I must admit that I have neglected this love most of all. I have been known to write some, some badly, some not so bad. I love the sound of the words, the power of the sound, poetry must be read aloud. Okay, maybe that is just my definition, but I believe it.

So, who, and what are my favorites? Again I will just free associate and see how the list forms.

1. Richard Brautigan, 1935-1984

June 30th, June 30th (1978)

Loading Mercy with a Pitchfork(1975)

Rommel Drives on Deep Into Egypt (1970)

The San Francisco Weather Report(1969)

Please Plant This Book (eight poems printed on separate seed packet envelopes, 1968)

2. Walt Whitman, 1819-1892

Leaves of Grass (1855)

O Captain! My Captain! (1865)

3. Homer, 750 B.C.

The Iliad (700 B.C.)

The Odyssey (700 B.C.

4. William Blake, 1757-1827

The Tiger (1784)

The Angel (1784)

5. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 1919- ,

Pictures of the Gone World (1955)

A Coney Island of the Mind (1958)

Come Lie with Me and Be My Love (1967)

6. Dylan Thomas, 1914-1953

Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night (1951)

And Death Shall Have No Dominion (1933)

7. e.e. cummings, 1894-1862

!blac (1958)

I Have Found What You Are Like (1955)

8. Annie Dillard, 1945- 

Tickets for a Prayer Wheel (1974)

Teaching A Stone To Talk (1984) not a poem, but I love it

Mornings Like This (1995)

9. William Shakespeare, 1564-1616

All The Worlds a Stage

Shall I Compare Thee (Sonnet 18)

10. Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321

The Divine Comedy (1300)

11. Edgar Allen Poe, 1809-1849

The Raven (1845)

Annabel Lee (1849)

Lenore (1843)

12. Emily Dickinson, 1839-1886

I Felt A Funeral in My Brain (1862)

I’m Nobody! Who are You? (1891)

13. Maya Angelou, 1928-2014

And Still I Rise (1978)

On Aging (2015)

Alone (1975)

14. Pablo Neruda, 1904-1973

Twenty Love Poems (1924)

100 Love Sonnets (1986)

15. Samuel Coleridge, 1772-1834

Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798)

Kubla Khan (1816)

17. Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882

Brahma (1856)

Uriel (1847)

18. Robert Frost, 1874-1963

The Road Not Taken (1916)

Birches (1816)

Stopping By the Woods (1924)

19. Gary Snyder, 1930- 

The Back Country (1967)

Axe Handles (1983)

20. Hugo Ball. 1886-1927

Karawane (1916)
And I say, “Bosso Fataka!”