Who Are Your Favorite Poet(s)?

[Nicoletta]

I understood that he had a weird theme, but I liked it all the same. It's very good writing.

[WICKES]

I like Auden and Larkin as far as the context of this list goes. There is an excellent biography on Youtube on Auden "Tell me the truth about love".

Great to see Larkin receive a mention. He is wonderful (though grim). Anyone who believes poetry is all sloppy and romantic should be given a copy of Larkin's collected poems.

Shelley
Keats
Robert Frost
Philip Larkin
Auden
T S Eliot
Thomas Hardy
Betjeman
Geoffrey Hill
Ted Hughes
Sylvia Plath
John Donne


Tennyson's In Memorium is magnificent

[MorpheusSandman]

Great to see Larkin receive a mention. He is wonderful (though grim). Anyone who believes poetry is all sloppy and romantic should be given a copy of Larkin's collected poems.

I do have a fondness for Larkin, but he's a lot like Elizabeth Bishop for me in that what they wrote was consistently excellent with a handful of genuine masterpieces, but they just didn't write enough for me to consider them in the top echelon of poets. That's probably why I prefer Auden, Merrill, Ashbery, and Hill when it comes to modern poets. The quality of their work may be more variable, but I find they have a richer oeuvre.

[WICKES]

I do have a fondness for Larkin, but he's a lot like Elizabeth Bishop for me in that what they wrote was consistently excellent with a handful of genuine masterpieces, but they just didn't write enough for me to consider them in the top echelon of poets.

Yes, that's well put Morpheus. You're so right- I can't really think of a dull or dud Larkin poem.

His other big weakness as a poet is his (I don't know how to put it)...his 'lack of intellectual curiosity'. T S Eliot, Auden, Yeats etc were poets in search of something, they were intellectually 'engaged', interested in myth, in modern science and so on. But Larkin is just so relentlessly bleak and despairing that one critic called him "the saddest heart in all English Literature". As well as being depressing, that narrow, bleak worldview eventually becomes suffocating. Most people who love him pretty soon feel the need to turn to other poets and writers.
He didn't begin that way: in the letters he wrote as an undergraduate at Oxford he refers several times to Blake and how astonishing and profound he is.

[MorpheusSandman]

There's no doubting Larkin could be incredibly depressing--he did, perhaps, write the bleakest (and one of the most profoundly poignant) poems ever about death in Aubade--but I think the stereotype of him ONLY being "relentlessly bleak and depressing" is slightly misleading. Larkin could also be damn funny, witty, and even bizarrely mysterious when he wanted to. I think of a poem like Days:

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.

Or the bitingly satirical Sunny Prestatyn:


Come To Sunny Prestatyn
Laughed the girl on the poster,
Kneeling up on the sand
In tautened white satin.
Behind her, a hunk of coast, a
Hotel with palms
Seemed to expand from her thighs and
Spread breast-lifting arms.

She was slapped up one day in March.
A couple of weeks, and her face
Was snaggle-toothed and boss-eyed;
Huge tits and a fissured crotch
Were scored well in, and the space
Between her legs held scrawls
That set her fairly astride
A tuberous **** and balls

Autographed Titch Thomas, while
Someone had used a knife
Or something to stab right through
The moustached lips of her smile.
She was too good for this life.
Very soon, a great transverse tear
Left only a hand and some blue.
Now Fight Cancer is there.

There's also the lovely and even rather hopeful An Arundel Tomb:


Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd—
The little dogs under their feet.

Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.

They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends would see:
A sculptor’s sweet commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.

They would not guess how early in
Their supine stationary voyage
The air would change to soundless damage,
Turn the old tenantry away;
How soon succeeding eyes begin
To look, not read. Rigidly they

Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the glass. A bright
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-riddled ground. And up the paths
The endless altered people came,

Washing at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of
An unarmorial age, a trough
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
Above their scrap of history,
Only an attitude remains:

Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.

However, I do agree with you about his "lack of intellectual curiosity," especially in comparison with the other greats of the age (you could also definitely throw Merrill in with that group; The Changing Light at Sandover may be the greatest sustained 20th century poetic investigation into science, myth, poetry, religion, the occult, love, death, etc. and how they all relate). Larkin was undeniably a poet of the people, a poet of the everyday, the elegantly simple and universal. One rarely struggles with a passage in Larkin as they do in Eliot, Yeats, Stevens, or Merrill (though Larkin does contain his complexities and ambiguities: just why are those priests and doctors running over the fields in their long coats? How was our "almost-instinct" "almost true"? etc.). I really think of Larkin of being in the poetic tradition of those like Robert Burns rather than, say, Donne and the metaphysics; and while that may make his impact/reach somewhat limited, perhaps it also made what he did all the more special since, afterall, how many 20th century poets could match his tone and voice? In comparison, I do hear a lot of similarities amongst the other big names we're mentioning.

[Drkshadow03]

Neruda

What did you find appealing about Neruda's work?

[MorpheusSandman]

Not speaking for St Lukes, but what strikes me most about Neruda is his breadth and versatility. I think of all 20th century poets he's the hardest to pin down to one voice, tone, form, subject matter, style, philosophy, etc. He seemed to touch on everything and do everything quite well. I can't say I've read everything by him, but I have been quite impressed by his love poems, odes, and his surrealistic national epic, The Heights of Macchu Picchu. All of them are completely different. In terms of versatility, the only 20th Century English poet I think can match him is Auden.

[Drkshadow03]

Not speaking for St Lukes, but what strikes me most about Neruda is his breadth and versatility. I think of all 20th century poets he's the hardest to pin down to one voice, tone, form, subject matter, style, philosophy, etc. He seemed to touch on everything and do everything quite well. I can't say I've read everything by him, but I have been quite impressed by his love poems, odes, and his surrealistic national epic, The Heights of Macchu Picchu. All of them are completely different. In terms of versatility, the only 20th Century English poet I think can match him is Auden.

Is he supposed to remind me of a melodramatic Stephane Mallarme?

[MorpheusSandman]

Having not yet read Mallarme, I couldn't say.

[mortalterror]

1.Dante- Paradiso
In fashion then as of a snow-white rose
Displayed itself to me the saintly host,
Whom Christ in his own blood had made his bride,

But the other host, that flying sees and sings
The glory of Him who doth enamour it,
And the goodness that created it so noble,

Even as a swarm of bees, that sinks in flowers
One moment, and the next returns again
To where its labour is to sweetness turned,

Sank into the great flower, that is adorned
With leaves so many, and thence reascended
To where its love abideth evermore.

Their faces had they all of living flame,
And wings of gold, and all the rest so white
No snow unto that limit doth attain.

2.Shakespeare- Titus Andronicus
LUCIUS
Art thou not sorry for these heinous deeds?
AARON
Ay, that I had not done a thousand more.
Even now I curse the day--and yet, I think,
Few come within the compass of my curse,--
Wherein I did not some notorious ill,
As kill a man, or else devise his death,
Ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it,
Accuse some innocent and forswear myself,
Set deadly enmity between two friends,
Make poor men's cattle break their necks;
Set fire on barns and hay-stacks in the night,
And bid the owners quench them with their tears.
Oft have I digg'd up dead men from their graves,
And set them upright at their dear friends' doors,
Even when their sorrows almost were forgot;
And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,
Have with my knife carved in Roman letters,
'Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.'
Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things
As willingly as one would kill a fly,
And nothing grieves me heartily indeed
But that I cannot do ten thousand more.

3.Homer- The Iliad
Now the stout heart of Ajax cared no longer
to stay where others had withdrawn; he moved
with long strides on the ships' decks, making play
with his long polished pike, the sections joined
by rivets, long as twenty-two forearms.
Think of an expert horseman, who has harnessed
a double team together from his string
and rides them from the plain to a big town
along the public road, where many see him,
men and women both; with perfect ease,
he changed horses, leaping, at a gallup.
That was Ajax, going from deck to deck
of many ships with his long stride, his shout
rising to heaven, as in raging tones
he ordered the Danaans to defend them.

4.Ferdowsi- The Shahnameh
Both armies drew their swords and closed amid
The din of trump and drum, the sky was ebon,
Earth indigo, while swords and maces gleamed
Like lightning flashing from a murky cloud.
The air was crimson, black, and violet,
With spears and flags. The shouting of the divs,
The clouds of dust, the roar of kettledrums,
And neigh of steeds, rent earth and shook the mountains;
None e'er saw such a fight. Arose the din
Of arrow, mace, and sword, the plain became
A pool of heroes' blood, earth like a sea
Of pitch whose waves were maces, swords, and arrows.
Swift steeds sped on like ships upon the deep.
And thou hadst said of them :"They founder fast !

5.Vyasa- The Bhagavad Ghita
Then, O King! the God, so saying,
Stood, to Pritha's Son displaying
All the splendour, wonder, dread
Of His vast Almighty-head.
Out of countless eyes beholding,
Out of countless mouths commanding,
Countless mystic forms enfolding
In one Form: supremely standing
Countless radiant glories wearing,
Countless heavenly weapons bearing,
Crowned with garlands of star-clusters,
Robed in garb of woven lustres,
Breathing from His perfect Presence
Breaths of every subtle essence
Of all heavenly odours; shedding
Blinding brilliance; overspreading—
Boundless, beautiful—all spaces
With His all-regarding faces;
So He showed!

6.Virgil- The Aeneid
Truly we found here a prodigious fight,
As though there were none elsewhere, not a death
In the whole city: Mars gone berserk, Danaans
In a rush to scale the roof; the gate besieged
By a tortoise shell of overlapping shields.
Ladders clung to the wall, and men strove upward
Before the very doorposts, on the rungs,
Left hand putting the shield up, and the right
Reaching for the cornice. The defenders
Wrenched out upperworks and rooftiles: these
For missiles, as they saw the end, preparing
To fight back even on the edge of death.
And gilded beams, ancestral ornaments,
They rolled down on the heads below. In hall
Others with swords drawn held the entrance way,
Packed there, waiting. Now we plucked up heart
To help the royal house, to give our men
A respite, and to add our strength to theirs,
Though all were beaten. And we had for entrance
A rear door, secret, giving on a passage
Between the palace halls; in other days
Andromache, poor lady, often used it,
Going alone to see her husband's parents
Or taking Astyanax to his grandfather.
I climbed high on the roof, where hopeless men
Were picking up and throwing futile missiles.
Here was a tower like a promontory
Rising toward the stars above the roof:
All Troy, the Danaan ships, the Achaen camp,
Were visible from this. Now close beside it
With crowbars, where the flooring made loose joints,
We pried it from its bed and pushed it over.
Down with a rending crash in sudden ruin
Wide over the Danaan lines it fell;
But fresh troops moved up, and the rain of stones
With every kind of missile never ceased.

7.Ovid- The Heroides
Penelope to the tardy Ulysses:
do not answer these lines, but come, for
Troy is dead and the daughters of Greece rejoice.
But all of Troy and Priam himself
are not worth the price I've paid for victory.
How often I have wished that Paris
had drowned before he reached our welcoming shores.
If he had died I would not have been
compelled now to sleep alone in my cold bed
complaining always of the tiresome
prospect of endless nights and days spent working
like a poor widow at my tedious loom.
Imagining hazards more awful than real,
love has always been tempered by fear:
I was sure it was you the Trojans attacked
and the name of Hector made me pale;
if someone told the tale of Antilochus
I dreamed of you dead as he had died;
if they sang of the death of Menoetius' son,
slain in armour not his own, I wept,
because even clever tricks had failed

8.Tasso- Jerusalem Delivered
I sing the reverent armies, and that Chief
who set the great tomb of our Savior free;
much he performed with might and judgement, much
he suffered in the glorious victory;
in vain Hell rose athwart his path, in vain
two continents combined in mutiny.
Heaven graced him with it's favor, and restored
his straying men to the banner of the Lord.

O Muse, who do not string a garland of
the fading laurel fronds of Helicon,
but far in heaven among the blessed choirs
wreathe deathless stars into a golden crown
breathe into my heart the fire of Heavenly love,
illuminate my song and if I have sewn
embroideries of the truth in any place,
I ask forgiveness for their lesser grace.

9.Milton- Paradise Lost
horror and doubt distract
His troubl'd thoughts, and from the bottom stirr
The Hell within him, for within him Hell
He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell
One step no more then from himself can fly
By change of place:

10.Rumi- Masnavi
Yet ears are slow, and carnal eyes are blind.
Free through each mortal form the spirits roll,
But sight avails not. Can we see the soul?
Such notes breath'd gently from yon vocal frame:
Breath'd said I? no; 'twas all enliv'ning flame.
'Tis love, that fills the reed with warmth divine;
'Tis love, that sparkles in the racy wine.

[mortalterror]

11.Aeschylus-Agamemnon
Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget,
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until in our own despair, against our will,
comes wisdom, through the awful grace of God.

12.Baudelaire- Flowers of Evil
Folly and error, stinginess and sin
Possess our spirits and fatigue our flesh.
And like a pet we feed our tame remorse
As beggars take to nourishing their lice.

Our sins are stubborn, our contrition lax;
We offer lavishly our vows of faitb
And turn back gladly to tbe path of filth,
Thinking mean tears will wash away our stains.

On evil's pillow lies the alchemist
Satan Thrice-Great, who lulls our captive soul,
And all the richest metal of our will
Is vaporized by his hermetie arts.

Truly tbe Devil pulls on all our strings!
In most repugnant objects we find charms;
Each day we're one step furtber into Hell,
Content to move across tbe stinking pit.

As a poor libertine will suck and kiss
The sad, tormented tit of some old whore,
We steal a furtive pleasure as we pass,
A shrivelled orange that we squeeze and press.

Close, swarming, like a million writhing worms,
A demon nation riots in our brains,
And, when we breathe, death flows into our lungs,
A secret stream of dull, lamenting cries.

13.Jayadeva- Gita Govinda
Fish! that didst outswim the flood;
Tortoise! whereon earth hath stood;
Boar! who with thy tusk held'st high
The world, that mortals might not die;
Lion! who hast giants torn;
Dwarf! who laugh'dst a king to scorn;
Sole Subduer of the Dreaded!
Slayer of the many-headed!
Mighty Ploughman! Teacher tender!
Of thine own the sure Defender!
Under all thy ten disguises
Endless praise to thee arises.

Endless praise arises,
O thou God that liest
Rapt, on Kumla's breast,
Happiest, holiest, highest!
Planets are thy jewels,
Stars thy forehead-gems,
Set like sapphires gleaming
In kingliest anadems;
Even the great gold Sun-God,
Blazing through the sky,
Serves thee but for crest-stone,
_Jai, jai!_ Hari, _jai!_
As that Lord of day
After night brings morrow,
Thou dost charm away
Life's long dream of sorrow.

14.Anonymous- Book of Job
Can an innocent man be punished?
Can a good man die in distress?
I have seen the plowers of evil
reaping the crimes they sowed.
One breath from God and they shrivel up;
one blast of his rage and they burn.
The lion may roar with fury,
but his teeth are cracked in his mouth.
The jackal howls and goes hungry;
the wolf is driven away.

15.Jean Racine- Andromache
PYLADES: What, is it true? Your soul a slave to love,
you are thrown upon its mercy? By what charm,
forgetting so much agony endured,
could you consent to wear those irons again?
Do you suppose Hermione, cold in Sparta,
waits burning in Epirus? Well ashamed
to have persisted in such useless prayers,
you hated her, you spoke no more of her.
Sir, you deceived me.
ORESTES: I deceived myself.

16.T.S. Eliot- The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet–and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

17.Du Fu- Song of the Wagons
"Where do you go to-day ?" a passer-by
Calls to the marching men.
A grizzled old veteran answers him,
Halting his swinging stride:
"At fifteen I was sent to the north
To guard the river against the Hun;
At forty I was sent to camp,
To farm in the west, far, far from home.
When I left, my hair was long and black;
When I came home, it was white and thin.
Today they send me again to the wars,
Back to the north frontier,
By whose gray towers our blood has flowed
In a red tide, like the sea--
And will flow again, for Wu Huang Ti
Is resolved to rule the world.

18.Leopardi- Infinitive
I've always loved this lonesome hill
And this hedge that hides
The entire horizon, almost, from sight.
But sitting here in a daydream, I picture
The boundless spaces away out there, silences
Deeper than human silence, an unfathomable hush
In which my heart is hardly a beat
From fear. And hearing the wind
Rush rustling through these bushes,
I pit its speech against infinite silence-
And a notion of eternity floats to mind,
And the dead seasons, and the season
Beating here and now, and the sound of it. So,
In this immensity my toughts all drown;
And it's easeful to be wrecked in seas like these.

19.Coleridge- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

The very deep did rot: O Christ!
That ever this should be!
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.

About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night;
The water, like a witch's oils,
Burnt green, and blue and white.

And some in dreams assured were
Of the spirit that plagued us so:
Nine fathom deep he had followed us
From the land of mist and snow.

20.Lucan- Pharsalia
Tyrrhenus high
Upon the bulwarks of his ship was struck
By leaden bolt from Balearic sling
Of Lygdamus; straight through his temples passed
The fated missile; and in streams of blood
Forced from their seats his trembling eyeballs fell.
Plunged in a darkness as of night, he thought
That life had left him; yet ere long he knew
The living rigour of his limbs; and cried,
"Place me, O friends, as some machine of war
Straight facing towards the foe; then shall my darts
Strike as of old; and thou, Tyrrhenus, spend
Thy latest breath, still left, upon the fight:
So shalt thou play, not wholly dead, the part
That fits a soldier, and the spear that strikes
Thy frame, shall miss the living." Thus he spake,
And hurled his javelin, blind, but not in vain;
For Argus, generous youth of noble blood,
Below the middle waist received the spear
And falling drave it home. His aged sire
From furthest portion of the conquered ship
Beheld; than whom in prime of manhood none,
More brave in battle: now no more he fought,
Yet did the memory of his prowess stir
Phocaean youths to emulate his fame.
Oft stumbling o'er the benches the old man hastes
To reach his boy, and finds him breathing still.
No tear bedewed his cheek, nor on his breast
One blow he struck, but o'er his eyes there fell
A dark impenetrable veil of mist
That blotted out the day; nor could he more
Discern his luckless Argus.He, who saw
His parent, raising up his drooping head
With parted lips and silent features asks
A father's latest kiss, a father's hand
To close his dying eyes. But soon his sire,
Recovering from his swoon, when ruthless grief
Possessed his spirit, "This short space," he cried,
"I lose not, which the cruel gods have given,
But die before thee. Grant thy sorrowing sire
Forgiveness that he fled thy last embrace.
Not yet has passed thy life blood from the wound
Nor yet is death upon thee -- still thou may'st
Outlive thy parent." Thus he spake, and seized
The reeking sword and drave it to the hilt,
Then plunged into the deep, with headlong bound,
To anticipate his son: for this he feared
A single form of death should not suffice.

21.Wordsworth- I wandered lonely as a Cloud
I wandered lonely as a Cloud
That floats on high o'er Vales and Hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd
A host of dancing Daffodils;
Along the Lake, beneath the trees,
Ten thousand dancing in the breeze.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee: --
A poet could not but be gay
In such a laughing company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the Daffodils.

22.Shelley- Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert... 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.'

23.Petrarch- The Secret
And what is life itself? A space of toil,
A wrestling, a stage-play, a labyrinth
Of errors, or a game of mountebanks,
A desert, a morass, a land of briers,
An unploughed valley, or a crest unclomb:
Sombre its caves, and what wild beasts dwell there!
There is the stream of tears, the sea of woes,
Rest ever anxious, labour all for naught,
Hope without fruit, false pleasure but true pain,
Full breadth of poverty but empty wealth,
Inglorious honour, waste of all desire,
Adversity with never-stayned complaint,
The sting in all enjoyment, and the sweet,
Alas, not seldom bitter; a brief halt
At wayside inns; a dirty prison; a ship
Without a rudder; a blind man unled;
A stormy sea, a dangerous coast, a port
All doubtful,--with no dearth of monstrous wreck;
Hate, lust, and anger, virtue aye assumed,
Successful fraud labelled with honour's name,
Innocence scoffed at, faith held up to scorn,
And puffed-up science that no science is;
A land of ghosts and spectres, 'neath the reign
Of Lucifer and demons; or a sleep
Death ends and every dream. But yet some way
Remains, thank heaven, to good life, and hereafter
Unto the eternal.

24.Yeats- 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?

25.Tennyson- Ulysses
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

26.Ezra Pound- Make strong old dreams
Make-strong old dreams lest this our world lose heart.

For man is a skinfull of wine
But his soul is a hole full of God
And the song of all time blows thru him
As wind thru a knot-holed board.

Tho man be a skin full of wine
Yet his heart is a little child
That croucheth low beneath the wind
When the God-storm battereth wild.

27.Robert Frost- The Road Less Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

28.John Donne- Works
Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear,
No where
Lives a woman true, and fair.

If thou find'st one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet;
Though she were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.

29.John Wilmot- A Ramble in St James' Park
Much wine had passed, with grave discourse
Of who ****s who, and who does worse
(Such as you usually do hear
From those that diet at the Bear),
When I, who still take care to see
Drunkenness relieved by lechery,
Went out into St. James's Park
To cool my head and fire my heart.
But though St. James has th' honor on 't,
'Tis consecrate to prick and ****.
There, by a most incestuous birth,
Strange woods spring from the teeming earth;
For they relate how heretofore,
When ancient Pict began to ****,
Deluded of his assignation
(Jilting, it seems, was then in fashion),
Poor pensive lover, in this place
Would frig upon his mother's face;
Whence rows of mandrakes tall did rise
Whose lewd tops ****ed the very skies.

30.Statius- The Thebaid
The horses match their masters' fire: eyes flash,
Teeth grind and bloody foam corrodes the bits.
Their pressure almost bursts the starting-gates
As in their thwarted rage they snort and steam.
To stand's such torture, countless steps are lost
Before the start and hooves pound down the course
That's still to come. The faithful grooms stand by,
Adjusting harness, smoothing tangled manes,
With words of courage, wealth of good advice.
The trumpet sounded and away they all
Hurtled. What sails at sea, what spears in war,
What clouds across the sky, can fly so fast?
Weaker are winter spates and forest fires,
Slower shoot stars, slower fall sheets of rain,
Slower rush cataracts from mountain peaks.

[JBI]

Across the sky, whirling and twirling, a swift wind blows.34
I ascend the Magnolia Tower and look into the distance;35
20 My spirit, troubled and confused, spills out of my body.
Floating clouds gather and everywhere block the view;
The sky is black, and the day darkens.
The droning din of thunder begins to resound;
It reminds me of the rumbling of my lord's carriage.
25 A whirlwind blows round my chamber,
Lifting the curtains, which flap and flutter.
Cinnamon trees, branches intertwined and thickly tangled,
Exude a fragrance pungent and strong.
Peacocks flock together as if paying courtesy calls;
30 Black gibbons shriek and howl.
Kingfishers fold their wings and snuggle together;
Only the phoenixes soar off alone, one north, one south.38
My heart is choked with sorrow-I cannot release it;
Foul humors fiercely attack my innards.
35 I descend the Magnolia Tower and look all around;
Languidly I walk through the deep palace recesses.
The main hall solitarily stretches to the sky,
Massively rising and arching upward.
I linger for a while in the eastern chamber,
40 Gazing at its endless delicate beauty.

The translation is choppy, as Sima Xiangru is one of the most difficult poets to translate, but in the original it rhymes and bounces very naturally with both imbedded rhymes and end-of-line rhymes, as well as lots of assonance and alliteration.

Take his poem on High Park as an example

Swiftly, amply flowing, 汩乎混流 (yù hū hùn liú)
They descend along the slopes, 順阿而下 (shùn ē ér xià)
Enter mouths of narrow gorges, 赴隘陝之口 ( fù ài xiá zhī kŏu)
Collide with giant boulders, 觸穹石 (chù qióng shí)
Smash against winding shores, 激堆埼 ( jī duī qí)
50 Frothing with violent anger. 沸乎暴怒 ( fèi hū bào nù)
Soaring and leaping, surging and swelling, 洶湧彭湃 (xiōng yŏng péng pài)
Spurting and spouting, rushing and racing, 滭弗宓汩 (bì fèi mì yù)
Pressing and pushing, clashing and colliding, 偪側泌瀄 (bī cè bì jié)
Flowing uncontrolled, bending back, 橫流逆折 (héng liú nì zhé)
55 Wheeling and rearing, beating and battering, 轉騰潎洌 (zhuăn téng piĕ liè)
Swelling and surging, troublous and turbulent. 滂濞沆溉 (páng pì hàng gài)
Loftily arching, billowing like clouds, 穹隆雲橈 (qióng lóng yún náo)
Sinuously snaking, curling and coiling, 宛潬膠盭 (wăn shàn jiāo lì)
Outracing their own waves, rushing to the chasms, 逾波趨浥 (yú bō qū yà)
60 Lap, lap, they descend to the shoals. 蒞蒞下瀨 (lì lì xià lài)
Striking the bluffs, hurtling against the dikes, 批巖衝擁 (pī yán chōng yōng)
Racing and swelling, spraying and spuming. 奔揚滯沛 (bēn yáng zhì pèi)
Nearing the sandbars, they pour into gullies, 臨坻注壑 (lín chí zhù hè)
Plashing and splashing as they tumble downward. 瀺灂霣墜 (chán zhuó yún zhuì)
65 Deep, deep, full, full, 沈沈隱隱 (chén chén yĭn yĭn)
Rumbling and roaring, bellowing and blustering, 砰磅訇礚 (pēng pāng hōng kài)
Bubbling and boiling, gushing and gurgling, 潏潏淈淈 ( jué jué gŭ gŭ)
Foaming and frothing like a seething cauldron, 湁潗鼎沸 (chì jí dĭng fèi)
Speeding waves, flinging spray, 馳波跳沫 (chí bō tiào mò)
70 They swiftly swirl, furious and fast. 汩濦漂疾 (yù xī piāo jí)
Far and wide, distantly heading homeward, 悠遠長懷 (yōu yuăn cháng huái)
Still and silent, without a sound, 寂漻無聲 ( jì liáo wú shēng)
Gently, they make their long return. 肆乎永歸 (sì hū yŏng guī)
And then 然後 (rán hòu)
Broad and boundless, deep and wide, 灝溔潢漾 (hào yāo huáng yàng)
75 Calmly coursing, slowly turning, 安翔徐回 (ān xiáng xú huí)
Brightly gleaming and glistening, 翯乎滈滈 (hè hū hào hào)
Eastward they pour into great lakes, 東注太湖 (dōng zhù tài hú)
Spill and overflow into reservoirs and ponds.


................


“And then the lofty mountains spire on high: 於是乎崇山矗矗 (yú shì hū chóng shān chù chù)
Arching aloft, tall and towering, 巃嵸崔巍 (lóng sŏng cuī wéi)
110 Densely forested with giant trees, 深林巨木 (shēn lín jù mù)
Steeply scarped, jaggedly jutting. 嶄巖參差 (chán yán cēn cī)
Jiuzong rises sheer and sharp,10 九嵕巀嶭 ( jiŭ zōng zá è)
Southern Mountains soar solemn and stately,11 南山峨峨 (nán shān é é)
Their cliffs and ledges, like tottering cauldrons, 巖阤甗錡 (yán yĭ yăn qí)
115 Stand precipitously piled, jagged and steep 摧崣崛崎 (cuī wĕi jué qí)
Waters collect in streams, converge in gullies, 振溪通谷 (zhèn xī tōng gŭ)
Which twist and twine into cloughs and channels. 蹇產溝瀆 ( jiăn chăn gōu dú)
Valley mouths widely gape and yawn, 谽呀豁閜 (hān yā huò xiă)
Mounds rise from the waters, each a separate isle. 阜陵別隝 ( fù líng bié dăo)
120 The hills, rugged and ragged, 崴磈岧瘣 (wēi kuí tiáo huì)
Hillocky and hummocky, rolling and rearing, 丘虛堀礨 (qiū xū jué lĕi)
Cragged and crannied, 隱轔鬱鵾 (yĭn lín yù lĕi)
Rise and fall, wind and weave. 登降施靡 (dēng jiàng yī mí)
Where the land slopes and slants, gradually
levels out, 陂池貏豸 (pí chí bĭ zhì)
125 The waters stream forth in a flooding flow, 允溶淫鬻 (yŭn róng yín yù)
Scattering and spreading over the level plain, 散渙夷陸 (săn huàn yí lù)
64 the han dynasty
For a thousand leagues of flat marshland, 亭皋千里 (tíng gāo qiān lĭ)
There is nothing that has not been tamped
smooth. 靡不被築 (mí bú bèi zhù)
The ground is covered with green patchouli, 揜以綠蕙 (yăn yĭ lǜ huì)
130 Blanketed with lovage shoots, 被以江離 (bèi yĭ jiāng lí)
Scattered with lovage leaves, 糅以蘼蕪 (róu yĭ mí wú)
Strewn with peonies, 雜以留夷 (zá yĭ liú yí)
Spreading knot-thread, 布結縷 (bù jié lǚ)
Clustered green galingale, 攢戾莎 (cuán lì suō)
135 Cart-halt, asarum, bugleweed, 揭車衡蘭 ( jiē chē héng lán)
Sichuan lovage, blackberry lily, 槀本射干 (hào bĕn yè gān)
Purple ginger, mioga ginger, 茈薑蘘荷 (zī jiāng ráng hé)
Winter cherry, ground-cherry, pollia, sweet flag, 葴持若蓀 (zhēn chí ruò sūn)
Malabar spinach, virgin’s bower, 鮮支黃礫 (xiān zhī huáng lì)
140 Water bamboo, burreed tuber, and green sedge, 蔣芧青薠 ( jiăng zhù qīng fán)
Spread and sprawl over the wide marsh, 布濩閎澤 (bù huò hóng zé)
Range and ramble over the great plain, 延曼太原 (yán màn tài yuán)
Tightly tangled, broadly stretching. 離靡廣衍 (lí mí guăng yăn)
Bent and blown by the wind, 應風披靡 (yīng fēng pī mí)
145 They emit fragrance, waft pungency, 吐芳揚烈 (tŭ fāng yáng liè)
Rich and redolent, sweetly-scented, 郁郁菲菲 (yù yù fēi fēi)
And myriad perfumes issue forth, 眾香發越 (zhòng xiāng fā yuè)
Spread and scatter, permeating everything, 肸蠁布寫 (xì xiăng bù xiĕ)
Thick and heavy, strong and sharp. 晻薆咇茀 (yăn ài bí bó)


The park in a sense is the entire world - and contains the entire world within it. As it is the whole poem is an elaborate metaphor for the power and majesty of the Han Wu Emperor, but the work is so masterful in using language that it is almost shocking that it could have been written over 2000 years ago. The range of its vocabulary is just staggering - even more so than the fact that it rhymes and is as rhetorically dense as Milton

[Paulclem]

I like quite a few of the poets posted here - Prufrock was the first Eliot poem I felt I could get to grips with. I read The Wasteland over number of years trying to unlock it, but enjoyed such intriguing poetry. I also like Philip Larkin. He's to my experience of poetry as Lowry is to my experience of art. I found his bleakness resonated such as in Mr Bleaney:

http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems...in/mr-bleaney/

I like Basho's The Narrow Road to the Deep North, which has haiku within a travelogue. Interestingly, my lad has just returned from japan, and he was telling me of the significance of North to the Japanese as representing purity which, now I come to think about it, makes the title more meaningful whereas before it seemed enigmatic.

I like Frost, and I like Milton. I enjoyed Paradise Lost very much. The module they were going to run on him when I was at university was cancelled, and so I never read and studied him as I would have.

In the 80s I came across a book called Three Czech poets - Vitezslav Nezval, Antonin Bartusek, Josef Hanzlik. I used to read them, with, at that time, little understanding of the political situation other than a vague idea of communism, and ponder their meaning. I found them to present me with a similar challenge as Eliot. I knew that the poetry was good, but I needed to work on my understanding of it. As I was wondering who I would include in this post, I thought of the book and have just ordered it second hand off Amazon. Marvellous. At least I may be able to understand their poems better this time.(I hope!).

The Mersey Poets, (their anthology was called The Mersey Sound), for me were important in breaking the assumption that there were only formal ways to do poetry. Some of the poems are just jokes, but I really liked reading them. I think they encouraged people to have a go in a similar way that punk rock encouraged people to have a go at music. They were well established from the Beatles era when I got to read them.

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/song-...-the-motorway/

Roger McGough originally wrote Let Me Die a Youngman's Death - which was in the Mersey Sound, and he has done a follow up poem - which is his view now that he's much older.

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/let-m...ngman-s-death/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_wgs5tXbPs

John Cooper Clarke - poet and recently revived and reformed heroin addict became the punk version of the Mersey poets. He's quite the celebrity now.

http://www.cyberspike.com/clarke/yours.html

[Whisper]

Oh my, could we narrow it down a little?

Dean young
Richard Hoffman
Dylan Thomas
Elizabeth Bishop
W. S. DI PIERO
Auden
Eliot
W.C. Williams
Dickinson
Keats
Basho
Robert Frost
Pinsky
Mark Strand
Yeats
Shakespeare
Houseman
D. Hammes (Despite many of my contemporaries, who refer to his work as "high-grade doggerel".)
Whitman
Dan Beachy-Quick
Reginald Dwayne Betts
Herman Melville
(and many more)

[Paulclem]

Oh my, could we narrow it down a little?

I like the variety.

I got my Three Czech Poets from Amazon recently. I'm amazed that I recognise - though not verbatim - some of the poems. I can remember reading them in the house I used to live in then thirty years or so ago.

The poems are still good, and I understand them better now - though not everything is crystal. I'll keep reading.

One thing I noted in the introduction was the idea of Poetism. Having just looked it up, it was an idea espoused by Czech poets. The translated manifesto is here:

http://cafeirreal.alicewhittenburg.com/pmanifes.htm

It has a mixture of realism and the poetic within it. How it would have gone down in the post war years is probably why we haven't heard much about it - I'm not sure it would have resonated that well under Communist auspices.