An inventory of favorite poets

     The poetry workshop I'm taking this semester is being led by a Pulitzer prize winner. I have long admired her work, and as a guide she is fantastic. She asked students to "return to your old favorites" and let her know which poets we plan to read and pay attention to as we craft new poems in the next several weeks. Here's my list.

• Joseph Brodsky
• Stan Rice
• Frank O'Hara
• Sharon Olds
• Mark Strand
• Mary Oliver
• Rita Dove
• Wallace Stevens
• Raymond Carver
• Claudia Emerson
• W.H. Auden
• From my mother's volumes, read and recited in our house growing up: Leigh Hunt, Wordsworth, Byron, E.B. Browning, Cavafy, Yeats, Burns, Shakespeare

     I know nothing about poetic form; nothing about how to discuss poetry. I know what I like; sometimes I know why I like it. I hope to learn much more.

     Meantime, I also have a poem to finish for workshop. To my knowledge, it is not about cancer.