Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

Happy Dust

By Aleister Crowley

For Margot

Snow that fallest from heaven, bear me aloft on thy wings To the domes of the star-girdled Seven, the abode of ineffable things,

Quintessence of joy and of strength, that, abolishing future and past,

Mak'st the Present an infinite length, my soul all-One with the Vast,

The Lone, the Unnameable God, that is ice of His measureless cold,

Without being or form or abode, without motion or matter, the fold

Where the shepherded Universe sleeps, with nor sense nor delusion nor dream,

No spirit that wantons or weeps, no thought in its silence supreme.

I sit, and am utterly still; in mine eyes is my fathomless lust

Ablaze to annihilate Will, to crumble my being to dust, To calcine the dust to an ash, to burn up the ash to an air, To abolish the air with a flash of the final, the fulminant flare.

All this I have done, and dissolved the primordial germ of my thought;

I have rolled myself up, and revolved the wheel of my being to Naught.

Is there even the memory left? That I was, that I am? It is lost.

As I utter the Word, I am cleft by the last swift spear of the frost.

Snow! I am nothing at last; I sit, and am utterly still; They are perished, the phantoms, and past; they were born of my weariness-will

When I craved, craved being and form, when the consciousness-cloud was a mist

Precurser of stupor and storm, when I and my shadow had kissed,

And brought into life all the shapes that confused the clear space with their marks,

Vain spectres whose vapour escapes, a whirlwind of ruinous sparks,

No substance have any of these; I have dreamed them in sickness of lust,

Delirium born of disease-ah, whence was the master, the "must"

Imposed on the All? is it true, then, that something in me

Is subject to fate? Are there two, after all, that can be?

I have brought all that is to an end; for myself am sufficient and sole.

Do I trick myself now? Shall I rend once again this homologous Whole?

I have stripped every garment from space; I have strangled the secret of Time,

All being is fled from my face, with Motion's inhibited rime.

Stiller and stiller I sit, till even Infinity fades; 'Tis an idol-'tis weakness of wit that breeds, in inanity, shades!

Yet the fullness of Naught I become, the deepest and steadiest Naught,

Contains in its nature the sum of the functions of being and thought.

Still as I sit, and destroy all possible trace of the past, All germ of the future, nor joy nor knowledge alive at the last,

It is vain, for the Silence is dowered with a nature, the seed of a name:

Necessity, fearfully flowered with the blossom of possible Aim.

I am Necessity? Scry Necessity mother of Fate!

And Fate determines me "I"; and I have the Will to create. Vast is the sphere, but it turns on itself like the pettiest star. And I am the looby that learns that all things equally are. Inscrutable Nothing, the Gods, the cosmos of Fire and of Mist.

Suns, atoms, the clouds and the clouds ineluctably dare to exist-

I have made the Voyage of Thought, the Voyage of Vision, I swam

To the heart of the Ocean of Naught from the source of the Spring of I am:

I know myself wholly the brother alike of the All and the One;

I know that all things are each other, that their sum and their substance is None;

But the knowledge itself can excel, its fulness hath broken its bond;

All's Truth, and all's falsehood as well, and-what of the region beyond?

So, still though I sit, as for ever, I stab to the heart of my spine;

I destroy the last seed of endeavour to seal up my soul in the shrine

Of Silence, Eternity, Peace; I abandon the Here and the Now;

I cease from the effort to cease; I absolve the dead I from its Vow,

I am wholly content to be dust, whether that be a mote or a star,

To live and to love and to lust, acknowledge what seem for what are,

Not to care what I am, if I be, whence I came, whither go, how I thrive,

If my spirit be bound or be free, save as Nature contrive. What I am, that I am, 'tis enough. I am part of a glorious game.

Am I cast for madness or love? I am cast to esteem them the same.

Am I only a dream in the sleep of some butterfly? Phantom of fright

Conceived, who knows how, or how deep, in the measureless womb of the night?

I imagine impossible thought, metaphysical voids that beget

Ideas intagible wrought to things less conceivable yet. It may be. Little I reck -but, assume the existence of earth.

Am I born to be hanged by the neck, a curse from the hour of my birth?

Am I born to abolish man's guilt? His horrible heritage, awe?

Or a seed in his wantoness spilt by a jester? I care not a straw,

For I understand Do what thou wilt; and that is the whole of the Law.

Didn't see Rumi in the list.

  Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
  there is a field. I will meet you there.
  When the soul lies down in that grass,
  the world is too full to talk about
  language, ideas, even the phrase each other
  doesn't make any sense.

Patrick Kavanagh - Stony Grey Soil

    O stony grey soil of Monaghan
    The laugh from my love you thieved;
    You took the gay child of my passion
    And gave me your clod-conceived.
    
    You clogged the feet of my boyhood
    And I believed that my stumble
    Had the poise and stride of Apollo
    And his voice my thick tongued mumble.
    
    You told me the plough was immortal!
    O green-life conquering plough!
    The mandril stained, your coulter blunted
    In the smooth lea-field of my brow.
    
    You sang on steaming dunghills
    A song of cowards' brood,
    You perfumed my clothes with weasel itch,
    You fed me on swinish food
    
    You flung a ditch on my vision
    Of beauty, love and truth.
    O stony grey soil of Monaghan
    You burgled my bank of youth!
    
    Lost the long hours of pleasure
    All the women that love young men.
    O can I stilll stroke the monster's back
    Or write with unpoisoned pen.
    
    His name in these lonely verses
    Or mention the dark fields where
    The first gay flight of my lyric
    Got caught in a peasant's prayer.
    
    Mullahinsa, Drummeril, Black Shanco-
    Wherever I turn I see
    In the stony grey soil of Monaghan
    Dead loves that were born for me.

I've been reading poetry ever since I read one by Cocteau that physically moved me. Yes, I felt it in my body, not only in my mind. Since then, I've read too many. Here are some of my favorites. Delve deep into the greats and then the lesser known, you'll find the ones that move you.

Fernando Pessoa (if he were a french or english poet, he would be considered, I have absolutely no doubt about it, one of the greatest poets to have ever written)

W.H. Auden

Robert Desnos

Homer

Ovid

I'm not that much of a fan of beat poetry, but I recently got a hold of Mexico City Blues by Kerouac and discovered how much more I like his poetry than his prose.

Since you studied it - what do you look for in great poetry?