Who are your “forbearers, models, spirits whose influence and teachings” are you “now inseparable from, and forever grateful for?” Share excerpts and/or titles from their work in the comments.

For me imagery has always been something that grabs me. Here are some excerpts from some of my earliest favourite poets. The trouble is there are so many awesome poets to choose from and learn from my list of favourite poets is ever growing.

One of the earliest poets that caught my attention was Pablo Nehruda the first poem of his I read was “Tonight I can write to the saddest lines”.I loved the imagery, the repetition, the emotion within it.

Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Lines

By Pablo NerudaTonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, ‘The night is starryand the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.’

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.

I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.How could one not have loved her great still eyes.T

onight I can write the saddest lines.

To think that I do not have her.

To feel that I have lost her.

His array of poetry is breathtaking and he’s a poet I go back to frequently. About the same time I discovered Faiz Ahmed Faiz – 1911-1984 Again it is his mastery of imagery that I so loved the great metaphors the emotional impact.

Before you came.

Before you came,

things were as they should be:

the sky was the dead-end of sight,

the road was just a road,

wine merely wine.

Now everything is like my heart,

a color at the edge of blood:

the grey of your absence,

the color of poison, of thorns,

And from

Be near me

At this hour when night comes down,

When, having drunk from the gash of sunset, darkness comes

With the balm of musk in its hands, its diamond lancets,

When it comes with cries of lamentation,with laughter with songs;

Its blue-gray anklets of pain clinking with every step.

At this hour when hearts, deep in their hiding places,

Have begun to hope once more, when they start their vigil

I was also drawn to the sparse beauty of poets like Mary Oliver and the imagery in the understatement of Billy Collins.

Maya Angelou, Imtiaz Dharker, David John Terelinck, Ted Hughes, Jane Hirshfield, Louise Glück, Carol Ann Duffy, and some of the classical poets such as Wordsworth.It’s hard to choose the seminal influences from the many but these are the poets that jump into my mind how about you?