April is National Poetry Month, so here is a small sampling of some of my favorite modern poets--some well-known, some not so much, and others rather obscure, but all I know you will enjoy. In no particular order.
| E. E. Cummings A fun poet whose eccentricity of language, punctuation, and point of view set him apart as a true original. Dylan Thomas The popular Welsh poet whose poems are as lyrical as they are romantic. Gwendolyn Brooks A Kansas-born poet, although she was raised in Chicago, where she became the first African American to receive a Pulitzer Prize (1950) for her second book of poetry, Annie Allen, which painted poignant portraits of the Black urban poor whom she witnessed everyday. William Stafford Another fine, lyrical poet from my native state of Kansas whose subject matter runs the gamut, from meditative to playful. William Carlos Williams A pediatrician from Rutherford, New Jersey, whose poems celebrate the simple things in life in unique and surprising ways. Bobby Byrd I call Bobby the "Bard of the Border" for his delicious and moving poems about living and loving in El Paso across the border from Juarez. They are so good I had to borrow a verse from his "Why I am a Poet, #7" for the introduction to my Bobby Blue Bland biography. Langston Hughes Probably my favorite of the Harlem Renaissance writers, his poems are strong, straight-forward, and always sweetly rhythmic. Lawrence Ferlinghetti My favorite of the so-called Beat Poets whose funny, irreverent poems still speak to the country's outcasts and dreamers. Joy Harjo She was appointed America's 23rd Poet Laureate in 2019, the first Native American to be so honored. She is a member of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation and lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her poems about her culture and family are especially warm and spiritual. Pablo Neruda No one spends a love poem like this Nobel Prize winning Chilean poet and statesman: Don't leave me, even for an hour, because then the little drops of anguish will run together the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift into me, choking my lost heart. Happy National Poetry Month! |           |
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