W. H. Auden
My first encounter with Auden was in the romantic comedy, Four
Weddings and a Funeral. Who could forget Funeral Blues, a eulogy
serving as a dedication in a wedding? Auden is best known for the remarkable
variety of his body of work, ranging from ballads and sonnets to limericks and free verse.
e. e. cummings
When I first read somewhere i have never traveled, it struck me:
hey, this is a song! (You know, the one that goes: "The first time I loved
forever...", the theme song to that 1980s TV show "Beauty and the
Beast".) The poem became a grist of many love letters, shameless plagiarisms all.
"Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands." God, who wouldn’t fall
for that? Despite the complex structure (or non-structure, as he is specially known
for violating rules of composition) of his poems, his ideas are fairly straightforward
and traditional.
T. S. Eliot
Eliot was -- and will always be -- unfathomable. I don’t mean that as a
pejorative. With his copious endnotes and eclectic literary allusions, you can’t help
but read up on themes like classic mythology, medieval romances, even Tarot
cards and Eastern and Oriental mysticism, to get his point. The Waste Land is
a major literary coup, with its obscure literary references -- some in foreign
languages -- and a complex theme that portrays the decay of modern Europe and a longing
for things past.
Allen Ginsberg
No one can beat the Beats, too. With a contemporary like Jack Kerouac, and a
hangout like San Francisco, no wonder Ginsberg writes the
way he does. My own take on why the Beats got their name is that they dance to
a different beat. (Or is it: they beat to a different drum?) Beats me. Seriously: the Beats
gave voice to that generation's growing clamor against conformity and false values,
advocating peace and civil rights, thus setting the stage for radical protests in the 1960s.
Federico García Lorca
Along with Miguel Cervantes, García Lorca is one of the greatest Spanish poets
and dramatists. The imagery he evokes are striking and delicate in its
simplicity. Lament is his finest poem.
Pablo Neruda
Il Postino, where else? With a delightful soundtrack and a powerhouse of voice
talents to render his words (Andy Garcia, Julia Roberts, Madonna, to name a few), one
cannot resist being drawn to Neruda's "songs of love and despair". Neruda is
better known, though, for his surrealist, sometimes violent, imagery, and a portrayal
of universal chaos consistently cropping up in his themes.
Rainer Maria Rilke
I bummed a copy of Sonnets to Orpheus from a friend. I almost
deliberately forgot to return it. Rilke is way up there in the pantheon of German literary
greats along with Goethe and Kafka. His Letters to a Young Poet displayed his
deft mastery of the craft.