THOUGHTS ON THE POETS I HAVE BEEN READING
Billy Collins - He is currently one of the most famous and most read living American poets. He poetry is highly accessible and easy to read. Its often filled with humor and he writes lots of poems about writing poems (which can get a little old). His poetry is extremely conversational and even challenges the definition of what a poem means.
Mary Oliver - Is one of the other most read American poets. All of her works focus on nature and it is rare for a human (other than the observer) to be in her poetry, and is fairly accessible. American Primitive won a Pulitzer which is a book I found to be a little stronger than a lot of her other books but also darker in tone. She had a lot of years of writing poetry and I found little change in her topic or style from book to book, but I would recommend dream work and thirst.
Luci Shaw - Slightly less transparent than collins or Oliver but still not so coded as to lose its meaning. Topics of her poetry generally include God, and nature. Normally I can’t stand the endorsements on books by other authors (it feels like advertising) but she does have one from Annie Dillard so…. theres that. Angels of light is my favorite book of hers.
Denise Levertov - I find the balance between between poetry and clarity to my taste in her books. Her style and topics have a nice variety which I can find lacking on other poets. I am reading her collected works and her early poetry is defiantly more challenging than her later works. I would recommend her book evening train.
T.S. Elliot - When I read four quartets or waste land I feel like I am beholding the work of a master (not an experience I have very often (its like listening to Bach)). It feels so well crafted every sound and word feel like they were meticulously and painstakingly knit together. Its so well done we can all forgive him if the meaning is not always super clear. And we can all be forgiven for googling “what is four quartets about"? Another thing that really stands out about his work is the dramatic nature of his poems (dramatic has in drama, not dramatic as in overly emotional). Its like he creates these slices of stories in poetic form, and his poems are filled with characters he created, not him self. This stands in stark contrast to the works of all the other poets I have talked about, which feel predominately like autobiographic works.
