[Andrew Szilvasy]

I stole this from Philosophy Twitter and thought people here might find it something to consider.

Basically thinking about the five most important poets to you--not necessarily now but over the course of your life. This was mine one twittter:

Five poetic influences, in rough chronological order

1. cummings (HS)
2. Keats (undergrad)
3. Milton (between)
4. Stevens (grad)
5. Bishop (grad & after)

I then followed it up with a discussion of each of the poets and how/why they were on the list, which is below the tweet if you click on it. Novick also shared his list.

[Mark McDonnell]

1. Allen Ginsberg (aged 15 or 16) - because I read that Bob Dylan liked him. Inspired a few really bad teenage poems.

2. William Blake (aged 17 to 20) - because the band The Doors took their name from him. Inspired a few more bad poems. During this time (late teens) I also read and loved Lorca, Whitman, Rimbaud, Plath and Eliot, all because they were mentioned by various rock bands.

(My reasons above sound flippant, but they're true. It doesn't take away from the fact the poets had a huge effect. I like them all still, though Ginsberg in fairly small doses)

Then I became a father aged 21 and somehow didn't write any or even read much poetry for pleasure for about 20 years, despite part of my job entailing teaching it to teenagers.

3. Philip Larkin (aged 40ish) - showed me that absolute ordinariness could be a worthy subject and be made extraordinary. Started reading poetry for pleasure again and wrote my first half decent poems. Joined the Sphere.

4 and 5. Mary Meriam/R Nemo Hill - living, breathing poets whose work I fell for hard and who were generous and inspirational. Thanks guys. Really.

Now, at 48, I'm insatiable. I have a lot of catching up to do and my poetry shelf is expanding. Am currently reading Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus and a Louis MacNeice Selected. Loving both.

[Aaron Novick]

Thanks for this, Andrew. I'll give two answers:

(1) If we're talking about who has influenced my writing most deeply, it would be:

1. Shakespeare, who got me started writing sonnets
2. Ammons, for his taut and lithe descriptions of nature
3. Stevens, for expanding my sense of meter, and showing how to write philosophical poems
4. Eliot, for opening me up to heterometricality
5. Ashbery, for loosening the grip of sense on my writing

(2) If, by contrast, we're talking about the lineage of poets I've constructed, at the end of which I'd place myself, it's:

1. Donne
2. Stevens
3. Pessoa
4. Bronk
5. Ashbery

[Jim Moonan]

.
Frost, Yeats, Eliot, Blake, Ginsberg, Thomas, Lawrence

Then a swath of time passed when there was a dearth of both writing and reading poetry. But there was love and children and work that was (and still is) poetry.

Now, as I ease into retirement, and as Mark noted, a garden of poets here on Eratosphere that has sparked a miraculous marriage of the two. And a renewal of my first love: words.

...And then Rilke, Heaney and Billy Collins showed up.

Sorry Andrew. I broke every rule you laid out for listing : )
.
.

[R. Nemo Hill]

Tristan Tzara (youth)
Rainer Maria Rilke (in my 20's)
Alexander Pope (in my 30's)
St-John Perse + Edwin Arlington Robinson + Hart Crane
H.D.

Nemo

[Orwn Acra]

Not chronological but

Nash (Ogden)
Eliot
Edwin Morgan
Mansur al-Hallaj
Gilbert (W. S.)

[Mark McDonnell]

Nemo - Ooh, I just finished ploughing through the fat "Oxford Book of American Poetry" (I said I was insatiable) and I remember EA Robinson really standing out!

[Andrew Szilvasy]

Originally Posted by Mark McDonnell

. I have a lot of catching up to do and my poetry shelf is expanding. Am currently reading Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus and a Louis MacNeice Selected. Loving both.

Rilke is amazing. I had Keats on my list because "Keats really brought me heart to my love of poetry, aside from just innovation. I couldn't really read meter when I most loved him, but the Odes, Fall of Hyperion, his narrative pieces...it just all really resonated with me and definitively made me want to write. I still do really like his stuff, but Keats is, I think someone you have to really fall in love with when you're under 25. But through Keats I fell in love with Rilke (who almost made this list) and (sort of) Stevens (who obviously loved Keats)."

Keats brought me to a lot of other poets, but man, Rilke..."Sonnets to Orpheus" are great, I fell hard for the Duino Elegies in my mid-20s, too, much like Nemo.

[Mark McDonnell]

The Elegies are on order. I'm spending all the money I saved from not drinking during lockdown on poetry books haha.

Keats is wonderful, yes. The only poetry I remember from school really is Wilfred Owen and "The Eve of St Agnes".

[Andrew Szilvasy]

Yes. Keats is someone who is less influential on my writing now, but someone who fundamentally played a role in making love poetry and pushed me to seek out a wide range of different styles.

I loved cummings in high school, and he's fine (I haven't read him in years), but I do credit him in making me love play in poetry, both sound and shape. At Walter's suggestion I've been working through some Edwin Morgan--and I'm as receptive to this type of poetry as I am, I think, because my foray into poetry was cummings.