Keith Althaus D. C. Berry William Blake Richard Brautigan André Breton Kelly Cherry Leonard Cohen Stephen Crane Part 1 Stephen Crane Part 2 e. e. cummings J. V. Cunningham Emily Dickinson Paul Laurence Dunbar Bob Dylan Richard Eberhart Randy Edelman Barbara Eve Richard Fariña Lawrence Ferlinghetti Robert Frost Tu Fu Jack Galef Suzanne Gordon Hafiz Richard Harris A. E. Housman David Huddle Richard Hugo David Ignatow Randall Jarrell Robinson Jeffers

Does the Fish soar to find the Ocean,  The Eagle plunge to find the Air—  That we ask of the Stars in motion  If they have rumor of thee there?  Not where the wheeling Systems darken,  And our benumbed conceiving soars!—  The drift of pinions, would we hearken,  Beats at our own clay shuttered Doors.  The Angels keep their ancient places,  Turn but a Stone and start a Wing!  ’Tis ye, ’tis your estranged faces  That miss the many Splendored Thing.       —Francis Thompson (1859-1907) Rodney Jones Nguyen Kakiu Ronald Koertge Greg Kuzma Naomi Lazard Richard Lovelace Lyle Lovett Andrew Marvell Roger McGough W. S. Merwin Edna St. Vincent Millay

Joni Mitchell Edwin Morgan John G. Neihardt John Nixon, Jr. Li Po Leanne Ponder Ezra Pound Racter Craig Raine Edwin Arlington Robinson Theodore Roethke Donald Rumsfeld Muslih-uddin Sadi Siegfried Sassoon William Shakespeare Zimmerman Skyrat Stevie Smith Richard Snyder William Stafford Wallace Stevens Rabindranath Tagore Sara Teasdale Chidiock Tichborne Robert Wallace Walt Whitman G. T. Wright James Wright Elinor Hoyt Wylie William Butler Yeats Neil Young

           Poets are people. They see the same things that you or I do. They feel the same emotions. However, the poet has a unique vision of the experiences of life. Because the poet is an artist, he is able to crystallize these experiences into words. And those words are what the poet shares with others. His words may anger, disgust, sadden, or delight, but they are meant to be shared....
           Some people say we are conceived and born; we live, grow, love, and die. Life might seem that pat without the world of poets and poetry. But life is filled with limitless emotions which shade each existing moment in time.
           The poet perceives and preserves life for us, and captures the essence as well as the delicate nuances of everyday objects, thoughts, and feelings through visions of experience. The poet takes the ordinary and makes it extraordinary, revealing life, translating and distilling visions of experience to each individual. The poet causes us to think and wonder and feel more and more intensely until we begin to see life as a crystal image....
           —from the Preface and Introduction to The Crystal Image: A Poetry Anthology, edited by Paul Janeczko (out of print).