Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Top Ten Tuesday [3]

This Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish.

This week I'm stepping out of the strict realm of fiction to present you with (and these do not include poetry-structured-fiction-book-writers) :

Top Ten Favorite Poets

1. Emily Dickinson

  • We've all heard of her, but how many of us have read beyond her few most famous poems, or beyond the poems you had to read for high school English class?  I have loved her writing for a long time because it's not clear.  You have to decipher what you think she was talking about and I feel like she is a master of analogies and metaphors.

2. Adrienne Rich

  • In my travels for something I can tolerate reading during the semester I found one of her books in an undergraduate library.  She's very profound and very visual.  Her emotions and opinions shine through her narratives of people's lives, and in descriptions of cities.

3. Mattie J.T. Stepaneck

  • A truly special young man who died well before his time.  He was a self-proclaimed "peacemaker" and his poems spoke of hope and the good in people.  It seems that he truly believed man could be good to their fellow man and the world would right itself.  In the age of profoundly deep depressing poetry, his books are a breath of fresh air.

4. Aimee Nezhukumatathil

  • I can't say much more than: Unique.  Read her book, Lucy Fish.

5. Sylvia Plath

  • I have a strange love of Sylvia Plath that I can't explain.  Maybe it's her tragedy, maybe it's the fact that she never became a great master no matter how powerful her poems are.

6. Lord Alfred Tennyson

  • I love him only for "Charge of the Light Brigade".  If you haven't read it, go read it now.  Seriously, right now, you can read the rest of this list later.

7. Lewis Carroll

  • The author of Alice in Wonderland, and let's face it, everything he writes feels like a poem, even an epic.

8. Whoever wrote "Beowulf"

  • Unlike the other's listed here I'm not a fan of the author per-say because no one knows who that is, but I'm a fan of the work.  Beowulf is an amazing epic poem of a quest, but within the quest are questions and challenges people still face today.

9. Shel Silverstein

  • Come look me in the eye and say you don't love his poems, even as an adult.  Bet you can't do it.

10. William Carlos Williams

  • Not truly a favorite, but he is a classic master.

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