Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

I don't blame the teachers because it is true that most literary masterpieces are hard to tackle the "right way" especially when there is a standard final examination that students have to be prepared for.

I was lucky enough to have a very passionate teacher during my senior year of high-school who introduced me to some really exciting readings, and had enough charisma to capture the imagination of a room full of troubled teenagers. That is one of my fondest memory so far.

As far as I can remember, I always liked L'Albatros. Although I have to admit that the original version resonates a lot more with myself.

The slower pace of the last few sentences are like a kiss of death, a condemnation at the end of a trial: unquestionable and absolute.

You can almost feel the tears tearing Baudelaire apart. It's glorious in its very own morbidity. I just love it :)

http://www.lesfigues.com/book/gods-livestock-policy/

Other than that, I'm a huge fan of romantic era German poetry. Heine's Wenn ich in deine Augen seh is haunting

Wenn ich in deine Augen seh, So schwindet all mein Leid und Weh; Doch wenn ich küsse deinen Mund, So werd ich ganz und gar gerund.

Wenn ich mich lehn an deine Brust, Kommts über mich wie Himmelslust; Doch wenn du sprichst: Ich liebe dich! So muß ich weinen bitterlich.

  A big locomotive has pulled into town,
  Heavy, humungus, with sweat rolling down,
  A plump jumbo olive.
  Huffing and puffing and panting and smelly,
  Fire belches forth from her fat cast iron belly.

  Poof, how she's burning,
  Oof, how she's boiling,
  Puff, how she's churning,
  Huff, how she's toiling.
  She's fully exhausted and all out of breath,
  Yet the coalman continues to stoke her to death.

  Numerous wagons she tugs down the track:
  Iron and steel monsters hitched up to her back,
  All filled with people and other things too:
  The first carries cattle, then horses not few;
  The third car with corpulent people is filled,
  Eating fat frankfurters all freshly grilled.
  The fourth car is packed to the hilt with bananas,
  The fifth has a cargo of six grand pi-an-as.
  The sixth wagon carries a cannon of steel,
  With heavy iron girders beneath every wheel.
  The seventh has tables, oak cupboards with plates,
  While an elephant, bear, two giraffes fill the eighth.
  The ninth contains nothing but well-fattened swine,
  In the tenth: bags and boxes, now isn't that fine?

  There must be at least forty cars in a row,
  And what they all carry -- I simply don't know:

  But if one thousand athletes, with muscles of steel,
  Each ate one thousand cutlets in one giant meal,
  And each one exerted as much as he could,
  They'd never quite manage to lift such a load.

  First a toot!
  Then a hoot!
  Steam is churning,
  Wheels are turning!

  More slowly - than turtles - with freight - on their - backs,
  The drowsy - steam engine - sets off - down the tracks.
  She chugs and she tugs at her wagons with strain,
  As wheel after wheel slowly turns on the train.
  She doubles her effort and quickens her pace,
  And rambles and scrambles to keep up the race.
  Oh whither, oh whither? go forward at will,
  And chug along over the bridge, up the hill,
  Through mountains and tunnels and meadows and woods,
  Now hurry, now hurry, deliver your goods.
  Keep up your tempo, now push along, push along,
  Chug along, tug along, tug along, chug along
  Lightly and sprightly she carries her freight
  Like a ping-pong ball bouncing without any weight,
  Not heavy equipment exhausted to death,
  But a little tin toy, just a light puff of breath.
  Oh whither, oh whither, you'll tell me, I trust,
  What is it, what is it that gives you your thrust?
  What gives you momentum to roll down the track?
  It's hot steam that gives me my clickety-clack.
  Hot steam from the boiler through tubes to the pistons,
  The pistons then push at the wheels from short distance,
  They drive and they push, and the train starts a-swooshin'
  'Cuz steam on the pistons keeps pushin' and pushin';
  The wheels start a rattlin', clatterin', chatterin'
  Chug along, tug along, chug along, tug along! . . . . 

  Julian Tuwim

    The heart can think of no devotion
    Greater than being shore to ocean -
    Holding the curve of one position,
    Counting an endless repetition. 

    Robert Frost

Catullus is the greatest, though.