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!
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
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.
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...
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.
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
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.
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...
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.
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?!
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?
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.
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? ).
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.
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".
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
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.
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 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]