A Pastor's Favorite Poets

In honor of National Poetry Month (and also because I think there is an intersection--an overlap--between the poet's craft and the pastor's task, as M. Craig Barnes so ably demonstrates in his book, The Pastor as Minor Poet), I herewith offer my ten favorite poets:

1. William Shakespeare
"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player..."

2. Robert Frost
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood..."

3. Emily Dickinson
"Each life converges to some centre/Expressed or still..."

4. Wendell Berry
"Even while I dreamed I prayed that what I saw was only fear and no foretelling..."

5. Mary Oliver
"I thought the earth remembered me..."

6. Robinson Jeffers
"The wild God of the world is sometimes merciful to those/That ask mercy, not often to the arrogant..."

7. Christina Rossetti
"Then He shall say, 'Arise, My love,/My fair one, come away.'"

8. Albert Orsborn
"I know Thee as Thou art/And what Thy healing name..."

9. Edgar Lee Masters
"Out of me unworthy and unknown /The vibrations of deathless music..."

10. Richard Wilbur
"I can’t forget/How she stood at the top of that long marble stair/Amazed..."