Favourite American Poet

[TrogL]

I know I've missed some, I'm trying for the highlights.

Order is alphabetical.

see http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/

[mr_hat]

1. Townes Van Zandt for me. >

Not so much lyrics as poetry with a musical accompanyment.

[Fovea]

2. Very hard choices.

I finally went with Williams, but Plath was very compelling too.

[thebeaglehaslanded]

3. Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" may be the great American novel.

[HuckleB]

4. Marvin Bell or Theodore Roethke.

.

[BurtWorm]

5. Voted for Whitman, but thought Wallace Stevens could be on the list

and Poe. I'm amazed at how many poets I really enjoy and feel warmly about, like virtually everyone on your list. I don't think of myself as a poetry reader, but I guess I'm more of one than I thought. I hope someone votes for e.e. cummings.

[Loonman]

6. Henry Rollins

n/t

[SlavesandBulldozers]

7. William S. Burroughs

a violent sexually-charged drug-addict. the epitome of american culture.

[thebigidea]

19. ooo, seconded

"Listen to my last words, any where... listen all you powers behind what filth deals consumated in what lavatory... to take what is not yours, to sell the ground from unborn feet - forever..."

[Goldmund]

8. I say Whitman

But I think that Bob Dylan deserves to be on the list as well.

9. others

This is what my degree is in, so it's hard to pick one.

William Everson
Kenneth Patchen
Bob Kaufman
William Carlos Williams
Ted Berrigan
Frank O'Hara
Anselm Hollo
David Henderson
Gregory Corso
Ezra Pound
Ted Joans
Amiri Baraka
Bob Dylan

[LuminousX]

10. Shel Silverstein? Ogden Nash?

[Redleg]

11. The guy who wrote "There once was a man from Nantucket...

Ha ha ha. Just kidding. My vote is for Walt Whitman.

[lapislzi]

12. Stanley Kunitz

the dignity and humanity of this frail 98-year-old is humbling, to say the least. I heard him read "God's Grandeur" at a symposium and it actually made me weep. And I'm an atheist!

[roughsatori]

13. Robert Hayden, Frank O'Hara, Whitman, Dickinson

are my favorites. There are many other wonderful American poets.

[Wickerman]

14. Kenneth Rexroth

and the first person who responds Rod McKuen, well, I don't know what'll happen, but, but, it should be bad...

[ironflange]

15. I have two copies of "Leaves of Grass"

One paperback portable, the other the hardback with the Edward Weston photos. Very very moving stuff.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

25. I've given away more copies than I could count.

[BrotherBuzz]

16. Ogden Nash

Hey, I got a simple mind and I enjoy him.

The Germ

A mighty creature is the germ,
Though smaller than a pachyderm.
His customary dwelling place
Is deep within the human race.
His childish pride he often pleases
By giving people strange diseases.
Do you, my poppet, feel infirm?
You probably contain a germ.

[Richardo]

21. Me too. Ogden Nash. In the poll - e. e. cummings.

I have a hard time grokking 'hard-core' poetry.

[bobja]

17. Allen Ginsberg

There's no lightweights on your list, but Ginsberg's the one for me.

[StopTheMorans]

18. where's Poe?

there's no comparison. Annabel Lee is one of the coolest poems every, Poe is the man!

[TrogL]

20. I'd always thought of T. S. Eliot as a British poet

but it turns out he was born in the States.

The Wasteland (the only poem I know that needs an owners manual) and The Hollow Men are my two favourites.

22. in St. Louis

T.S. Eliot, Miles Davis and William Burroughs were all born within a few miles of each other in St. Louis. Wonder what was in the water.

[Speck Tater]

23. Other: POE. How could you leave POE off the list?

If nothing else he deserves a place in history for being the only poet to ever use the word "tintinabulation" in a poem.

[TrogL]

24. No room, known more for prose than poetry

the Raven not withstanding.

Plus, I was trying for later poets (Whittman and Frost) notwithstanding.

[ulysses]

26. other

A tie between Galway Kinnell and Carolyn Forché.

[bicentennial_baby]

27. Sylvia

or e.e. cummings. Tough choice

[GoddessOfGuinness]

28. I pick Frost today...

Tomorrow it'll be someone different.

IN A DISUSED GRAVE YARD

The living come with grassy tread
To read the gravestones on the hill;
The graveyard draws the living still,
But never anymore the dead.
The verses in it say and say:
"The ones who living come today
To read the stones and go away
Tomorrow dead will come to stay."
So sure of death the marbles rhyme,
Yet can't help marking all the time
How no one dead will seem to come.
What is it men are shrinking from?
It would be easy to be clever
And tell the stones: Men hate to die
And have stopped dying now forever.
I think they would believe the lie.

[geniph]

29. Robert Zimmerman

better known as Bob Dylan...