Desperate to read...!

"Betting on the Muse" by Charles Bukowski has got to be my favorite collection of poetry. He is edgy, raw and brutal, but there is a surprising poignancy to his works and emotional undertone that captures me every time.

Wilfred Owen. First world war poet, died under tragic circumstances - his family read the telegram to the sound of Armistice bells ringing nearby. My absolute favourite poet.

Closely followed by Betjeman and Sassoon, but Owen's my no.1.

You have the ability to scour almost every piece of literature
ever written right before you. All you need do is search.

One search type, which can narrow down what is currently
popular is e-zines.

http://www.fglaysher.com/LitLinks.htm is a remarkable list
of online poetry magazines and other literary forms.

I was going to suggest checking out the Amazon’s top
selling poetry list but that, as it turns out, may be a bad
idea for new poetry. In the top ten is a book of Haiku,
Dante’s Divine Comedy and Inferno, Odyssey and Iliad by
Homer, Beowulf, Gilgamesh and Paradise Lost by Milton.

T.S.Elliot, James Joyce, Chaucer and Virgil make it in the top 40.

A surprise entrant in the top 50 is Rapper Tupac Shakur.

http://www.poemhunter.com: more poems than you can read in a year.
http://www.famous-poems.org
http://www.famous-poems.biz

Two well known Australian poets:
http://www.lesmurray.org/
http://www.alangouldwriter.com/

So much to choose from.

Colin Fiat's post above is probably as helpful as it's going to get.

Personally, I am not a huge poetry fan but I have read enough to know what I do like and don't like:

- T.S. Eliot is immensely enjoyable and's Old Possum's Book of Cats is particularly entertaining.

- Wilfred Owen. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful writing. He was a war poet so it can feel very sad but it's not depressing. Just real and honest.

- Homer. Very entertaining. Took me a long time and I had to be disciplined. The various gods and their politics and incestous relationshops got to me but it felt good to finish the books. I found myself on wikipedia alot.

- Robert Burns. Couldn't read most of it. The old Scottish was just too difficult to understand even with my Scottish husband's patient translation. I got irritated every time I tried so i gave up.

- Coleridge. Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Great in parts. Skipped the ones that dragged a bit. Felt the same about Milton.

Perhaps you could go to a library and find a poetry book for high school or first year uni students. From what I can remember, there'll be Wordsworth and Keats, much like a "Best of" selection.

"The Really Short Poems Of A.R. Ammons". You can get it from your local library, Barnes and Noble, Amazon and other places.

example poem

Substantial Planes

it doesn't
matter

to me
if

poems mean
nothing:

there's no
floor

to the
universe

and yet
one

walks the
floor.

they are all short like this, perhaps a little longer, and very, very thought-provoking.

As far as poets go, I've been reading a lot of Russell Edson lately. He writes some pretty strange prose poems, very clever/funny.

Poem Hunter has quite a few of them on their site..

http://www.poemhunter.com/russell-edson/

The Fitzgerald translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is one of my favourites. A collection of 50 or so 4 line poems from a medieval Arab poet. Beautiful and philosophical all. Should be easy to find online since the copyright is long expired.

Go to the www.writebloody.com website. That is where the most cutting edge relevant poetry of our day is housed. Buddy Wakefield, Anis Mojgani, Mike McGee, Beau Sia, and Derrick Brown are five authors who are truly inspiring to behold and you can find them all on YouTube performing their work as well.