National Poetry Month

[kjc]

It's National Poetry Month here in the USA

Comments

[metagnat]

W.H. Auden is my favorite. He supplanted T.S.Eliot some time ago, who still ranks in the top ten in my pantheon of poetry in spite of unsavory beliefs

[drwex]

I'm an old-fashioned bore when it comes to poetry. My favorites are all old dead white guys: Poe, cummings, Eliot, Coleridge

The fact that they're also all drug-addled and depressing is left as an interpretive exercise for the reader.

In the room, the women come and go,
Talking of Michaelangelo

Always with the levity

[bedfull_o_books]

Some primal termite knocked on wood
and tasted it and found it good.

And that is why your Cousin May
fell through the parlor floor today.

--- Ogden Nash

[dr_pretentious]

I still love the poet I wrote my dissertation about. Hilda Doolittle published under her initials, as you would too if you had a name like Hilda Doolittle. My favorite H.D. poem is "Tribute to the Angels." It's the second long movement of her war trilogy, stuff she wrote in London during the Blitz. The bombing's still going on almost every night as she writes, and every day she's still alive seems like an astonishing miracle to her. She tries to thank the angels who've protected her, and the Goddess shows up unexpectedly. Great visionary stuff, grounded in the gritty daily detail of the war. Every time I come to the part where the burnt apple tree's charred bark breaks into flower, I get weepy.