For a first post, a little taste of what's to come in the first 31 days...

I thought, for the hell of it, before I get to posting a ton of my own work, I'd post a few poems from poets that have really shaped who I am as a poet. It took me a while to wade through the thousands of poems that sprung to mind that I really loved, but eventually it came down to these few that were some of my favorites - ones that have always stuck in my mind and I have always remembered no matter what - ones I have been able to quote offhandedly without even thinking about it. Just the same, some of them contain a wonderful musical quality that I've come to admire so much and tend to emulate quite often in my own work - probably because of my Irish heritage which, in its own native language, also has a similar, distinct musicality.

Anyway, I'm putting these up for your consideration and I hope you can dig them up and give them a read. They're all really quite good - but, of course, that's just, like, my opinion, man. :)

"Waking Early New Year's Day, Without a Hangover" - Thomas M. Disch
"The Wild Swans at Coole" - W.B. Yeats
"[anyone lived in a pretty how town]" - E.E. Cummings
"The Purse-Seine" - Robinson Jeffers
"Ozymandias" - Percy Bysshe Shelley
"The Second Coming" - W.B. Yeats
"Grown-Up" - Edna St. Vincent Millay
"The Waste Land" - T.S. Eliot
"The Nameless One" - James Clarence Mangan
"How did it get so late so soon?" - Theodore Geisel (or, as you know him, Dr. Seuss)

As I said, these are just a few. But give them a google. I guarantee you'll see echoes of many of them in my own work.