Poetry

[Ben Jackson]

A couple of years ago when I started reading Wisława Szymborska's poetry, I realized it was the first woman poet I had ever read. I was astounded with her incredible poetry, the tone, the subtlety, a warmth that only a woman can give. After that I read an Israeli poet, Hamutal Bar Yosef wich was also a great experience.
So I'm definitely looking to read more women poets and right know I have two names in mind already: Danish poet Inger Christensen and Argentinian poet Alejandra Pizarnik.
However two names is too few, so please tell me who are your favorite female poets and why.

I recommend some of my favourite female poets:

Anna Akhmatova, Russian poet known for simple, direct lyricism, themes include Russian revolution and love and sometimes alluding to religion and political events. Shortlisted for Nobel in 1965.

Sylvia Plath, confessional poet with sometimes dense lyricism. Themes range from art to relationship and family.
Edith Sitwell, Amy Lowell-- modernist poets known for dense and musical lyrics.
Sappho-- some of her fragments are aphoristic in nature, e.g you burn me.
Nelly Sachs-- read a few pieces, her poems are biblical, cryptic and prophetic and explore her experience as holocaust survivor.
Gabriela Mistral-- poems explore family, love from a female perspective in direct language.
Hilda Doolittle---- Dense, allusive especially to Ancient Greek Literature.
Elizabeth Bishop--- read few poems known for poems about travel and memory. Brilliant.
Marianne Moore--- scientific and erudite.
Inger Christensen--- known for mathematical approach to her poems. Very sad she didn't win Nobel Prize.
Alejandra Pizarnik--- dark poet known for poems of silence, despair, suicidal meditations, music. Not all of her poems I love, but she worth reading.
Emily Dicksion, Mary Oliver--- beautiful poets, the former a hit difficult especially with her poems of dashes, the other plain language with nature imagery.
Marina Tsvateva-- simple and plain language but very emotional.

Still have Adrienne Rich Collected Poems and Szymborska to tackle.

 

[Liam]

Marina Tsvateva-- simple and plain language but very emotional.

If you read her work in the original Russian you will discover that her language is anything but "simple." Lots of archaisms and sometimes convoluted syntax (esp. in her later poetry), but yes, very emotional. Her work is much more difficult to translate than Akhmatova's as a result.

 

[Liam]

Saw this pretty little poem on the train today (part of NYC subway's Poetry in Motion series):

Lullaby (Ilya Kaminsky, b. 1977)

Little daughter
rainwater

snow and branches protect you
whitewashed walls

and neighbors' hands all
Child of my Aprils

little earth of
six pounds

my white hair
keeps your sleep lit

*

No punctuation whatever, but I understood it as follows: "[My] little daughter: rainwater, snow and branches are protecting you, [together with] whitewashed walls [of your nursery?] and [our] neighbors' hands. Child of my Aprils. Little earth [weighing] six pounds. My white hair [will shine a light on] your sleep." I found it incredibly moving, and I don't even have a kid, LOL.

 

[Ленин]

fatamorgana (Breno Santana Pereira a.k.a me)

In your absence,
I see a myopic version of you
hovering the jagged cliffs
surrounding the endless red stream of my being,
a peregrine bird iridescent to my senses often so strange yet familiar…
Inside and even more,
bulks of clever white lava spurting painfully at your moistywings
coming straight from the depths of my paradise,
a quagmire sinking my bones and
you ever so distant, you
who are one but so often can be two or three,
black-blue-purple and thin,
moving away and
away from
me.