poetry suggestions?

[JaBlue]

Sometimes I like poetry, sometimes I don't. I like listening to Bob Dylan if you want to call him a poet.

I also like nature.

What do you like and what might I like?

Suggest somebody you are actually familiar with please

[Unabridged]

Rilke

[thatpfunk]

It is difficult to dislike Charles Bukowski as a young man.

[codewarrior]

Whitman. Ginsberg.

[mackthefork]

[ QUOTE ]
I like listening to Bob Dylan if you want to call him a poet.


[/ QUOTE ]

He is a poet, you wanna call him a singer?

Mack

[Moneyline]

I took my girlfriend to your last poetry reading,
she said.
yes, yes? I asked.
she's young and pretty, she said.
and? I asked.
she hated your
guts.
then she stretched out on the couch
and pulled off her
boots.

I don't have very good legs,
she said.

all right, I thought, I don't have very good
poetry; she doesn't have very good
legs.

scramble two.

[codewarrior]

Oh, and, of course, Blake.

[craig r]

Dylan Thomas
damn..there are so many more I can't remember right now.

craig

[jakethebake]

Try THIS GUY (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=exchange&Number=3039924&Fo rum=&Words=&Searchpage=0&Limit=25&Main=3039924&Sea rch=true&where=bodysub&Name=42404&daterange=1&newe rval=1&newertype=m&olderval=&oldertype=&bodyprev=# Post3039924).

[ChipWrecked]

[ QUOTE ]
Oh, and, of course, Blake.

[/ QUOTE ]

Annie Savoy: "'The path of excess leads to the tower of wisdom,' William Blake.

Crash Davis: "What...William Blake?"

Annie Savoy: "I mean William Blake."

Crash Davis: "What do you mean William Blake?"

Annie Savoy: "I mean William Blake!"

[imported_The Vibesman]

Rip into some Poe. Some creepy stuff, some sonnets, all very well written.

[RunDownHouse]

TS Eliot is far and away my favorite.

[InchoateHand]

C.K. Williams spent many years within my reach. He is a fabulous poet, and over the last forty years his work has gone through numerous evolutions. In "general," he is noted for long, overflowing lines, to the point where they do not fit in one line in standard print. They range from the harshly cynical to the piercingly obvservant (perhaps those are the same?) and are always good for a thought.

I'm a fan of the more bitter of Phillip Levine's work. He's known as the "everyman" with his rust-belt pedigree, but when he's on point, instead of waxing workingclass nostalgic, his work is beautiful, sparse and cutting.

Albert Goldbarth is a little more cerebral and esoteric, but I find myself returning to Beyond, my favorite of his collections, again and again over the years.

I'm not sure where your tastes lie--perhaps Levine is too banal, Goldbarth too "out-there," but I can't urge you enough to read C.K. Williams---especially, in no particular order I Am the Bitter Name , The Vigil , and/or Tar. You can't go wrong with Selected Poems , drawn from the above collections among others, either.

[ChipWrecked]

Screenwrote 'Blood In Blood Out', Jimmy Santiago Baca (http://www.jimmysantiagobaca.com/index.html)

[2planka]

Seamus Heaney
e.e. cummings
Eliot
Langston Hughes
WB Yeats
Jean Toomer

To name a few.

Bukowski is crap. Verse requires skill, revision, craft - you know, thought. Bukowski's one-off approach is ridiculous. Lots of people like his stuff - probably because it's accessible - so I could be wrong. Bukowski is to poetry as craft fair is to art museum.

[mason55]

Do a lot of meth and read "Howl" by Ginsberg.

[thatpfunk]

[ QUOTE ]
Bukowski is crap. Verse requires skill, revision, craft - you know, thought. Bukowski's one-off approach is ridiculous. Lots of people like his stuff - probably because it's accessible - so I could be wrong. Bukowski is to poetry as craft fair is to art museum.

[/ QUOTE ]

And would you say the same thing about some of Picasso's stages?

There is a bunch of crap that Buk produced.

There is also pure brilliance. The fact that he has fooled you so much so that you claim he has not taken the time for "revision" or that he lacks skill/craft (utter nonsense, even most of his greatest detractors grudgingly admit he was skilled) should be telling enough of his talent.

One could argue that writing something that seems effortless is the most difficult aspect of the craft.

to each his own, however

[Scotch78]

T.S Eliot (http://town.hall.org/radio/HarperAudio/011894_harp_ITH.html) and Dylan Thomas (http://town.hall.org/radio/HarperAudio/020894_harp_ITH.html) are my favorites to listen to. Salon.com (http://www.salon.com) also has (had) some good recordings, but a quick search didn't turn up anything. I also like to read Robert Frost, Hart Crane and Andrew Hudgins.

Scott

[2planka]

[ QUOTE ]
There is also pure brilliance. The fact that he has fooled you so much so that you claim he has not taken the time for "revision" or that he lacks skill/craft (utter nonsense, even most of his greatest detractors grudgingly admit he was skilled) should be telling enough of his talent

[/ QUOTE ]

Fair enough. I own Last night of the Earth - picked it up to see what the fuss was about - and was unimpressed. Can you recommend some of his better stuff? I admit that my perception is based on limited reading. Some of his other work may change my mind.

edit - and yes, I have similar opinions of later Picasso.

[thatpfunk]

Regarding his collections- in each that I have read there are good and bad.

The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills- I believe it is his first published collection. There is a stark difference between his early and late work (Last Night is quite late). He definetly got lazy and cocky with success/age. Days Run Away has some hilarious and heartbreaking stuff.

Septuagenarian Stew is a collection of poems and stories that I think is a great bedside table book.

For older stuff I have read parts of You Get So Alone At Times It Just Makes Sense. From what I have read, it is his most honest writing regarding aging and his own mortality.

Hope you enjoy /images/graemlins/smile.gif

And you are right, he is simple. But when he writes well he is honest, and I can ask nothing more from a poet than that.

[InchoateHand]

The Orange
by Benjamin Rosenbaum

An orange ruled the world.

It was an unexpected thing, the temporary abdication of Heavenly Providence, entrusting the whole matter to a simple orange.

The orange, in a grove in Florida, humbly accepted the honor. The other oranges, the birds, and the men in their tractors wept with joy; the tractors' motors rumbled hymns of praise.

Airplane pilots passing over would circle the grove and tell their passengers, "Below us is the grove where the orange who rules the world grows on a simple branch." And the passengers would be silent with awe.

The governor of Florida declared every day a holiday. On summer afternoons the Dalai Lama would come to the grove and sit with the orange, and talk about life.

When the time came for the orange to be picked, none of the migrant workers would do it: they went on strike. The foremen wept. The other oranges swore they would turn sour. But the orange who ruled the world said, "No, my friends; it is time."

Finally a man from Chicago, with a heart as windy and cold as Lake Michigan in wintertime, was brought in. He put down his briefcase, climbed up on a ladder, and picked the orange. The birds were silent and the clouds had gone away. The orange thanked the man from Chicago.

They say that when the orange went through the national produce processing and distribution system, certain machines turned to gold, truck drivers had epiphanies, aging rural store managers called their estranged lesbian daughters on Wall Street and all was forgiven.

I bought the orange who ruled the world for 39 cents at Safeway three days ago, and for three days he sat in my fruit basket and was my teacher. Today, he told me, "it is time," and I ate him.

Now we are on our own again.

[swede123]

May I humbly suggest that you don't read anything by John Donne. That's all.

Swede

[hobbsmann]

Rimbaud.

[britspin]

My current favourite The War Music series by Cristopher Logue- an adaptation of Homer's Iliad in modern poetry.. it's cinematic and epic- and quite wonderful...

If you're looking on Amazon the titles are:

War Music
All day permanant red
Cold Calls

[dibbs]

Try if you like Charles Bukowski.