Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

Desert Places by Robert Frost

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast In a field I looked into going past, And the ground almost covered smooth in snow, But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it-it is theirs. All animals are smothered in their lairs. I am too absent-spirited to count; The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is, that loneliness Will be more lonely ere it will be less- A blanker whiteness of benighted snow With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces Between stars-on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home To scare myself with my own desert places.

Ode by Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy.

WE are the music-makers,

  And we are the dreamers of dreams, 

Wandering by lone sea-breakers,

  And sitting by desolate streams; 

World-losers and world-forsakers, On whom the pale moon gleams:

Yet we are the movers and shakers

  Of the world for ever, it seems. 

 

With wonderful deathless ditties

We build up the world's great cities, And out of a fabulous story

  We fashion an empire's glory: 

One man with a dream, at pleasure,

  Shall go forth and conquer a crown; 

And three with a new song's measure Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying

  In the buried past of the earth, 

Built Nineveh with our sighing,

  And Babel itself with our mirth;

And o'erthrew them with prophesying

  To the old of the new world's worth; 

For each age is a dream that is dying,

  Or one that is coming to birth.

No Mention of the Bard?

    That time of year thou may'st in me behold
    When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
    Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
    Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
    In me thou see'st the twilight of such day,
    As after sunset fadeth in the west,
    Which by-and-by black night doth take away,
    Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
    In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
    That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
    As the death-bed whereon it must expire
    Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
        This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
        To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

I discovered The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran around 2009 and it quickly became and has remained one of my favorites. I appreciate the descriptiveness and beauty of the language along with the continuing relevance of the advice. It's very easy reading and enjoyable to pick up for a short time and enjoy in small bits or read straight through.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prophet_%28book%29

A couple favorites of mine are:

On Pain - http://www.katsandogz.com/onpain.html

On Reason & Passion - http://www.katsandogz.com/onreason.html

Ted Kooser.

http://tedkooser.net/

He was the US Poet Laureate for a few years. He is from Nebraska, and writes about Midwestern life, among other things. His most recent volume just came out, and I thought it was great.

http://www.amazon.com/Splitting-Order-Ted-Kooser/dp/15565946...

From "Splitting an Order":

    I like to watch an old man cutting a sandwich in half 
    … and then to see him lift half
    onto the extra plate that he asked the server to bring,
    and then to wait, offering the plate to his wife
    while she slowly unrolls her napkin and places her spoon,
    her knife and her fork in their proper places,
    then smoothes the starched white napkin over her knees
    and meets his eyes and holds out both old hands to him.

I stumbled across this in a high school magazine left in a youth hostel in Maroochydore, Queensland in 1986, and have never seen another reference to it since. It's attribution was 'anonymous', and googling key lines bring up nothing.

I've always liked it, and posting it here might give it some longevity beyond that of my hard drive.

  Running on the front line
  Leading the way to uncertainty.
  With the shadow of a dream to guide you,
  Following a gleaming ray
  Picked from another’s closed mind.
  Why will you lead the way while
  Others show no taste for adventure?
  Alone and self-exiled
  In the midst of a crowd
  Something not quite a thought flickers and is gone
  Leaving just enough to tell it came
  But not enough to remember.
  Somehow it is connected
  To what you don’t know
  But must find out.
  Go forward, relish the unusual,
  And question the normal.
  Push yourself always to the edge
  And the edge will move with you.
  A blur of consciousness, knowledge,
  Experience, prediction, guesses and lies
  The elusive unknown and
  The excitingly uncertain.
  -
  Anonymous