In Search of Meaning discussion

Over this past year, I've grown to really enjoy poetry. And that's not something I ever thought I'd say. Poetry for me, until this point, has been dull, incomprehensible, or too sentimental. I realize now that I had not yet encountered any great poetry. So here is a handful of great poems I thought I would share with all of you. You can find them all in a quick Google search, and I have rank ordered them from my most to least favourite. Enjoy.

"Ulysses" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
"As I Walked Out One Evening" by W. H. Auden
"The Second Coming" by W. B. Yeats
"Lullaby" by W. H. Auden
"Hurt Hawks" by Robinson Jeffers
"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone" by W. H. Auden
"Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey" by William Wordsworth
"Ode to a Nightingale" by John Keats
"Introduction to the Songs of Experience" by William Blake

Feel free to recommend some of your favourite poetry.

I'm a big Auden fan and am glad to have found another! Have you read his "In Time Of War"? Thank you for the list of recommendations. I'm getting into the poetry of Bukowski, Leonard Cohen and Louise Gluck.

I am glad to meet a fellow Auden admirer! His ability to convey a sense of hopelessness is unrivaled, and though I have not read "In Time of War" I will add it to my list! I have encountered Bukowski and Gluck in the past but I cannot say that I'm very familiar with them, and as for Leonard Cohen I greatly enjoy his music, though evidently, I need to read his poetry! Currently, I'm on a bit of a Wordsworth stint, and I've found his motivations quite compelling; he wrote of rural life unspoiled by culture and in common language that he thought "more permanent, and far more philosophical than that which is substituted for it by poets." I'm finding it no wonder that he went on to inspire such great writers as Tennyson and Dickens. Thanks for commenting Marianne!

I haven't read much Wordsworth, but I do appreciate when common language in poetry can still be resonant. Bukowski and Cohen have that going for them I feel. My current personal guide to poetry: Bukowski for dirty dog sense (&sensitivity), Gluck for shrill psychological surgery, Cohen for love-hate skin-flap bedsheets blood and longing, Auden... humility and despair

Occasionally I can get into the pastoral. Adore this stanza from Andrew Marvell's "The Garden" for example:
What wondrous life is this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumblung on melons, as I pass,
Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass

(ambrosial sap? lol) Do you think it's too corny?

It's a bit late to join the discussion, but I still want to ask you what do you think of this one?

Coplas de Manrique
From the Spanish by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
https://www.bartleby.com/356/478.html

I grew up in a tradition of metric poetry therefore all modern poetry in English is incomprehensible to me