Poetry!

[mousme]

Dear flist, I am sorry for spamming you relentlessly.

Can someone recommend some good modern poetry for me? I am in a poetry frame of mind these days, and realized that I am poor in that department. My father is the one with all the poetry books, and they are thus at his home and far away from me. I only have The Wasteland, Leaves of Grass, and... yeah, I think that's it, on my shelves. Oh, and the complete works of Shakespeare.

This must be remedied.

Comments

[fearsclave.livejournal.com]

greatpoets.

[tx-cronopio.livejournal.com]

Oh, I could go all day on this one! But I'll restrain myself.
I'm quite a fan of Philip Larkin, here's a sample:
http://www.artofeurope.com/larkin/lar2.htm

[tx-cronopio.livejournal.com]

And I love almost all of Yeats and Auden. Here's the Auden one that everyone knows from Four Weddings and a Funeral:
http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/auden.stop.html

[grnladybug.livejournal.com]

You post as much as you want hon! :)

The only poetry I know is my own for the most part...which you have probably seen most of in my journal! Lol.

I don't think you were in my joumal when I posted "Nothingness" my fav personal best. It is under my poetry tag. (Which I can't paste the link with my blackberry - or I would have!) :)

Check it out if you have a moment!

[bodhifox.livejournal.com]

There is no such thing as good modern poetry. Except crowgirl13 can totally steer you toward some.

[odheirre.livejournal.com]

Louise Erdrich rocks. Anne Sexton is pretty good too, and Neil Gaiman has a few poems out in one of his collections that I was impressed with.

[raven-albion.livejournal.com]

None of these are very modern, but...I like Rumi. Also, Sara Teasdale when she is not rhyming (which is sadly not very often). I used to like Bukowski, but I think it was a phase and that I'm through it.

[ai731.livejournal.com]

For modern stuff, I quite like Andrew Motion.

Here's an example of his stuff:
http://danger-ahead.railfan.net/features/paddington/poem.html

And his website with a bibliography:
http://www.uktouring.org.uk/andrewmotion/books.htm

[(Anonymous)]

Here's an example of one of my favorite poets, Richard Wilbur. Another is Wallace Stevens, but only for the poem "Sunday Morning", which is a great, beautiful poem about what to do if you really don't feel in touch with organized religion any more.

Bev Preston, Pasley's mom, the ex English teacher.


The Writer

In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.

I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash

And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark

And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top,

And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,

It lifted off from a chair-back,
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.

It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.

Richard Wilbur