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Hey TL, I was wondering if you guys have any favorite poems.
Recently I really like Robert Frost's "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening" Wordsworth's "Daffodils" and Shelleys "Ozymandias". I really like Romanticism, although I don't necessarily agree with the philosophy, I feel it does provide a generally happy world view which is hard to find in literature.
Got any recommendations? Major turn offs for me are heavy god themes (I have trouble reading most Milton because of this), and bad love poetry.
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My favorite poems are Kubla Khan by Samuel Coleridge and anything by T.S. Eliot. I really like poems that make beautiful and interesting images without bothering to tie them together neatly into some kind of narrative or simple description.
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I like this one:
In Flanders Fields, by John McCrae
In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.
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United States4053 Posts
On May 28 2011 12:49 nbaker wrote: My favorite poems are Kubla Khan by Samuel Coleridge and anything by T.S. Eliot. I really like poems that make beautiful and interesting images without bothering to tie them together neatly into some kind of narrative or simple description. +1 to Kubla Khan. It's a genius work.
Mending Wall by Robert Frost is pretty interesting too, especially in historical context.
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Kubla Khan is quite good, if I'm not incorrect that's another romantic poem. Those are all really quite good.
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Baa?21242 Posts
The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe is probably my favorite poem.
Dante's Divine Comedy is technically a poem, and is another one of my favorites. Paradise Lost by John Milton as well.
John Donne is great as someone mentioned. Death be Not Proud is a particular favorite of mine.
Other good ones include The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats, and Ode to a Grecian Urn and Ode to Psyche by John Keats.
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I recommend you just buy a comprehensive anthology that spans a wide range of time. It seems to be what you're looking for. Pretty much everything in an anthology will be pretty deep with fair amount to chew on for an analytical mind.
Sometimes when people say what their favourite poem is, I get the intense feeling of "wow, you took an English course one time." I suppose it can't be helped. I myself almost never read poetry outside of the literary canon.
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How about i sing of olaf glad and big? Its one of my favorite poems:
i sing of Olaf glad and big whose warmest heart recoiled at war: a conscientious object-or
his wellbelovéd colonel(trig westpointer most succinctly bred) took erring Olaf soon in hand; but--though an host of overjoyed noncoms(first knocking on the head him)do through icy waters roll that helplessness which others stroke with brushes recently employed anent this muddy toiletbowl, while kindred intellects evoke allegiance per blunt instruments-- Olaf(being to all intents a corpse and wanting any rag upon what God unto him gave) responds,without getting annoyed "I will not kiss your fucking flag"
straightway the silver bird looked grave (departing hurriedly to shave)
but--though all kinds of officers (a yearning nation's blueeyed pride) their passive prey did kick and curse until for wear their clarion voices and boots were much the worse, and egged the firstclassprivates on his rectum wickedly to tease by means of skilfully applied bayonets roasted hot with heat-- Olaf(upon what were once knees) does almost ceaselessly repeat "there is some shit I will not eat"
our president,being of which assertions duly notified threw the yellowsonofabitch into a dungeon,where he died
Christ(of His mercy infinite) i pray to see;and Olaf,too
preponderatingly because unless statistics lie he was more brave than me:more blond than you.
Or if you're feeling a little bit more modern you could listen to ginsburg read Howl parts 1 & 2 right here: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15308 Its amazing to me that they are able to do that. Listening to Ginsburg read this poem is the literary equivalent of listening to Jimmy hendrix playing the national anthem at woodstock.
Or you could read this poem thats apparently really famous but I'd never heard of it before one of my classes this year:
The Bear BY GALWAY KINNELL
1 In late winter I sometimes glimpse bits of steam coming up from some fault in the old snow and bend close and see it is lung-colored and put down my nose and know the chilly, enduring odor of bear.
2 I take a wolf’s rib and whittle it sharp at both ends and coil it up and freeze it in blubber and place it out on the fairway of the bears.
And when it has vanished I move out on the bear tracks, roaming in circles until I come to the first, tentative, dark splash on the earth.
And I set out running, following the splashes of blood wandering over the world. At the cut, gashed resting places I stop and rest, at the crawl-marks where he lay out on his belly to overpass some stretch of bauchy ice I lie out dragging myself forward with bear-knives in my fists.
3 On the third day I begin to starve, at nightfall I bend down as I knew I would at a turd sopped in blood, and hesitate, and pick it up, and thrust it in my mouth, and gnash it down, and rise and go on running.
4 On the seventh day, living by now on bear blood alone, I can see his upturned carcass far out ahead, a scraggled, steamy hulk, the heavy fur riffling in the wind.
I come up to him and stare at the narrow-spaced, petty eyes, the dismayed face laid back on the shoulder, the nostrils flared, catching perhaps the first taint of me as he died.
I hack a ravine in his thigh, and eat and drink, and tear him down his whole length and open him and climb in and close him up after me, against the wind, and sleep.
5 And dream of lumbering flatfooted over the tundra, stabbed twice from within, splattering a trail behind me, splattering it out no matter which way I lurch, no matter which parabola of bear-transcendence, which dance of solitude I attempt, which gravity-clutched leap, which trudge, which groan.
6 Until one day I totter and fall— fall on this stomach that has tried so hard to keep up, to digest the blood as it leaked in, to break up and digest the bone itself: and now the breeze blows over me, blows off the hideous belches of ill-digested bear blood and rotted stomach and the ordinary, wretched odor of bear,
blows across my sore, lolled tongue a song or screech, until I think I must rise up and dance. And I lie still.
7 I awaken I think. Marshlights reappear, geese come trailing again up the flyway. In her ravine under old snow the dam-bear lies, licking lumps of smeared fur and drizzly eyes into shapes with her tongue. And one hairy-soled trudge stuck out before me, the next groaned out, the next, the next, the rest of my days I spend wandering: wondering what, anyway, was that sticky infusion, that rank flavor of blood, that poetry, by which I lived?
I'll give you a hint: its not really a ghost story.
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One of my all-time favourites. "unstructured space is a deluge" + Show Spoiler +Progressive insanities of a pioneer Margaret Atwood
i
He stood, a point on a sheet of green paper proclaiming himself the centre,
with no walls, no borders anywhere; the sky no height above him, totally unenclosed and shouted:
Let me out!
ii
He dug the soil in rows, imposed himself with shovels He asserted into the furrows, I am not random.
The ground replied with aphorisms:
a tree-sprout, a nameless weed, words he couldn't understand.
iii
The house pitched the plot staked in the middle of nowhere.
At night the mind inside, in the middle of nowhere.
The idea of an animal patters across the roof.
In the darkness the fields defend themselves with fences in vain: everything is getting in.
iv
By daylight he resisted. He said, disgusted with the swamp's clamourings and the outbursts of rocks, this is not order but the absence of order.
He was wrong, the unanswering forest implied:
It was an ordered absence
v
For many years he fished for a great vision, dangling the hooks of sown roots under the surface of the shallow earth.
It was like enticing whales with a bent pin. Besides he though
in that country only the worms were biting.
vi
If he had known unstructured space is a deluge and stocked his log house— boat with all the animals
even the wolves
he might have floated.
But obstinate he stated, The land is solid and stamped,
watching his foot sink down through stone up to the knee.
vii
Things refused to name themselves; refused to let him name them.
The wolves hunted outside.
On his beaches, his clearings, by the surf of under— growth breaking at his feet, he foresaw disintegration
and in the end
through eyes made ragged by his effort, the tension between subject and object,
the green vision, the unnamed whale invaded.
You might want to check out some other 20th century poets - Atwood, ee cummings, and Seamus Heaney are some of my faves.
EDIT: added spoiler tags. the poem is kinda long.
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Those Winter Sundays
Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueback cold then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked in fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I'd wake and hear the cold splinering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he'd call and slowly I would rise and dress fearing the chronic angers of the house,
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
The name eludes me, but I always loved this poem.
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On May 28 2011 13:20 Chef wrote: Sometimes when people say what their favourite poem is, I get the intense feeling of "wow, you took an English course one time." I suppose it can't be helped. I myself almost never read poetry outside of the literary canon.
Yeah this is a common problem. I think its because they teach the most boring poems in school; there are way more exciting poems that you could spend your time reading than the ones they give you in school. I mean Liz Browning is great but she has way better poems then "let me count the ways I love thee." And don't even get me started on the merits of presenting Plath to a bunch of middle schoolers.
You just have to find the right poet! Modern readers will find the most complexity and surprise in poems that are more contemporary because older poems feel dated. I posted two big (relatively) contemporary hits above, but there are a ton of really really good poets that are still living and writing today who write stuff that is much more exciting to me than things written by dead people. Robert Hass is an example. Also Billy Collins (although I think he died recently) and that Gluck woman, whatshername... I think its Lucille Gluck although I could be mistaken.
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On May 28 2011 13:20 Chef wrote: Sometimes when people say what their favourite poem is, I get the intense feeling of "wow, you read and became interested in poetry on your own"
I fixed it for you. I'd die just once if my english classes taught any remote form of poetry.
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On May 28 2011 13:35 Torte de Lini wrote:Show nested quote +Those Winter Sundays
Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueback cold then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked in fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I'd wake and hear the cold splinering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he'd call and slowly I would rise and dress fearing the chronic angers of the house,
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 The name eludes me, but I always loved this poem.
Thats Robert Hass! No... Hayden. Yep, just googled it, Robert Hayden.
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On May 28 2011 13:37 tnkted wrote:Show nested quote +On May 28 2011 13:20 Chef wrote: Sometimes when people say what their favourite poem is, I get the intense feeling of "wow, you took an English course one time." I suppose it can't be helped. I myself almost never read poetry outside of the literary canon. Yeah this is a common problem. I think its because they teach the most boring poems in school; there are way more exciting poems that you could spend your time reading than the ones they give you in school. What? This is like the opposite of what I said. And don't call Elizabeth Browning "Liz" lol. Every single poet mentioned in this thread (including Mrs. Browning) is taught in school.
On May 28 2011 13:40 Torte de Lini wrote:Show nested quote +On May 28 2011 13:20 Chef wrote: Sometimes when people say what their favourite poem is, I get the intense feeling of "wow, you read and became interested in poetry on your own" I fixed it for you. I'd die just once if my english classes taught any remote form of poetry. English in high school is different from English in university. English in high school is just trying to teach you how to read and write proficiently, with a few famous examples. English in university is a wide survey of each movement that makes up the history of English literature, and you will certainly encounter legitimate study of poetry
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On May 28 2011 13:41 tnkted wrote:Show nested quote +On May 28 2011 13:35 Torte de Lini wrote:Those Winter Sundays
Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueback cold then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked in fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I'd wake and hear the cold splinering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he'd call and slowly I would rise and dress fearing the chronic angers of the house,
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 The name eludes me, but I always loved this poem. Thats Robert Hass! No... Hayden. Yep, just googled it, Robert Hayden.
@____________@ I love you.
Thanks a lot. I wasn't aware of who wrote it for awhile, but I've always been fond of this poem, fond of the theme.
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I read poems both in and out of school . Ozy I read outside at first, the other two inside school, though Frost was life 5th grade and I reread it on my own last year. My dad has a bunch of anthologies I like to look through and poetry.org is a great resource.
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On May 28 2011 13:41 Chef wrote:Show nested quote +On May 28 2011 13:37 tnkted wrote:On May 28 2011 13:20 Chef wrote: Sometimes when people say what their favourite poem is, I get the intense feeling of "wow, you took an English course one time." I suppose it can't be helped. I myself almost never read poetry outside of the literary canon. Yeah this is a common problem. I think its because they teach the most boring poems in school; there are way more exciting poems that you could spend your time reading than the ones they give you in school. What? This is like the opposite of what I said. And don't call Elizabeth Browning "Liz" lol. Every single poet mentioned in this thread (including Mrs. Browning) is taught in school.
I know, that's my point. So many people today don't like poetry because the poems they teach in school are the most boring ones. Yes, many of Shakespeares poems are really good and fun to read but to someone who woke up ten minutes before the bus showed up Shakespeare is the least interesting thing in the world. You don't show your girlfriend Thorzain videos when you introduce her to starcraft, you show her Boxer or TLO vods.
(and my spellchecker hated Elizabeth no matter how I spelt it so I just said liz instead to satisfy my OCD.)
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My favorite poems are pretty much anything by Pablo Neruda. Or at least any of the stuff I have read so far by him, and I have only read one and a half of his books. I also really enjoy Siegfried Sassoon.
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My favorite is either Tractor by Ted Hughes (spoilered below) or The Wasteland.
EDIT: Actually, that's probably a complete lie. My real favorite poems are all by Jack Prelutsky and possibly some Shel Silverstein. I'm currently thinking of such enduring greats as When Daddy Sat on the Tomatoes. Seriously, "A Pizza the Size of the Sun" is one of my most treasured books.
+ Show Spoiler +The tractor stands frozen - an agony To think of. All night Snow packed its open entrails. Now a head-pincering gale, A spill of molten ice, smoking snow, Pours into its steel. At white heat of numbness it stands In the aimed hosing of ground-level fieriness.
It defied flesh and won't start. Hands are like wounds already Inside armour gloves, and feet are unbelievable As if the toe-nails were all just torn off. I stare at it in hatred. Beyond it The copse hisses - capitulates miserably In the fleeing, failing light. Starlings, A dirtier sleetier snow, blow smokily, unendingly, over Towards plantations Eastward. All the time the tractor is sinking Through the degrees, deepening Into its hell of ice.
The starting lever Cracks its action, like a snapping knuckle. The battery is alive - but like a lamb Trying to nudge its solid-frozen mother - While the seat claims my buttock-bones, bites With the space-cold of earth, which it has joined In one solid lump.
I squirt commercial sure-fire Down the black throat - it just coughs. It ridicules me - a trap of iron stupidity I've stepped into. I drive the battery As if I were hammering and hammering The frozen arrangement to pieces with a hammer And it jabbers laughing pain-crying mockingly Into happy life.
And stands Shuddering itself full of heat, seeming to enlarge slowly Like a demon demonstrating A more-than-usually-complete materialization - Suddenly it jerks from its solidarity With the concrete, and lurches towards a stanchion Bursting with superhuman well-being and abandon Shouting Where Where?
Worse iron is waiting. Power-lift kneels Levers awake imprisoned deadweight, Shackle-pins bedded in cast-iron cow-shit. The blind and vibrating condemned obedience Of iron to the cruelty of iron, Wheels screeched out of their night-locks -
Fingers Among the tormented Tonnage and burning of iron
Eyes Weeping in the wind of chloroform
And the tractor, streaming with sweat, Raging and trembling and rejoicing.
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