What are the most important poetry books to read?

Question

If someone was interested in poetry, what are the essential books to be read first?

Answer 1

Here is a collection I really like, "War and the Poet" Eberhart/Rodman.

Answer 2

My advice don't read some one Else's make your own and learn from them and be your self

Answer 3

Anything by William Blake or Robert Frost, I would think.

Answer 4

william shakesphere.

Answer 5

Why not do what I did, and still do, and that is to pick up anthologies very cheaply at secondhand booksellers, car boot sales or charity shops. They may be "themed" , general collections, ancient or modern, but they are sure to contain a great variety of poems including all of the classics, but you will also be introduced to many poets whom you would otherwise never read. Happy reading !

Answer 6

The collected works of William Carlos Williams would be a great start.

Answer 7

Shakespeare

Chaucer

Milton

Wordsworth

Coleridge

Byron

Shelley

Keats

Tennyson

Frost

Whitman

Dickinson

Wallace Stevens

Horace

Ovid

Catullus

Rilke

Baudelaire

Leopardi

Garcia Lorca

Neruda

Important contemporaries: John Ashbery, A.R. Ammons

Answer 8

Emily Dickinson,  Robert Frost,  William Shakespeare.

I love Shel Silverstien, too.

Answer 9

I think it depends on the type of poetry you are interested in. I'm a fan of confessional poetry, so I go for Sylvia Plath.

Answer 10

A Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, an old school San Francisco 'Beat' poet. And any Nikki Giovanni book of poetry!