As well take from the alphabet all those poets

Whose names begin with the same letter as take

One book by one poet. Who is your favorite poet?

All or nothing is the only possible answer.

Take the P's, since I am not going there anyway,

E. A. Poe, Patchen, and Pound. No, I think not.

The L's? Lindsay, Lanier, Longfellow, three Lowells,

Amy, James Russell, Robert. Unlikely, not to say

Incongruous, and there'd be William Ellery Leonard.

R is for Rexroth, Rukeyser, Riley, and Robinson,

But that, I feel, would have to be four islands.

Now here in the M's one perceives possibilities,

With Edna St. Vincent Millay and Herman Melville,

If it were a large island; William Vaughan Moody,

Edgar Lee Masters, W. S. Merwin, Archibald MacLeish,

And three Moores, Julia, Merrill, and Marianne,

She watching from under a hat wide as a palm-tree

David McCord, Joaquin Miller, and Edwin Markham.

Best stay inside my book-ends, Abbe and Zaturenska.