I really like Edgar Allan Poe's Annabel Lee. Robert Frost's A Road Not Taken is amazing, too. Who do you like and what poem by them do you like?
I really like Edgar Allan Poe's Annabel Lee. Robert Frost's A Road Not Taken is amazing, too. Who do you like and what poem by them do you like?
My fav. Is as well Edgar Allan Poe but the fav poem is Alone :)
And I like reading for Emily Dickinson poems Life ; some things that fly there by .
Shakespeare
Shakespeare is he OK?http://www.NEWMEETS.INFO/avatar1.jpg
Yeah he's okay.Quote:
Originally Posted by F2ionA76
I guess I change my mind regularly about favorite poets and poems. Blake and the Sick Rose is always high on my list as well as W.H.Auden and his poems to Britten but at the moment I Have to say Baudelaire, A celle qui est trop gaie and Une charogne.
I too change my mind regularly, but there are certain firm favourites that keep cropping up, one of the most recurring being Tennyson's sublime Tithonus.
hahahaha your comment actually made me laugh out loud.Quote:
Originally Posted by Darcy88
I have so many 'favorites' that it is really difficult to choose... among them are Neruda, Lorca, Dylan Thomas, Blake, Coleridge and John Milton (Paradise Lost is spectacular)...
Some of my favorite poems are: 'Clown in the Moon' by Thomas; 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' by Coleridge, 'Marriage of Heaven and Hell' by Blake, and 'A Song of Despair' by Pablo Neruda.
Borges, Yeats, Whitman, Akhmatova, Shakespeare, Rilke would be the top echelon for me, so far.
Couldn't possibly choose a favourite poem. Maybe when I re-read their stuff multiple more times in the future the standouts will be extra apparent.
Its a three-way tie between Shakespeare, Whitman and Auden. My favourite poems of each are these:
Song of Myself
1
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
(The poem is super-long, I only copied here the first few stanzas.)
The Shield of Achilles
by W. H. Auden
She looked over his shoulder
For vines and olive trees,
Marble well-governed cities
And ships upon untamed seas,
But there on the shining metal
His hands had put instead
An artificial wilderness
And a sky like lead.
A plain without a feature, bare and brown,
No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,
Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,
Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood
An unintelligible multitude,
A million eyes, a million boots in line,
Without expression, waiting for a sign.
Out of the air a voice without a face
Proved by statistics that some cause was just
In tones as dry and level as the place:
No one was cheered and nothing was discussed;
Column by column in a cloud of dust
They marched away enduring a belief
Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.
She looked over his shoulder
For ritual pieties,
White flower-garlanded heifers,
Libation and sacrifice,
But there on the shining metal
Where the altar should have been,
She saw by his flickering forge-light
Quite another scene.
Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot
Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)
And sentries sweated for the day was hot:
A crowd of ordinary decent folk
Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke
As three pale figures were led forth and bound
To three posts driven upright in the ground.
The mass and majesty of this world, all
That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
And could not hope for help and no help came:
What their foes like to do was done, their shame
Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride
And died as men before their bodies died.
She looked over his shoulder
For athletes at their games,
Men and women in a dance
Moving their sweet limbs
Quick, quick, to music,
But there on the shining shield
His hands had set no dancing-floor
But a weed-choked field.
A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,
Loitered about that vacancy; a bird
Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:
That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
Were axioms to him, who'd never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.
The thin-lipped armorer,
Hephaestos, hobbled away,
Thetis of the shining breasts
Cried out in dismay
At what the god had wrought
To please her son, the strong
Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles
Who would not live long.
(Shield of Achilles is my favourite poem period.)
Sonnet 29
When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Eliot is my favorite poet and my favorite poem by him is probably Little Gidding. But my favorite poem, in general, changes a lot. Lately, I've been loving:
Spring and Fall: To a Young Child, by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Márgarét, are you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves, líke the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow's spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
Allan Poe's To Helen is also great！And my favourite poet is Ralph Waldo Emerson，his Nature attracts me most.
Including epic poetry, the choice for me is easy: Dante's Comedia. If we are speaking of shorter (lyrical) poetry, then my favorites are too numerous to even begin to name and my answers would change from day to day. At the moment, I could live with saying that I can't think of any poem I like more than Spenser's Epithalamion.
Wake now, my love, awake! for it is time;
The Rosy Morne long since left Tithones bed, 75
All ready to her silver coche to clyme;
And Phoebus gins to shew his glorious hed.
Hark! how the cheerefull birds do chaunt theyr laies
And carroll of Loves praise.
The merry Larke hir mattins sings aloft; 80
The Thrush replyes; the Mavis descant playes;
The Ouzell shrills; the Ruddock warbles soft;
So goodly all agree, with sweet consent,
To this dayes merriment.
Ah! my deere love, why doe ye sleepe thus long? 85
When meeter were that ye should now awake,
T' awayt the comming of your joyous make,
And hearken to the birds love-learnèd song,
The deawy leaves among!
Nor they of joy and pleasance to you sing, 90
That all the woods them answer, and theyr eccho ring.
My love is now awake out of her dreames,
And her fayre eyes, like stars that dimmèd were
With darksome cloud, now shew theyr goodly beams
More bright then Hesperus his head doth rere. 95
Come now, ye damzels, daughters of delight,
Helpe quickly her to dight:
But first come ye fayre houres, which were begot
In Joves sweet paradice of Day and Night;
Which doe the seasons of the yeare allot, 100
And al, that ever in this world is fayre,
Doe make and still repayre:
And ye three handmayds of the Cyprian Queene,
The which doe still adorne her beauties pride,
Helpe to addorne my beautifullest bride: 105
And, as ye her array, still throw betweene
Some graces to be seene;
And, as ye use to Venus, to her sing,
The whiles the woods shal answer, and your eccho ring.
http://www.bartleby.com/101/82.html
Well, it depends. I love Homer's poems (Iliad and Oddisey), The Satyricon by Petronius, Au lecteur by Baudelaire, Une Charogne by the same poet, The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, Les chants de maldoror by Lautréamont and famous Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven. I also like Horatio's Odes.
There are a lot of poets and poetry that I really enjoy. But if I had to narrow it down, I'd probably say "Tintern Abbey" by Wordsworth. But I'm a sucker for all of the English romantics -- Blake, Byron, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelly. . . . But "Tintern Abbey" is the poem that I return to several times a year just to sink into it. I mumble it to myself. Hell, I nearly have is memorized.
Robert ·Frost:smile5:http://www.infoocean.info/avatar2.jpg
Do you like this poem purely for aesthetic reasons? Silly question really.Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
No comtemporary poets, a whole lot of dinosaurs in this thread though.
John Milton
Lycidas
That was really the first poem I read where I became conscious of the power of poetry as a unique art-form. After many years, many poets, a great many more poems, I still return to Lycidas and marvel at its perfection on every level. In many ways, it's the poem I've been trying to write, and constantly failing to, since I started writing poetry.
I have to say, I have been studying Emily Dickinson in class (and meant to be revising right now) and have reluctantly come to enjoy and like her. I think it may be after great analysis and deep evaluation of her poems I realise they have so much depth and am astounded by them! Can't stop thinking about some of the ideas!
At the time i am reading Georg Trakl a lot,
He is really awesome poet
Yeats 'The Second Coming' is strangely powerful, the first and last part in particular.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
As of right now my choice is a tie between Byron and Leopardi, but it changes everyday -
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
- Byron, Child Harold's Pilgrimage IV Canto
Sempre caro mi fu quest'ermo colle,
e questa siepe, che da tanta parte
dell'ultimo orizzonte il guardo esclude.
Ma sedendo e mirando, interminati
spazi di là da quella, e sovrumani
silenzi, e profondissima quïete
io nel pensier mi fingo, ove per poco
il cor non si spaura. E come il vento
odo stormir tra queste piante, io quello
infinito silenzio a questa voce
vo comparando: e mi sovvien l'eterno,
e le morte stagioni, e la presente
e viva, e il suon di lei. Così tra questa
immensità s'annega il pensier mio:
e il naufragar m'è dolce in questo mare
- L'infinito Leopradi
Here is a translation
I always loved this solitary hill,
This hedge as well, which takes so large a share
Of the far-flung horizon from my view;
But seated here, in contemplation lost,
My thought discovers vaster space beyond,
Supernal silence and unfathomed peace;
Almost I am afraid; then, since I hear
The murmur of the wind among the leaves,
I match that infinite calm unto this sound
And with my mind embrace eternity,
The vivid, speaking present and dead past;
In such immensity my spirit drowns,
And sweet to me is shipwreck in this sea.
But I have yet to find an english translation which is not ugly and plain compared to the original.
My favorite is probably Rimbaud although it's nearly impossible to choose a favorite piece...
Either The Drunken Boat or "The Savior Bumped Upon His Heavy Butt".
Robert Burns -
A Man's a Man for A' That
Is there for honesty poverty
That hings his head, an' a' that;
The coward slave - we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that, an' a' that,
Our toils obscure an' a' that,
The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The man's the gowd for a' that.
What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey, an' a' that?
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
A man's a man for a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
Their tinsel show, an' a' that,
The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor,
Is king o' men for a' that.
Ye see yon birkie ca'd a lord,
Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that;
Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof for a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
His ribband, star, an' a' that,
The man o' independent mind
He looks an' laughs at a' that.
A price can mak a belted knight,
A marquise, duke, an' a' that;
But an honest man's aboon his might,
Gude faith, he maunna fa' that!
For a' that, an' a' that,
Their dignities an' a' that,
The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth,
Are higher rank than a' that.
Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a' that,)
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an' a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
That man to man, the world o'er,
Shall brithers be for a' that.
Picking among the small lot I am familier with, It would be a toss up between Sir Edwar Dyer's My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is or Oliver Goldsmith's The Deserted Village
Here is Dyer's:
"My mind to me a kingdom is;
Such perfect joy therein I find
That it excels all other bliss
Which God or nature hath assign'd.
Though much I want that most would have,
Yet still my mind forbids to crave.
No princely port, nor wealthy store,
No force to win a victory,
No wily wit to salve a sore,
No shape to win a loving eye;
To none of these I yield as thrall,--
For why? my mind despise them all.
I see that plenty surfeit oft,
And hasty climbers soonest fall;
I see that such as are aloft
Mishap doth threaten most of all.
These get with toil and keep with fear;
Such cares my mind can never bear.
I press to bear no haughty sway,
I wish no more than may suffice,
I do no more than well I may,
Look, what I want my mind supplies.
Lo ! thus I triumph like a king,
My mind content with anything.
I laugh not at another's loss,
Nor grudge not at another's gain;
No worldly waves my mind can toss;
I brook that is another's bane.
I fear no foe, nor fawn on friend,
I loathe not life, nor dread mine end.
My wealth is health and perfect ease,
And conscience clear my chief defence;
I never seek by bribes to please,
Nor by desert to give offence.
Thus do I live, thus will I die,--
Would all did so as well as I!"
Sir Edward Dyer
A difficult choice, of course.
Perhaps Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen:
FURIES
Banished from sin and the sacred
Now they inhabit the humble intimacy
Of daily life. They are
The leaky faucet the late bus
The soup that boils over
The lost pen the vacuum that doesn’t vacuum
The taxi that doesn’t come the mislaid receipt
Shoving pushing waiting
Bureaucratic madness
Without shouting or staring
Without bristly serpent hair
With the meticulous hands of the day-to-day
They undo us
They’re the peculiar wonder of the modern world
Faceless and maskless
Nameless and breathless
The thousand-headed hydras of efficiency gone haywire
They no longer pursue desecrators and parricides
They prefer innocent victims
Who did nothing to provoke them
Thanks to them the day loses its smooth expanses
Its juice of ripe fruits
Its fragrance of flowers
Its high-sea passion
And time is transformed
Into toil and the rush
Against time
Or Alexandre O'Neill:
AN UNORIGINAL POEM ABOUT FEAR
Fear will have everything
legs
ambulances
and the armored luxury
of a few cars
It will have eyes no one sees
cautious little hands
almost innocent schemes
ears not only in the walls
but also in the floor
in the ceiling
in the gurgle of drainpipes
and perhaps even (caution!)
ears in your ears
Fear will have everything
phantoms at the opera
ongoing séances
miracles
processions
courageous words
model daughters
honest pawnshops
naughty brothels
various conferences
numerous congresses
excellent jobs
original poems
and poems like this one
utterly sordid projects
heroes
(fear will have heroes!)
real and unreal dressmakers
factory workers
(more or less)
office clerks
(lots)
intellectuals
(what you’d expect)
perhaps your voice
perhaps mine
undoubtedly theirs
It will have capitals
countries
suspicions like everybody
countless friends
kisses
green sweethearts
silent
passionate
anguished lovers
Yes fear will have everything
everything
(I think about what fear will have
and I’m afraid
that’s exactly
what fear wants)
*
Fear will have everything
almost everything
and all of us in our different ways
are bound to come
almost all of us
to rats
Yes
to rats
(Translations by Richard Zenith)
I think the Victorian poets are different. I personally really enjoy reading their works. If I want to choose one of them, I would not choose other than Robert Browning. I think his masterpiece is "The Last Ride Together". I've read it many times, and I want to read it again.
my favorite poet is John Keats and favorite poem is Ode to a Nightingale :)
It's hard not to agree that "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost is hard to beat. However, I like poems that have a nice and sometimes funny image to them, which is why I like "There Was an Old Man with a Beard" by Edward Lear. It's famous, too. However, the best poems are ones I've come across by family members. One of the poems was found in a bathroom stall and may be a bit too raunchy to put here. It's terribly funny, though. So is the one written by my uncle, who apparently writes poems mostly in the limerick format. It details his disbelief with presumptuous skeptics, something he's had to combat for his college thesis. I think that one would compete with the other limerick for being my favorite.
I believe you have posted a version of The Second Coming not consistent with the author's final revisions. The stanza breaks are not the same as your version, and some of the words are even different. Yeat used only rwo stanzas.
Instead of a waste of desert sand, Yeat says somwehere in the sands of the desert.
I may be wrong. But my collected edtion which says it contains the author's final revisions prints it as above.