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Mary Oliver. She's my favorite. Totally awesome, mostly about nature.ee cummings was my fave when I was younger tho.
Still really like both.
Not read poetry since I left school.
i love poetry, not that i read it very much. i love the poem '"hope" is the thing with feathers' by Emily Dickinson. i have no idea why i love it so much, but i do.
May Our Friendship Last Forever May our friendship last forever;
May I sail upon your sea.
May we go through life together;
May there always be a "we."
May I be your endless sky;
May you breathe my gentle air.
May you never wonder why
Each time you look for me, I'm there.
May we be for each a smile
Like the warm, life-giving sun;
Yet when we're in pain awhile,
May our suffering be one.
May we share our special days,
The happiness of one for two;
And if we must go separate ways,
Let my love remain with you.
A Friend...Is someone that everyone needs
A friend
Is that special one
A friend
Is someone you tell EVERYTHING
A friend
Is someone you never lie to
A friend
Can be a boy or a girl
A friend
Is someone that is always their
A friend
Will always listen to you
A friend
Always has input to give
A friend
Will never leave you in the dust
A friend
Will help you through the thick and the thin
A friend
Will always stand by your side
A friend
Will never let you down
A friend
Is someone everyone needs
What would you do if you didnt have a friend?
Shashidhar Kumar
I don't read a whole lot of it, but I do like Walt Whitman and I've read and loved most of Les Fleurs du Mal (Baudelaire). And I was assigned a book of poerty for a class last year. Claiming the Spirit Within: A Sourcebook of Women's Poetry by Marilyn Sewell was pretty interesting. Had some not so great, and some really good pieces in it.
The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock is probably my favorite.I love e e cummings, though. Here's my favorite:
Buffalo Bill's
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeons justlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what I want to know is
how do you like your blue-eyed boy
Mister Death
Mod
My favorite poet by a long shot!
Saved - try Mary Oliver. Her poems remind me of your photographs (nature).
Laura, Mary Oliver is my favorite too! Have you read her newest collection, I think it's called Red Bird? They don't have it at my library yet; think I'm going to have to break down and buy it!
One of my favorites because it contains depth in simplicity:In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, 'Is it good, friend?'
'It is bitter -- bitter,' he answered,
'But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart.'
— Stephen Crane
If you like quirky, try out some Richard Brautigan. Some of his stuff is just plain bizarre, some of it just plain simple. And then you turn the page and he'll make you cry. Most definitely quirky stuff, though.
A smattering of Brautigan....Color As Beginning
Forget love
I want to die
in your yellow hair
Richard Brautigan
December 30
At 1:30 in the morning a fart
smells like a marriage between
an avocado and a fish head.
I have to get out of bed
to write this down without
my glasses on.
Richard Brautigan
I Live In The Twentieth Century
I live in the Twentieth Century
and you lie here beside me. You
were unhappy when you fell asleep.
There was nothing I could do about
it. I felt hopeless. Your face
is so beautiful that I cannot stop
to describe it, and there's nothing
I can do to make you happy while
you sleep.
Richard Brautigan
I like peotry but couldn't just say which ones I like a lot. I used to have a dog who seems to have liked French peotry: I had a book with it on the kitchen table once and while we were out he must have decided to 'read' it. Thanks to him I have that library book on my bookshelves now!
I absolutely love Rod McKuen. I almost own all his poetry books. He is absolutely amazing. I highly recommend his books I would say that "New Ballads", "In Someone's Shadow" and "Listen to the Warm" are my absolute favorites of his collections.
Robert Frost is also one of my fav's. I love Burns, Shelly, Dickinson, Whitman, Brownings, Guest, Lee... I could go on. I love reading poetry in the winter with a nice warm blanket wrapped around me...........
Robert Frost is also one of my fav's. I love Burns, Shelly, Dickinson, Whitman, Brownings, Guest, Lee... I could go on. I love reading poetry in the winter with a nice warm blanket wrapped around me...........
Thanks Leppaluoto... He's one of my favorites. I own all of his works. I love Bukowski, Angelou, and Frost as well, although there have been many poems I've read and liked but couldn't tell you who penned them. My favorites by Frost are 'Lodged' and 'Wind and Windowflower'.
Robert Frost is one of my favorites. Some of his poems that I love are Mending Wall; The Death of the Hired Man; The Road Not Taken; Out, Out--; Nothing Gold Can Stay; Stopping By Woods On a Snowy Evening; Fire and Ice; and The Pasture.Nothing Gold Can Stay (loved since reading The Outsiders)
Nature's first green is gold.
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower.
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Another favorite poet is my man, Edgar Allan Poe. The Raven is just magnificent. Youtube has some good takes on this poem. I even love the Simpson's take with Bart being the raven, from their Treehouse of Horror collection.
Then, there is The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. There is a great Youtube on this poem with Gerard Butler as the highwayman (super hot). It can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVQF_R... Loreena McKennitt is the Celtic singer performing it.
Ok, then there is Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters. The poems are the voices of the dead buried in the town cemetary, revealing lives and secrets that were buried with them.
And, I can't forget to mention the wonderful children's poet, Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky. Prelutsky's books, The Dragon Sings Tonight, Awful Ogre's Awful Day, and The Gargoyle on the Roof are examples of superb wit and great vocabulary (these books are not his younger children's books and adults should love them, too for their witty verse).
OK, I'll stop for now, but there will probably be other poets and poems I add as favorites. Poetry is so intoxicatingly wonderful.
Bird, you would also love the Jack Prelutsky ones I mentioned in my post if you love fun and quirky. He's thought of a children's poet, but the books I mentioned in my post appeal to all of us who love the witty use of language.
Wow - I read quite a bit of poetry, but there are a number of poets listed here that I've never heard of. I can't wait to start reading some of their stuff! Darla - Brautigan sounds intriguing....I like reading stuff from poets who sound like they might be off their rocker! :O)
Leppaluoto -- OMG...... I want it. I own everything by Brautigan, I've read all of his work. I love him. Give it to me or I will throw a dead squirrel on your roof. Just kidding.or am I????
I need Fiona and her hypnotic eye.... :)
Side note: I knew that about Brautigan. Very sad. It does seem to be the way, though, doesn't it. The best ones are the most tortured. I think that's the root of the art. If for some reason they make it through and don't take themselves out, clean up their act, or move on, the work seems to suffer.The star that burns the brightest will burn out the fastest.
Lodged by Robert Frost
The rain to the wind said,
'You push and I'll pelt.'
They so smote the garden bed
That the flowers actually knelt,
And lay lodged--though not dead.
I know how the flowers felt.
Darla - I love that Frost poem! I've never read that one before. Oh, and I'm heading to the library sometime this week to see if they have any Brautigan. :O)
That's my favorite Frost poem, followed by this one. Read it more than once to get the true effect of what he's saying:Wind and Window Flower
by: Robert Frost
Lovers, forget your love,
And list to the love of these,
She a window flower,
And he a winter breeze.
When the frosty window veil
Was melted down at noon,
And the caged yellow bird
Hung over her in tune,
He marked her though the pane,
He could not help but mark,
And only passed her by
To come again at dark.
He was a winter wind,
Concerned with ice and snow,
Dead weeds and unmated birds,
And little of love could know.
But he signed upon the sill,
He gave the sash a shake,
As witness all within
Who lay that night awake.
Perchange he half prevailed
To win her for the flight
From the firelight looking-glass
And warm stove-window light.
But the flower leaned aside
And thought of naught to say,
And morning found the breeze
A hundred miles away.
I have to admit... I've never read McKuen... what's worse, I've never even heard of him...*ducking to make sure nobody throws their books at me*
Dammit you guys, now I have to start looking him up... you know, there are only so many hours in a day.... I only got three hours of sleep last night because of my sick determination to finish "The Other Boleyn Girl"...I'll probably stay up too late tonight because I started reading HP...
I love this group, and maybe it's just paranoia, but sometimes, I get the feeling that you guys are trying to take me out by sleep deprivation. :)~
Al Purdy.Canada's poet; there's a statue of him outside the provincial legislature at Queens Park in Toronto. Bukowski was a big fan of Purdy's.
"When I Sat Down to Play The Piano" would make a fine introduction to Purdy. This is a poem about taking a dump in the Canadian arctic while fending off a pack of sled dogs.
Wilfred Owen, who I'm reading now, was superb. Sassoon, also; Edmund Blunden, Ivor Gurney, all those WWI poets. There is a WWII poet or two I like, Keith Douglas. Also Alun Lewis.
Brautigan's poetry left me cold; I like his prose writing, though.
Andrew -- my favorite war poem:Song of Napalm
After the storm, after the rain stopped pounding
We stood in the doorway watching horses
Walk off lazily across the pasture’s hill.
We stared through the black screen,
Our vision altered by the distance
So I thought I saw a mist
Kicked up around their hooves when they faded
Like cut-out horses
Away from us.
The grass was never more blue in that light, more
Scarlet; beyond the pasture
Trees scraped their voices in the wind, branches
Criss-crossed the sky like barbed-wire
But you said they were only branches.
Okay. The storm stopped pounding.
I am trying to say the straight: for once
I was sane enough to pause and breathe
Outside my wild plans and after the hard rain
I turned my back on the old curses, I believed
They swung finally away from me…
But still the branches are wire
And thunder is the pounding mortar,
Still I close my eyes and see the girl,
Running from her village, napalm
Stuck to her dress like jelly,
Her hands reaching for the no one
Who waits in waves of heat before her.
So I can keep on living,
So I can stay here beside you,
I try to imagine she runs down the road and wings
Beat inside her until she rises
Above the stinking jungle and her pain
Eases, and your pain, and mine.
But the lie swings back again.
The lie works only as long as it takes to speak
And the girl runs only so far
As the napalm allows
Until her burning tendons and crackling
Muscles draw her up
Into that final position
Burning bodies so perfectly assume. Nothing
Can change that; she is burned behind my eyes
And not your good love and not the rain-swept air
And not the jungle green
Pasture unfolding before us can deny it.
~Bruce Weigl
I freakin' LOVE Emily Dickinson. She makes me feel not so crazy.I just got to teach her. ...wait, I mean I got to teach her poetry, not her..she's dead.
Here's an Al Purdy poem, one of his better known ones: At the Quinte Hotel.First, a youtube vid, a short film based around a recording of Purdy reading the poem (reading starts about 2 mins in):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPKecz...
AT THE QUINTE HOTEL
I am drinking
I am drinking beer with yellow flowers
in underground sunlight
and you can see that I am a sensitive man
And I notice that the bartender is a sensitive man too
so I tell him about his beer
I tell him the beer he draws
is half fart and half horse piss
and all wonderful yellow flowers
But the bartender is not quite
so sensitive as I supposed he was
the way he looks at me now
and does not appreciate my exquisite analogy
Over in one corner two guys
are quietly making love
in the brief prelude to infinity
Opposite them a peculiar fight
enables the drinkers to lay aside
their comic books and watch with interest
as I watch with interest
A wiry little man slugs another guy
then tracks him bleeding into the toilet
and slugs him to the floor again
with ugly red flowers on the tile
three minutes later he roosters over
to the table where his drunk friend sits
with another friend and slugs both
of em ass-over-electric-kettle
so I have to walk around
on my way for a piss
Now I am a sensitive man
so I say to him mildly as hell
“You shouldn’ta knocked over that good beer
with them beautiful flowers in it”
So he says to me “Come on.”
So I Come On
like a rabbit with weak kidneys I guess
like a yellow streak charging
on flower power I suppose
& knock the shit outa him & sit on him
(he is just a little guy)
and say reprovingly
“Violence will get you nowhere this time chum
Now you take me
I am a sensitive man
and would you believe I write poems?”
But I could see the doubt in his upside down face
in fact in all the faces
“What kind of poems?”
“Flower poems”
“So tell us a poem”
I got off the little guy but reluctantly
for he was comfortable
and told them this poem
They crowded around me with tears
in their eyes and wrung my hands feelingly
for my pockets for
it was a heart-warming moment for Literature
and moved by the demonstrable effect
of great Art and the brotherhood of people I remarked
“— the poem oughta be worth some beer”
It was a mistake of terminology
for silence came
and it was brought home to me in the tavern
that poems will not really buy beers or flowers
or a goddam thing
and I was sad
for I am a sensitive man
I write is more then I read it. The only reason for that is because I don't want to compare my writing to others.I've got a bunch of them posted online. If anyone wants to read them here's the link; http://eagle07.deviantart.com/gallery...
I haven't put them up here yet. But I'm working on that.
I like 'proper' poetry but rarely: a little Keats, some Frost, Miroslav Holub once in a while. But what I really like is children's poetry, especially Michael Rosen and John Agard.This poem is too long to put on here but I'm going put on the first bit anyway. Its truly snorkingly, wet-yer-pants funny but also something I think most people will identify with.
Chocolate Cake
I love chocolate cake.
And when I was a boy
I loved it even more.
Sometimes we used to have it for tea
and Mum used to say,
'If there's any left over
you can have it to take to school
tomorrow to have at playtime.'
And the next day I would take it to school
wrapped up in tin foil
open it up at playtime
and sit in the corner of the playground
eating it,
you know how the icing on top
is all shiny and it cracks as you
bite into it,
and there's that other kind of icing in
the middle
and it sticks to your hands and you
can lick your fingers
and lick your lips
oh it's lovely.
yeah.
Anyway,
once we had this chocolate cake for tea
and later I went to bed
but while I was in bed
I found myself waking up
licking my lips
and smiling.
I woke up proper.
'The chocolate cake.'
It was the first thing
1 thought of.
I could almost see it
so I thought,
what if I go downstairs
and have a little nibble, yeah?
It was all dark
everyone was in bed
so it must have been really late
but I got out of bed,
crept out of the door
there's always a creaky floorboard, isn't there?
Past Mum and Dad's room,
careful not to tread on bits of broken toys
or bits of Lego
you know what it's like treading on Lego
with your bare feet,
yowwww
shhhhhhh
downstairs
into the kitchen
open the cupboard
and there it is
all shining.
So I take it out of the cupboard
put it on the table
and I see that
there's a few crumbs lying about on the plate,
so I lick my finger and run my finger all over the crumbs
scooping them up
and put them into my mouth.
oooooooommmmmmmmm
nice.
Then
I look again
and on one side where it's been cut,
it's all crumbly.
So I take a knife
I think I'll just tidy that up a bit,
cut off the crumbly bits
scoop them all up
and into the mouth
oooooommm mmmm
nice.
The rest of it is here http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/chocol...
Mod
I don't read poetry that often and it is usually more for school. For some reason, I find it hard to appriciate poems when they haven't been analyzed and well...I can't read a poetry and analyze it at the same time on my own unfortunately. I do have however three favourite poems. The first one is part of Walt Whitmans, Song of Myself. I haven't actually finished the whole (it's so frigging long! 52 sections...) but I love section 4 because I can identify to every single sentence there. You can find the whole poem here.
The second is actually a Swedish poem, called "Ja visst gör det ont" by Karin Boye. I think it's beautiful. I found a translation though here
:)
Of Course It Hurts
Of course it hurts when buds burst.
Otherwise why would spring hesitate?
Why would all our fervent longing
be bound in the frozen bitter haze?
The bud was the casing all winter.
What is this new thing, which consumes and bursts?
Of course it hurts when buds burst,
pain for that which grows
and for that which envelops.
Of course it is hard when drops fall.
Trembling with fear they hang heavy,
clammer on the branch, swell and slide -
the weight pulls them down, how they cling.
Hard to be uncertain, afraid and divided,
hard to feel the deep pulling and calling,
yet sit there and just quiver -
hard to want to stay
and to want to fall.
Then, at the point of agony and when all is beyond
help,
the tree's buds burst as if in jubilation,
then, when fear no longer exists,
the branch's drops tumble in a shimmer,
forgetting that they were afraid of the new,
forgetting that they were fearful of the journey -
feeling for a second their greatest security,
resting in the trust
that creates the world.
Then, my third favourite is a war-poem by Siegfried Sassoon. I know it by heart. I don't know why exactly it is one of my favourites but it touched me deeply. It's rather sad and tragic though.
Suicide in the Trenches
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you’ll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.
Just recently read Why Things Burn: Poems by Daphne Gottlieb. It's rather experimental/feminist, I suppose, but I liked quite a few of the poems."kissing with the lights on"
by Daphne Gottlieb:
You told me you like my mouth.
You want to kiss me.
My mouth is a wound and you
want to kiss me.
But you're like
that: You want to go
leaping over cliffs--
you want to go
drinking poison
and then write pretty poems about it--
and all I want to do is
fuck you.
You want flowers and sonnets and us
to be together until the end of the world and I'd
just like a blow job, I'd just like
to be friends.
that's what I'd really like.
Something warm and snuggly like a friendship.
and to fuck you.
The flowers are going to die and the cliffs are
going to erode and we might as well go fuck
since we're going to anyway.
We'll fuck and fight and eat and drink and smoke and fuck and smoke and fuck and
get married
And in six months from now
we'll stop making the world stop
to fuck each other
and one year from now
I'll get fat and you'll go bald and
I'll take prozac and you'll take viagra
I'll get obsessed with my biological clock
and my career
and you'll get obsessed with your hairline
and your career
and two years from now
you'd rather watch reruns than fuck me
and I'd rather be drinking than fuck you
so we'll drink in separate bars and one night
someone who likes my mouth will buy me a drink
that drink will be attached to a hand
there will be a human holding that drink
the kind with ears
and I will tell whoever it is
all about you
and how we used to forget to eat when we were in bed for three days
and your ears will be burning across town
where you are telling whoever it is how I don't understand you
and two years from now, that girl with that drink
she will nod that yes that I am nodding at you tonight
that nod, that yes that means you're not coming home
because just for a second the world has gone away
because just for a second there's someone who understands you
and that night it will be her pretty mouth you want
and that night I will pass out at home, alone
with a bottle that reminds me of us
because it'll be empty
because it'll be gone
I will pass out waiting for you
to come
home
listening to country music--and I hate
country music--
but I'll be feeling tragic
it'll be the most romantic moment
I've ever had and
I'll be alone
and you'll be across town
with that girl who right now is in high school
and right now I just met you
and right now I think you should take me home and fuck me
because it only gets uglier from here
we only get uglier from here
so take me to the edge of that cliff you love
and pour me a shot of your silky poison
you can take this mouth
this wound you want
but you can't kiss
and make it
better.
Poetry is wonderful. I have favorites and to narrow them to my UTMOST faves:I LOVE Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath.
Walt Whitman, Emily Dickenson, Robert Frost, Dylan Thomas and Philip Larkin.
BUT BY FAR.....Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath.
Delicious!
I liked that, Fiona. I just finished reading a book of poems and excerpts for funerals and memorial services, and that would've fit in a lot better than many of the selections that made it into the book.
Fiona... I went and saw the AIDS Quilt in Washington D.C. when it was being shown in full for the last time. (It's too large now to fully display.) The first time I ever saw that poem was on a panel of the quilt. Brought me to tears.
I just posted a bunch of my old stuff.... go sneak a peek :)
I like fun, quirky poetry. :O)