LIGHT

Today is National Poetry Day 2015 in Great Britain. The theme is "light."

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I'm not British, but I thought I would participate anyway. I've decided to share some of the poets who have been lights in my life. In other words, they've influenced me in some way as a reader and a writer.

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This list is by no means exhaustive nor is it ranked in any way. It's also in no particular order.

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The list is by poet, followed by one of collections or poems of the poet that have been a light for me.

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Homer • The Odyssey

Alice Oswald • Memorial: A Version of Homer's Iliad

John of Patmos • The Book of Revelation

The Psalmists • The Psalms

Emily Dickinson • The Complete Poems

T. S. Eliot • The Waste Land

Victoria Chang • The Boss

Alta Ifland • Voice of Ice/Voix de Glace

Katie Ford • Deposition

William Kupinse • Fallow

dg nanouk okpik • Corpse Whale 

Nate Marshall • Wild Hundreds

Anne Carson • Autobiography of Red

Marvin Bell • Ardor

Robinson Jeffers • Rock and Hawk

Diana Khoi Nguyen • "Buzkashi"

Kathleen Flenniken • Plume

Greta Wrolstad • "Notes on Sea & Shore"

Mark Jarman • Questions for Ecclesiastes

Scott Cairns • Philokalia

Don Marquis • Archy and Mehitabel

William Shakespeare • Sonnets

Walt Whitman • Leaves of Grass

Caroline Knox • Nine Worthies

Michael Robbins • Alien vs. Predator

Carol Ann Duffy • The Bees

Edgar Allan Poe • Complete Poems

W. H. Auden • Poems 1927-1931

Evan S. Connell • Notes from a Bottle Found on the Beach at Carmel