Dancing with Words Forum Your Personal Favorites

Who are your most influential poets? What is your favorite poem? Post it here and tell us why.

Honestly, my favorite poets are all of the ones on this site.  I never read or wrote poetry before joining WC, and now I love it.  There are so many amazing poems here, but one of my favs is "Shores of God" by Kiri Nells.  I tried posting it, but I couldn't get it to keep its format. >:(

My favorite poet of all time is Willaim Shakespeare. His sonnets are among the most beautiful in the English language. I really enjoy "The Phoenix and the Turtle," as well.   In Renaissance Era:
1. Shakespeare
2. Marlowe (my second favorite): made blank verse the standard in English playwriting and other poems. "Hero and Leander," "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," Ovid's "Amores," and Lucan's "Pharsalia." 3. Samuel Daniel: Sonnets to Delia, "The Complaint of Rosamond," "Ulysses and the Syren," and "Musophilus."
4. Michael Drayton: Idea Sonnets
5. Sir Edmund Spenser: Fairie Queene, Amoretti Sonnets
6. Sir Philip Sidney: Astrophel and Stella sonnets 7. Sir John Davies: Gullinge Sonnets, Ten Sonnets to Philomel, Orchestra, and Hymns to Astraea       In the Seventeenth Century, my favorite poet is Andrew Marvell, but John Milton is the most influential.

1. John Milton: Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Sonnets, other works
2. Andrew Marvell (Favorite): To His Coy Mistress, On a Drop of Dew, Eyes and Tears, Clorinda and Damon, Dialogue between Body and Soul, The Definition of Love.
3. John Donne: The Flea, The Sun Rising, The Token, Holy Sonnets, A Valediction Forbidding Morning     The Romantic Era has a profound influence on my writing. John Keats is among one of my favorites, but they are all so important.     1. William Blake: The Tyger, To the Evening Star, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, The Fly, To Winter 2. William Wordsworth: Lyrical Ballads, The Prelude, Daffodils, The World Is Too Much With Us, "With How Sad Steps, O Moon, Thou Climb'st the Sky" 3. Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Kublah Khan, The Eolian Harp, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel 4. John Keats: Lamia, Endymion, Fall of Hyperion, Bright Star, Ode to a Grecian Urn, O thou whose face hat felt the winter's wind, Ode to a Nightingale, On First Looking into Chapman's Homer, On Seeing the Elgin Marbles, 5. Percy Shelley: Adonais, Hymn to Apollo, Ode to the West Wind, Ozymandias, Ode to a Skylark 6. George Gordon, Lord Byron: Don Juan, Manfred, When We Two Parted, She Walks in Beauty, My Soul is Dark, Prometheus.     Lastly, I find the Victorian era to hold many fantastic writers who influence me as much as the Romantic writers. My favorite writer from this era is Dante Gabriel Rossetti. His sonnets and long narrative poems are utterly fantastic.   1. Dante Gabriel Rossetti: House of Life Sonnets, Jenny, The Blessed Damozel, Love Lily, much more. 2. Robert Browning: My Last Duchess, Porphyria's Lover 3. Gerard Manley Hopkins: Sonnets       In the U.S., my options are limited. 1. Edgar Allan Poe: The Raven, The Coliseum, To the Lake, Romance, The Raven, The Sleeper, The Happiest Day, Dreams, A Dream, A Dream Within a Dream, Alone, The Valley of Unrest 2. Emily Dickenson: No certain one.