention Kipling's If, but the link's not quite hyper.


If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

[Nemerov]

Charles Bukowski

example:

Poem For My 43rd Birthday

To end up alone
in a tomb of a room
without cigarettes
or wine--
just a lightbulb
and a potbelly,
grayhaired,
and glad to have
the room.

...in the morning
they're out there
making money:
judges, carpenters,
plumbers, doctors,
newsboys, policemen,
barbers, carwashers,
dentists, florists,
waitresses, cooks,
cabdrivers...

and you turn over
to your left side
to get the sun
on your back
and out
of your eyes.

[amuse]

bootiful


s10cr

[katealaurel]

My favorite poet is probably Tennyson.. favorite poem is below.
--
Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height:
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang),
In height and cold, the splendour of the hills?
But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease
To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine,
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire;
And come, for Love is of the valley, come,
For Love is of the valley, come thou down
And find him; by the happy threshold, he,
Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize,
Or red with spirted purple of the vats,
Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk
With Death and Morning on the silver horns,
Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine,
Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice,
That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls
To roll the torrent out of dusky doors:
But follow; let the torrent dance thee down
To find him in the valley; let the wild
Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave
The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill
Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke,
That like a broken purpose waste in air:
So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales
Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth
Arise to thee; the children call, and I
Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound,
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.
--

I love the sensations of both despair and love that come across in that poem- particularly the "...that like a broken purpose waste in air/ so waste not thou". The fervency of the wish for the beloved not to waste away...

*wanders away ranting and raving*

-K

[Miranda]

K- I haven't ever heard this poem before and I think its great. I read it out loud - well I'm all alone sitting here and no one but the cat to laff...but even he listened! Reading it aloud helped me concentrate and I love its rhthym and the images of the mountain are so beautiful..;cease to glide a sunbeam by the blasted pine'. The contrast between the cold hard mountain where she dwells alone and the love and lushness of the valley are so stark, you can feel the welcome that awaits her in the valley, if only she will come down. Thanks for sharing it -

Miranda

[nns]

My favourite poet is someone you haven't heard of (I'd think): his name is Carlo Alberto Salustri (1871-1950), though he'd sign his poems as Trilussa. He didn't even write in Italian, but in "romanesco" (the dialect spoken in Rome).

Next, I like Giuseppe Ungaretti.

Of the English poets, I liked most of the War I authors; my favourite poem is T. Hardy's "The Oxen". :thumbs_up

[mono]

What a difficult question! I think I may have the ability to narrow my favorites to ten, in no special order, of course: Dante Alighieri, D.H. Lawrence, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, Rumi, E.E. Cummings, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and John Keats.

[laetitia_niah]

my favorite poet? definately SAPPHO

[Luckdragon]

I really like Billy Collins, who used to be America's Poet Laureate.

I'd recommend, among others, his spoof on Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey.

[Jester]

never had a favorite poet but i do like stephan crane, dont have a smaple, Tennyson (i believe mentioned above) SYlvia plath, Robert Frost and I do read random work hlaf the time, my borther is also up there, not famous jsut really good...
nope dont have any with me, thats strange must be on floopies that i dont have..... hmmmm anyway

[atiguhya padma]

I used to be a great fan of Coleridge, Shelley and Keats. Then I moved on in time to TS Eliot, Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney. Although I don't have a particular favourite poet, I would say that Heaney's translation of Beowulf, and some of Larkin's poems are especially cherished by me. One of the two most hated poems for me was mentioned earlier on this thread - If by Rudyard Kipling. Boy do I hate that. It reminds me of St. Paul's twaddle about love in Corinthians. Both of which are completely unrealistic nonsense.

[jessw]

phyllis webb ,edgar allen poe are my favs oh and of course myself lol

[Spite]

Edgar allen Poe, and Tessa Musat.

[SuicideKitten]

i'm not that good you know :P
you always make me blush so madly

anyway.... i'm a fan of the ever famous poe and the madhatter, just her psuedo name but she is quite good. from the one poem i read lol, i fell in love with it.

[amuse]

was thinking of carl sandburg the other day.

Fog

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.


i also like John McCrae's In Flander's Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

[Night Closet]

Hay , come on and say Who is your favorit poet??:yawnb:

For me ????...i like reading Donne to the deapth ....

[PrinceMyshkin]

Hay , come on and say Who is your favorit poet??:yawnb:

Yeats followed by Blake...

[tinustijger]

I love Blake, Donne, Emily Dickinson, Poe, Robert Frost etcetera, VERY much, but although I haven't read that many poems of his, I must say that

-ee cummings-

really 'stands out', and is really special, and my favourite.

[Kiba]

I love Kipling,Dickinson, and Poe is good :)
(i am new at poetry so i dont know much bout it :s)

[quasimodo1]

RAINER MARIA RILKE...translated by Mitchell

[aabbcc]

I never had one favourite.
Mácha, Pushkin, Lermontov, Byron, Milton, DANTE (:D If I have to choose "the" poet, it would be him), ... Depending upon my whims.

[Dorothea Fayne]

Does anyone know how I could get in touch with the modern, British poet - William Wordsworth? He is the grandson of the famous poet from the past also known as William Wordsworth. Thanks.

Dorothea

[Dori]

Although I haven't read much into the realm of poetry, I have read a few poems. Due to my interest in Ancient Roman history, I came across a biography on the Roman poet, Catullus. Despite some of his more explicit material, I do enjoy his poetry.

Also, when I searched authors that have the same birthday as I do, I came back with one result: Walt Whitman. I've read very few of his poems, but I did enjoy them nonetheless.

[Gonturan]

Personally, I love Emily Dickinson because her work is so bursting with passion and yet so tightly controlled.

[Mortis Anarchy]

W.B. Yeats, Lord Byron, Blake, William Carlos Williams and Pablo Neruda. Oh and my Grandfather.:) In that order...hehe.

[Dark Star]

Goethe, followed by Leopardi.

[Mortis Anarchy]

Goethe, followed by Leopardi.

Ooo, I forgot about Goethe!! I agree, he is incredible! Add him to my list as well!

[trippy star]

I am a very great fan of Keats, Byron, etc. as well as James Joyce, E.E Cummings, and Cynewulf.

And if sonwriters are being taken into account (as I saw previously) then I would profess my love of Cobain.

[crazefest456]

Dante and Poe, some Donne...

[glenn71]

does any enjoy the work of philip larkin , im very fond of all his work.

[cracking muse]

Many, many favourites, so I shall not mention them all. But, one of favourite poems has to be 'A Dream Within A Dream' by Edgar Allen Poe.

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

[nyka]

Tonight I would say - Wisława Szymborska.

[rgdmalaysia]

My Favorites.....

William Wordworth
Philip Larkin
Yeats
Anne Sexton
Delmore Schwartz
Charles Baudelaire
T.S. Eliot
Stevie Smith

[Mattch1331]

Yeats, Frost, and Poe are all amazing... A lot of amateur poets are great too, you just have to know where to look...

try Poetry.com and look at the past winners section, there are some really awesome poems displayed...

Just know that the contest and anthologies are a scam so don't enter...

[awritersrevolve]

i truly enjoy the work of langston hughes. i recently just finished reading his book of his best works. it was truly magnificant.

[Janine]

Shakespeare!

[quasimodo1]

Janine, Shakespeare is an unfair choice; he can't be eclipsed by anyone.

[awritersrevolve]

well shakespeare can be eclipsed by anyone. it just depends on the way you read it because his words have many different meanings that could be comprehended in different ways.
sure you can't understand most of what he says BUT you can understand if you make it understand for yourself.
but he is quite a different writer.

[trippy star]

From the many poets I am fond of, my favourites would have to be,

William Blake
John Keats
Lord Byron
James Joyce
Fulke Greville
Snorri, and for that matter both the Eddas
and Shakespeare, but that goes without saying, really.

[Janine]

Janine, Shakespeare is an unfair choice; he can't be eclipsed by anyone.

But quasi, I just found it unbelievable that my beloved Shakespeare had not been mentioned yet. After all, he invented some of the most used poetic devices. He is acclaimed as the greatest poet/playright in the English language; aren't I correct about this? In my opinion he can't be eclipsed by anyone, but this is not to say there are not other fine, wonderfully fine, poets out there. I have many, many more favorites, I can add to my list, but I think Shakespeare will have to remain at the top of my own choices.

[*_Annabel Lee_*]

Poe,
Baudelaire

[thescholar]

Rudyard Kipling's poem "If" is by far the best poem I have ever read.
http://www.online-literature.com/kipling/836/

[sherlock]

Frost

[JBI]

William Butler Yeats.

[Irrylath]

My literary interests are fairly neatly split between the 16th and 20th centuries, so I'll give you my favorites from both:
16th-probably John Donne, though I do love the structures that Henry Vaughan uses for his poems
20th-have to go with TS Eliot

[Dr Jekyll]

T.S. Eliot, Thomas Dylan and E.E. Cummings are my favourite poets of all time, and then again we have to mention Edgar A. Poe and Ezra Pound for their contributing to the growth of the English literature.
But where are all those other great poets, like Homer or Goethe?
I think that every weaver of a poetic web of words needs to be mentioned in respect for all their work.