Favorite contemporary poets?

[metaxy99]

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Unlike some people, I think that there are a lot of incredible poets writing today.

So, I'd like to know who your favorite contemporary poets are - people writing in the last 25 years.

Even though she's not my very favorite, I have a feeling my favorites will all be mentioned sooner or later, so I'll propose Joy Harjo.

This is part of her poem She Had Some Horses (pub.1883):

Night Out

I have seen you in the palms of my hands
late nights in the bar
just before the lights
are about to be turned on. You are powerful horses
by then, not the wrinkled sacks of thin, mewing
spirit,
that lay about the bar early in the day
waiting for minds and bellies.
You are the ones who slapped Anna on the back,
told her to drink up
that it didn’t matter anyway.
You poured Jessie another Coors, and another one
and another.
Your fingers were tight around hers
because she gave herself to you.
Your voice screamed out from somewhere in the
darkness
another shot, anything to celebrate this deadly
thing called living. And Joe John called out to bring
another round, to have another smoke, to dance dance it good
because tomorrow night is another year -



....

[mono]

Difficult to say, and even more difficult to narrow down my favorite poems by my favorite contemporary poets. I would have to list, in no specific order:
William Stafford
Theodore Roethke
Raymond Carver
Maya Angelou
Sharon Olds

[metaxy99]

Thanks mono. Good choices. I really like Sharon Olds. Like Roethke too, though it might be a little bit of a stretch to call him contemporary (d.1963). Saw your selection of Raymond Carver's poems for baddad, and those are very nice.
I always wanted to like William Stafford, but he usually leaves me disappointed. For me, his poems strain too hard at contemplation, and too many of his lines just clank against the ear.

I would say my favorite favorite conemtporay poets are Robert Hass,
Jorie Graham, Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde.
Then I'd say Joy Harjo, Denis Johnson, and Sharon Olds.
Then Luise Gluck, Robert Pinsky, and Denise Levertov.

[Jack_Aubrey]

Jeff Tweedy.

[metaxy99]

of wilco? alright, i'll check that out.

[Jack_Aubrey]

Yeah of Wilco, wow you're a cool dude. Check out A Ghost is Born which is the latest Wilco record. He also has a poetry book called Adult Head that's out.

[Bix12]

Best contemporary poets? I love the Beat Poets...an aquired taste, maybe, nonetheless, some of it is fantastic stuff. I was reading someone slamming Burroughs somewhere in one of these threads. I suppose I can see how one might think that sort of stuff is trash, especially someone brought up with, or educated in, the classics. Fortunately for me, I can appreciate the new, as well as the old.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti is an outstanding poet. He's also the founder of City Lights, a San Francisco-based arts magazine, and he's also responsible for getting so many new poets published. Here's part of one of my favorite poems by Ferlinghetti:


Constantly Risking Absurdity


Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams


....

defying leap
And he
a little charleychaplin man
who may or may not catch
her fair eternal form
spreadeagled in the empty air
of existence

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

[Bix12]

Charles Bukowski lived a very hard life, from the daily beatings his father administered to him as a child, to his life as an adult fighting a losing battle against alchoholism. Although he was loved by more than one "good" woman, he never considered himself worthy of that love, and subsequently felt more at ease in the company of the jaded, and indifferent prostitutes he often frequented. His poetry exhibits a rawness that, at first glance, appears no more than merely cold & harsh...but for me, Bukowski's work holds it's own unique beauty. Here's part of one of my favorites:


THE BLACKBIRDS ARE ROUGH TODAY


lonely as a dry and used orchard
spread over the earth
for use and surrender.

shot down like an ex-pug selling
dailies on the corner.


taken by tears like
an aging chorus girl
who has gotten her last check.

....


don't be ashamed of
anything; I guess God meant it all
like
locks on
doors.


Charles Bukowski

[uranderson]

Here is part of one by Levis, from Winter Stars:

********************
The Poet at Seventeen
by Larry Levis


My youth? I hear it mostly in the long, volleying
Echoes of billiards in the pool halls where
I spent it all, extravagantly, believing
My delicate touch on a cue would last for years.


Outside the vineyards vanished under rain,
And the trees held still or seemed to hold their breath
When the men I worked with, pruning orchards, sang
Their lost songs: Amapola; La Paloma;

....


The trees, wearing their mysterious yellow sullenness
Like party dresses. And parties I didn’t attend.
And then the first ice hung like spider lattices
Or the embroideries of Great Aunt No One,


And then the first dark entering the trees—
And inside, the adults with their cocktails before dinner,
The way they always seemed afraid of something,
And sat so rigidly, although the land was theirs.

***********

This is a good poem, but not one of my favorites, I can't find the text of many online and they're generally too long to type.

He published 5 books I believe (one more came out posthmously), the last three are the best in my opinion. The best way to approach him is to get The Selected Levis and start with the poems of The Widening Spell of the Leaves .

[NickAdams]

Well, I'll tell you a story
Of whiskey and mystics and men,
And about the believers and
How the whole thing began.


....



And if all of the teachers and
Preachers of wealth were arraigned,
We could see quite a future
For me in the literal sands.
And if all the people
Could claime to inspect such regrets,
Well, we'd have no forgiveness,
Forgetfullness, faithful remorse.
So I tell you, I tell you,
I tell you we must send away.
We must try to find a
New answer instead of a way.

[Janine]

From Losing Track
By Denise Levertov

Long after you have swung back
Away from me
I think you are still with me:

You come in close to the shore
On the tide
And nudge me awake the way

A boat adrift nudges the pier:
I am the pier
Half-in half-out of the water?

....


From The Secret
By Denise Levertov

Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.

I who don't know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me

(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was
not even


....



and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that

a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines

From LIVING
By Denise Levertov

The fire in leaf and grass

so green it seems

each summer the last summer

The wind blowing, the leaves

shivering in the sun,

each day the last day.

....

and long tail. I hold

my hand open for him to go.

Each minute the last minute.

[uranderson]

"Losing Track" was my favorite poem of hers when I first started reading her. It's been a long time since I've read it. I used to know it by heart.

[Janine]

"Losing Track" was my favorite poem of hers when I first started reading her. It's been a long time since I've read it. I used to know it by heart.

Hi uranderson, I used to read her poems a lot but there is one in particular I am trying to find. I can't clearly recall the lines to it or even the first line. If I saw it I would know it. I have to think more about it. If I come up with one line maybe could you help me find it online or suggest the first line so I can locate it? I will get back to you later, if I think of it. NO - I am not going senile yet - just 'brain overload!'

[Granny5]

Paul Simon is one of my favorites.

[stlukesguild]

Within the limits of poets writing within the last 25 years there are certainly far too many of real merit to begin to list here. 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