E.E. Cummings

Selected Poems 1923-1958. Faber and Faber. ISBN 987-0-571-08986-4
(Selected by the poet)
I'd neglected this man, hitherto, for no better reason than my aversion to gimmickry: he uses idiosyncratic punctuation (frequently none) and rarely uses a capital letter. Then, a few weeks ago we watched a movie in which the always watchable Cameron Diaz played an almost illiterate girl, who slowly read one of EEC's love poems to a blind patient, and I was amazed by its beauty. Now I'm a convert.
Some are political, some humorous, some erotic, a few religious, but most are about love, and life, and light. In form, quite a few are sonnets, the style strongly reminiscent of Shakespeare. For instance:

true lovers in each happening of their hearts
live longer than all which and every who;
despite what fear denies,what hope asserts,
what falsest both disprove by proving true
....

But he uses all sorts of standard metrical and rhyming structures, with just an occasional innovation, in which the layout on the page suggests the intended phrasing, and pauses. Such as this:

...
so world is a leaf so tree is a bough
(and birds sing sweeter
than books
tell how)
so here is away and so your is a my
(with a down
up
around again fly)
forever was never till now

His word-order sometimes recalls Horace:

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)

(-- the use of parentheses is a characteristic. Sometimes, there is just one short sentence outside the parenteses, and a whole world inside.)
So much, so beautiful -- read it!

Oliver Goldsmith: The Vicar of Wakefield

Goethe thought this "one of the best novels ever written", although most discriminating critics (and even the author, in his 'Advertisement') point to the faults of its fantastically-improbable plot, in which coincidence is heaped upon coincidence. It has enjoyed enduring popularity, and this is clearly due to the great charm of its style, its wealth of aphorisms, and the singular character of the hero: upright, trusting, innocent of guile, vain about his writing, faithful and courageous. I loved it.
Life is full of coincidences. Last week my friend MN used the valediction:

Ná díol do chearc lá fliuch!
(Never sell your hen on a wet day!)

This was new to me, but soon after I ran across a reference to the same proverb in Goldsmith's novel. When the vicar becomes anxious that his son Moses has been away so long at the fair, where he went to sell a horse, the vicar's wife says that he need not worry..."Depend on it, he knows what he is about. I'll warrant we'll never see him sell his sell a hen on a rainy day." Sadly, her confidence is misplaced, and Moses returns, having exchanged the price of the horse for some rubbish.