Favorite Poetry?

I'd have to say my favourite poem is "Motto" by Langston Hughes -

I play it cool
And dig all jive
That's the reason
I stay alive
My motto
As I live and learn
Is:
Dig And Be Dug
In Return.

It's apparently about survival in the ghetto, but I think it can apply to life in general. It's a really simple poem that holds a lot of meaning for me.

 

Wow, when I was small, my cousin was an English major, and while browsing through the textbooks one day, I came across that sonnet and she helped me translate/understand it. Interesting.

My favourites right now are Spenser's Amoretti #75 and the Der Erlkönig by Goethe.
As for Hungarian poets, here's my favourite: Hajnali Részegség by Dezső Kosztolányi
Babel Web Anthology :: Kosztolányi Dezs
(I didn't know an English translation existed, but was very happy to find it )

I'm also looking forward to reading some East-Asian poetry next year (I'm going to major in Chinese, yay! ) )

 

That's a nice sonnet. I hadn't read that one yet, but it's an interestingly dark twist on immortality through verse, a common theme of Shakespeare's poetry.

Lucy Maude Montgomery, a rather famous Canadian author, wrote quite a bit of poetry throughout her life. This one, called Vers libre (Free verse) I find particularly charming:

I feel
Very much
Like taking
Its unholy perpetrators
By the hair 
Of their heads
(If they have any hair)
And dragging them around
The yard
A few times
And then cutting them
Into small, irregular pieces
And burying them
In the depths of the blue sea.
They are without form
And void,
Or at least
The stuff they produce
Is.
They are too lazy
To hunt up rhymes
And thatis all
That is the matter with them.

 

I love your signature, Steve712. I am a huge fan of Edgar Allen Poe's works. Both are, unfortunately, too long to post here, but The Raven and The Tell-Tale Heart are among my favorites.

 

Agreed.

 

I really love The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot (bit long to paste here) but I really love it.

 

He was a master of enjambment, Mr. Eliot. He wrote in French, too:

Mélange adultère de tout

En Amerique, professeur;
En Angleterre, journaliste;
C’est à grands pas et en sueur
Que vous suivrez à peine ma piste.
En Yorkshire, conferencier;
A Londres, un peu banquier,
Vous me paierez bein la tête.
C’est à Paris que je me coiffe
Casque noir de jemenfoutiste.
En Allemagne, philosophe
Surexcité par Emporheben
Au grand air de Bergsteigleben;
J’erre toujours de-ci de-là
A divers coups de tra la la
De Damas jusqu’à Omaha.
Je celebrai mon jour de fête
Dans une oasis d’Afrique
Vêtu d’une peau de girafe.

On montrera mon cénotaphe
Aux côtes brûlantes de Mozambique.

 

I quite like Bukowski

Specifically one called "The Genius of the Crowd." It's a bit long so I'll just post a small chunk of it.


The Genius Of The Crowd

there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day

and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace

those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not have peace
those who preach peace do not have love

 

I love poetry especially foreign (non-english) poetry like this:

That which then was ours, my love,
don't ask me for that love again.
The world then was gold, burnished with light -
and only because of you. That's what I had believed.
How could one weep for sorrows other than yours?
How could on ehave any sorrow but the one you gave?
So what were these protests, these rumors of injustice?
A glimpse of your face was evidence of springtime.
The sky, wherever I looked, was nothing but your eyes.
If you;d fall into my arms, Fate would be helpless.
All this I'd thought, all this I'd believed.
But there were other sorrows, comforts other than love.
The rich had cast their spell on history:
dark centuries had been embroidered on brocades and silks.
Bitter threads began to unravel before me
as I went into alleys and in open markets
saw bodies plastered with ash, bathed in blood.
I saw them sold and bought, again and again.
This too deserves attention. I can't help but look back
when I return from those alleys - what should one do?
And you are still so ravishing - what should I do?
There are other sorrows in this world,
comforts other than love.
Don't ask me, my love, for that love again.
-Faiz Ahmed Faiz (from pakistan)

I just love the symbolism and metaphors (!) just wanted to share

 

Both on the same subject, but both I like.
Ozymandias, by Shelly

Spoiler

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart. 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.

And "On A Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below," by Horace Smith

Spoiler

IN Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:—
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
"The wonders of my hand."— The City's gone,—
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.

We wonder,—and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

 

i havent read a lot of poetry (I should :rolle but we studied Vultures by Chinua Achebe last year in English, and it was my favourite out of the cluster... I don't know why, I think I just liked the idea that love or warmth can be found in any being:

'In the greyness
and drizzle of one despondent
dawn unstirred by harbingers
of sunbreak a vulture
perching high on broken
bones of a dead tree
nestled close to his
mate his smooth
bashed-in head, a pebble
on a stem rooted in
a dump of gross
feathers, inclined affectionately
to hers. Yesterday they picked
the eyes of a swollen
corpse in a water-logged
trench and ate the
things in its bowel. Full
gorged they chose their roost
keeping the hollowed remnant
in easy range of cold
telescopic eyes...

Strange
indeed how love in other
ways so particular
will pick a corner
in that charnel-house
tidy it and coil up there, perhaps
even fall asleep - her face
turned to the wall!

...Thus the Commandant at Belsen
Camp going home for
the day with fumes of
human roast clinging
rebelliously to his hairy
nostrils will stop
at the wayside sweet-shop
and pick up a chocolate
for his tender offspring
waiting at home for Daddy's
return...

Praise bounteous
providence if you will
that grants even an ogre
a tiny glow-worm
tenderness encapsulated
in icy caverns of a cruel
heart or else despair
for in the very germ
of that kindred love is
lodged the perpetuity
of evil.'

 

Pretty old school, but whatevs.. hehe





The Canterbury Tales

by Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343-1400)




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"Tho were the gates shet, and cried was loude:
Do now youre devoir, yonge knyghtes proude!
The heraudes lefte hir prikyng up and doun;
Now ryngen trompes loude and clarioun.
Ther is namoore to seyn, but west and est
In goon the speres ful sadly in arrest;
In gooth the sharpe spore into the syde.
Ther seen men who kan juste and who kan ryde;
Ther shyveren shaftes upon sheeldes thikke;
He feeleth thurgh the herte-spoon the prikke.
Up spryngen speres twenty foot on highte;
Out goon the swerdes as the silver brighte;
The helmes they tohewen and toshrede;
Out brest the blood with stierne stremes rede;
With myghty maces the bones they tobreste.
He thurgh the thikkeste of the throng gan threste;
Ther stomblen steedes stronge, and doun gooth al;
He rolleth under foot as dooth a bal;
He foyneth on his feet with his tronchoun,
And he hym hurtleth with hors adoun;
He thurgh the body is hurt and sither take,
Maugree his heed, and broght unto the stake:
As forward was, right there he moste abyde."

---------- Post added 25th Jun 2012 at 01:41 AM ----------

Intro to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight


[YOUTUBE]nl4KYZ9JrUw[/YOUTUBE]




SIÞEN þe sege and þe assaut watz sesed at Troye,
Þe borȝ brittened and brent to brondeȝ and askez,
Þe tulk þat þe trammes of tresoun þer wroȝt
Watz tried for his tricherie, þe trewest on erthe:
Hit watz Ennias þe athel, and his highe kynde,
Þat siþen depreced prouinces, and patrounes bicome
Welneȝe of al þe wele in þe west iles.
Fro riche Romulus to Rome ricchis hym swyþe,
With gret bobbaunce þat burȝe he biges vpon fyrst,
And neuenes hit his aune nome, as hit now hat;
Tirius to Tuskan and teldes bigynnes,
Langaberde in Lumbardie lyftes vp homes,
And fer ouer þe French flod Felix Brutus
On mony bonkkes ful brode Bretayn he settez
wyth wynne,
Where werre and wrake and wonder
Bi syþez hatz wont þerinne,
And oft boþe blysse and blunder
Ful skete hatz skyfted synne.

 

Can I post my own?

 

Poem
By ryanninjasheep

When it is that it is poems youre making
Poetrys the book from which youll be taking
of course there are rules that youll have to be breaking
so during this poem you should be note taking

Ill post more later...

---------- Post added 29th Jun 2012 at 12:36 AM ----------

A subject of poetrys something youll need
dr. Suess once thought that could be a thneed
by making someone be corrupted by greed
but a thneeds just as fake of a word as gorpied

Which brings me to something we shant be forgetting
Itsprobably as good as some safety netting
When you hear it youll probably start to be betting
The tips the best tip that youll ever be getting

But now I have realized that I just forgot
which is something you might do but of course should not
unless it is that you have just got a shot
not a gun kind of shot but one a doctor brought

 

Its always nice to end with beginning
for poetry contests youll always be winning
the others, of course, will all be trash binning
its always nice to end with beginning

But in this poem it wouldnt be fitting
so much so that I would probably start hitting
My forehead from seeinghow bad it is gitting
spelled wrong, of course, so that its being more fitting

 

Chaucer's timeless, not old school!

 

The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde - one of my personal heroes