National Poetry Month #2 - Classic Early Poets in English

As I mentioned in my last NPM post, there's an almost infinite number of poems and poets out there. Looking through a couple of anthologies, and seeing if any of the poems jump out at you is one good way to start finding authors you like. Another way to begin reading poetry is to take a look at some of the established, classic authors, and see which ones might be up your street. There's a good reason the work of these writers has lasted so long, and here's some who wrote in English. For American poets, the two big names are Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman.  Dickinson's poems look deeply inward, and find whole universes there.  It's easy to picture her sitting in her hermit's room, writing her bottomless feelings and thoughts. There are many, many collections of her poems -- the R.W. Franklin volume is supposed to be closest to her original drafts, but any will suffice. Whitman goes the other way, and shouts out at America and the universe, he declaims, he preaches, nothing is too large for him, he shares all with everyone. He only wrote Leaves of Grass, adding to it for his whole life. Others find the rhymes and rhythms of Edgar Allan Poe irresistible: "The Raven," "Annabel Lee," "The Bells." A later poet is Robert Frost, who writes more deeply and darkly than his country bumpkin reputation would suggest ("Acquainted with the Night"). From the British Isles we have an embarrassment of riches. William Blake is an early mystic and visionary -- Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience are his best known. William Wordsworth is considered the greatest of the English Romantic poets, tho I know little of him myself, except he has one of the best writers' names ever. I do, however, have an affection for the rural poems of the self-taught peasant, John Clare, who died insane in an asylum, but wrote of wondrous nature and the effect of the approaching industrial revolution on the English countryside. Another recluse, Christina Rossetti, wrote beautiful and sensual poems -- her long "children's" poem "Goblin Market" is her best known. For those who enjoy rhyme and rhythm, Lord Byron is your man, with "She Walks in Beauty," "So We'll Go No More a Roving," and the "The Destruction of Sennacherib" (read it aloud), being his greatest hits. For many John Keats, who died at 26, is their favorite poet of this period. Among his many famous poems (such as "On a Grecian Urn"), my favorite is "La Belle Dame San Merci" (don't worry, it's in English). Finally, I'll mention a later poet, William Butler Yeats, who wrote long and well, including among many others, "Easter 1916" and "The Second Coming." This is just a quick and too brief list of some of the classic poets of the English language. I hope you find some of them to your liking.