Who is your favorite Poet of all time?

Nice pick...he is really "out of the crowd"... I won't tell you my favourite poet, because you may have not heard of him, since his career was only local, I mean in Romania...but I would tell you about his works. He wrote something like Picasso wrote...the feeling is of surprise...the approach, or the "ars poetica" was decomposing the reality. That is to express a feeling or creating an image with the fewest elements possible for us to understand, or to feel... That I consider genius, since they both show (Picasso and this poet) the very foundation or basic things of reality, and show how things apparently complex may be translated in simple, basic shapes, images....words!

I like Edgar All Poe, he wrote many great poems and short stories.

Poe was the first that caught my eye, so many years ago. I can't say who my favorite is now though. I relate really well to so many different poets, depending on my mood, what is going on in my life, and how I approached their work. Emily Dickenson was a huge inspiration of mine for a long time, and later Rod McKuen's poetry really started getting my attention. I've always loved Maya Angelou. It's just impossible to choose a favorite, like choosing a favorite blossom out of an entire field of flowers! Of course, on a personal level, my first love was also a poet, and so he'd be my favorite in a way.

my favorite poet is william blake.

Poe's great. One of my favorite poems of all time in The Haunted Palace in The Fall of the House of Usher. As far as most influential, at least in my poetry, I'd have to say Kenneth Patchen. He's a lesser known poet in the tradition of Bukowsky, in that he writes about drunkeness and the working class, but his poems also have a dreamlike quality that I find very appealing.

My favorite poet is Sylvia Plath. Her work is dark but so full of musical rhythms that are textured and layered and never sing-songy. I really love hearing her work read aloud.