Sam’s Friday Top 5: Favorite Poets

I never used to like reading poetry. I remember in middle school my English teacher read us a poem by Robert Frost. I believe it was “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening.” I thought it was incredibly boring, talking about nature, that ridiculous rhyme scheme, just the whole essence of the poetic form didn’t appeal to me. And that lasted until my junior year of high school when in English we had to read T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland.” It certainly opened my eyes, and now, looking back on it, I don’t think the Frost was boring at all. I think I just wasn’t at an age and a place to appreciate it. Now I do appreciate it (but I still think Eliot’s poem is better). Since that day in eleventh grade, I have read and enjoyed many poems and poets. So, here are my top 5 poets at the moment…

5. Naomi Shihab Nye

It’s funny how I got into her poetry. I was in a bookstore purchasing a collection of Edgar Allan Poe poems (that sounds weird to say), when I saw another book of poetry that caught my eye in the section. When I slid it off the shelf, I saw that it was called Fuel and it just spoke to me, so I bought it. Without having read a single poem in it. I did things like that back in those days. Regardless, when I had gotten it home I read it from start to finish, eating it up (funny, considering the art on the book’s cover). And I loved it. I still do. Standout poem: “Hugging the Jukebox.” Favorite line: “He bangs his fist so they will raise the volume.”

4. Edgar Allan Poe

Going classic with my fourth favorite poet, and you can’t get much more classic than the man whose poetry is read in more classrooms than nearly every other poet. I should know. I taught at least three poems from him every year during my seven years of teaching ninth grade English. From “Annabel Lee,” to “The Raven,” and beyond, Poe has the ability to create space where there was previously none, and a heartbeat where there was only dead flesh. His poems stand the test of time, even read through the haze of the different type of English he was working with and from at the time. Timeless. Standout poem: “Evening Star.” Favorite line(s): “I gazed a while / on her cold smile / Too cold– too cold for me.”

3. William Carlos Williams

I recall reading “The Red Wheelbarrow” also in my junior year of high school and thinking that it was the strangest poem I had ever read.

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens

I went to my mother, the woman who knew what everything had to do with everything else from the moment she was born, and asked her what it meant. She read it, and she read it again, then she admitted to being just as thrown off as I was. Yet, it captivated me, and it still does. That is the power of William Carlos Williams, and why I so enjoy his poetry to this day. Simplicity in the complex. Standout poem: “Dance Russe.” Favorite line(s): “Who shall say I am not / the happy genius of my household?”

2. Walt Whitman

Going classic again, and for good reason. Whitman always said he wanted to be “The Great American Poet,” and after reading one of his poems aloud, I would ask my classes if he had achieved his most fervent wish. The response would be varied, but generally a majority would say he did. And this is from kids who grew up on Jay-Z and Radiohead. That’s called standing the test of time, and doing what he set out to do. I love Whitman because he is so clear, and his verse is so crisp. There is something to be said about being the conscience, nee, the heart of America, and Whitman does it so well. Still. Standout poem: “I Hear America Singing.” Favorite line: “Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else.”

1. Paul Hewson (aka Bono)

I have always been a proponent of the poem being sung and set to music, and I always started my poetry units by sharing lyrics from my favorite musical artists, showing the students that writing lyrics to songs is a valid form of poetic expression. They are always shocked by this, and perhaps you are too, but I’ve never been conventional (Whitman, Poe, and Eliot aside). But one lyricist I hardly ever talk about, but who I kept up on my wall throughout the years, is my favorite one, and also my favorite poet. Bono has written some of the most profound lyric poems I have ever read or listened to, and I would be remiss if I didn’t honor him here in my top spot. Standout poem: “Ultra Violet (Light My Way).” Favorite line(s): “There is a silence / that comes to a house / where no one can sleep / I guess it’s the price of love / I know it’s not cheap.”

Sam

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