Share your favorite poems...

Discussion in 'Books' started by HartwickFan, May 4, 2009.

  1. HartwickFan

    HartwickFan Member

    Jul 31, 1999
    Climax, MI
    Club:
    VfR Wormatia 08 Worms
    Nat'l Team:
    Tuvalu
    Here are a few of my favorites:

    Eros Turannos, by E.A. Arlington http://www.slate.com/id/3397/

    Mad Girl's Love Song, by Silvia Plath http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/madgirl.html

    A Misunderstanding, by Maggie Nelson http://counterbalance.typepad.com/counterbalance/2007/03/a_misunderstand.html

    I Know a Man, by Robert Creeley http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=171564

    One Art, by Elizabeth Bishop http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15212

    Something About the Trees, by Linda Pastan http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/something-about-the-trees/

    In Time of Daffodils, by e.e. cummings http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/eecummings/11926

    Please share some of your favorites! :)
     
  2. royalstilton

    royalstilton Member

    Aug 2, 2004
    SoCal
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
  3. royalstilton

    royalstilton Member

    Aug 2, 2004
    SoCal
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    This Is Just To Say by William Carlos Williams

    I have eaten
    the plums
    that were in
    the icebox

    and which
    you were probably
    saving
    for breakfast

    Forgive me
    they were delicious
    so sweet
    and so cold
     
  4. royalstilton

    royalstilton Member

    Aug 2, 2004
    SoCal
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
  5. Atouk

    Atouk BigSoccer Supporter

    DC United
    Apr 16, 2001
    Arlington, VA
    Club:
    Queens Park Rangers FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
  6. Ian Lozada

    Ian Lozada Member

    May 29, 2001
    The Pick Four Pool
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    "There once was a man from Nantucket..."
     
  7. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    Kenneth Rexroth: "Portrait of the Author as a Young Anarchist"


    1917-18-19,
    While things were going on in Europe,
    Our most used term of scorn or abuse
    Was “bushwa.” We employed it correctly,
    But we thought it was French for “bullshit.”
    I lived in Toledo, Ohio,
    On Delaware Avenue, the line
    Between the rich and poor neighborhoods.
    We played in the jungles by Ten Mile Creek,
    And along the golf course in Ottawa Park.
    There were two classes of kids, and they
    Had nothing in common: the rich kids
    Who worked as caddies, and the poor kids
    Who snitched golf balls. I belonged to the
    Saving group of exceptionalists
    Who, after dark, and on rainy days,
    Stole out and shat in the golf holes.
     
  8. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
  9. royalstilton

    royalstilton Member

    Aug 2, 2004
    SoCal
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    i was born in Toledo and i have played golf at Ottawa Park. it's a muni, which means anyone can play there and it's pretty cheap. i'm not sure Rexroth actually lived in Toledo, but this is a wonderful bit of poetry, scatological as it may be...
     
  10. Iceblink

    Iceblink Member

    Oct 11, 1999
    Chicago
    Club:
    Ipswich Town FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I Chop Some Parsley While Listening To Art Blakey's Version Of "Three Blind Mice"
    by Billy Collins

    And I start wondering how they came to be blind.
    If it was congenital, they could be brothers and sister,
    and I think of the poor mother
    brooding over her sightless young triplets.

    Or was it a common accident, all three caught
    in a searing explosion, a firework perhaps?
    If not,
    if each came to his or her blindness separately,

    how did they ever manage to find one another?
    Would it not be difficult for a blind mouse
    to locate even one fellow mouse with vision
    let alone two other blind ones?

    And how, in their tiny darkness,
    could they possibly have run after a farmer's wife
    or anyone else's wife for that matter?
    Not to mention why.

    Just so she could cut off their tails
    with a carving knife, is the cynic's answer,
    but the thought of them without eyes
    and now without tails to trail through the moist grass

    or slip around the corner of a baseboard
    has the cynic who always lounges within me
    up off his couch and at the window
    trying to hide the rising softness that he feels.

    By now I am on to dicing an onion
    which might account for the wet stinging
    in my own eyes, though Freddie Hubbard's
    mournful trumpet on "Blue Moon,"

    which happens to be the next cut,
    cannot be said to be making matters any better.
     
  11. Iceblink

    Iceblink Member

    Oct 11, 1999
    Chicago
    Club:
    Ipswich Town FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Don't let that horse

    Don't let that horse
    eat that violin
    cried Chagall's mother

    But he
    kept right on
    painting

    And became famous

    And kept on painting
    The Horse With Violin In Mouth
    And when he finally finished it
    he jumped up upon the horse
    and rode away
    waving the violin

    And then with a low bow gave it
    to the first naked nude he ran across

    And there were no strings
    attached

    Lawrence Ferlinghetti
     
  12. Iceblink

    Iceblink Member

    Oct 11, 1999
    Chicago
    Club:
    Ipswich Town FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    This one requires some thought before you can see that it's not worthless. I use it with my students. We've talked about it for a whole class period.

    Nothing in That Drawer
    by Ron Padgett

    Nothing in that drawer.
    Nothing in that drawer.
    Nothing in that drawer.
    Nothing in that drawer.
    Nothing in that drawer.
    Nothing in that drawer.
    Nothing in that drawer.
    Nothing in that drawer.
    Nothing in that drawer.
    Nothing in that drawer.
    Nothing in that drawer.
    Nothing in that drawer.
    Nothing in that drawer.
    Nothing in that drawer.
     
  13. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    One of my favorite 20th century sonnets!
     
  14. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
  15. royalstilton

    royalstilton Member

    Aug 2, 2004
    SoCal
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    i have the album on which these tunes are recorded.

    Billy Collins did good.

    or did "well", but i prefer "good" in these sorts of circumstances...
     
  16. Iceblink

    Iceblink Member

    Oct 11, 1999
    Chicago
    Club:
    Ipswich Town FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Ya know. It's funny. I heard him read this poem on NPR... Listening to a single oral interpretation from the poet kind of ruined it for me. It was weird. I found it limiting.

    Incidentally, I was in a class today and we analyzed a poem, so I'm going to list another favorite. It was shocking to me that I liked it, because I hated one of her other poems, "She Had Some Horses" especially hearing her read it aloud... But this one I really liked.


    Perhaps the World Ends Here
    by Joy Harjo

    The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

    The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

    We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

    It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

    At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

    Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

    This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

    Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

    We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

    At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

    Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.
     
  17. Iceblink

    Iceblink Member

    Oct 11, 1999
    Chicago
    Club:
    Ipswich Town FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Oh... and I was curious about him (and now you) calling it a sonnet. I thought that, by definition, sonnets were iambic pentameter. These aren't iambs, and there are only five syllables in each line. Whassup wit dat?!
     
  18. HartwickFan

    HartwickFan Member

    Jul 31, 1999
    Climax, MI
    Club:
    VfR Wormatia 08 Worms
    Nat'l Team:
    Tuvalu
    This is one of my favorites as well. I just love the last stanza:

    Speaking indifferently to him,
    who had driven out the cold
    and polished my good shoes as well.
    What did I know, what did I know
    of love’s austere and lonely offices?

    :)
     
  19. HartwickFan

    HartwickFan Member

    Jul 31, 1999
    Climax, MI
    Club:
    VfR Wormatia 08 Worms
    Nat'l Team:
    Tuvalu
    Ogden Nash has some poems that always make me chuckle:

    The Panther

    If called by a panther
    Don't anther


    "Reflections on Ice-Breaking"

    Candy
    Is dandy
    But liquor
    Is quicker.


    The Turtle

    The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
    Which practically conceal its sex.
    I think it clever of the turtle
    In such a fix to be so fertile.
     
  20. royalstilton

    royalstilton Member

    Aug 2, 2004
    SoCal
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    it's interesting to me as a person who really loves words that the simple repetition of "what did I know" makes all the difference in the world ( howzat for a cliché? ).
     
  21. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire

    That's a good point. Upon further review, I think Hayden manages to bail it out with that last line about "Love's austere and lonely offices," which makes a connection between his father's action and the rituals of those in religious orders. Or so I think. Anyway, back on topic...

    Here is one of my favorite Wallace Stevens poems:

    Postcards From the Volcano

    Children picking up our bones
    Will never know that these were once
    As quick as foxes on the hill;

    And that in autumn, when the grapes
    Made sharp air sharper by their smell
    These had a being, breathing frost;

    And least will guess that with our bones
    We left much more, left what still is
    The look of things, left what we felt

    At what we saw. The spring clouds blow
    Above the shuttered mansion-house,
    Beyond our gate and the windy sky

    Cries out a literate despair.
    We knew for long the mansion's look
    And what we said of it became

    A part of what it is . . . Children,
    Still weaving budded aureoles,
    Will speak our speech and never know,

    Will say of the mansion that it seems
    As if he that lived there left behind
    A spirit storming in blank walls,

    A dirty house in a gutted world,
    A tatter of shadows peaked to white,
    Smeared with the gold of the opulent sun.
     
  22. royalstilton

    royalstilton Member

    Aug 2, 2004
    SoCal
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    i can't complain too much about the device of three line stanzas that break in mid-sentence, but it is a little contrived, especially when there is no rhyme scheme to maintain.

    i'm a little puzzled at the title ( which you may have misquoted -- i think it's A Postcard From The Volcano ) and it's difficult for me to be sure i know what "volcano" refers to.

    the choice of "weaving...aureoles" is also puzzling. the word comes from a latin word that means "gold", which ties well to the "gold of the opulent sun", but the word "aureole" doesn't normally mean anything that is woven.

    all that aside, i love the "feel" of the poem: its starkness, the bleak portent of "Children picking up our bones", the mysterious "he that lived there" with his "storming spirit".
     
  23. HartwickFan

    HartwickFan Member

    Jul 31, 1999
    Climax, MI
    Club:
    VfR Wormatia 08 Worms
    Nat'l Team:
    Tuvalu
    This is one of my favorites as well. I just love the first two stanzas:

    Children picking up our bones
    Will never know that these were once
    As quick as foxes on the hill;

    And that in autumn, when the grapes
    Made sharp air sharper by their smell
    These had a being, breathing frost;

    I love how the line "as quick as foxes on the hill," has a meter that itself feels clipped and quick. My all-time favorite Stevens poem, though, has to be The Idea of Order at Key West: http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Poetry/Stevens/The_Idea_of_Order_at_Key_West.html
     
  24. Mikeshi

    Mikeshi New Member

    Jul 14, 2004
    Jasper,Ga
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Here's some from Stephen Crane...


    A youth in apparel that glittered
    Went to walk in a grim forest.
    There he met an assassin
    Attired all in garb of old days;
    He, scowling through the thickets,
    And dagger poised quivering,
    Rushed upon the youth.
    "Sir," said this latter,
    "I am enchanted, believe me,
    To die, thus,
    In this medieval fashion,
    According to the best legends;
    Ah, what joy!"
    Then took he the wound, smiling,
    And died, content.



    In the desert
    I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
    Who, squatting upon the ground,
    Held his heart in his hands,
    And ate of it.
    I said: "Is it good, friend?"
    "It is bitter - bitter," he answered;
    "But I like it
    Because it is bitter,
    And because it is my heart."



    Once there was a man --
    Oh, so wise!
    In all drink
    He detected the bitter,
    And in all touch
    He found the sting.
    At last he cried thus:
    "There is nothing --
    No life,
    No joy,
    No pain --
    There is nothing save opinion,
    And opinion be damned."



    "Truth," said a traveller,
    "Is a rock, a mighty fortress;
    Often have I been to it,
    Even to its highest tower,
    From whence the world looks black."

    "Truth," said a traveller,
    "Is a breath, a wind,
    A shadow, a phantom;
    Long have I pursued it,
    But never have I touched
    The hem of its garment."

    And I believed the second traveller;
    For truth was to me
    A breath, a wind,
    A shadow, a phantom,
    And never had I touched
    The hem of its garment.



    A man feared that he might find an assassin;
    Another that he might find a victim.
    One was more wise than the other.
     
  25. Naughtius Maximus

    Jul 10, 2001
    Shropshire
    Club:
    Chelsea FC
    Nat'l Team:
    England
    For some unfathomable reason I'd never bothered to check if BS had a poetry section. Which is strange because I'm a great lover of it. Anyway, as some of you may know the BBC is having a Poetry Season...

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/poetryseason/

    ... and it was this that finally prompted me to search this site.

    Anyway, explanations, (excuses?;)), for my absence from this thread out of the way here are a couple of my favourites. Only the standard stuff I'm afraid. I'm not clever enough to read anything too high-brow :D

    Slough - John Betjeman

    Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
    It isn't fit for humans now,
    There isn't grass to graze a cow.
    Swarm over, Death!

    Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
    Those air -conditioned, bright canteens,
    Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
    Tinned minds, tinned breath.

    Mess up the mess they call a town-
    A house for ninety-seven down
    And once a week a half a crown
    For twenty years.

    And get that man with double chin
    Who'll always cheat and always win,
    Who washes his repulsive skin
    In women's tears:

    And smash his desk of polished oak
    And smash his hands so used to stroke
    And stop his boring dirty joke
    And make him yell.

    But spare the bald young clerks who add
    The profits of the stinking cad;
    It's not their fault that they are mad,
    They've tasted Hell.

    It's not their fault they do not know
    The birdsong from the radio,
    It's not their fault they often go
    To Maidenhead

    And talk of sport and makes of cars
    In various bogus-Tudor bars
    And daren't look up and see the stars
    But belch instead.

    In labour-saving homes, with care
    Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
    And dry it in synthetic air
    And paint their nails.

    Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
    To get it ready for the plough.
    The cabbages are coming now;
    The earth exhales.


    I suspect it sounds incredibly elitist to a foreign ear but my interpretation of it is that it captures the English middle class distaste for... the English middle class. :)

    Stop all the clocks - 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 for ever: 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.



    A change of pace for the next one and one you might not be familiar with. It's by John Cooper Clarke, the self-styled 'bard of Salford'

    Reader Wives

    make a date with the brassy brides of britain
    the altogether ruder readers' wives
    who put down their needles and their knitting
    at the doorway to our dismal daily lives

    the fablon top scenarios of passion
    nipples peep through holes in leatherette
    they seem to be saying in their fashion
    'I'm freezing charlie - haven't ya finished yet?'

    cold flesh the colour of potatoes
    in an instamatic living room of sin
    all the required apparatus
    too bad they couldn't fit her head in

    in latex pyjamas with bananas going ape
    their identities are cunningly disguised
    by a six-inch strip of insulation tape
    strategically stuck across their eyes

    wives from inverness to inner london
    prettiness and pimples co-exist
    pictorially wife-swapping with someone
    who's happily married to his wrist


    To end, a poem that continues Betjeman's theme of dislike of one's own class, (a staple of the British culture if ever there was one), we have John Cooper Clarke again with 'Chickentown', read by the poet himself.

    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGWhjojt5dw"]YouTube - John Cooper Clarke - Chickentown[/ame]
     

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