favorite poems

[Piscivore]

Here's another of mine:

COMING HOME FROM RUNNING LATE-NIGHT
ERRANDS AT THE 24-HOUR GROCERY-PLEX

or

Tuf-Tuf-Tuf-Tuf-Tuf-Tuf - Tif-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f


Revolving tires abruptly cease
rapid dizzy spinning
hot engine quits its grumbling

thunder screaming stereo
cuts off without a warning

Suburban house-calm ruffled
by my car reckless and hasty
slam-parked beside the curb

but I stay seated for a second
listening to the sound I heard

Working hard, buying food,
trying not to be too rude,
worrying 'bout the human race,
and the acne on my face,

Warm October night wind whistling,
quiet click of cooling pistons,
it all retreats a patient distance

list'ning to the gentle spitting
of the neighbor's sprinkler system

 

[LibraryLady]

I'm pretty low-brow when it comes to poetry.

Lisa also calls herself lowbrow. I want you both to cut it out immediately.

This divide between the high- and lowbrow seems to me to be a recent development in the world of all the arts, including poetry. I think it started when art became an in joke among artists, like the Dadaists. Here we are being extremely clever and funny, and if you don't get it, you're just lowbrow. Soon, anything accessible became lowbrow and anything confusing became highbrow. All these brows are just so much hogwash. Yes, I said it and Rule 8 be darned.

Take a look at the poems in this thread that mean something important to the people who posted them. Well, not the ones by William McGonagall, but all the others. They are not low or high brow. They are poems that appeal to the senses and senses of humor. They tell stories. They make us remember things from the past. They create a mood or an atmosphere. That's what poetry is supposed to do!

I was an English major and did my share of analysing and taking poems apart and seeing how they work. And the bottom line is that you like what you like and that's part of who you are. It makes no statement about your intelligence or sophistication.

And to prove my point, here is a poem my mother used to read to me constantly, and which is probably not considered to be the highest brow literary work around:

"Abou Ben Adhem"

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An Angel writing in a book of gold:

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the Presence in the room he said,
"What writest thou?" The Vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord
Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."

"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so,"
Replied the Angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerily still; and said, "I pray thee, then,
Write me as one who loves his fellow men."

The Angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And, lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest!
-- By Leigh Hunt.


So there.

 

[Dogdoctor]

Piscivore,
Great stuff. And as for titles such as lowbrow highbrow....whatever they are meaningless to me and only meant to divide people up into uneeded categories.

 

[Skeptic]

The Angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And, lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest!

Asimov wrote that he was taught this poem in High School. The teacher then asked, "Why was Adhem's name first?". Asimove replied, "Alphabetical order, Sir"--and got kicked out of class.

 

[Brown]

From a poem popularized on M*A*S*H:

A Channel Passage ("The Damned Ship") by Rupert Brooke:

The damned ship lurched and slithered. Quiet and quick
My cold gorge rose; the long sea rolled; I knew
I must think hard of something, or be sick;
And could think hard of only one thing -- YOU!
You, you alone could hold my fancy ever!
And with you memories come, sharp pain, and dole.
Now there's a choice -- heartache or tortured liver!
A sea-sick body, or a you-sick soul!

Do I forget you? Retchings twist and tie me,
Old meat, good meals, brown gobbets, up I throw.
Do I remember? Acrid return and slimy,
The sobs and slobber of a last years woe.
And still the sick ship rolls. 'Tis hard, I tell ye,
To choose 'twixt love and nausea, heart and belly.

 

[Brown]

Let me put in a word for the poetry of AA Milne: Fun stuff to read aloud.

 

[Piscivore]

From a poem popularized on M*A*S*H:

A Channel Passage ("The Damned Ship") by Rupert Brooke:

The damned ship lurched and slithered. Quiet and quick
My cold gorge rose; the long sea rolled; I knew
I must think hard of something, or be sick;
And could think hard of only one thing -- YOU!
You, you alone could hold my fancy ever!
And with you memories come, sharp pain, and dole.
Now there's a choice -- heartache or tortured liver!
A sea-sick body, or a you-sick soul!

Do I forget you? Retchings twist and tie me,
Old meat, good meals, brown gobbets, up I throw.
Do I remember? Acrid return and slimy,
The sobs and slobber of a last years woe.
And still the sick ship rolls. 'Tis hard, I tell ye,
To choose 'twixt love and nausea, heart and belly.

Now that's some highbrow stuff right there.

Ahhh... Bach.

 

[Hutch]

Mostly guy-stuff poets--Kipling, Robert Front, Carl Sandburg.

And this one from Macaulay always sticks in my mind:

Then out spake brave Horatius, the Captain of the Gate;
To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods

 

[bruto]

Poems are so compact and plentiful that favorite ones come and go, but some recent poets on my current list are Mary Oliver, Stephen Dobyns, Charles Simic, Billy Collins, and Wislawa Szymborska. Here's another one that has kept pretty well, from another pretty reliable poet:

The Good Life, by Mark Strand

You stand at the window.
There is a glass cloud in the shape of a heart.
The wind's sighs are like caves in your speech.
You are the ghost in the tree outside.

The street is quiet.
The weather, like tomorrow, like your life,
is partially here, partially up in the air.
There is nothing you can do.

The good life gives no warning.
It weathers the climates of despair
and appears, on foot, unrecognized, offering nothing,
and you are there.

**************

Oh, and don't forget Yeats! I have a horrible memory for lines and recitations, but I know "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" by heart!

 

[LibraryLady]

One more from me, before the shutdown. I can't think how I didn't mention this one up front. I chant it to myself in times of stress; somehow it always calms me.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. Wallace Stevens.

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

 

[Dogdoctor]

Thanks for posting that LibraryLady. I really like this one especially this passage
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

It really shows a self awareness of the writer.
Thanks again

 

[Graham]

W B Yeats

"Cuchulain stirred,
Stared on the horses of the sea, and heard
The cars of battle and his own name cried;
And fought with the invulnerable tide."


Say no more, IMO.

 

[Jono]

"A wolf’s best friend"

The cold bites my fur as I sit alone under my best friend
And the howling pack of past times is but an echo in my memory
It is now that I surrender below midnight lucidity in hope for a good end
Thinking about my brothers that became man’s tapestry

Hear my song of howling, dear friend of old
Let me feel your guidance warm my blood so cold
So I can dismiss despair and find love with nature anew
And not to end up in a man made stew

Vicious hunters I hear in the distance
Please hurry do, my friend of the silver glow
Have me saved from man’s wicked persistence
And have my tracks lost in the snow

Hear my song of howling, dear friend of old
Let me feel your guidance warm my blood so cold
So I can release my fears of the hungry arrow
And not to end up in pieces, big as that of a sparrow

Give me but a taste of your kindness so I might survive
I wish only to be and to grace earth for a few more years
There are songs to be sung, a future to be kept alive
A coldness to melt and the stopping of cub tears

Hear my song of howling, dear friend of old
Let me feel your guidance warm my blood so cold
So I can give birth to the children of tomorrow
And not to add more fur to man’s world of sorrow

Aooowwww!!!

- Hans Anderberg

 

[epepke]

Remembered another one

"For Lewis Carroll and the Children"

The gentle journey jars to stop,
The drifting dream is done.
The long-gone goblins lurk ahead
The deadly, that we thought were dead
Stand waiting, every one.

That's by Walt Kelley, better known as the creator of Pogo. It gives me goose-bumps every time I think of it.

Here's another one of his, which I have to paraphrase, because I can't remember it exactly.

And when is the happy ending, when the foot fits the shoe?
And where are the knightly wending, in the vasts of blue?
Searching for clean tomorrows, in hope of a bright today?
Counting their well-worn sorrows in the hopes they'll go away?

 

[Freakshow]

"Me, We" - by The Greatest, AKA Muhammad Ali. This was in response to a request for a poem while delivering a commencement address at Harvard.

Short, simple, and to the point.

 

[bruto]

"For Lewis Carroll and the Children"

The gentle journey jars to stop,
The drifting dream is done.
The long-gone goblins lurk ahead
The deadly, that we thought were dead
Stand waiting, every one.

That's by Walt Kelley, better known as the creator of Pogo. It gives me goose-bumps every time I think of it.

Here's another one of his, which I have to paraphrase, because I can't remember it exactly.

And when is the happy ending, when the foot fits the shoe?
And where are the knightly wending, in the vasts of blue?
Searching for clean tomorrows, in hope of a bright today?
Counting their well-worn sorrows in the hopes they'll go away?

"It is probably all right to try to be
anything you cannot be,
when you find that you cannot be
Everything that you are."

(Walt Kelly)

 

[Ryokan]

My favorite poem is written by the Japanese zen-monk Ryokan, whom I took my nick from :

Too lazy to be ambitious,
I let the world take care of itself.
Ten days' worth of rice in my bag;
a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.
Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?
Listening to the night rain on my roof,
I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.


I also love Basho's frog haiku, that I've put in my signature.

 

[Piscivore]

My favorite poem is written by the Japanese zen-monk Ryokan, whom I took my nick from :

Too lazy to be ambitious,
I let the world take care of itself.
Ten days' worth of rice in my bag;
a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.
Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?
Listening to the night rain on my roof,
I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.


I also love Basho's frog haiku, that I've put in my signature.

As long as we've gone East, there's Ikkyu:

A Meal of Fresh Octopus

Lots of arms, just like Kannon the Goddess;
Sacrificed for me, garnished with citron, I revere it so!
The taste of the sea, just divine!
Sorry, Buddha, this is another precept I just cannot keep.

From Crow With No Mouth

Ikkyu this body isn't yours I say to myself
wherever I am I'm there

ten fussy days running this temple all red tape
look me up if you want to in the bar whorehouse fish market

nature's a killer I won't sing to it
I hold my breath and listen to the dead singing under the grass

suddenly nothing but grief
so I put on my father's old ripped raincoat

when I was forty-seven everybody came to see me
so I walked out forever

my monk friend has a weird endearing habit
he weaves sandals and leaves them secretly by the roadside

a crazy lecher shuttling back and forth between whorehouse and bar
this past master paints south north east west with his cock

no nothing only those wintry crows
bright black in the sun

peace isn't luck for six years stand facing a silent wall
until the you of your face melts like a candle

don't hesitate get laid that's wisdom
sitting around chanting what crap

life's like climbing knife-tree hills with swords sticking up
day and night something stabs you

we live in a cage of light an incredible cage
animals animals without end

sick of it whatever it's called sick of the names
I dedicate every pore to what's here

inside the koan clear mind
gashes the great darkness

ten years of whorehouse joy I'm alone now in the mountains
the pines are like a jail the wind scratches my skin

the wise know nothing at all
well maybe one song

men are like cows horses **** poetry
look at your hand read it

I woke from a dream of death to day's amazing
death grass death rice death chairs death death asleep or
awake

no words sitting alone night in my hut eyes closed hands open
wisps of an unknown face

my death? who was it anyway always where he was never
no not once ever seeing himself an eyeball speaks

a well nobody dug filled with no water
ripples and a shapeless weightless man drinks

oh green green willow wonderfully red flower
but I know the colors are not there

my gray cat jumped up just as I lifted this spoon
we're born we die

if there's nowhere to rest at the end
how can I get lost along the way?

that stone Buddha deserves all the birdshit it gets
I wave my skinny arms like a tall flower in the wind

I won't die I won't go away I'll always be here
no good asking me I won't speak

only a kind deadly sincere man
can show you the way here in the other world

melons eggplants rice rivers the sky
I offer them to you on this holiday

oh yes things exist like the echo when you yell at the foot of a
huge mountain

hear the cruel no-answer until blood drips down
beat your head against the wall of it

the mind is exactly this tree that grass
without thought or feeling both disappear

not two not one either
and the unpainted breeze in the ink painting feels cool

go down on your silly knees pray
for what? tomorrow is yesterday

I found my sparrow Sonrin dead one morning
and buried him just as gently as I would my own daughter

I hate it I know it's nothing but I
suck out the world's sweet juicy plum

why is it all so beautiful this fake dream
this craziness why?

it's logical: if you are not going anywhere
any road is the right one

know nothing I know nothing nobody does can you face me
and know nothing know

stare at it until your eyes drop out
this desk this wall this unreal page

only one koan matters
you

you stand inside me naked infinite love
the dawn bell rips my dreaming heart

we're lost where the mind can't find us
utterly lost

 

[Pirate_Lad]

I wanted to say that I've been trying, on & off, to "get" poetry for the last year or two. All without success, I might add. In fact, my sole reason for popping my head in here is to say that out of the poems I have read, none have ever really "touched" me, like the one from Stephen Crane just did. I'm looking up more stuff by him now. Thanks, poem loving poster.

 

[Freakshow]

I wanted to say that I've been trying, on & off, to "get" poetry for the last year or two. All without success, I might add. In fact, my sole reason for popping my head in here is to say that out of the poems I have read, none have ever really "touched" me, like the one from Stephen Crane just did. I'm looking up more stuff by him now. Thanks, poem loving poster.

I mostly feel the same way. But, when I add song lyrics to what are considered to be "poems", then I find many that I like. I personally consider song lyrics to be a form of poetry.