Great question, but a hard one. I’m a big fan of Milton (Lycidas, Il Penseroso & L’Allegro, At a Solemn Musick, etc.). Then there’s Shakespeare, of course. Yeats, Keats, The Brownings (Robert, Elizabeth), Gray (Favourite Cat…, Elegy in a Churchyard, etc.), Donne (Death Be Not Proud, etc.), Hopkins (Carrion Comfort, etc.), Wordsworth, Thomas (Do Not Go Gentle, etc.), etc. There are a lot of good poets referenced in Elisabeth Elliot’s Passion and Purity and Sheldon Van Auken’s A Severe Mercy as well. T. David Gordon, in his recent book Why Johnny Can’t Preach, highly recommends Harold Bloom’s The Best Poems of the English Language : From Chaucer Through Robert Frost. If you buy something, be sure it’s well-annotated; that’s very helpful if you don’t have a teacher to question.

Another great resource for (especially devotional) poetry is the Trinity Hymnal and the Olney Hymns of John Newton and Charles Simeon. (I will often incorporate hymns into my private or family devotions for their theological as well as aesthetic beauty.) There’s so much out there – good and bad. Perhaps if Lauren (the lady-of-letters extraordinaire) stops by, she could give you some advice too…? Anyone else?

Liked this one…

I’m looking to read a little more poetry. Any good suggestions on where to start?

I need to use the word knave more often. Well, even once yearly would be more than I use it now.