Who's Your Favorite Poet?

I can't believe I forgot Shakespeare - Sonnet 73

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth from the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed by that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

The last 2 lines are a great skeptic's reply to the whole "eternity of love" thing.
 
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Glad to see this thread bumped.

G. Chaucer:

what ys thys lyf?
what asketh men to hav?
now wyth hys lov,
now in hys colde grave
alone
wythouten anye companye.
farwel mi swete fo,
myn Emelye.

Or Charles Bukowski. He's always got a few laffs buried in there somewhere.
 
Piggy said:
I'm with you up til the last one there.

The first 3 are works of genius.

The last... for my money it's a throwaway.
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Heresy! "Let be be finale of seem/the only emperor is the emperor of ice cream"

A masterpiece, unique, complex and ultimately very profound.
 
Robert Frost. Mending Wall really says everything about what it means to be an American to me. Or at least, a lot of what it means to be a Yankee.

Gilbert and Sullivan, for their high mark of nonsense.
 
RedIbis said:
Heresy! "Let be be finale of seem/the only emperor is the emperor of ice cream"

A masterpiece, unique, complex and ultimately very profound.
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Well, I'm certainly willing to hear a good argument for a reading of that one.

In my experience, Stevens' brain-crackingly tight syntax often works like a sort of optical illusion. You can look at it again and again, from close up and far back, and not penetrate it, until suddenly, the thing snaps out in clear relief in its jewel-like entirety, and it nearly takes your breath away!

Suddenly, it's clear as crystal, and you wonder how you could have been missing it all this time.

But heck, even Stevens said he didn't know what the hell he was talking about in that one.
 
Piggy said:
But heck, even Stevens said he didn't know what the hell he was talking about in that one.
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He did? Where? I'd like to see that. From what I read he considered "Emperor" his favorite poem.

If you want I can give you a pretty straightforward, explicit reading of the poem, which will, as you describe, make it come into sharp focus.
 
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RedIbis said:
He did? Where? I'd like to see that. From what I read he considered "Emperor" his favorite poem.
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I've also heard him say it was his favorite, or among his favorites. I don't have the article anymore, but his comment on meaning was to an interviewer who was after him to explain "concupiscient curds".

I think he liked the sound of the poem, and the images, and the opalescence of potential meaning that can arise from irreducible linguistic ambiguity.

RedIbis said:
If you want I can give you a pretty straightforward, explicit reading of the poem, which will, as you describe, make it come into sharp focus.
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I'd love to hear it! Post it here if you think it will be of general interest, or PM me.
 
Piggy said:
I've also heard him say it was his favorite, or among his favorites. I don't have the article anymore, but his comment on meaning was to an interviewer who was after him to explain "concupiscient curds".

I think he liked the sound of the poem, and the images, and the opalescence of potential meaning that can arise from irreducible linguistic ambiguity.



I'd love to hear it! Post it here if you think it will be of general interest, or PM me.
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First there is the call to bring in the muscular cigar roller, who is strong enough to crank the old fashioned ice cream machine and will dish out the "concupiscent curds" (delicious ice cream) for those attending the wake.

The wenches (prostitutes) will attend in the same outfits they wear when they are working.

The boys (customers) are poor and will bring flowers in old newspapers.

Then the line, "let be be finale of seem" or let reality be the end to speculation, the only divinity is the one who provides the good and comfort, not who it might "seem" to be, such as God, but the cigar roller/ice cream provider.

The dead woman was poor and she doesn't have a proper burial shroud, so they make do with an old embroidered cloth that they take from a cheap dresser, but it doesn't cover her whole body so if her rigid feet protrude they prove that she is dead and silent, not where it might "seem" she is now, in a better place.

The only god is the god of now, the one who provides the good.

The poem is very symbolic with all life, young boys and girls, occupying the kitchen, and only a dead body in the bedroom.
I hope this helps.
 
sphenisc said:
"Do you like Kipling?" ;)
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I don't know. I've never Kippled before.

Langston Hughes
Mary Oliver
Ted Kooser
Ogden Nash
Gary Soto
Wilfred Owen
Richard Wilber
Okay ... Kipling

and the person who wrote Western Wind - Anonymous
 
Stephen Crane

Couple of my shorter favs:

A man said to the universe:
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."

Another -

"Think as I think, said a man,
"Or you are abominably wicked;
You are a toad."

And after I had thought of it,
I said: "I will, then, be a toad."

One more -

A man said: "Thou tree!"
The tree answered with the same scorn: "Thou Man!
Thou art greater than I only in thy possibilities."
 
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Complexity said:
I only have a minute for now, though I'd like to answer more fully, but I'll offer up one...

Recent poets: Richard Wilbur
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Is he the one who did the translations of the Moliere plays (in verse)? I really love them.

Not a big poetry reader, but over the years, I've liked:

Coleridge
Stephen Vincent Benet
William Rose Benet (Do I detect a pattern here?)
Kipling
Shakespeare
Vachel Lindsay
 
Favorite contemporary poets: Maya Angelou and Roma Ryan

Favorite dead poets: Robert Burns and John Keats
 
I've always loved Poe and Charles Dodgson.

I used to be able to recite "The Raven" from memory.
 
Overman said:
e.e.cummings by far. I have his complete works, and have made one of his into an Overman song. Really all over the charts, from the most beautiful stuff I have ever read, to just the cutiest little poems there are, to waaaaaay abstract stuff, to downright dirty stuff, he does it all and does it well.

(The last link is the one I made a song to...)
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When he's on, no one does it better than cummings:

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
 
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Dylan Thomas
William Shakespeare
John Masefield
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Marshall Mathers (no really)
J R R Tolkien
James K Baxter
Hone Tuwhare
William Wordsworth
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Edgar Allan Poe

And I know this is incredibly immodest of me, but can I say "myself"?
 
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