favorite poems

[LibraryLady]

He's generally regarded as the worst English-language poet ever

And deservedly so. What a relief!

 

[ceo_esq]

Here is a sample of my poetry, I hope it doesn't sound like pillroy to everyone.

Thanks for sharing it. Hope you haven't stopped writing completely.

 

[Jas]

I love Kubla Khan. I enjoy Coleridge in general.

And I have to second Lewis Carroll.

Nick Bantock did some great pop-up books of these that are worth checking out.

 

[Skeptic]

W. H. Auden's The Shield of Achilles and Under which Lyre, a reactionary tract for the times (which predicted perfectly the follies of academia).

T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland.

Philip Larkin's Church Going and This be the Verse.

Ezra Pound's Song (and others I cannot find online)

Pope's translation of the Iliad

The Psalms (in the original Hebrew)

John Donne's The Flea

Marell's To his Coy Mistress ("My vegetable love should grow / vaster than empires, and more slow")

 

[LibraryLady]

Dogdoctor, I have no idea who Pillroy is, but I enjoyed your poem. Nicely done!

Should I tell the others that we all agree on Jabberwocky?

 

[Dogdoctor]

Dogdoctor, I have no idea who Pillroy is, but I enjoyed your poem. Nicely done!

That was supposed to be "pillory" who posts on other parts of this board.

Should I tell the others that we all agree on Jabberwocky?

Depends on what others. You know I can't always tell what anyone might like when I do art or poetry. But that piece documents an important step in the development of my own version of skepticism (accepting uncertainty) and a turning point in my life (accepting myself)

 

[Lisa Simpson]

I'm extremely lowbrow in my poetry (although I do like Poe, Frost and Whitman), so my favorite poem is by Shel Silverstein:


Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout would not take the garbage out!
She'd scour the pots and scrape the pans,
Candy the yams and spice the hams,
And though her daddy would scream and shout,
She simply would not take the garbage out.
And so it piled up to the ceilings:
Coffee grounds, potato peelings,
Brown bananas, rotten peas,
Chunks of sour cottage cheese.
It filled the can, it covered the floor,
It cracked the window and blocked the door
With bacon rinds and chicken bones,
Drippy ends of ice cream cones,
Prune pits, peach pits, orange peel,
Gloppy glumps of cold oatmeal,
Pizza crusts and withered greens,
Soggy beans and tangerines,
Crusts of black burned buttered toast,
Gristly bits of beefy roasts...
The garbage rolled on down the hall,
It raised the roof, it broke the wall...
Greasy napkins, cookie crumbs,
Globs of gooey bubble gum,
Cellophane from green baloney,
Rubbery blubbery macaroni,
Peanut butter, caked and dry,
Curdled milk and crusts of pie,
Moldy melons, dried-up mustard,
Eggshells mixed with lemon custard,
Cold french fries and rancid meat,
Yellow lumps of Cream of Wheat.
At last the garbage reached so high
That finally it touched the sky.
And all the neighbors moved away,
And none of her friends would come to play.
And finally Sarah Cynthia Stout said,
"OK, I'll take the garbage out!"
But then, of course, it was too late...
The garbage reached across the state,
From New York to the Golden Gate.
And there, in the garbage she did hate,
Poor Sarah met an awful fate,
That I cannot right now relate
Because the hour is much too late.
But children, remember Sarah Stout
And always take the garbage out!

by
Shel Sliverstein

 

[Kiless]

W. H. Auden's The Shield of Achilles and Under which Lyre, a reactionary tract for the times (which predicted perfectly the follies of academia).

Funeral Blues

Personal prejudices aside:

In the Secular Night - Atwood.

Not often you get Glenn Miller in a poem. I've liked everything she writes, mind.

A Dialogue Between the Soul and Body - Marvell again (mostly because To His Coy Mistress has already been mentioned, so this is my second favourite).

And a very special one, mostly because of the beautiful pace in the last quatrain:

On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer - Keats.

 

[LibraryLady]

Funeral Blues

I saw Four Weddings and a Funeral shortly before the death of my nephew, ten years ago. I read this poem over to myself about a hundred times. It was one of the few things that helped.

 

[Mercutio]

Perhaps a year ago, we had a poetry night on Paltalk. I would love to hear that again.

I recited Dylan Thomas...

DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT


Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

 

[Dogdoctor]

Perhaps a year ago, we had a poetry night on Paltalk. I would love to hear that again.

I recited Dylan Thomas...

DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT

I could never remember who wrote that poem but it is great.

 

[skepHick]

Although I've always been an avid reader, I've never been a devotee of poetry. I prefer to think it's because I tend to be a "fact based" person and therefore, more literal than figurative. However, I suspect the reality is that I'm just not "deep" enough to interpret poetry. At any rate, I do have a few favorites, as follows:

I absolutely agree with Library Lady on the Carroll selections. Creating a poem out of "gibberish" that evokes a story, even to a literalist like me...genius.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost.
Oddly enough, I was introduced to this poem because the last stanza(?) was used in the Charles Bronson film Telefon, which I saw as a kid (at the drive-in of all places, Jeebus, I am dating myself.) It intrigued me enough to find out what the poem was, and I have loved it ever since.

Lastly, ee cummings (formatting likely not correct):
Buffalo Bill's
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death

I always was intrigued by the apparent simplicity of ee's quirky poetry, which, at least initially, belies a deeper meaning. This poem in particular floored me when I first read it. In my interpretation, it spoke volumes about "how the West was really won" and the reality behind the kind of people [we] Americans sometimes regard as heroes.

Thanks LL, for the excellent topic. It's been a while since I gave much thought to the "creative" side of life.

 

[Skeptic]

I saw Four Weddings and a Funeral shortly before the death of my nephew, ten years ago. I read this poem over to myself about a hundred times. It was one of the few things that helped.

It is amazing how good literature is far, far better in such situations than all the "grief counceling" claptrap.

 

[Dogdoctor]

Endless
Endless thoughts
Endless games to play
Endless friends
Turned to endless enemies

Endless rituals
From an endless society
Endless lines of lost people
Endless insanity

Endless clouds
Passing through endless skys
Inside endless minds
Of endless eternity

Twisted
My life in the last few years
Has been full of strange new fears
Not to mention the old ones
With fear my mind screams and runs
To find no place left to hide
Tearing me up from inside
My mind just keeps on fleeing
Keeps running without seeing
Waiting for the very last straw
When I can see what I saw
Yet somehow I think I know
I'll win in the end even though
I feel like I'm lost and gone
I'll just keep on keeping on


Jeany

So much alive and living
So much love and loving
Your eyes show
Your inner glow
Proof of your happiness
Protection against sorrow
And you are on my mind
At least until tomorrow

 

[treble_head]

Emily Dickinson - There is a solitude in space

There is a solitude of space,
A solitude of sea,
A solitude of death, but these
Society shall be,
Compared with that profounder site,
That polar privacy,
A Soul admitted to Itself:
Finite Infinity.

Still working on wrapping my brain around this one entirely. I get new meaning out of it every time I read it.

 

[LibraryLady]

It is amazing how good literature is far, far better in such situations than all the "grief counceling" claptrap.

Actually, I did get grief counseling, and I went again last year when my brother died. Happily, the counselor I was sent to by my doctor was not a newage, claptrappy kind of person. As a matter of fact, she helped me deal with all the idiotic things people were saying to me about my nephew's energy living on in the universe and so forth. It was very helpful.

 

[LibraryLady]

Since others are baring their poetic souls, and I started the thread, I thought I'd share one of my very few actually readable poems, which is a haiku.

I watch the high white clouds
Swimming in the deep blue sky.
They do not watch me.

 

[Dogdoctor]

Very nice poem Library lady.
For me I find it difficult to look objectively at my own poetry since it all is an expression of my self at a particular point in time. Others will not like it so much since it doesn't evoke the emotions it does in me. Those three are ones that some people have commented that they like. The first one I thought perhaps skeptics might like it since it is a philosophical poem. My all time favorite poem that I wrote is this one. It is short and captures my thoughts and feelings very well at the time with a minimum of words. Almost no one else likes it though.

Untitled

To the dark eyed girl
To be like you
To like you
Love you
me

 

[tim]

I love this -

Ozymandias

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley

That still sends shivers down my spine.

And this too -

The Soldier

IF I should die, think only this of me;
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Rupert Brooke. 1887–1915

 

[Piscivore]

Shel Silverstein

Boo yah.


Here's one of mine, as long as we're exposing ourselves:

MISDIRECTED ATTENTION

The fish gods silently slither,
cows moo their discontent,
The Walrus shuffles proudly
though his left-hand flipper's bent

Past the hairy wombat
contemplating thoughts arcane,
The Walrus plods morosely,
for his brain is more mundane

Though he knows not why he's going,
or where and when he's gone,
he drags his lumb'ring carcass
down the solemn path he's on

Crawling 'long the seashore,
clamb'ring up the steepest hill,
he knows he's going somewhere
'cause he isn't standing still

"No one can go with him;"
softly croaks the mouldy toad,
"The Walrus limps at midnight,
on a lonely walrus road."