what poet/poetry book would you recommend?

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maniac

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i recently started to write poetry.

and i really want to look into poetry, so i was wondering if you could please recommend a starting point for me?

i want to read poems that inspire and evoke a life of freedom and expression and release.

i also like reading humorous poems...and i guess love poems are okay.

so which poet should i look into?

where should i start?

i heard william blake is good...would you recommend him?

which poet is your favourite?
 
For poems that inspire and evoke a life of freedom and expression and release, I'd recommend the following:

Walt Whitman
St.-John Perse
Rainer Maria Rilke (but don't read Sonnets to Orpheus till later, I'd say)
Emily Dickinson (really much less gloomy than you're led to believe in school)
Juan Ramon Jimenez
Allen Ginsberg
Edna St. Vincent Millay (she'll also supply you with love poems)
Paul Eluard
Arthur Rimbaud (you might want to save him for later)
Gerard Manley Hopkins

For humorous poems, you might want to avoid Shel Silverstein, since his presence is ubiquitous. Possibly the best thing to look at would be anthologies of "humorous verse" or "light verse." You could also try these:

Edward Lear
Richard Brautigan (also freedom and expression and release)
Don Marquis
Ogden Nash
Kenneth Koch (sometimes)
Calvin Trillin
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (VERY raunchy, though)
Martial (occasionally raunchy)
Catullus (also often raunchy, though not usually with language as explicit as Rochester's)

If you read William Blake, you'll want to concentrate on his shorter stuff, especially Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, which are usually read early in a poet's development.

I'd also recommend Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet and Louis Zukofsky's A Test of Poetry.

All the best to you on your journey! Remember that it's YOUR journey and not anyone else's. If you start reading Blake and decide he's perfect for you to read right now, then go for it!

Take care....
 
William blake is enjoyable, but my favorites are Robert Frost and Edgar Allen Poe for an intellectual challenge. But also Shel Silverstein, his poems are funny and they also help you understand the rhyming and verses and stanzas. Good luck hon. Don't be too imtimdated.
 
Michael Ondaatje is very good there's a book called the Cinnamon peeler or something or other. i would definitely recommend that. Sylvia Plath is good too any book of hers
 
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