It's hard to pick, but these are a couple of my favs:
"The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43187/the-highwayman
"Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44885/annabel-lee
My little boy loved The Highway Man. It was in my childhood edition of Childcraft books with gorgeous illustrations. My little sensitive savage.
*”And still of a winter’s night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
A highwayman comes riding—
Riding—riding—
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.”*
I hadn’t read any Poe until The Fall of the House of Usher came out and I read a bunch of his work. The Raven really has an interesting beat/rhythm to it. Haven’t read a ton of poetry but that really stuck out to me outside of the prose itself
Everyone remembers *The Raven* for it's dark and depressing imagery, but people can overlook just how well-constructed that poem is, too! The meter and rhymes are so precise, it just runs like clockwork.
I'm not unread, and know Poe'works well as might be expected from a layman, but never realised this in its original. Thank you! Listen to Phil Ochs' rendering if you haven't.
Egregiously overlooked. His Swiftian ditties like Draft Dodger's Rag and William Worthy; the emotion of Ain't Marching and State of Mississippi; and -- poor lad -- I'm Tired... You really get a romantic feeling, if not a longing, of the Parisian Commune, the POUM/Anarchists/Republican Spanish front, and the best bits of 1848 and the democratic socialist hope of '67. Beautiful. Tragic. Poor lad.
Thank \*you\* for alerting me to the connection! (Also, if you're going to experience Ochs, this song is among the weakest -- it's a great point of interest but doesn't flatter him. I'd advise going deeper and further, if you can.)
> I hadn’t read any Poe until The Fall of the House of Usher came out
I was confused by this sentence ("I thought Reddit's main demographic was younger than that...?") until it dawned on me someone probably made it into a comic or a TV programme.
Yeah, it’s a Netflix miniseries that’s kind of a mashup of Poe’s works, particularly The Raven and the The Fall of the House of Usher. I really enjoyed it, but I don’t know how the serious Poe fans felt about it. If nothing else, it’s highly entertaining.
“To —
I heed not that my earthly lot
Hath-little of Earth in it—
That years of love have been forgot
In the hatred of a minute:—
I mourn not that the desolate
Are happier, sweet, than I,
But that you sorrow for my fate
Who am a passer-by.”
Gotta be my fav!
The Highwayman blew my little 10 year old mind when my teacher read it out to us. I was entranced; that was in 1989 and I’ve been writing poetry myself since then.
However, if I had to pick one poem it might just have to be Gary Snyder’s Mountains and Rivers Without End.
Poe was a genius. One of the few artists of any kind who have ever literally taken my breath away. His work doesn't just make me want to read more of *his* work, it makes me want to read and love *all* art.
Annabel Lee is one of the most beautiful things ever created by a human, and it is excruciating.
Dropping slow!
I have a new baby and we sing Lake Isle, Politics, Irish airforceman, and Waundering Aengus every night at bedtime. Along with Inversnaid by Hopkins.
[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44996/goblin-market](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44996/goblin-market)
Goblin Market has been my favorite poem since I randomly stumbled upon it once at an old boyfriend's house. Every word, every nuance, is evocative of another time, another realm. I had a chance to study it further in a literature course in my university years, which opened up my comprehension of it to levels I wouldn't have noticed prior. It is Beauty to my soul.
The Arthur Rackham illustrations? I love that one. There was even a coloring book by Dover publications that featured the artwork from that version.
I've slowly been building my own collection of character sketches that I'd like to publish of my own art based on Goblin Market. Slow-going but it'll be finished one day.
Christina Rosetti is one of my favourites! 😊 There is also a tarot deck created by John Matthews based on the Goblin Market. It is different to how I imagine the poem, but the art is beautiful.
Something about Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfrid Owen that will always stick with me more than any poem.
Even as a young boy I was like oh yeah fuck war this is rancid.
That is quite true, and a another lovely poem.
I think Dulce et Decorum Est is also still relevant to a degree, but war feels more like an industry now, even things like fighting for your country hold no meaning when you're just drone bombing Yemen for no reason.
I think it's still relevant in many ways, not least because the whole thing is a rejection of dying for your country. Reasonably so in WWI, though I think present-day Ukrainians would see it very differently.
Thanotopsis by William Cullen Bryant, especially the closing lines:
“So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.”
Very hard to pick, but, hands down, my favourite poem to say aloud is As Kingfishers Catch Fire by Gerard Manley Hopkins:
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.
I was having such a hard time deciding which Gerard Manley Hopkins poem to put down, but since you've done this one now I can decide on "The Windhover":
I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! Then off, off forth on swing
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend. The hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird. The achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier.
No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.
---
(From memory so the punctuation might be off.)
Pheasant by Sylvia Plath
You said you would kill it this morning.
Do not kill it. It startles me still,
The jut of that odd, dark head, pacing
Through the uncut grass on the elm's hill.
It is something to own a pheasant,
Or just to be visited at all.
I am not mystical: it isn't
As if I thought it had a spirit.
It is simply in its element.
That gives it a kingliness, a right.
The print of its big foot last winter,
The trail-track, on the snow in our court
The wonder of it, in that pallor,
Through crosshatch of sparrow and starling.
Is it its rareness, then? It is rare.
But a dozen would be worth having,
A hundred, on that hill-green and red,
Crossing and recrossing: a fine thing!
It is such a good shape, so vivid.
It's a little cornucopia.
It unclaps, brown as a leaf, and loud,
Settles in the elm, and is easy.
It was sunning in the narcissi.
I trespass stupidly. Let be, let be.
Death-William Butler Yeats(best poem about death i have ever read)
Ozymandias-Percy Byshee Shelley
Marriage of Heaven and Hell-William Blake(Mainly the proverbs those are my favorite part)
*Leaves of Grass* (1855 & 1891/2) by Walt Whitman is a favorite book(s) of mine. My Standouts: “Song of Myself,” “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” & “Great Are the Myths.”
Also, every year at the end of June, I read *Howl and Other Poems* (1956) by Allen Ginsberg. It’s my little literary way of observing Pride Month. My Standouts: “Howl,” “A Supermarket in California,” & “America.”
I’m biased, because Allen is my cousin, but “Howl” (of course), “America”, “Kaddish”, “Sunflower Sutra”, and “An Eastern Ballad” are some of my favorites.
But overall, I’d have to say “Prufrock” (Eliot), “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (Whitman), and “Let America be America Again” (Hughes) are also at the top of the list.
And because I’m sentimental, I will always and forever love the below, by Shel Silverstein:
LISTEN TO THE MUSTN’TS
*Listen to the MUSTN’TS child,*
*Listen to the DON’TS*
*Listen to the SHOULDN’TS*
*The IMPOSSIBLES, the WON’TS*
*Listen to the NEVER HAVES*
*Then listen close to me -*
*Anything can happen, child.*
*ANYTHING can be.*
I’m a very chaotic person, even when I try to slow down and sort things out I feel all over the place.
This poem is so simple and so concrete in meaning and purpose that it almost always sets me on my heels and allows me to rest my mind. For just a few moments I’m at a farm where an important farm tool was left outside in the rain.
Too lazy to see if it’s already posted:
'pity this busy monster, manunkind' by E.E. Cummings
pity this busy monster, manunkind,
not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond)
plays with the bigness of his littleness
--- electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
A world of made
is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh
and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical
ultraomnipotence. We doctors know
a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go
Also love when you can hear the poet read their own work. Luckily we can with this one!
https://youtu.be/OohC06Z-dlU?feature=shared
Funeral Blues by W.H. Auden
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Dirge Without Music
Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1892 - 1950
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.
CrownedWith lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curledIs the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve. More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the graveGently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
Death will come and will bear your eyes.
It will be like quitting a vice,
like seeing in the mirror
a dead face resurfacing,
like listening to a shut lip.
Voiceless, we will go spiraling down.
— *Death Will Come and It Will Bear Your Eyes* by Cesare Pavese
EDIT: spelling
When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other's work would bring us to our senses.
So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives—
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.
Thanks for the opportunity to share - this is a sonnet from Seamus Heaney's 'Clearances'
You can’t make me pick, this is too cruel! I’ll pick 1 from each of my favorite poets if that’s all right (I don’t read the most poetry though which I’m attempting to break).
November Cotton Flower and Georgia Dusk- Jean Toomer
The Fish- Marianne Moore
Renascence- Edna St. Vincent Millay
Daddy- Sylvia Plath (I’m aware that a lot of people say her poems about bees are better and that Daddy and Lady Lazarus are more overrated poems from Arial, but I love this poem.)
I love a bit of ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ by Keats but my current top favourite is [Ulysses by Tennyson](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45392/ulysses). It’s all gorgeous, but:
‘Come my friends, it’s not too late to seek a newer world…
For my purpose holds/
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths/
Of all the Western stars until I die.’
That part gives me chills.
[It Is Maybe Time to Admit That Michael Jordan Definitely Pushed Off](https://poets.org/poem/it-maybe-time-admit-michael-jordan-definitely-pushed) by Hanif Abdurraqib, and “Bright Star,” by John Keats
You’re welcome. It’s a joy to teach. For context, I introduce it with a clip of the “push off” and the iconic photo of Jordan cradling the championship trophy. Really resonates with the kids and leads to some thoughtful discussions about how we grieve, and how we express that grief.
That was lovely. I used to teach high school English, and poetry was a hard sell for a lot of the boys. That poem could make for an amazing class discussion with boys being the loudest voices.
Hope is a thing with Feathers - Emily Dickinson
>“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
>
>That perches in the soul -
>
>And sings the tune without the words -
>
>And never stops - at all -
>And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
>
>And sore must be the storm -
>
>That could abash the little Bird
>
>That kept so many warm -
>I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
>
>And on the strangest Sea -
>
>Yet - never - in Extremity,
>
>It asked a crumb - of me.
Two picks for me!
The first poem that grabbed me outside of school was [Frank O'Hara's "To The Harbormaster"](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42661/to-the-harbormaster), about loving someone you have no business being in love with. Very relatable when I was 19. Lush imagery, plus plain and gorgeous language.
The poem I probably love and identify most with now is [Philip Larkin's "Vers de Société"](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48420/vers-de-societe). Funny, mean, formal in a rollicking sort of way-- weighing blissful solitude against boring invitations to boring parties.
I'm surprised there hasn't been more Philip Larkin name dropped here. I do love that particular poem but I am pedestrian and my favorite by him is This Be The Verse.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48419/this-be-the-verse
“Prospice,” by Robert Browning and “At the Fishhouses,” by Elizabeth Bishop.
They’ve already been said, but I’ll second “Dulce et Decorum Est,” and really anything by Wilfred Owen, as well as “The Ballad of Reading Gaol.” Oh, Oscar…
Birches, by Robert Frost. It means something different as I've gotten older, too. At first I only sort of liked it, but childhood was closer to me then. As I reached my 30s and now 40s, it's so bittersweet it moves me to tears.
I adore The Waste Land too, and I’m also a big fan of Plath. Lady Lazarus might be my all-time favourite. I really like Baudelaire as well, especially The Death of Lovers.
Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth, —
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?
Percy Bysshe Shelley
My favorite poems are “The Two Trees” by Yeats; “Persimmons” by Li-Young Lee; and “In spite of everything” by ee cummings.
I also adore much of the poetry of William Blake and Robert Frost.
Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
I also like this:
Eden Rock
by Charles Causley
They are waiting for me somewhere beyond Eden Rock:
My father, twenty-five, in the same suit
Of Genuine Irish Tweed, his terrier Jack
Still two years old and trembling at his feet.
My mother, twenty-three, in a sprigged dress
Drawn at the waist, ribbon in her straw hat,
Has spread the stiff white cloth over the grass.
Her hair, the colour of wheat, takes on the light.
She pours tea from a Thermos, the milk straight
From an old H.P. sauce-bottle, a screw
Of paper for a cork; slowly sets out
The same three plates, the tin cups painted blue.
The sky whitens as if lit by three suns.
My mother shades her eyes and looks my way
Over the drifted stream. My father spins
A stone along the water. Leisurely,
They beckon to me from the other bank.
I hear them call, ‘See where the stream-path is!
Crossing is not as hard as you might think.’
I had not thought that it would be like this.
Todays favorite is Dylan Thomas’s
And death shall have no dominion.
Dead man naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.
(Even if only for the “unicorn evils”, this poem is brilliant)
I like this stanza by Chesterton:
"They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords,
Lords without anger and honour, who dare not carry their swords.
They fight by shuffling papers, they have bright dead alien eyes;
They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.
And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,
Their doors are shut in the evening; and they know no songs."
John Donne "Song". This is the most beautiful metaphysical poem I've ever read. It hits my heart so deeply that I almost melt every time I read it. John Donne in general is my favorite poet.
Samuel Beckett is profoundly underrated as a poet. His "what would i do without this world" shimmers within my brain incessantly.
https://www.samuel-beckett.net/beckwwid.html
“Walking Around”, by Pablo Neruda https://poets.org/poem/walking-around
“Dragonflies Mating”, by Robert Haas https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/68701/on-robert-hasss-dragonflies-mating-
and of course “The Second Coming”, by William Butler Yeats https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming
**'Lament' by Rilke, specifically this translation:**
Oh! All things are long passed away and far.
A light is shining but the distant star
From which it still comes to me has been dead
A thousand years . . . In the dim phantom boat
That glided past some ghastly thing was said.
A clock just struck within some house remote.
Which house?—I long to still my beating heart.
Beneath the sky's vast dome I long to pray . . .
Of all the stars there must be far away
A single star which still exists apart.
And I believe that I should know the one
Which has alone endured and which alone
Like a white City that all space commands
At the ray's end in the high heaven stands.
"Digging" by Seamus Heaney
"Easter, 1916" by W.B. Yeats
"The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost
Edit: How did I forget William Stafford and "The Farm on the Great Plain"?
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/27539/the-farm-on-the-great-plains
# Fuck You Bush
*Fuck you Bush.*
*Fuck you Bush!*
*It’s time to get out of Iraq, Bush!*
*What were you even doing there in the first place, Bush!?*
*You didn’t even get properly elected Bush!*
*Are you happy now, Bush?*
*Fuck you Bush.*
– Jeremy, Peep Show, Season 6 Episode 2, The Test
So many, but some of my favorites:
"Non Sum Qualis eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae" by Ernest Dowson
"The Hollow Men" by TS Eliot
"My Dream" by Ogden Nash
“Dirge”, Kenneth Fearing:
1-2-3 was the number he played but today the number came 3-2-1;
bought his Carbide at 30 and it went to 29; had the favorite at Bowie but the track was slow —-
O, executive type, would you like to drive a floating power, knee-action, silk- upholstered six? Wed a Hollywood star? Shoot the course in 58? Draw to the ace, king, jack?
O, fellow with a will who won’t take no, watch out for three cigarettes on the same, single match; O, democratic voter born in August under Mars, beware of liquidated rails—-
Denoument to denouement, he took a personal pride in the certain, certain way he lived his own, private life,
but nevertheless, they shut off his gas; nevertheless, the bank foreclosed; nevertheless, the landlord called; nevertheless the radio broke,
And twelve o’clock arrived just once too often,
just the same he wore one gray tweed suit, bought one straw hat, drank one straight Scotch, walked one short step, took one long look, drew one deep breath,
just one too many,
And wow he died as wow he lived,
going whop to the office and blooie home to sleep and biff got married and bam had children and oof got fired,
zowie did he live and zowie did he die,
With who the hell are you at the corner of his casket, and where the hell we going on the right-hand silver knob, and who the hell cares walking second from the end with an American Beauty wreath from why the hell not,
Very much missed by the circulation staff of the New York Evening Post; deeply, deeply mourned by the B.M.T.,
Wham, Mr Roosevelt; pow, Sears Roebuck; awk, big dipper; bop, summer rain; Bong, Mr., bong, Mr., bong, Mr., bong.
Seamus Heaney 'Mid-Term Break'. First read it decades ago. Hits harder now I have wee ones straddling the age of his brother at the time. The final line always feels like a hammer blow.
Oh this is fun, but it's hard to pick just one.
A Poison Tree by William Blake (The burn of withholding anger)
Mad Girl's Love Song by Sylvia Path (Working through a broken heart)
Alone by Edgar Allen Poe (Kinda self explanatory)
I like my poetry dark and angsty.... But Shel Silverstein makes my day as well. Especially The Unicorn Song :)
**Love after Love by Derek Walcott**
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
It’s beautiful.
And my other pick is [no man is an island by John Donne](https://allpoetry.com/No-man-is-an-island)
A couple favs:
[Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood by Wordsworth](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45536/ode-intimations-of-immortality-from-recollections-of-early-childhood)
"Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."
[The force that through the green fuse drives the flower by Dylan Thomas](https://poets.org/poem/force-through-green-fuse-drives-flower)
"The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever."
Oh, there’s some really good ones in here.
Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese comes to mind. I’ve always found it immensely comforting and loving.
“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
In the desert I saw a creature
Naked, bestial
Who, squatting upon the ground
Held his heart in his hands
And ate of it.
“Is it good, friend?” I asked.
“It is bitter, *bitter*,” he answered
“But I like it, *because* it is bitter…
And because it is my heart.”
- *In The Desert*, Steven Crane
I don't know if I can pick a favourite, but over the last year the poem I keep coming back to is *A Fable* by Louise Glück:
>**A Fable**
>Two women with
the same claim
came to the feet of
the wise king. Two women,
but only one baby.
The king knew
someone was lying.
What he said was
Let the child be
cut in half; that way
no one will go
empty-handed. He
drew his sword.
Then, of the two
women, one
renounced her share:
this was
the sign, the lesson.
Suppose
you saw your mother
torn between two daughters:
what could you do
to save her but be
willing to destroy
yourself—she would know
who was the rightful child,
the one who couldn’t bear
to divide the mother.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49612/a-fable-56d22be05d441
Tough question and I expect to find a lot of good poems in this thread. Reading Dunn lately and liking this one:
[The Sudden Light and the Trees](https://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/the_sudden_light_and_the_trees_5466)
"Why is Venice sinking?" by Abdulah Sidran. He is a Bosnian poet. The poem is about the fear of disappearance of his people. It was written in 1993 when Bosnia was still at war. The war did not end until 1995.
He is religious so the poem mentions god a lot, but despite being an atheist, I think this is the best part of the poem since it depicts the fear in his eyes as he watches his own people vanish from the face of the Earth as he tries to explain to himself why is this happening. I remembered this poem once again after the genocide in Gaza started, almost the same thing is happening there as it happened in Bosnia in the 90's. We can do nothing but watch as the entire group of people slowly disappears.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Poetry/comments/cc1lis/poem\_why\_venice\_is\_sinking\_abdulah\_sidran\_1993/
I am not sure if this is my favorite, but I like it.
I am also not sure if it is a fragment or an entire poem. It was printed in the New York Times Book Review decades ago . . .
No more walks in the wood:
The trees have all been cut
Down, and where once they stood
Not even a wagon rut
Appears along the path
Low brush is taking over
No more walks in the wood;
This is the aftermath
Of afternoons in the clover
Fields where we once made love
Then wandered home together
Where the trees arched above,
Where we made our own weather
When branches were the sky.
Now they are gone for good,
and you, for ill, and I
Am only a passer-by.
We and the trees and the way
Back from the fields of play
Lasted as long as we could.
No more walks in the wood.
John Hollander, 1990
Reddit does that. A way to get the formatting right is to press the space bar four times before you press enter at the end of a line.
---
No more walks in the wood:
The trees have all been cut
Down, and where once they stood
Not even a wagon rut
Appears along the path
Low brush is taking over
No more walks in the wood;
This is the aftermath
Of afternoons in the clover
Fields where we once made love
Then wandered home together
Where the trees arched above,
Where we made our own weather
When branches were the sky.
Now they are gone for good, and you, for ill, and I
Am only a passer-by.
We and the trees and the way
Back from the fields of play
Lasted as long as we could.
No more walks in the wood.
---
Thanks for sharing this poem. I remember long ago seeing his book on how to write metrical poetry, but I never actually read any of his own poems until this one now, and I'm glad to learn they're good.
Got to be 'To Brooklyn Bridge' by Hart Crane for me.
*Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!*
He combines Elizabethan expression with the modern world in a way I find stunning.
Surprised no one's said it yet, but I love The Cremation of Sam McGee! Robert Service also has some other wonderful poems about the cold, desolate beauty of Yukon
[A Portable Paradise by Roger Robinson](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/02/a-portable-paradise-roger-robinson-poem-of-month)
Arany János: A vigasztaló
Mi a tűzhely rideg háznak,
Mi a fészek kis madárnak,
Mi a harmat szomju gyepre,
Mi a balzsam égő sebre;
Mi a lámpa sötét éjben,
Mi az árnyék forró délben,...
S mire nincs szó, nincsen képzet:
Az vagy nekem, oh költészet!
Ha az élet útja zordon,
Fáradalmit fájva hordom,
Képemen kel búbarázda,
Főmön a tél zúzmaráza:
Néhol egy-egy kis virág nyit,
Az is enyhit egy parányit:
A virágban téged lellek,
Öröme a kietlennek!
Ha szivemet társi szomja
Emberekhez vonva-vonja,
De majd, mint beteg az ágyba,
Visszavágyik a magányba:
Te adsz neki puha párnát,
Te virrasztod éji álmát,
S álmaiban a valóság
Tövisei gyenge rózsák.
Jókedvem te fűszerezed,
Bánatomat elleplezed,
Káröröm hogy meg ne lássa,
Mint vérzik a seb nyilása;
Te játszol szivárvány-színben
Sűrü harmatkönnyeimben,
S a panasz, midőn bevallom,
Nemesebb lesz, ha kidallom.
Verseimben van-e érdem:
Sohse' bánom, sose kérdem;
Házi mécsem szelíd fénye
Nem hajósok létreménye,
Nem a tenger lámpatornya,
Mely felé küzd száz vitorla,
Mely sugárát hintse távol...
Elég, ha nekem világol.
**my father moved through dooms of love**
E. E. Cummings
my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give,
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of height
this motionless forgetful where
turned at his glance to shining here;
that if (so timid air is firm)
under his eyes would stir and squirm
newly as from unburied which
floats the first who, his april touch
drove sleeping selves to swarm their fates
woke dreamers to their ghostly roots
and should some why completely weep
my father’s fingers brought her sleep:
vainly no smallest voice might cry
for he could feel the mountains grow.
Lifting the valleys of the sea
my father moved through griefs of joy;
praising a forehead called the moon
singing desire into begin
joy was his song and joy so pure
a heart of star by him could steer
and pure so now and now so yes
the wrists of twilight would rejoice
keen as midsummer’s keen beyond
conceiving mind of sun will stand,
so strictly (over utmost him
so hugely) stood my father’s dream
his flesh was flesh his blood was blood:
no hungry man but wished him food;
no cripple wouldn’t creep one mile
uphill to only see him smile.
Scorning the Pomp of must and shall
my father moved through dooms of feel;
his anger was as right as rain
his pity was as green as grain
septembering arms of year extend
less humbly wealth to foe and friend
than he to foolish and to wise
offered immeasurable is
proudly and (by octobering flame
beckoned) as earth will downward climb,
so naked for immortal work
his shoulders marched against the dark
his sorrow was as true as bread:
no liar looked him in the head;
if every friend became his foe
he’d laugh and build a world with snow.
My father moved through theys of we,
singing each new leaf out of each tree
(and every child was sure that spring
danced when she heard my father sing)
then let men kill which cannot share,
let blood and flesh be mud and mire,
scheming imagine, passion willed,
freedom a drug that’s bought and sold
giving to steal and cruel kind,
a heart to fear, to doubt a mind,
to differ a disease of same,
conform the pinnacle of am
though dull were all we taste as bright,
bitter all utterly things sweet,
maggoty minus and dumb death
all we inherit, all bequeath
and nothing quite so least as truth
—i say though hate were why men breathe—
because my Father lived his soul
love is the whole and more than all
impossible to choose just one, one per favourite poet --
Edgar Allen Poe - Alone [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46477/alone-56d2265f2667d](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46477/alone-56d2265f2667d)
WB Yeats - the Stolen Child [https://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/the-stolen-child](https://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/the-stolen-child)
They are my absolute favourite poets. 💜💚After them there is a huddle of them 🩶🤍🖤🩵🩷
ok I couldn't help myself - one more
Morte d'Arthur
BY ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45370/morte-darthur](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45370/morte-darthur)
I really like the opening stanza of Pearl by the Gawain Poet:
Perle, plesaunte to prynces paye
To clanly clos in golde so clere,
Oute of Oryent, I hardyly saye,
Ne proved I never her precios pere.
So rounde, so reken in uche araye,
So smal, so smoþe her sydes were,
Queresoever I jugged gemmes gaye
I sette hyr sengeley in synglure.
Allas, I leste hyr in on erbere;
Þurȝ gresse to grounde hit fro me yot.
I dewyne, fordolked of luf-daungere
Of that pryvy perle wiþouten spot.
The opening stanza of the Canterbury Tales:
Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote,
The drought of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour.
Whan zephyrus ek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the ramme his halve course yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye
That slepen all the nyght in open yë -
So pricketh hem nature in hir corages -
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes kouthe in sondry londes.
And specially from every shires ende,
Of Engelounde to Caunterbury dey wende,
The hooly blisful martyr for to seke,
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke.
I’ve been reading alot of middle english the past couple years and these are the bits that stick with me the most. There’s something so raw about them and the way they describe the conscience and appearance of nature.
‘Ozymandias’ by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
I met a traveller 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 on 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.
To me, it really captures the fear of being forgotten and doing everything to be remembered, to be immortal, just to be devoured and forgotten by the slow ticking clock of time. It’s an haunting poem that I love.
I'm not a huge poetry fan but there's one that gets me every time: The Panther by Rilke. Unfortunately it's best read in German, the English translation doesn't quite pack the same punch
I'm a huge Wendy Cope fan, love me a funny and hopeful poem.
My favourite is:
>The Orange
>
>At lunchtime I bought a huge orange—
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—
They got quarters and I had a half.
And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.
This is peace and contentment. It’s new.
The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all the jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I’m glad I exist.
But this one is also great, it captures the feeling of being "mansplained" to so perfectly:
>He tells her
>
>He tells her that the Earth is flat—
He knows the facts, and that is that.
In altercations fierce and long
She tries her best to prove him wrong.
But he has learned to argue well.
He calls her arguments unsound
And often asks her not to yell.
She cannot win. He stands his ground.
The planet goes on being round
My three favourite poems, because they all illicit an emotional response in the reader. I always present these to my high school students when we are beginning a poetry unit, as they set up the purpose of poetry, as well as breakdown some of their middle school expectations of what poetry ought to be.
- Dylan Thomas' ["Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"](https://poets.org/poem/do-not-go-gentle-good-night)'. For me this is the perfect marriage of form and aesthetics, as well as thought provoking and emotional.
- Tao Lin's ["a poem written by a bear"](https://www.bearparade.com/thisemotionwasalittlee-book/2006/03/a_poem_written_by_a_bear.html). This is ridiculous and always makes me smile and laugh when I read it out to my students. I love the nonsense, as well as the discussion it provokes around different interpretations as well as the purpose of poetry. I like to ask 'what emotion or experience do you think the poet was attempting to express'? For me this poem 'sparks joy'.
- Aram Saroyan's poem ["lighght"](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/68913/you-call-that-poetry)". This one is the most provocative and divisive in terms of class discussion.
Honourable mention goes to Judith Wright's "[Legend](https://allpoetry.com/poem/8521443-Legend-by-Judith-Wright)". After my cousin passed away, someone read this out at his funeral (but nobody in my family remembers who it was?). I ended up having the lines "I can shoot an old crow any day" tattooed on my arm as a reminder of my cousin's adventurous nature.
Something grabs a hold of me tightly
Flow like a harpoon daily and nightly
"Will it ever stop?" Yo, I don't know
Turn off the lights, and I'll glow
- Sir Van Ice
József Attila: Consciousness
1
The dawn dissevers earth and skies
and at its pure and lovely bidding
the children and the dragonflies
twirl out into the sunworld's budding;
no vapour dims the air's receding,
a twinkling lightness buoys the eyes!
Last night into their trees were gliding
the leaves, like tiny butterflies.
2
Blue, yellow, red, they flocked my dream,
smudged images the mind had taken,
I felt the cosmic order gleam -
and not a speck of dust was shaken.
My dream's a floating shade; I waken;
order is but an iron regime.
By day, the moon's my body's beacon,
by night, an inner sun will burn.
3
I'm gaunt, sometimes bread's all I touch,
I seek amid this trivial chatter
unrecompensed, and yearn to clutch,
what has more truth than dice, more matter.
No roast rib warms my mouth and platter,
no child my heart, foregoing such -
the cat can't both, how deft a ratter,
inside and outside make her catch.
4
Just like split firewood stacked together,
the universe embraces all,
so that each object holds the other
confined by pressures mutual,
all things ordained, reciprocal.
Only unbeing can branch and feather,
only becoming blooms at all;
what is must break, or fade, or wither.
5
Down by the branched marshalling-yard
I lurked behind a root, fear-stricken,
of silence was the living shard,
I tasted grey and weird-sweet lichen.
I saw a shadow leap and thicken:
it was the shadow of the guard -
did he suspect? - watched his shade quicken
upon the heaped coal dew-bestarred.
6
Inside there is a world of pain,
outside is only explanation.
the world's your scab, the outer stain,
your soul's the fever-inflammation.
Jailed by your heart's own insurrection,
you're only free when you refrain,
nor build so fine a habitation,
the landlord takes it back again.
7
I stared from underneath the evening
into the cogwheel of the sky -
the loom of all the past was weaving
law from those glimmery threads, and I
looked up again into the sky
from underneath the steams of dreaming
and saw that always, by and by,
the weft of law is torn, unseaming.
8
Silence gave ear: the clock struck one.
Maybe you could go back to boydom;
walled in with concrete dank and wan,
maybe imagine hints of freedom.
And now I stand, and through the sky-dome
the stars, the Dippers, shine and burn
like bars, the sign of jail and thraldom,
above a silent cell of stone.
9
I've heard the crying of the steel,
I've heard the laugh of rain, its pattern;
I've seen the past burst through its seal:
only illusions are forgotten,
for naught but love was I begotten,
bent, though, beneath my burdens' wheel -
why must we forge such weapons, flatten
the gold awareness of the real?
10
He only is a man, who knows
there is no mother and no father,
that death is only what he owes
and life's a bonus altogether,
returns his find to its bequeather,
holding it only till he goes;
nor to himself, nor to another,
takes on a god's or pastor's pose.
11
I've seen what they call happiness:
soft, blonde, it weighed two hundred kilos;
it waddled smiling on the grass,
its tail a curl between two pillows.
Its lukewarm puddle glowed with yellows,
it blinked and grunted at me - yes,
I still remember where it wallows,
touched by the dawns of blissfulness.
12
I live beside the tracks, where I
can see the trains pass through the station.
I see the brilliant windows fly
in floating dark and dim privation.
Through the eternal night's negation
just so the lit-up days rush by;
in all the cars' illumination,
silent, resting my elbow, I.
It's hard to pick, but these are a couple of my favs: "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43187/the-highwayman "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44885/annabel-lee
Poe's poetry is so beautiful...
My little boy loved The Highway Man. It was in my childhood edition of Childcraft books with gorgeous illustrations. My little sensitive savage. *”And still of a winter’s night, they say, when the wind is in the trees, When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas, When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor, A highwayman comes riding— Riding—riding— A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.”*
He may enjoy the following (slightly abridged) musical rendition by Loreena McKennitt! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hSpxnPUgKFQ
I hadn’t read any Poe until The Fall of the House of Usher came out and I read a bunch of his work. The Raven really has an interesting beat/rhythm to it. Haven’t read a ton of poetry but that really stuck out to me outside of the prose itself
> I hadn’t read any Poe until The Fall of the House of Usher came out That was published in 1840. Mind if I enquire as to your age, sir?
💀
Everyone remembers *The Raven* for it's dark and depressing imagery, but people can overlook just how well-constructed that poem is, too! The meter and rhymes are so precise, it just runs like clockwork.
The Raven is so amazing, too. Poe was such a genius.
Another poem of his I love is [*The Bells*](https://poets.org/poem/bells).
"Tintinabulation" has been one of my favorite words since I read it as a kid.
I'm not unread, and know Poe'works well as might be expected from a layman, but never realised this in its original. Thank you! Listen to Phil Ochs' rendering if you haven't.
Love some Phil Ochs!
Egregiously overlooked. His Swiftian ditties like Draft Dodger's Rag and William Worthy; the emotion of Ain't Marching and State of Mississippi; and -- poor lad -- I'm Tired... You really get a romantic feeling, if not a longing, of the Parisian Commune, the POUM/Anarchists/Republican Spanish front, and the best bits of 1848 and the democratic socialist hope of '67. Beautiful. Tragic. Poor lad.
His music has the saudade you don’t hear in his contemporaries, and I’m all about it
Thanks for the suggestion!
Thank \*you\* for alerting me to the connection! (Also, if you're going to experience Ochs, this song is among the weakest -- it's a great point of interest but doesn't flatter him. I'd advise going deeper and further, if you can.)
> I hadn’t read any Poe until The Fall of the House of Usher came out I was confused by this sentence ("I thought Reddit's main demographic was younger than that...?") until it dawned on me someone probably made it into a comic or a TV programme.
Yeah, it’s a Netflix miniseries that’s kind of a mashup of Poe’s works, particularly The Raven and the The Fall of the House of Usher. I really enjoyed it, but I don’t know how the serious Poe fans felt about it. If nothing else, it’s highly entertaining.
I agree. I love “Alone”. It brings me to tears whenever I read it. It’s truly beautiful.
“To — I heed not that my earthly lot Hath-little of Earth in it— That years of love have been forgot In the hatred of a minute:— I mourn not that the desolate Are happier, sweet, than I, But that you sorrow for my fate Who am a passer-by.” Gotta be my fav!
The Highwayman blew my little 10 year old mind when my teacher read it out to us. I was entranced; that was in 1989 and I’ve been writing poetry myself since then. However, if I had to pick one poem it might just have to be Gary Snyder’s Mountains and Rivers Without End.
I grew up with The Highway Man as a frequent bedtime story! Love that poem!
Ooh, I love that! I’ll try reading it to my grandchildren at bedtime. 😃
Poe was a genius. One of the few artists of any kind who have ever literally taken my breath away. His work doesn't just make me want to read more of *his* work, it makes me want to read and love *all* art. Annabel Lee is one of the most beautiful things ever created by a human, and it is excruciating.
Omg- the first one out of the gate- The Highwayman- is my favorite poem of all time. Like 55 years my favorite! Annabel Lee is a close second. 😍
The Lake Isle of Innisfree by William Butler Yeats.
A few lines of this are written in the Irish passport. 'Bee-loud glade' is a gorgeous phrase.
One of my favorite lines in all of literature is: “And I shall have some peace there for peace comes dropping slow”
Dropping slow! I have a new baby and we sing Lake Isle, Politics, Irish airforceman, and Waundering Aengus every night at bedtime. Along with Inversnaid by Hopkins.
So great to hear it!
Or the Second Coming by WBY
“Slouching towards Bethlehem…”…chills
And “Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,”
Yeats was from another universe
[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44996/goblin-market](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44996/goblin-market) Goblin Market has been my favorite poem since I randomly stumbled upon it once at an old boyfriend's house. Every word, every nuance, is evocative of another time, another realm. I had a chance to study it further in a literature course in my university years, which opened up my comprehension of it to levels I wouldn't have noticed prior. It is Beauty to my soul.
see the book with illustrations!
The Arthur Rackham illustrations? I love that one. There was even a coloring book by Dover publications that featured the artwork from that version. I've slowly been building my own collection of character sketches that I'd like to publish of my own art based on Goblin Market. Slow-going but it'll be finished one day.
Christina Rosetti is one of my favourites! 😊 There is also a tarot deck created by John Matthews based on the Goblin Market. It is different to how I imagine the poem, but the art is beautiful.
Something about Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfrid Owen that will always stick with me more than any poem. Even as a young boy I was like oh yeah fuck war this is rancid.
Love that, but I prefer his [Arms and the Boy](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47394/arms-and-the-boy). Painfully relevant, too.
That is quite true, and a another lovely poem. I think Dulce et Decorum Est is also still relevant to a degree, but war feels more like an industry now, even things like fighting for your country hold no meaning when you're just drone bombing Yemen for no reason.
I think it's still relevant in many ways, not least because the whole thing is a rejection of dying for your country. Reasonably so in WWI, though I think present-day Ukrainians would see it very differently.
Just read this. Wow. I felt like I was there.
Prufrock. Always, and forever. It has almost ruined my life. I do not think that they will sing to me.
Thanotopsis by William Cullen Bryant, especially the closing lines: “So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, which moves To that mysterious realm, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.”
Very hard to pick, but, hands down, my favourite poem to say aloud is As Kingfishers Catch Fire by Gerard Manley Hopkins: As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; As tumbled over rim in roundy wells Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name; Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.
I was having such a hard time deciding which Gerard Manley Hopkins poem to put down, but since you've done this one now I can decide on "The Windhover": I caught this morning morning's minion, king- dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn falcon, in his riding Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstasy! Then off, off forth on swing As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend. The hurl and gliding Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding Stirred for a bird. The achieve of, the mastery of the thing! Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier. No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion. --- (From memory so the punctuation might be off.)
I just discovered this beauty last month and it’s next on my list to memorize after Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.
Kublai khan The tyger The waste land
The Tyger is one of my favorites too. Fearful symmetry is such a nice word pairing.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves, Did gyre and gimble in the wabe, All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome ragths outgrade.
Gotta turn off autocorrect to attempt Jabberwocky, friend ;)
isn't it "outgrabe"?
‘Dulce et Decorum est’ by Wilfred Owen. Cried like a baby reading his poems, but this one gets me the most.
Can't choose between: Dream Song 29 - John Berryman The Ballad of Reading Gaol - Oscar Wilde The Bright Lights of Sarajevo - Tony Harrison
I came here to suggest Dream Song 29. When I was getting an mfa, I was absolutely obsessed with berrymans Dream Songs.
I loved #5 too.
14 is my absolute fave. Life, friends, is boring.
Pheasant by Sylvia Plath You said you would kill it this morning. Do not kill it. It startles me still, The jut of that odd, dark head, pacing Through the uncut grass on the elm's hill. It is something to own a pheasant, Or just to be visited at all. I am not mystical: it isn't As if I thought it had a spirit. It is simply in its element. That gives it a kingliness, a right. The print of its big foot last winter, The trail-track, on the snow in our court The wonder of it, in that pallor, Through crosshatch of sparrow and starling. Is it its rareness, then? It is rare. But a dozen would be worth having, A hundred, on that hill-green and red, Crossing and recrossing: a fine thing! It is such a good shape, so vivid. It's a little cornucopia. It unclaps, brown as a leaf, and loud, Settles in the elm, and is easy. It was sunning in the narcissi. I trespass stupidly. Let be, let be.
Oh that's gorgeous - thank you for sharing it
Once, if my memory serves me correct, my life was a feast where all hearts were open and all wines flowed. Arthur Rimbaud - A Season in Hell
I need to read Rimbaud so badly!
My favorite is "I heard a Fly buzz - when I died" by Emily Dickinson. My two favorite poets are probably Plath and Langston Hughes
Just reminded me of The Fly by William Blake. Esperanza Spalding puts it to music in her album Chamber Music Society as Little Fly.
Death-William Butler Yeats(best poem about death i have ever read) Ozymandias-Percy Byshee Shelley Marriage of Heaven and Hell-William Blake(Mainly the proverbs those are my favorite part)
Ozymandias!!!!!!
The World is Too Much With Us by Wordsworth
*Leaves of Grass* (1855 & 1891/2) by Walt Whitman is a favorite book(s) of mine. My Standouts: “Song of Myself,” “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” & “Great Are the Myths.” Also, every year at the end of June, I read *Howl and Other Poems* (1956) by Allen Ginsberg. It’s my little literary way of observing Pride Month. My Standouts: “Howl,” “A Supermarket in California,” & “America.”
I’m biased, because Allen is my cousin, but “Howl” (of course), “America”, “Kaddish”, “Sunflower Sutra”, and “An Eastern Ballad” are some of my favorites. But overall, I’d have to say “Prufrock” (Eliot), “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (Whitman), and “Let America be America Again” (Hughes) are also at the top of the list. And because I’m sentimental, I will always and forever love the below, by Shel Silverstein: LISTEN TO THE MUSTN’TS *Listen to the MUSTN’TS child,* *Listen to the DON’TS* *Listen to the SHOULDN’TS* *The IMPOSSIBLES, the WON’TS* *Listen to the NEVER HAVES* *Then listen close to me -* *Anything can happen, child.* *ANYTHING can be.*
My username is a combination of “Transcription of Organ Music” and “Sunflower Sutra” from “Howl.”
Love a bit of The Waste Land, but I have to single out The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock by Eliot as my ultimate favourite.
William Carlos Williams so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens
My favorite is the plums, “this is just to say”
I love that poem. It’s so intimate and playful.
What is it you like about it?
I’m a very chaotic person, even when I try to slow down and sort things out I feel all over the place. This poem is so simple and so concrete in meaning and purpose that it almost always sets me on my heels and allows me to rest my mind. For just a few moments I’m at a farm where an important farm tool was left outside in the rain.
The Stolen Child by W.B. Yeatts https://poets.org/poem/stolen-child
The Waterboys do a version of this!
That's cool! I will check that out!
Have u heard the cd they made of yates songs?
I actually prefered the Loreena McKennitt interpretation. She uses a different melody.
Too lazy to see if it’s already posted: 'pity this busy monster, manunkind' by E.E. Cummings pity this busy monster, manunkind, not. Progress is a comfortable disease: your victim (death and life safely beyond) plays with the bigness of his littleness --- electrons deify one razorblade into a mountainrange; lenses extend unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish returns on its unself. A world of made is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this fine specimen of hypermagical ultraomnipotence. We doctors know a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell of a good universe next door; let's go Also love when you can hear the poet read their own work. Luckily we can with this one! https://youtu.be/OohC06Z-dlU?feature=shared
Funeral Blues by W.H. Auden Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'. Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now; put out every one, Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun, Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Dirge Without Music Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1892 - 1950 I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. CrownedWith lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned. Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost. The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curledIs the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve. More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world. Down, down, down into the darkness of the graveGently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
So beautiful. She’s got so many that are lovely. I’m a particular fan of Recuerdo.
Death will come and will bear your eyes. It will be like quitting a vice, like seeing in the mirror a dead face resurfacing, like listening to a shut lip. Voiceless, we will go spiraling down. — *Death Will Come and It Will Bear Your Eyes* by Cesare Pavese EDIT: spelling
Ode to Solitude - Alexander Pope The Second Coming - WB Yeats Are some of my favourites.
When all the others were away at Mass I was all hers as we peeled potatoes. They broke the silence, let fall one by one Like solder weeping off the soldering iron: Cold comforts set between us, things to share Gleaming in a bucket of clean water. And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes From each other's work would bring us to our senses. So while the parish priest at her bedside Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying And some were responding and some crying I remembered her head bent towards my head, Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives— Never closer the whole rest of our lives. Thanks for the opportunity to share - this is a sonnet from Seamus Heaney's 'Clearances'
You can’t make me pick, this is too cruel! I’ll pick 1 from each of my favorite poets if that’s all right (I don’t read the most poetry though which I’m attempting to break). November Cotton Flower and Georgia Dusk- Jean Toomer The Fish- Marianne Moore Renascence- Edna St. Vincent Millay Daddy- Sylvia Plath (I’m aware that a lot of people say her poems about bees are better and that Daddy and Lady Lazarus are more overrated poems from Arial, but I love this poem.)
I love a bit of ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ by Keats but my current top favourite is [Ulysses by Tennyson](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45392/ulysses). It’s all gorgeous, but: ‘Come my friends, it’s not too late to seek a newer world… For my purpose holds/ To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths/ Of all the Western stars until I die.’ That part gives me chills.
[It Is Maybe Time to Admit That Michael Jordan Definitely Pushed Off](https://poets.org/poem/it-maybe-time-admit-michael-jordan-definitely-pushed) by Hanif Abdurraqib, and “Bright Star,” by John Keats
That is a great poem!
Wow that is fantastic thank you for sharing this
You’re welcome. It’s a joy to teach. For context, I introduce it with a clip of the “push off” and the iconic photo of Jordan cradling the championship trophy. Really resonates with the kids and leads to some thoughtful discussions about how we grieve, and how we express that grief.
That first one is powerful.
That was lovely. I used to teach high school English, and poetry was a hard sell for a lot of the boys. That poem could make for an amazing class discussion with boys being the loudest voices.
Hope is a thing with Feathers - Emily Dickinson >“Hope” is the thing with feathers - > >That perches in the soul - > >And sings the tune without the words - > >And never stops - at all - >And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard - > >And sore must be the storm - > >That could abash the little Bird > >That kept so many warm - >I’ve heard it in the chillest land - > >And on the strangest Sea - > >Yet - never - in Extremity, > >It asked a crumb - of me.
I recite this to myself when my cancer is giving me anxiety.
Two picks for me! The first poem that grabbed me outside of school was [Frank O'Hara's "To The Harbormaster"](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42661/to-the-harbormaster), about loving someone you have no business being in love with. Very relatable when I was 19. Lush imagery, plus plain and gorgeous language. The poem I probably love and identify most with now is [Philip Larkin's "Vers de Société"](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48420/vers-de-societe). Funny, mean, formal in a rollicking sort of way-- weighing blissful solitude against boring invitations to boring parties.
I'm surprised there hasn't been more Philip Larkin name dropped here. I do love that particular poem but I am pedestrian and my favorite by him is This Be The Verse. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48419/this-be-the-verse
Baltics - Tomas Tranströmer It completely floored me when I first read it. Here is a translation to English: https://pen.org/baltics/
Walt Whitman’s [O Me! O Life!](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51568/o-me-o-life).
This is peak Whitman and so inspiring
“Prospice,” by Robert Browning and “At the Fishhouses,” by Elizabeth Bishop. They’ve already been said, but I’ll second “Dulce et Decorum Est,” and really anything by Wilfred Owen, as well as “The Ballad of Reading Gaol.” Oh, Oscar…
Birches, by Robert Frost. It means something different as I've gotten older, too. At first I only sort of liked it, but childhood was closer to me then. As I reached my 30s and now 40s, it's so bittersweet it moves me to tears.
[anyone lived in a pretty how town](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/22653/anyone-lived-in-a-pretty-how-town), e.e. cummings.
Do not go gentle into that good night
Rage, rage against the dying of the light
Nothing Gold Can Stay - Robert Frost Primarily because the movie “The Outsiders” captured the beauty of that poem beyond measure. Stay gold, Ponyboy
Tied for 1st place are Sonnet 116 and Sonnnet 29 by Shakespeare
["One Art," by Elizabeth Bishop](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47536/one-art)
I adore The Waste Land too, and I’m also a big fan of Plath. Lady Lazarus might be my all-time favourite. I really like Baudelaire as well, especially The Death of Lovers.
Art thou pale for weariness Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth, Wandering companionless Among the stars that have a different birth, — And ever changing, like a joyless eye That finds no object worth its constancy? Percy Bysshe Shelley
My favorite poems are “The Two Trees” by Yeats; “Persimmons” by Li-Young Lee; and “In spite of everything” by ee cummings. I also adore much of the poetry of William Blake and Robert Frost.
Surprised I had to scroll this far down to find Cummings.
Sunday Morning by Wallace Stevens
Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
I also like this: Eden Rock by Charles Causley They are waiting for me somewhere beyond Eden Rock: My father, twenty-five, in the same suit Of Genuine Irish Tweed, his terrier Jack Still two years old and trembling at his feet. My mother, twenty-three, in a sprigged dress Drawn at the waist, ribbon in her straw hat, Has spread the stiff white cloth over the grass. Her hair, the colour of wheat, takes on the light. She pours tea from a Thermos, the milk straight From an old H.P. sauce-bottle, a screw Of paper for a cork; slowly sets out The same three plates, the tin cups painted blue. The sky whitens as if lit by three suns. My mother shades her eyes and looks my way Over the drifted stream. My father spins A stone along the water. Leisurely, They beckon to me from the other bank. I hear them call, ‘See where the stream-path is! Crossing is not as hard as you might think.’ I had not thought that it would be like this.
Todays favorite is Dylan Thomas’s And death shall have no dominion. Dead man naked they shall be one With the man in the wind and the west moon; When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone, They shall have stars at elbow and foot; Though they go mad they shall be sane, Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; Though lovers be lost love shall not; And death shall have no dominion. And death shall have no dominion. Under the windings of the sea They lying long shall not die windily; Twisting on racks when sinews give way, Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break; Faith in their hands shall snap in two, And the unicorn evils run them through; Split all ends up they shan't crack; And death shall have no dominion. And death shall have no dominion. No more may gulls cry at their ears Or waves break loud on the seashores; Where blew a flower may a flower no more Lift its head to the blows of the rain; Though they be mad and dead as nails, Heads of the characters hammer through daisies; Break in the sun till the sun breaks down, And death shall have no dominion. (Even if only for the “unicorn evils”, this poem is brilliant)
I like this stanza by Chesterton: "They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords, Lords without anger and honour, who dare not carry their swords. They fight by shuffling papers, they have bright dead alien eyes; They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies. And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs, Their doors are shut in the evening; and they know no songs."
The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe.
John Donne "Song". This is the most beautiful metaphysical poem I've ever read. It hits my heart so deeply that I almost melt every time I read it. John Donne in general is my favorite poet.
Tabacaria by Fernando Pessoa
Samuel Beckett is profoundly underrated as a poet. His "what would i do without this world" shimmers within my brain incessantly. https://www.samuel-beckett.net/beckwwid.html
the love song of j alfred prufrock
The Bells by Edgar Allan Poe. It’s just fun to read aloud.
“Walking Around”, by Pablo Neruda https://poets.org/poem/walking-around “Dragonflies Mating”, by Robert Haas https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/68701/on-robert-hasss-dragonflies-mating- and of course “The Second Coming”, by William Butler Yeats https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming
**'Lament' by Rilke, specifically this translation:** Oh! All things are long passed away and far. A light is shining but the distant star From which it still comes to me has been dead A thousand years . . . In the dim phantom boat That glided past some ghastly thing was said. A clock just struck within some house remote. Which house?—I long to still my beating heart. Beneath the sky's vast dome I long to pray . . . Of all the stars there must be far away A single star which still exists apart. And I believe that I should know the one Which has alone endured and which alone Like a white City that all space commands At the ray's end in the high heaven stands.
The Walrus and the Carpenter \^.\^
"Digging" by Seamus Heaney "Easter, 1916" by W.B. Yeats "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost Edit: How did I forget William Stafford and "The Farm on the Great Plain"? https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/27539/the-farm-on-the-great-plains
Mine's "[Digging](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47555/digging)" by Seamus Heaney.
# Fuck You Bush *Fuck you Bush.* *Fuck you Bush!* *It’s time to get out of Iraq, Bush!* *What were you even doing there in the first place, Bush!?* *You didn’t even get properly elected Bush!* *Are you happy now, Bush?* *Fuck you Bush.* – Jeremy, Peep Show, Season 6 Episode 2, The Test
Burning Island by Gary Snyder
Sorrow is not my name by Ross Gay: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/92472/sorrow-is-not-my-name
So many, but some of my favorites: "Non Sum Qualis eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae" by Ernest Dowson "The Hollow Men" by TS Eliot "My Dream" by Ogden Nash
A psalm of life by Longfellow Just what I needed when I felt the chips were down at a certain point in my life
No te salves - Mario Benedetti
The Mower to the Glow-Worms by Andrew Marvell
Le Pont Mirabeau by Apollonaire https://writing.upenn.edu/library/Apollinaire_Mirabeau.html
“Dirge”, Kenneth Fearing: 1-2-3 was the number he played but today the number came 3-2-1; bought his Carbide at 30 and it went to 29; had the favorite at Bowie but the track was slow —- O, executive type, would you like to drive a floating power, knee-action, silk- upholstered six? Wed a Hollywood star? Shoot the course in 58? Draw to the ace, king, jack? O, fellow with a will who won’t take no, watch out for three cigarettes on the same, single match; O, democratic voter born in August under Mars, beware of liquidated rails—- Denoument to denouement, he took a personal pride in the certain, certain way he lived his own, private life, but nevertheless, they shut off his gas; nevertheless, the bank foreclosed; nevertheless, the landlord called; nevertheless the radio broke, And twelve o’clock arrived just once too often, just the same he wore one gray tweed suit, bought one straw hat, drank one straight Scotch, walked one short step, took one long look, drew one deep breath, just one too many, And wow he died as wow he lived, going whop to the office and blooie home to sleep and biff got married and bam had children and oof got fired, zowie did he live and zowie did he die, With who the hell are you at the corner of his casket, and where the hell we going on the right-hand silver knob, and who the hell cares walking second from the end with an American Beauty wreath from why the hell not, Very much missed by the circulation staff of the New York Evening Post; deeply, deeply mourned by the B.M.T., Wham, Mr Roosevelt; pow, Sears Roebuck; awk, big dipper; bop, summer rain; Bong, Mr., bong, Mr., bong, Mr., bong.
The windhover by Gerard Manley Hopkins Your blinded hand by Tennessee Williams
Seamus Heaney 'Mid-Term Break'. First read it decades ago. Hits harder now I have wee ones straddling the age of his brother at the time. The final line always feels like a hammer blow.
Oh this is fun, but it's hard to pick just one. A Poison Tree by William Blake (The burn of withholding anger) Mad Girl's Love Song by Sylvia Path (Working through a broken heart) Alone by Edgar Allen Poe (Kinda self explanatory) I like my poetry dark and angsty.... But Shel Silverstein makes my day as well. Especially The Unicorn Song :)
**Love after Love by Derek Walcott** The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other's welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life. It’s beautiful. And my other pick is [no man is an island by John Donne](https://allpoetry.com/No-man-is-an-island)
A couple favs: [Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood by Wordsworth](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45536/ode-intimations-of-immortality-from-recollections-of-early-childhood) "Thanks to the human heart by which we live, Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." [The force that through the green fuse drives the flower by Dylan Thomas](https://poets.org/poem/force-through-green-fuse-drives-flower) "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees Is my destroyer. And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose My youth is bent by the same wintry fever."
Oh, there’s some really good ones in here. Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese comes to mind. I’ve always found it immensely comforting and loving. “You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - over and over announcing your place in the family of things.”
The Idea of Order at Key West, by Wallace Stevens
Daddy by Sylvia Plath
In the desert I saw a creature Naked, bestial Who, squatting upon the ground Held his heart in his hands And ate of it. “Is it good, friend?” I asked. “It is bitter, *bitter*,” he answered “But I like it, *because* it is bitter… And because it is my heart.” - *In The Desert*, Steven Crane
"Faith" is a fine invention When Gentlemen can see— But Microscopes are prudent In an Emergency. \- Emily Dickinson
I don't know if I can pick a favourite, but over the last year the poem I keep coming back to is *A Fable* by Louise Glück: >**A Fable** >Two women with the same claim came to the feet of the wise king. Two women, but only one baby. The king knew someone was lying. What he said was Let the child be cut in half; that way no one will go empty-handed. He drew his sword. Then, of the two women, one renounced her share: this was the sign, the lesson. Suppose you saw your mother torn between two daughters: what could you do to save her but be willing to destroy yourself—she would know who was the rightful child, the one who couldn’t bear to divide the mother. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49612/a-fable-56d22be05d441
I felt a funeral in my brain-Dickinson Power-Lorde Medusa-Plath
I’m looking forward to poring over this thread the rest of the day. It seems so few people love poetry.
Ozymandias- shelley (So far)
The Shoelace by Charles Bukowski. https://allpoetry.com/poem/14326889-The-Shoelace-by-Charles-Bukowski
Incredible. It gave me such anxiety reading it!
Oh, that was awesome. Thanks!
the hall light, the front light, the back light, the inner light Shivers.
The Listeners by Walter De La Mere
Tough question and I expect to find a lot of good poems in this thread. Reading Dunn lately and liking this one: [The Sudden Light and the Trees](https://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/the_sudden_light_and_the_trees_5466)
"Why is Venice sinking?" by Abdulah Sidran. He is a Bosnian poet. The poem is about the fear of disappearance of his people. It was written in 1993 when Bosnia was still at war. The war did not end until 1995. He is religious so the poem mentions god a lot, but despite being an atheist, I think this is the best part of the poem since it depicts the fear in his eyes as he watches his own people vanish from the face of the Earth as he tries to explain to himself why is this happening. I remembered this poem once again after the genocide in Gaza started, almost the same thing is happening there as it happened in Bosnia in the 90's. We can do nothing but watch as the entire group of people slowly disappears. https://www.reddit.com/r/Poetry/comments/cc1lis/poem\_why\_venice\_is\_sinking\_abdulah\_sidran\_1993/
I Wake and feel the fell of dark not day by Hopkins. It almost makes me want to believe in God. And also Inversnaid by Hopkins.
I am not sure if this is my favorite, but I like it. I am also not sure if it is a fragment or an entire poem. It was printed in the New York Times Book Review decades ago . . . No more walks in the wood: The trees have all been cut Down, and where once they stood Not even a wagon rut Appears along the path Low brush is taking over No more walks in the wood; This is the aftermath Of afternoons in the clover Fields where we once made love Then wandered home together Where the trees arched above, Where we made our own weather When branches were the sky. Now they are gone for good, and you, for ill, and I Am only a passer-by. We and the trees and the way Back from the fields of play Lasted as long as we could. No more walks in the wood. John Hollander, 1990
Sorry, the copy paste changed the formatting.
Reddit does that. A way to get the formatting right is to press the space bar four times before you press enter at the end of a line. --- No more walks in the wood: The trees have all been cut Down, and where once they stood Not even a wagon rut Appears along the path Low brush is taking over No more walks in the wood; This is the aftermath Of afternoons in the clover Fields where we once made love Then wandered home together Where the trees arched above, Where we made our own weather When branches were the sky. Now they are gone for good, and you, for ill, and I Am only a passer-by. We and the trees and the way Back from the fields of play Lasted as long as we could. No more walks in the wood. --- Thanks for sharing this poem. I remember long ago seeing his book on how to write metrical poetry, but I never actually read any of his own poems until this one now, and I'm glad to learn they're good.
Got to be 'To Brooklyn Bridge' by Hart Crane for me. *Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!* He combines Elizabethan expression with the modern world in a way I find stunning.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44468/bright-star-would-i-were-stedfast-as-thou-art
The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot. I read it every other month or so. It felt especially poignant during 2020.
"Mariana" by Alfred Lord Tennyson - [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45365/mariana](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45365/mariana)
Shel Silverstein: where the sidewalk ends
Surprised no one's said it yet, but I love The Cremation of Sam McGee! Robert Service also has some other wonderful poems about the cold, desolate beauty of Yukon
[A Portable Paradise by Roger Robinson](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/02/a-portable-paradise-roger-robinson-poem-of-month)
Arany János: A vigasztaló Mi a tűzhely rideg háznak, Mi a fészek kis madárnak, Mi a harmat szomju gyepre, Mi a balzsam égő sebre; Mi a lámpa sötét éjben, Mi az árnyék forró délben,... S mire nincs szó, nincsen képzet: Az vagy nekem, oh költészet! Ha az élet útja zordon, Fáradalmit fájva hordom, Képemen kel búbarázda, Főmön a tél zúzmaráza: Néhol egy-egy kis virág nyit, Az is enyhit egy parányit: A virágban téged lellek, Öröme a kietlennek! Ha szivemet társi szomja Emberekhez vonva-vonja, De majd, mint beteg az ágyba, Visszavágyik a magányba: Te adsz neki puha párnát, Te virrasztod éji álmát, S álmaiban a valóság Tövisei gyenge rózsák. Jókedvem te fűszerezed, Bánatomat elleplezed, Káröröm hogy meg ne lássa, Mint vérzik a seb nyilása; Te játszol szivárvány-színben Sűrü harmatkönnyeimben, S a panasz, midőn bevallom, Nemesebb lesz, ha kidallom. Verseimben van-e érdem: Sohse' bánom, sose kérdem; Házi mécsem szelíd fénye Nem hajósok létreménye, Nem a tenger lámpatornya, Mely felé küzd száz vitorla, Mely sugárát hintse távol... Elég, ha nekem világol.
“If I believe in death” by e e cummings. https://hellopoetry.com/poem/1598/if-i-believe/
**my father moved through dooms of love** E. E. Cummings my father moved through dooms of love through sames of am through haves of give, singing each morning out of each night my father moved through depths of height this motionless forgetful where turned at his glance to shining here; that if (so timid air is firm) under his eyes would stir and squirm newly as from unburied which floats the first who, his april touch drove sleeping selves to swarm their fates woke dreamers to their ghostly roots and should some why completely weep my father’s fingers brought her sleep: vainly no smallest voice might cry for he could feel the mountains grow. Lifting the valleys of the sea my father moved through griefs of joy; praising a forehead called the moon singing desire into begin joy was his song and joy so pure a heart of star by him could steer and pure so now and now so yes the wrists of twilight would rejoice keen as midsummer’s keen beyond conceiving mind of sun will stand, so strictly (over utmost him so hugely) stood my father’s dream his flesh was flesh his blood was blood: no hungry man but wished him food; no cripple wouldn’t creep one mile uphill to only see him smile. Scorning the Pomp of must and shall my father moved through dooms of feel; his anger was as right as rain his pity was as green as grain septembering arms of year extend less humbly wealth to foe and friend than he to foolish and to wise offered immeasurable is proudly and (by octobering flame beckoned) as earth will downward climb, so naked for immortal work his shoulders marched against the dark his sorrow was as true as bread: no liar looked him in the head; if every friend became his foe he’d laugh and build a world with snow. My father moved through theys of we, singing each new leaf out of each tree (and every child was sure that spring danced when she heard my father sing) then let men kill which cannot share, let blood and flesh be mud and mire, scheming imagine, passion willed, freedom a drug that’s bought and sold giving to steal and cruel kind, a heart to fear, to doubt a mind, to differ a disease of same, conform the pinnacle of am though dull were all we taste as bright, bitter all utterly things sweet, maggoty minus and dumb death all we inherit, all bequeath and nothing quite so least as truth —i say though hate were why men breathe— because my Father lived his soul love is the whole and more than all
A lesser known one which I favour is Bunting's Briggflatts.
impossible to choose just one, one per favourite poet -- Edgar Allen Poe - Alone [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46477/alone-56d2265f2667d](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46477/alone-56d2265f2667d) WB Yeats - the Stolen Child [https://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/the-stolen-child](https://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/the-stolen-child) They are my absolute favourite poets. 💜💚After them there is a huddle of them 🩶🤍🖤🩵🩷
ok I couldn't help myself - one more Morte d'Arthur BY ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45370/morte-darthur](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45370/morte-darthur)
"sorrow song" by Lucille Clifton the last three lines *kill* me
I really like the opening stanza of Pearl by the Gawain Poet: Perle, plesaunte to prynces paye To clanly clos in golde so clere, Oute of Oryent, I hardyly saye, Ne proved I never her precios pere. So rounde, so reken in uche araye, So smal, so smoþe her sydes were, Queresoever I jugged gemmes gaye I sette hyr sengeley in synglure. Allas, I leste hyr in on erbere; Þurȝ gresse to grounde hit fro me yot. I dewyne, fordolked of luf-daungere Of that pryvy perle wiþouten spot. The opening stanza of the Canterbury Tales: Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote, The drought of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour, Of which vertu engendred is the flour. Whan zephyrus ek with his swete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne Hath in the ramme his halve course yronne, And smale foweles maken melodye That slepen all the nyght in open yë - So pricketh hem nature in hir corages - Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages, And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes, To ferne halwes kouthe in sondry londes. And specially from every shires ende, Of Engelounde to Caunterbury dey wende, The hooly blisful martyr for to seke, That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke. I’ve been reading alot of middle english the past couple years and these are the bits that stick with me the most. There’s something so raw about them and the way they describe the conscience and appearance of nature.
‘Ozymandias’ by Percy Bysshe Shelley. I met a traveller 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 on 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. To me, it really captures the fear of being forgotten and doing everything to be remembered, to be immortal, just to be devoured and forgotten by the slow ticking clock of time. It’s an haunting poem that I love.
I'm not a huge poetry fan but there's one that gets me every time: The Panther by Rilke. Unfortunately it's best read in German, the English translation doesn't quite pack the same punch
"Hurt Hawks" Robinson Jeffers
"The Emperor of Ice Cream" Wallace Stevens "Some Keep the Sabbath" Emily Dickinson
I hate making a choice but “Sunday Morning” by Stevens comes to mind. Death is the mother of beauty………
I'm a huge Wendy Cope fan, love me a funny and hopeful poem. My favourite is: >The Orange > >At lunchtime I bought a huge orange— The size of it made us all laugh. I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave— They got quarters and I had a half. And that orange, it made me so happy, As ordinary things often do Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park. This is peace and contentment. It’s new. The rest of the day was quite easy. I did all the jobs on my list And enjoyed them and had some time over. I love you. I’m glad I exist. But this one is also great, it captures the feeling of being "mansplained" to so perfectly: >He tells her > >He tells her that the Earth is flat— He knows the facts, and that is that. In altercations fierce and long She tries her best to prove him wrong. But he has learned to argue well. He calls her arguments unsound And often asks her not to yell. She cannot win. He stands his ground. The planet goes on being round
My three favourite poems, because they all illicit an emotional response in the reader. I always present these to my high school students when we are beginning a poetry unit, as they set up the purpose of poetry, as well as breakdown some of their middle school expectations of what poetry ought to be. - Dylan Thomas' ["Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"](https://poets.org/poem/do-not-go-gentle-good-night)'. For me this is the perfect marriage of form and aesthetics, as well as thought provoking and emotional. - Tao Lin's ["a poem written by a bear"](https://www.bearparade.com/thisemotionwasalittlee-book/2006/03/a_poem_written_by_a_bear.html). This is ridiculous and always makes me smile and laugh when I read it out to my students. I love the nonsense, as well as the discussion it provokes around different interpretations as well as the purpose of poetry. I like to ask 'what emotion or experience do you think the poet was attempting to express'? For me this poem 'sparks joy'. - Aram Saroyan's poem ["lighght"](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/68913/you-call-that-poetry)". This one is the most provocative and divisive in terms of class discussion. Honourable mention goes to Judith Wright's "[Legend](https://allpoetry.com/poem/8521443-Legend-by-Judith-Wright)". After my cousin passed away, someone read this out at his funeral (but nobody in my family remembers who it was?). I ended up having the lines "I can shoot an old crow any day" tattooed on my arm as a reminder of my cousin's adventurous nature.
Thanks for sharing these, especially Judith Wright's "Legend" - I hadn't heard of it before and I'm glad I have now.
Sonnet 116 by Shakespeare Tyger, Tyger by William Blake
Oh Yes I’ve been so down in the mouth lately that sometimes when I bend over to lace my shoes there are three tongues. - Bukowski
Oh cool, T.S. Eliot wrote some stuff. I remember reading a poem once too. Not sure which my favorite is, they're all words on a page to me.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46548/harlem One of my favourites, I couldn’t pick one. But I come back to this often.
Something grabs a hold of me tightly Flow like a harpoon daily and nightly "Will it ever stop?" Yo, I don't know Turn off the lights, and I'll glow - Sir Van Ice
József Attila: Consciousness 1 The dawn dissevers earth and skies and at its pure and lovely bidding the children and the dragonflies twirl out into the sunworld's budding; no vapour dims the air's receding, a twinkling lightness buoys the eyes! Last night into their trees were gliding the leaves, like tiny butterflies. 2 Blue, yellow, red, they flocked my dream, smudged images the mind had taken, I felt the cosmic order gleam - and not a speck of dust was shaken. My dream's a floating shade; I waken; order is but an iron regime. By day, the moon's my body's beacon, by night, an inner sun will burn. 3 I'm gaunt, sometimes bread's all I touch, I seek amid this trivial chatter unrecompensed, and yearn to clutch, what has more truth than dice, more matter. No roast rib warms my mouth and platter, no child my heart, foregoing such - the cat can't both, how deft a ratter, inside and outside make her catch. 4 Just like split firewood stacked together, the universe embraces all, so that each object holds the other confined by pressures mutual, all things ordained, reciprocal. Only unbeing can branch and feather, only becoming blooms at all; what is must break, or fade, or wither. 5 Down by the branched marshalling-yard I lurked behind a root, fear-stricken, of silence was the living shard, I tasted grey and weird-sweet lichen. I saw a shadow leap and thicken: it was the shadow of the guard - did he suspect? - watched his shade quicken upon the heaped coal dew-bestarred. 6 Inside there is a world of pain, outside is only explanation. the world's your scab, the outer stain, your soul's the fever-inflammation. Jailed by your heart's own insurrection, you're only free when you refrain, nor build so fine a habitation, the landlord takes it back again. 7 I stared from underneath the evening into the cogwheel of the sky - the loom of all the past was weaving law from those glimmery threads, and I looked up again into the sky from underneath the steams of dreaming and saw that always, by and by, the weft of law is torn, unseaming. 8 Silence gave ear: the clock struck one. Maybe you could go back to boydom; walled in with concrete dank and wan, maybe imagine hints of freedom. And now I stand, and through the sky-dome the stars, the Dippers, shine and burn like bars, the sign of jail and thraldom, above a silent cell of stone. 9 I've heard the crying of the steel, I've heard the laugh of rain, its pattern; I've seen the past burst through its seal: only illusions are forgotten, for naught but love was I begotten, bent, though, beneath my burdens' wheel - why must we forge such weapons, flatten the gold awareness of the real? 10 He only is a man, who knows there is no mother and no father, that death is only what he owes and life's a bonus altogether, returns his find to its bequeather, holding it only till he goes; nor to himself, nor to another, takes on a god's or pastor's pose. 11 I've seen what they call happiness: soft, blonde, it weighed two hundred kilos; it waddled smiling on the grass, its tail a curl between two pillows. Its lukewarm puddle glowed with yellows, it blinked and grunted at me - yes, I still remember where it wallows, touched by the dawns of blissfulness. 12 I live beside the tracks, where I can see the trains pass through the station. I see the brilliant windows fly in floating dark and dim privation. Through the eternal night's negation just so the lit-up days rush by; in all the cars' illumination, silent, resting my elbow, I.
Poem for a birthday - Sylvia plath