The “20 Poetry Books that Inspired Me” meme is going around Facebook.

Here are 20 or so — mostly modern — poetry books that inspired me throughout the earlier years.

Collected, Robert Hayden
Various Walt Whitman
Shakespeare’s sonnets (had to memorize many for theatre class)
e.e. cummings (only poet taught in high school, so he had to be an influence even if it’s a bit cliche to say so)
Li Young Lee, The Rose
Collected or Selected, Langston Hughes
Collected, Elizabeth Bishop
Collected, Frank O’Hara
Lunch Poems, Frank O’Hara (I read these during my lunch hour at my first out-of-college job.)
Song, Brigit Kelly
Meadowlands, Louise Gluck
Field Guide, Robert Hass
The Great Fires, Jack Gilbert
Collected, Sterling Brown
20 Love Poems, Pablo Neruda
Ariel, Sylvia Plath
Collected, Emily Dickinson
Supernatural Love, Gjertrud Schnackenburg
Collected or Selected, Caesar Vallejo
Various Anthony Hecht