Innovative Writers/Poets

I've been asked by some posters to name specifically some poets whom I enjoy. The following are some innovative poets who I have enjoyed reading. All or virtually all of them are of the modern and postmodern periods.

The early poetry of Andrei Codrescu

all poetry by Russell Edson

the poem Political Intelligence by A. J. M. Smith

the poem Vision by Harry Crosby

Kitchen Poem by Francis Scarfe

Residence on Earth by Pablo Neruda

all poetry by Anne Sexton

all poetry by Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Rilke

all surrealist, dada-ist and Cubist poetry by any poet

sometimes works claiming to be postmodern are quite interesting, as long as they're not boring

the poem Yelu Apoki by Luo Zhicheng

the poem Apocalypse and Resurrection by John Bayliss

One Night Away from Day by John Digby

most poetry by October Paz, as long as it's translated decently, which sadly is often not the case

the poet Frank Lima

the poem Daybreak by Bert Meyers

the poem "I Am Writing You from a Distant Land" by Henri Michaux

A Can of Fish by Xia Yu Lying

the poem Homage to Hieronymus Bosch by Thomas McGreevy

the poetry of Edouard Roditi

the poetry of Yves Bonnefoy

SIX WAYS OF EATING A WATERMELON by Luo Qing


I've also been heavily influenced by Afro Brazilian music (Bahia region), classical music of the Romantic and 20 century periods, free jazz, rock music, disco, painting & sculpture from the modern and postmodern periods, experimental/avant-garde film, modern dance (when the dancers move I see phrases of poetry), fringe/off-off-Broadway theater

Stlukesguild added the following poets to the list: Cesar Vallejo, Rafael Alberti, Antonio Machado, Federico Garcia Lorca, Boris Pasternak (as poet), Marina Tsvetaeva, Fernando Pessoa, Charles Wright, Louis Zukofsky, Samuel Beckett, J.L. Borges, Italo Calvino, Paul Celan, Geoffrey Hill, Anne Carson, etc...

Feel free to add interesting/bizarre/unique poets and writers from the modern and postmodern periods.

You don't like any poetry by Emily Dickinson?

David Foster Wallace with mammoth footnotes was probrably the most innovative writer of his generation. Also , Stephen Crane, especially in The Bridge. William Carlos Willaims 'Spring and All', but essentially his whole career. And e.e cummings were different, if not original. Ezra Pound and T.S Eliot pretty much developed an entire poetic sensibility of 'making new' old texts and dead languages.

I agree with the suggestion of Dickinson. It doesn't get much more innovative than that. I'd also check out Walt Whitman, who I think you'd like due to his calls for human (and in a way, literary) revolution. Both were way ahead of their time, and fit into the modern period more than the romantic.

Thank you for providing the list which some of us had requested.

In that list did you mean "Octavio" Paz?

What about Mallarme? Or for that matter, e e cummings with his liberation of conventional punctuation while at the same time--and here's a shock!--writing in "ancient" iambic pentameter? Did you forget the American beat poets? No Delmore Schwartz? Phillip Levine?

I wonder if you would be agreement with me on the following notion, which is this: Whenever a writer or an artist commits to a course of leaving tradition behind and discarding the past, we can assume that such an artist is thoroughly familiar with all of the traditions against which he is rebelling. Otherwise, how does he (or she) really know he is breaking virginal ground?In what way are you "new"?

Additionally, as some of us LitNutters have previously mentioned to you, authors whom you, Wolf, may have thought to have been overly conventional were in fact quite innovative in their own right. For instance, just yesterday I was reading an essay about Gerard Manley Hopkins. He was writing in the same era of Browning (a poet you might be quick to write off as being old-fashioned and conventional.) Hopkins's poems were not at all known in his lifetime, but when Robert Bridges discovered the work, it was immediately apparent that Hopkins's style-- in word choice, prosody, and imagery--waa as much a deviation from the past as that of Joyce.

Wolf, I am more than willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you do know what you are talking about --

BUT-- I hope to hell you are.

If you like Neruda and french symbolists, Ruben Dario is a must in your list, as he is the precussor of Neruda and Borges poetry.

If you really enjoy brazilian culture, the poetry of João Cabral de Mello, Carlos Drummond, Manuel Bandeira, Catullo da Paixão Cearense, Oswald de Andrade, Vinicius the Moraes and Manuel de Barros are good places for you to visit.