Your favorite poet/artist

My favorite poet is Tupac Amuru Shakur (Lesane Parish Crooks).
I identify with his wish to be virtuous, his natural love and empathy for people but his inner conflict from his negative environment. His character is untouchable, his charisma is the greatest I have ever seen. His ambitions, his wish to help the helpless, I can relate to him extremely.
He was the greatest star I can think of, he had the James Dean quality that most people Don't have.

I would think most of our favorite poem's and poets are those we can relate to.
For instance so many men like myself love Rudyard Kiplings poem 'IF'

Oh I'm a huge Poe's fan, I love his poetry as well as his stories. He has a great writing style and I admire that he writes whatever he feels like

My favorite poet is myself. My words speak directly to my soul, as if they were written exclusively for me
On a (slightly) more serious note, I don't read many poems from "strictly-poetry" poets. Most of the poetry I read is from authors who just write, using whatever form is most appropriate: novels; short stories; poems; essays. It shouldn't be much of a surprise then that my favorite poem is from one of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman.
I wish I could record myself reading this, because I think hearing being read to you has a greater impact than reading it for yourself, and also partially because I've been told that I have a nice voice for reading aloud.


"The Day the Saucers Came" from Fragile Things, by Neil Gaiman.

That day, the saucers landed.
Hundreds of them, golden,
Silent, coming down from the sky
like great snowflakes,
And the people of Earth stood and
stared as they descended,
Waiting, dry-mouthed, to find what waited
inside for us
And none of us knowing if we would
be here tomorrow
But you didn't notice it because

That day, the day the saucers came,
by some coincidence,
Was the day that the graves gave up their dead
And the zombies pushed up through soft earth
or erupted, shambling and dull-eyed, unstoppable,
Came towards us, the living,
and we screamed and ran,
But you did not notice this because

On the saucer day, which was the zombie day, it was
Ragnarok also, and the television screens showed us
A ship built of dead-men's nails, a serpent, a wolf,
All bigger than the mind could hold,
and the cameraman could
Not get far enough away, and then
the Gods came out
But you did not see them coming because

On the saucer-zombie-battling-gods
day the floodgates broke
And each of us was engulfed by genies and sprites
Offering us wishes and wonders and eternities
And charm and cleverness and true
brave hearts and pots of gold
While giants feefofummed across
the land, and killer bees,
But you had no idea of any of this because

That day, the saucer day the zombie day
The Ragnarok and fairies day, the
day the great winds came
And snows, and the cities turned
to crystal, the day
All plants died, plastics dissolved, the day the
Computers turned, the screens telling
us we would obey, the day
Angels, drunk and muddled,
stumbled from the bars,
And all the bells of London
were sounded, the day
Animals spoke to us in Assyrian, the Yeti day,
The fluttering capes and arrival of
the Time Machine day,
You didn't notice any of this because
you were sitting in your room,
not doing anything
not even reading, really, just
looking at your telephone,
wondering if I was going to call.

Edgar Allen Poe is one of my all time favorites.

favorite poet - e.e cummings.

Poet is probably TS Eliot, especially Prufrock, which resonates with me and my cynicism/"pessimism." I also consider myself as having a sort of "anti-hero" mindset (cf. Watchmen and Apocalypse Now), and Eliot probably assisted in that. I tried to understand at least parts of The Wasteland, and I still think I only vaguely understand it. The Hollow Men is also a good one, especially as read by Brando in Apocalypse Now

John Milton's Paradise Lost

"These two emparadised in one another’s arms the happier Eden, shall enjoy their fill of bliss on bliss, while I to hell am thrust, where neither joy nor love, but fierce desire, among our other torments not the least, still unfulfilled with pain of longing pines."

"Which way shall I fly infinite wrath, and infinite despair? Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell; and in the lowest deep a lower deep still threatening to devour me opens wide, to which the hell I suffer seems a heaven."

"For never can true reconcilement grow where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep: which would but lead me to a worse relapse, and heavier fall. This knows my punisher; therefore as far from granting he, as I from begging peace."

My favourite poets in the English Language are Cummings, Yeats and Meredith

This seems to sum up the positives of paranoid delusions with the beauty of waves overlapping meaning and imagery.

Cummings

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

This seems to sum up the positives of paranoid delusions with the beauty of overlapping meaning and imagery.

Yeats - this seems to me to be as much music and painting as poetry and story-telling metaphor.

The Wild Swans at Coole

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?


Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (1989)

Extract inscription on manuscript of Vaughn-Williams' Lark Ascending

He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound,
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake.
For singing till his heaven fills,
‘Tis love of earth that he instils,
And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup
And he the wine which overflows
to lift us with him as he goes.
Till lost on his aerial rings
In light, and then the fancy sings.

-- Sat Jul 19, 2014 12:37 pm --

-- Sat Jul 19, 2014 12:40 pm -- Posts illogically joined.

Favourite Poet of poems all languages I know of, Rilke. Translation: http://picture-poems.com/rilke/poemindex.html

Die Gazelle

Gazella Dorcas

Verzauberte: wie kann der Einklang zweier
erwählter Worte je den Reim erreichen,
der in dir kommt und geht, wie auf ein Zeichen.
Aus deiner Stirne steigen Laub und Leier,

und alles Deine geht schon im Vergleich
durch Liebeslieder, deren Worte, weich
wie Rosenblätter, dem, der nicht mehr liest,
sich auf die Augen legen, die er schließt:

um dich zu sehen: hingetragen, als
wäre mit Sprüngen jeder Lauf geladen
und schüsse nur nicht ab, solang der Hals

das Haupt ins Horchen hält: wie wenn beim Baden
im Wald die Badende sich unterbricht:
den Waldsee im gewendeten Gesicht.