Beth Denton has poetry flowing through her veins in more ways than one.

Denton, a graduate student in early childhood education, said her love of sonnets and haikus that began at an early age might be genetic.

“I won a PTA poetry contest as a seventh-grader and started writing it seriously when I was a freshman in high school,” she said. “Later on, I discovered that my great-grandma, Pearl McDowell, had been a poet of some note in British Columbia.”

Denton said the poems on her list come from poets who keep things simple.

“I like poets who use rich imagery and elegantly simple language to convey powerful emotion,” she said. “I discovered most of the poems as a young writer trying to improve my own craft, and I fell for them.”

Here are Denton’s top 10 favorite poems:

10. “I Am Somebody” by Jesse Jackson, Sr. – “Jackson and the Sesame Street gang taught us this important lesson. The poem is kind of campy, but we shouldn’t forget.”

9. “The Colonel” by Carolyn Forche – “A haunting, true story of the poet’s visit to the home of a high-ranking military officer in El Salvador in 1978.”

8. “Sonnet 90: Then Hate Me When Thou Wilt” by William Shakespeare – “Not your usual love sonnet. The Bard spits rage at a dying relationship. I fell in love with this poem during an unrequited crush as a pre-teen.”

7. “Goblin Market” by Christina Rossetti – “A great narrative poem. On the surface, it’s a story of sisterly love, but beneath that is a delicious wickedness.”

6. “Chicago” by Carl Sandburg – “Chicago history is one of my favorite subjects, and Sandburg caught it at its height of glory.”

5. “A Holiday in the Park” by John M. Ford – “Ford is a brilliant author of science fiction and fantasy, and in this narrative poem, he uses his mastery of the genre to poke fun at our modern holiday consumerism.”

4. “Towards Which” by Thomas Wolfe – “The narrator of ‘You Can’t Go Home Again’ faces death with remarkable insight and hope.”

3. “All the time I pray to Buddha” by Kobayashi Issa – “In three lines of Haiku, Issa captures the dilemma of spirituality.”

2. “Snow White” by Anne Sexton – “Sexton uses a fairy tale story to speak to her own suffering. Fantastic imagery and language.”

1. “The Waste Land” by T.S. Eliot – “I’ve spent years trying to unravel all the nuances in this poem and always can find something new in it. Eliot’s disillusionment with his world is quietly compelling, despite his complex use of literary references.”