Recommend me some poets, please

I'm going to go with Ted Berrigan. "The Sonnets" is his masterwork, and somewhat suffers under the weight of this, but is pretty great. His other work is looser, though, and filled with delights. Grab "Train Ride" if you see it, which I have a complete affection for, probably above and beyond what it deserves; if you don't like it, I'll buy it off you, but it's rare. "A Certain Slant Of Sunlight" is also nice. His selected is called "So Going Around Cities" and I think it was recently reprinted; it will do.

I took part in a reading of "The Sonnets" not long ago, so it works well read aloud. And it is very much involved with the tensions of a lyric tradition and how you can push it around, but also deeply emotional and sad -- the work of a young turk. And something which he quickly gets over; the later stuff always feels like a celebration of poetry and life (and yes that sounds cheezy, but he makes it work for me).

At the Writer's Almanac, each day Garrison Keillor reads a poem as part of the daily recording. Many of these are enjoyable.
Mr. Jaggers

My alltime faves are:
Elizabeth Bishop
Galway Kinnell
Murial Rukeyser
Wallace Stevens
Theodore Roethke
Then there's Emily Dickinson.

Philip Larkin
Derek Walcott
Delmore Schwartz (not everthing, but some of the more well-known stuff)
Paul Muldoon (but beware his pop music poems! For a good poem about a pop musician, look for Michael Hoffmann's poem about Marvin Gaye)

and these non-English-language poets
Antonio Machado
Rainer Maria Rilke
Bertolt Brecht
Jacques Prévert
Arthur Rimbaud

[Hint: I have the um, bilingual editions]

Philip Levine
David St. John
Glyn Maxwell

I wonder, though, if in many of these cases it's more a matter of you not knowing the traditions they're taking part in.

Sorry you took it that way number nine number nine number nine. I didn't intend echt disrespect to any poet you might treasure up a less than great indifference toward.

And suggest a reevaluation of Cummings; I dispute the charge that typographic gimmickry is all he offers. Almost everything he writes is rigidly metric, and tightly rhymed.

More recent poets I'll recommend are Stephen Dunn and Mona van Duyn.

I especially appreciate the names that are entirely new and unknown to me. Those are the prize catches. Thanks again.

Anyone else?

I collected all the names mentioned here that I had not previously been acquainted with and I printed them on a crib sheet that I put into my billfold. I consulted this crib extensively at bookstores and libraries over the past several weeks.

First finding: Many of the youngest poets were (predictably) hard to find anywhere. I do not live in New York or London, but Portland, Oregon - a "good reading town" but still a mid-sized provincial US city. Of those I located I read goodly chunks - 20-30 pp. at the very least - before jumping to any conclusions.

I found some poets who simply didn't chime with my view of life, the world and everything. We met; we shrugged; we parted. I found others who were able and wormanlike, but no arrows flew to my heart.

However, I have not walked off empty-handed. I did discover one poet (not mentioned here) whom I found to be worth every bit of the effort I put in: James Wright. I will return the favor so many of you did me and recommend him to your consideration. He died in the mid-1980s. His collected works are called Above the River.

Also, for the first time I read a considerable fraction of James Merrill. I now own his Collected Poems, in hardbound. They are a keeper.

If and as I turn up further finds, I'll add another update.

(Oh, and for the record, I deem that Kenneth Fearing is all-too-forgotten and seriously underrated at this time.)

Also:
Robert Creeley - "I Know A Man"; "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer..."
Allen Ginsberg - his poems were written to be spoken (or ). Can't go wrong with Howl. There's a recording of "America" with Tom Waits making music in the background; sounds nice if you can find it.
Adrienne Rich - the only 'political' poet that doesn't make me cringe. "Planetarium"
Lord Byron - Don Juan: Groucho Marx does Homer's Odyssey.
P.K. Page - "Photos of a Salt Mine" sounds like icy caverns when read aloud. (I just checked).
Seamus Heaney - Paul Muldoon gets the nod but not Seamus Heaney? Heaney's another Ulster poet, and once Muldoon's tutor. "Digging" sounds like digging sounds. "Station Island" is also top-notch.

C'mon. Feel the love.

Kenneth Fearing

W.B. Yeats (famous crossover hit from the Celtic Twilight group)
E.A. Robinson
Ezra Pound
T.S. Eliot
William Carlos Williams
Wallace Stevens
Robert Frost
Elizabeth Bishop
Marianne Moore
James Stephens
Padraic Colum
Robert Graves
W.H. Auden
Phillip Larkin
Randall Jarrell
William Stafford (he lived a few miles from my house)

As you can see, this was heavily weighted to the early part of the century and pretty sparse after the 1950s.

Since I posted this question I've poked around quite a bit and my 'permanent' library now includes these 20th century poets (in English) who hadn't been there before:

Langston Hughes
Louis MacNeice
Kenneth Rexroth
R.S. Thomas
John Berryman
James Merrill
James Wright
Robert Lowell

This is still not a very contemporary list by any means.

I find that the contemporary poets are off in another corner of the pasture than where I like to graze. I value fluency and lyricism far more highly than any contemporary poets seem to value them. I know this is a matter of taste and that the herd needs to graze in every part of the field, to give the overgrazed parts a chance to lie fallow.

I'll keep looking, though. I'm always interested in what else is out there. And thanks again to everyone who responded.

Well, anyway, may I recommend David McAleavey's book Huge Haiku? Have I mentioned that already? Give it a try, he's coming to read here in December, and I think you (and pretty much everyone else) might like him.

Oh! And Jack Collom, who is also coming to read here soon, who I think you would also like, especially if you can track down the Dog Sonnets. I think you would really like that book.