What is your favourite poem and why?

High Flight, by John Gillespie Magee Jr. It perfectly captures the sheer transcendent ecstasy of what it is to fly.

 

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.


And if you want to go really bleak: The Worrying by Paul Monette in Love Alone: 18 Elegies for Roger. I won't print it here. It's quite long.

 

I don't like poems very much, so I don't know very many, but one poem that I've always liked is The Bells, by Edgar Allen Poe

 

Annabel Lee - Edgar Allan Poe.

I love the all the creative horror in Poe's poems. I don't know why, I just do.

Also, I was named after this poem. My mom has an obsession with black and white horror flims and gothic horror stories. I recently found out that Edgar Allan Poe had bipolar disorder, which is terribly ironic, since my mother and I both also have it.

I also really like The Raven.

 

Our area has a problem with duii crashes.

 

My favourite poems are in Greek so it would be pointless to upload them here, and I don't believe in translated poetry.

Just following this thread to see some nice art on here

 

My favorite poem is about a women, Elif whose riding an ox chart during Independence War. She carries ammo to frontlines, takes pride in carry most and fast. Calls her chart, Mustafa Kemal's chart.

Then one day one of her oxen, old one dies and leave her in middle. She finally takes his place on chart and pull its to her destination.

I first heard this poem while on elementary school and cried and still cry whenever a good reader reads it. It touches many strings in my heart; love between Elif and her oxen, heroic female figure, love of country and showing courage and determination against all odds.

 

I really love Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Kubla Khan, whose opening stanzas I have memorized (a sure sign I like a poem is when I commit it to memory):

It's a longish poem, so here's the first stanza:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

Then, there's The Owl and the Pussycat, by Edward Lear

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five-pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
"O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!"

II
Pussy said to the Owl, "You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?"
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-Tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.

III

"Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?" Said the Piggy, "I will."
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.


Don't ask me what "runcible" means, although it's a perfectly cromulent [Simpson's reference] word...I love the imagery of two lovers dancing by the light of the moon. This one I know by heart as well, and for a while I taught it to all three of my kids at bedtime. Simply by sheer repetition, they all eventually learned to recite it to me every night as well. It's truly amazing how fast kids can learn this stuff!

I don't recite it much these days, the word "pussy", mentioned 6 times in the poem, has unfortunately taken on a different meaning in recent years...:dry:

 

"Twat" by John Cooper Clarke because he single-handedly made poetry accessable to the working classes and did it in an amazingly funny and witty way.

I mean, who couldn't love a poem that compares a person to a "rerecently disinfected shithouse"

 

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I love that he can make up words and yet you know exactly what's happening.

 

I love 'Jaberwocky' by Lewis Carrol and 'The Highwayman' by Alfred Noyes. Which one is my favorite, I have no idea, but I love them both.

 

House by the side of the Road by Sam Walter Foss

There are hermit souls that live withdrawn
In the place of their self-content;
There are souls like stars, that dwell apart,
In a fellowless firmament;
There are pioneer souls that blaze the paths
Where highways never ran-
But let me live by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

Let me live in a house by the side of the road
Where the race of men go by-
The men who are good and the men who are bad,
As good and as bad as I.
I would not sit in the scorner's seat
Nor hurl the cynic's ban-
Let me live in a house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

I see from my house by the side of the road
By the side of the highway of life,
The men who press with the ardor of hope,
The men who are faint with the strife,
But I turn not away from their smiles and tears,
Both parts of an infinite plan-
Let me live in a house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

I know there are brook-gladdened meadows ahead,
And mountains of wearisome height;
That the road passes on through the long afternoon
And stretches away to the night.
And still I rejoice when the travelers rejoice
And weep with the strangers that moan,
Nor live in my house by the side of the road
Like a man who dwells alone.

Let me live in my house by the side of the road,
Where the race of men go by-
They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong,
Wise, foolish - so am I.
Then why should I sit in the scorner's seat,
Or hurl the cynic's ban?
Let me live in my house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

.......i dont read too many poems, though i'd like to, but that one's a bit insightful for me

 

OK, it's hard to say, but I like the raw, dark bluntness of this one; her suicide was a huge tragedy to her, her family and the poetry=reading world:


The Fury Of Abandonment

Someone lives in a cave
eating his toes,
I know that much.
Someone little lives under a bush
pressing an empty Coca-Cola can against
his starving bloated stomach,
I know that much.
A monkey had his hands cut off
for a medical experiment
and his claws wept.
I know tht much.

I know that it is all
a matter of hands.
Out of the mournful sweetness of touching
comes love
like breakfast.
Out of the many houses come the hands
before the abandonment of the city,
out of the bars and shops,
a thin file of ants.

I've been abandoned out here
under the dry stars
with no shoes, no belt
and I've called Rescue Inc. -
that old-fashioned hot line -
no voice.
Left to my own lips, touch them,
my own nostrils, shoulders, breasts,
navel, stomach, mound,kneebone, ankle,
touch them.

It makes me laugh
to see a woman in this condition.
It makes me laugh for America and New York city
when your hands are cut off
and no one answers the phone.


-Anne Sexton


And I like the wry, playful attitude of this one, by John Berryman:


Dream Song 14


Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored
means you have no

Inner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.


Here he is reading it, at a pub in Ireland. He'd just won a Pulitzer, and was sorta a heavy drinker, which shows a bit in this footage.

 

Ha. I wish, but no. It was just the most powerful poem that I have ever read.

 

" Like the moon over the day,
My genius and brawn,
Are lost on these fools. ~ haiku "
Bowser​

I was tempted to put some ridiculously thought provoking, but then I remembered that quote from Super Mario RPG. I realized, I'd never have another opportunity to share this in the appropriate context.