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Favourite Poem?
I love reading poetry.
So...as the title says, please share your favourite poem(s) below! |
I have a fair few so just selected three:
Not waving but drowning-Stevie Smith (stereotypical I know) : Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning: I was much further out than you thought And not waving but drowning. Poor chap, he always loved larking And now he's dead It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way, They said. Oh, no no no, it was too cold always (Still the dead one lay moaning) I was much too far out all my life And not waving but drowning. Cut-Sylvia Plath (another sterotype, sorry lol but the title actually nothing to do with what you might initially think): What a thrill ---- My thumb instead of an onion. The top quite gone Except for a sort of hinge Of skin, A flap like a hat, Dead white. Then that red plush. Little pilgrim, The Indian's axed your scalp. Your turkey wattle Carpet rolls Straight from the heart. I step on it, Clutching my bottle Of pink fizz. A celebration, this is. Out of a gap A million soldiers run, Redcoats, every one. Whose side are they one? O my Homunculus, I am ill. I have taken a pill to kill The thin Papery feeling. Saboteur, Kamikaze man ---- The stain on your Gauze Ku Klux Klan Babushka Darkens and tarnishes and when The balled Pulp of your heart Confronts its small Mill of silence How you jump ---- Trepanned veteran, Dirty girl, Thumb stump. If-Rudyard Kipling: IF you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools: If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!' If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, ' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch, if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son! |
Bavarian Gentians by DH Lawrence.
The Moon and the Yew Tree by Sylvia Plath. and The Waste Land by TS Eliot. [I can still quote the beginning, from my A Level back in 1988!] I also like Lawrence Durrell's poetry, and Rumi. |
This was my favourite poem when i was a teen :) i guess it still is xxx
Look into her eyes you'll see her tears The pain she's been feeling for so many years You'll know how she feels She's screaming inside You'll see all the secrets she had to hide Look at her heart It's broken in two She can never go back to the world she once knew It's left in pieces They lie on the floor She knows life won't be the same anymore Look at her scars She makes herself bleed By cutting herself, she hopes to be free She knows that after, it just makes it worse She's trapped in herself She can't stop this curse When things get bad, she does it again And hopes for a time when her sadness will end Look at her life She didn't want this Look at her sitting here cutting her wrists Look at her tears as they flow down her face Now she feels nothing, just stares into space Her pain is taking over there's nothing she can do You can see her . . . but she can't see you. |
Mad Girl's Love Song and various others by Sylvia Plath.
Girl by Lisa Zaran. ooh and Education For Leisure by Carol Ann Duffy, I studied that for GCSE and really liked it. |
Thank you all so much, I love reading these. I especially like that Robert Graves poem, and I've never read it before, so thank you.
I could never really get into Sylvia Plath. I much prefer Anne Sexton if I'm honest. Anne Sexton - Courage It is in the small things we see it. The child's first step, as awesome as an earthquake. The first time you rode a bike, wallowing up the sidewalk. The first spanking when your heart went on a journey all alone. When they called you crybaby or poor or fatty or crazy and made you into an alien, you drank their acid and concealed it. Later, if you faced the death of bombs and bullets you did not do it with a banner, you did it with only a hat to cover your heart. You did not fondle the weakness inside you though it was there. Your courage was a small coal that you kept swallowing. If your buddy saved you and died himself in so doing, then his courage was not courage, it was love; love as simple as shaving soap. Later, if you have endured a great despair, then you did it alone, getting a transfusion from the fire, picking the scabs off your heart, then wringing it out like a sock. Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow, you gave it a back rub and then you covered it with a blanket and after it had slept a while it woke to the wings of the roses and was transformed. Later, when you face old age and its natural conclusion your courage will still be shown in the little ways, each spring will be a sword you'll sharpen, those you love will live in a fever of love, and you'll bargain with the calendar and at the last moment when death opens the back door you'll put on your carpet slippers and stride out. I am really keen on T.S. Eliot - The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock is excellent too and hasn't been mentioned yet. Another few of my favourites: William Yeats - When You Are Old When you are old and gray and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face; And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face among a crowd of stars. Boris Pasternak - Black spring! Pick up your pen, and weeping... Black spring! Pick up your pen, and weeping, Of February, in sobs and ink, Write poems, while the slush in thunder Is burning in the black of spring. Through clanking wheels, through church bells ringing A hired cab will take you where The town has ended, where the showers Are louder still than ink and tears. Where rooks, like charred pears, from the branches In thousands break away, and sweep Into the melting snow, instilling Dry sadness into eyes that weep. Beneath - the earth is black in puddles, The wind with croaking screeches throbs, And-the more randomly, the surer Poems are forming out of sobs. |
I liked reading all these :)
I have quite a few 'favourites', it's hard to pick one. Still I Rise - Maya Angelou. Journey of the Magi - T.S. Eliot. (Although I like Eliot in general). Ode to Autumn - John Keats. (We did Keats at school and I was the only one who liked him, but I just think it's beautiful). Adolescence - Nin Andrews. (It's not really a poem poem, it's a 'prose poem' but I like it a lot). Also, Stevie Smith in general. Everyone knows the Not Waving But Drowning one, but her other stuff is great too. |
One of the only poems that ever really grabbed me was The Ryme of the Ancient Mariner. Which is stupidly long, for a poem, but the imagery is just mindblowing to me.
I also liked Miss Gee by W.H.Auden when I was studying it. I'll find links in a mo. |
I love the Nin Andrews one, and Journey of the Magi is another favourite.
I have always struggled a bit with Keats though. Robert Frost - Dust of Snow The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued. |
A.A Milne
If you were a bird, and lived on high, You'd lean on the wind when the wind came by, You'd say to the wind when it took you away: "That's where I wanted to go today!" Where am I going? I don't quite know. What does it matter where people go? Down to the wood where the blue-bells grow. Anywhere, anywhere. I don't know |
I know very little poetry it seems and very little of it but I do find myself drawn to it. The 'courage' one made me cry, there is something special about it.. the gentle growth perhaps.
I don't know if this is my favourite poem, I don't think I will ever find one. It is the poem that I always come back to though - I read it at a young age and it made sense.. Not necessarily love.. just the world falling asleep on me. Past One O'Clock Vladimir Mayakovsky Past one o’clock. You must have gone to bed. The Milky Way streams silver through the night. I’m in no hurry; with lightning telegrams I have no cause to wake or trouble you. And, as they say, the incident is closed. Love’s boat has smashed against the daily grind. Now you and I are quits. Why bother then To balance mutual sorrows, pains, and hurts. Behold what quiet settles on the world. Night wraps the sky in tribute from the stars. In hours like these, one rises to address The ages, history, and all creation. |
Droplet, I agree - that one makes being awake at ridiculous o'clock in the morning seem very peaceful and awesome (in the literal sense of the word).
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I may sound starngte when I say this but I absolutely adored a lot of the poems in the AQA GCSE Anthology especially Education for Leisure by Carol Ann Duffy, Island Man by Grace Nichols and Hitcher by Simon Armitage.
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Oh and of course:-
Do not stand at my grave and weep I am not there. I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glints on snow. I am the sunlight on ripened grain. I am the gentle autumn rain. When you awaken in the morning's hush I am the swift uplifting rush Of quiet birds in circled flight. I am the soft stars that shine at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry; I am not there. I did not die |
Percy Bysshe 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. John Gillespie Magee - High Flight Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there, I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air.... Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace Where never lark nor even eagle flew— And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod The high untrespassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand, and touched the face of God. G.K. Chesterton - The Donkey When fishes flew and forests walked And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood Then surely I was born; With monstrous head and sickening cry And ears like errant wings, The devil's walking parody On all four-footed things. The tattered outlaw of the earth, Of ancient crooked will; Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb, I keep my secret still. Fools! For I also had my hour; One far fierce hour and sweet: There was a shout about my ears, And palms before my feet. (I think I like this one because I love donkeys, they are seriously cute) http://farm1.static.flickr.com/111/2...ea7b3d.jpg?v=0 |
I don't think anyone's mentioned this. It's one of my all-time favourites. Sad thing, though, the author now has Alzheimer's.
Sonnet for Heaven Below - Jack Agueros No, it wasn't Macondo, and it wasn't Calcutta in time past But subway magic turned the tunnels into Beautyrest mattresses And plenty of God's children started sleeping there. Some Were actually Angels fatigued from long hours and no pay. This is an aside, but I have to alert you. Angels run Around, don't shave or bathe; acid rain fractures their Feathers, and French fries and coca-cola corrupt The color of their skin and make them sing hoarsely. The gossamer shoes so perfect for kicking clouds Stain and tear on the concrete and in the hard light Of the city they start to look like abandoned barges Foundering in the cancerous waters of the Gowanus Canal. Shabby gossamer shoes always arouse the derision of smart New Yorkers Mercifully, Angels aren't tourists, so they are spared total disdain. |
Ariel - Sylvia Plath
Stasis in darkness. Then the substanceless blue Pour of tor and distances. God's lioness, How one we grow, Pivot of heels and knees! - The furrow Splits and passes, sister to The brown arc Of the neck I cannot catch, Nigger-eye Berries cast dark Hooks- Black sweet blood mouthfuls, Shadows. Something else Hauls me through air- Thighs, hair; Flakes from my heels. White Godiva, I unpeel- Dead hands, dead stringencies. And now I Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas. The child's cry Melts in the wall. And I Am the arrow, The dew that flies Sucidal, at one with the drive Into the red Eye, the cauldron of morning. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - TS Eliot S'io credessi che mia riposta fasse A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, Questa fiamma staria senza piú scosse. Ma per cío che giammai di questo fondo Non tornó via alcun, s'i'odo il vero, Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo. Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question. . . Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" Let us go and make our visit. In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo. The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, And seeing that it was a soft October night Curled once about the house, and fell asleep. And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions And for a hundred visions and revisions Before the taking of a toast and tea. In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo. And indeed there will be time To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?" Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair— [They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"] My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin— [They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"] Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. For I have known them all already, known them all; Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume? And I have known the eyes already, known them all— The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? And how should I presume? And I have known the arms already, known them all— Arms that are braceleted and white and bare [But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!] Is it perfume from a dress That makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl. And should I then presume? And how should I begin? Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . . 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. And would it have been worth it, after all, After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, Would it have been worth while, To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it toward some overwhelming question, To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all" If one, settling a pillow by her head, Should say, "That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all." And would it have been worth it, after all, Would it have been worth while, After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor— And this, and so much more?— It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: Would it have been worth while If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning toward the window, should say: "That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all." No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool. I grow old . . . I grow old . . . I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think they will sing to me. I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown. A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford - Derek Mahon Even now there are places where a thought might grow — Peruvian mines, worked out and abandoned To a slow clock of condensation, An echo trapped forever, and a flutter Of wildflowers in the lift-shaft, Indian compounds where the wind dances And a door bangs with diminished confidence, Lime crevices behind rippling rainbarrels, Dog corners for bone burials; And a disused shed in Co. Wexford, Deep in the grounds of a burnt-out hotel, Among the bathtubs and the washbasins A thousand mushrooms crowd to a keyhole. This is the one star in their firmament Or frames a star within a star. What should they do there but desire? So many days beyond the rhododendrons With the world waltzing in its bowl of cloud, They have learnt patience and silence Listening to the rooks querulous in the high wood. They have been waiting for us in a foetor Of vegetable sweat since civil war days, Since the gravel-crunching, interminable departure of the expropriated mycologist. He never came back, and light since then Is a keyhole rusting gently after rain. Spiders have spun, flies dusted to mildew And once a day, perhaps, they have heard something — A trickle of masonry, a shout from the blue Or a lorry changing gear at the end of the lane. There have been deaths, the pale flesh flaking Into the earth that nourished it; And nightmares, born of these and the grim Dominion of stale air and rank moisture. Those nearest the door growing strong — 'Elbow room! Elbow room!' The rest, dim in a twilight of crumbling Utensils and broken flower-pots, groaning For their deliverance, have been so long Expectant that there is left only the posture. A half century, without visitors, in the dark — Poor preparation for the cracking lock And creak of hinges. Magi, moonmen, Powdery prisoners of the old regime, Web-throated, stalked like triffids, racked by drought And insomnia, only the ghost of a scream At the flashbulb firing squad we wake them with Shows there is life yet in their feverish forms. Grown beyond nature now, soft food for worms, They lift frail heads in gravity and good faith. They are begging us, you see, in their wordless way, To do something, to speak on their behalf Or at least not to close the door again. Lost people of Treblinka and Pompeii! 'Save us, save us,' they seem to say, 'Let the god not abandon us Who have come so far in darkness and in pain. We too had our lives to live. You with your light meter and relaxed itinerary, Let not our naive labours have been in vain!' |
Ode To a Nightingale - John Keats
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thine happiness, - That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot Of beechen green and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease. O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country green, Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth! O for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stained mouth; That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade away into the forest dim: Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow And leaden-eyed despairs, Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. Away! away! for I will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy, Though the dull brain perplexes and retards: Already with thee! tender is the night, And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays; But here there is no light, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet Wherewith the seasonable month endows The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine; Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves; And mid-May's eldest child, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy! Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain - To thy high requiem become a sod. Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown: Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn; The same that oft-times hath Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. Forlorn! the very word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self! Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf. Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, over the still stream, Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep In the next valley-glades: Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music: - Do I wake or sleep? |
Quote:
But this is my absolute favourite: http://www.ravens.org/ravpoem/ravpoem.htm |
I Go Back to May 1937 by Sharon Olds
I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges, I see my father strolling out under the ochre sandstone arch, the red tiles glinting like bent plates of blood behind his head, I see my mother with a few light books at her hip standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its sword-tips black in the May air, they are about to graduate, they are about to get married, they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are innocent, they would never hurt anybody. I want to go up to them and say Stop, don't do it--she's the wrong woman, he's the wrong man, you are going to do things you cannot imagine you would ever do, you are going to do bad things to children, you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of, you are going to want to die. I want to go up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it, her hungry pretty blank face turning to me, her pitiful beautiful untouched body, his arrogant handsome blind face turning to me, his pitiful beautiful untouched body, but I don't do it. I want to live. I take them up like the male and female paper dolls and bang them together at the hips like chips of flint as if to strike sparks from them, I say Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it. |
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