Oddly enough I haven't actually read many names at this point. Odd because I've been writing poetry consistently for six years. A part of that might be access to a university library over the past while - other topics and books have taken my attention - and they're free. That and I have trouble choosing between alternatives without recommendations. Lots of poetry, absolutely nothing to go off of.
My collection - everything Cohen's done, some Irving Layton, Cavafy, Ginsberg, Corso, Burns, Ehrmann, Shakespeare, Lorca, Rilke, Trakl, a number of compilations both professional and amateur, and some ancient poetry. I've actually purchased quite a bit of it since the pandemic started and the library shut down.
Let me reply for once without being silly.
As might be obvious to most by now, poetry is right up my alley. I fell in love with the art when I was around fourteen. I first developed an interest in song lyrics, and that goes back to my earliest memories. My father would always play music, and I would tune into the words just as much as the music. My pop would sit with me and we would discuss the lyrics. I distinctly remember him asking me what I thought Fool on the Hill meant. I was very young, but I remember thinking the line, "And the eyes in his head..." meant that this person had eyes in the back of his head. I imagined him as a Humpty-Dumpty type character, and being a child and a literalist, I imagined him sitting literally on a hill.
I distinctly remember developing a serious interest in words and especially song lyrics, though I was very young, perhaps four or five. I thought the words in The Sound of Silence were, "Beneath the halo of a street clown." (It is street
lamp.) But I imagined a clown with a halo. Like I said, I was a literalist through and through.
Skip many years...
In high school, in the eighth grade (aha! So I was thirteen!), I had to memorize Robert Frost's poem "Mending Wall". What a superb poem that was, and I do recall really liking it. I wanted to understand what all the words meant. Eventually, I learned about meter. Subsequently, I became obsessed with it. I absolutely HAD to learn how to do it. My English class in eighth grade was not big on poetry; we barely touched on it, but there was a brief discussion of meter. However, I did nearly all of my real learning on my own. I pored over Frost, Tennyson, E.A. Robinson, William Cullen Bryant (whose Thanatopsis is a great example of expert blank verse and shall go in the iambic pentameter thread post haste and toot sweet), and of course, Shakespeare. I knew even then that no-one did it as well as Shakespeare. No-one had to tell me.
Over time, I taught myself how to write my rudimentary, clumsy lines. I wrote sonnets, blank verse, couplets, iambic tet, etc., but my poems sucked tremendously. At least when I was a teenager. I began to do it better and better, and even explored free verse. My obsession continued and has not abated to this day. I still prefer metrical poetry, though a third of my stuff is in free verse. Most of my published poems (small journals) were in rhymed and metered verse.
As for publishing: I was into submitting during the late eightees and all the way until 2000, when I stopped. I was fairly successful, since I didn't submit all that much. My first submission ever was a batch of poems to Bitterroot, a small journal from upstate NY, owned and edited by Menke Katz, an excellent Yiddish/American poet, much neglected but well known, who wrote mostly in Yiddish. He was from Lithuania, and wrote beautifully of Jewish persecution, and the holocaust. Mr. Katz accepted a little piece of mine. This was 1987, my first ever submission. YAY! I was told by the experts, like Judson Jerome who edited the Poet's Market, that I would have to wade through piles of rejections, like Hemingway and many other writers and poets.
I did above average while I submitted, but by the time I went online, I was bored with formal publishing, and to be honest, I was convinced then and am still today that anyone can be a published poet and writer, and that 99.9999999 % of published poetry sucks. It sucks!
I am content today to have the kind words and occasional praise of several accomplished and widely published poets, mostly Americans, but a few from abroad. I met the bulk of them at Eratosphere, and one, the terrific Scottish poet, Rob MacKenzie, at PFFA. Rob and I became friends online, and he was an early champion of my work, and tried to drum up interest in it, but I didn't care that much, and he eventually gave up.
But enough about me. Let's talk about me.
More later. I will talk about who my favorite poets are, and share more thoughts on poetry.
Thanks for the thread, rousseau! We starving artists need some attention once in a while.
ETA: we cross posted, rousseau. I just noticed post #48. Will address it soon, after I help cook something.
