Gerard Manley Hopkins:
"[..] sheer plod makes plough down sillion shine."
Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?
51–60 of 369 posts
Re: Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?
#52As somebody who studied lit, this is an impossible question to answer, so I'll just link to my favorite John Donne ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Donne ) poem from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Sonnets , number 14 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Holy_Sonnets#Holy_Sonnet_14 Batter my heart, three-person'd God; for you As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me,…
And one poet I never appreciated when introduced to her, but love now: Edna St. Vincent Millay http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edna_St._Vincent_Millay
Renaissance and Other Poems is full of just staggering work: http://books.google.com/books?id=vxUpAAAAYAAJ
Re: Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?
#53Issa.
Re: Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?
#54Omar Khayyam, the Persian poet is by far my favorite. His writings are absolutely riveting and awe-inspiring!! He was so ahead of his time and genius polymath as well.
Do you have any particular poems, or collections that you would suggest?
Re: Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?
#55Ghalib[0], whose every poem is like a heartbreaking Koan, although it's very hard to find good English translations:
Let awareness spread wide its net of comprehension,
In my world of words, meaning is a bird of dreams.
A thousand wishes thus, that each demands a life,
I've done the best I could, but couldn't do too much.
[0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghalib, http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ghalib/index....
Re: Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?
#56Wislawa Szymborska.
Until I read her poems, I thought people that fawned over poetry were just making it up.
Here is the one that I read first http://bettinamay.com/poem/2008/10/view-with-a-grain-of-sand...
Re: Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?
#57Henry James made it into the original (for me) Hack FAQ https://w2.eff.org/Net_culture/Hackers/hacking.faq But also Neruda: Of the many men whom I am, whom we are, I cannot settle on a single one. They are lost to me under the cover of clothing They have departed for another city. When everything seems to be set to show me off as a man of intelligence, the fool I keep concealed on my person takes over my talk and occ…
Is this the same (American) Henry James that I think of as a novelist?
Re: Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?
#58Charles Baudelaire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Baudelaire):
You have to be always drunk. That’s all there is to it
it’s the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden
of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth,
you have to be continually drunk.
But on what?
Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.Re: Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?
#59[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?
#60Pushkin, Lermontov, Nekrasov... Yeah, I'm Russian :-p Among English poems, I rather like this one by Laurie Lee: A golden fish like a pint of wine Rolls the sea undergreen, Glassily balanced on the tide Only the skin between. Fish and water lean together, Separate and one, Till a fatal flash of the instant sun Lazily corkscrews down. Did fish and water drink each other? The reed leans there alone; As we, who once dra…
I'm not Russian and I like Lermontov :)