Modern poets?

I don’t like any modern poets.    We stick with the tried-and-trues.  I have a personal difficulty with nonmetered poetry and a huge amount of modern poetry is vulgar.  The rest is obscure and weird.  (IMO of course!)  Sorry I can’t offer suggestions–teaching poetry is a passion of mine but run up to a few early 20th century British poets and then head right back to the good guys again.  I’m even related to a “modern” poet (Ezra Pound) and I don’t like him either! 

Well, I have tried to reach out to modern poets and I have found a lot that I like.  This is a good place to start

http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/

Poetry 180, a site set up by the library of congress to provide an approachable poem for each day of the school year.  I also look at current and recent  US poet laureates, and then read some of their poetry.  There are also poet laureates for most states, so you might find one for your state and read some of their work.

For instance, here is a poem by Kay Ryan, who served as US poet laureate

Dutch

Kay Ryan

Much of life
is Dutch
one-digit
operations

in which
legions of
big robust
people crouch

behind
badly cracked
dike systems

attached
by the thumbs

their wide
balloon-pantsed rumps
up-ended to the
northern sun

while, back
in town, little
black-suspendered
tulip magnates
stride around.

To me, this poem draws a very vivid picture, that I can understand based on my knowledge of current events and past history.  She uses a few words but a lot of the imagery that she knows we carry around in our heads to make her point clear.  “dutch one-digit operation” is a phrase that has stuck with me!

Anyway, maybe you will find something you like down one of these avenues!  Have fun with it!

I don’t know the names of current modern poets, other than myself.  😛  I have written poems in the past (mostly in my teenage years/early college days).  They are non-metered, non-rhyming, though I have tried to do those.  They are really hard!  LOL  Very few of them would be considered “vulgar,” even though they were from my pre-Christian days.  My poetry was like my diary.  I do hope to publish them someday, though.  I do think that you can’t always draw a blanket statement over even one poet, because he/she may be like me – drawing from our thoughts and emotions at the time we’re writing it.  Poetry, IMO and from my own experience, is a very emotional, personal thing.  It’s not like painting, for example, though that is very emotional, as well.  That usually is meant to be seen by everyone.  Poetry, on the other hand, unless the author actually wants to share it, is more of a personal, “secret” thing.  I rarely share my poetry – my dh is the only one who has ever read them all.  And even then I was a little skeptical of allowing him to read some of my innermost thoughts.  Occasionally, yeah, there will be something not-so-good, but unless they are pretty consistent in their own poetry with vulgarities and other not-so-nice things, I would just throw out the bad and keep the good, kwim?  Even in those who are mostly “bad,” you can find a few that are actually very good.

I love poetry, though I rarely read it “for fun.”  I wouldn’t have a problem with reading modern poetry provided it was wholesome and actually sounded good.  😉

Anyway, my $.02.  🙂

I love Robert Frost if that is considered modern – I also like the war time poet Wilfred Owen.  Linda