Favorite Poem

[RustedCorpse]

I'm currently using the "Second Coming" W.B. Yeats.

I have to present one to a rather large group so I wouldn't mind some other ideas. Thanks in advance.

[PoBoy321]

Robert Browning - My Last Duchess (http://mason.gmu.edu/~lsmithg/275duchess.htm)

Allen Ginsberg - Howl (http://www.people.virginia.edu/~jng2d/enlt255/texts/howl/howl.htm)

[mmcd]

I love you, you love me.
Going down the sugar tree.

We'll go down the sugar tree,
and see lots of bees:
playing, playing.

But the bees won't sting,
because you love me.

-Reed Rothchild

[TripleH68]

There once was a man from Nantucket...

[Matador225]

Someone already mentioned "Howl" by Ginsberg and another one of my favorites is "Charge of the Light Brigade" by Tennyson.

[PoBoy321]

And another

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

-- Randall Jarrell

[Clarkmeister]

Favorite poem
That one by El Diablo
Truly brilliant

[mason55]

The Wasteland - TS Eliot
The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock - TS Eliot
Howl - Ginsberg

Those are the three that most people will have heard of. I'm not going into the obscure stuff (I was a creative wruiting minor with a concentration in poetry).

[partygirluk]

Dulce et Decorum est

[pryor15]

Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note
(For Kellie Jones, Born 16 May 1959)

Lately, I've become accustomed to the way
The ground opens up and envelops me
Each time I go out to walk the dog.
Or the broad-edged silly music the win
Makes when I run for the bus...

Things have come to that.

And now, each night I count the stars,
And each night I get the same number.
And when they will not come to be counted,
I count the holes they leave.

Nobody sings anymore.

And then last night, I tiptoed up
To my daughter's room and heard her
Talking to someone, and when I opened
The door, there was no one there...
Only she on her knees, peeking into

Her own clasped hands.

-- Amiri Baraka

[pryor15]

[ QUOTE ]
(I was a creative wruiting minor with a concentration in poetry).

[/ QUOTE ]

awesome, just awesome

[mikech]

i love yeats. this yeats poem is probably not very appropriate for your purposes, but i read it again just the other night and was reminded of how awesome it is: cuchulain's fight with the sea (http://www.csun.edu/~hceng029/yeats/yeatspoems/CuchulainsFight).

it's a longish, narrative poem, and the story goes something like this: emer, who's kinda like the ex-wife from hell, finds out that cuchulain (a great warrior in celtic legends) has a beautiful young lover. in her jealousy, she sends her and cuchulain's son (father and son have never met) to fight and try to kill the man who's actually his father. cuchulain ends up killing his own son in battle, learns that it was his son, goes mad, and fights the sea.

[shant]

This Is Just to Say
by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

[diebitter]

It varies, but my favourite at the moment is:

John Donne

I wonder by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved ? were we not wean'd till then ?
But suck'd on country pleasures, childishly ?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers' den ?
'Twas so ; but this, all pleasures fancies be ;
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.

[Poker_Ink]

Emily Dickinson... best poem ever.

BECAUSE I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school where children played
At wrestling in a ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then ’t is centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses’ heads
Were toward eternity.

The Raven (http://www.comnet.ca/~forrest/raven.html) by Edgar Allan Poe.

[diebitter]

[ QUOTE ]
The Raven (http://www.comnet.ca/~forrest/raven.html) by Edgar Allan Poe.

[/ QUOTE ]

You tell em!

Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (http://www.bartleby.com/101/549.html)
Awesome poem

[2planka]

Two good ones:

Beale Street

The dream is vague
And all confused
With dice and women
And jazz and booze

The dream is vague
Without a name
Yet warm and wavering
And soft as a flame

The loss
Of the dream
Leaves nothing
The same

-- Langston Hughes



DIGGING

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests: snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.

My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.

-- Seamus Heaney

On the shores of an emerald sea
Beyond silver sands and foam
Lived a simple man with eyes of gold
The horizon was his home


The west wind called him by name
A name no one else knew
He set sail, on that day
To go where the wind blew

A dance of stars he saw by night
a clear sky by day
Familiar shores ever dwindling,
Chasing destiny he sailed away

A day arrived with a swift sunrise
He was nearing land again
Gulls cried welcome
His journey was nigh its end

What he found there is not mine to tell
He alone owns that tale
But never did he regret the day
The west wind filled his sail

-Me

[nothumb]

Been done recently. Do a search.

That said, most Eliot up to and including The Hollow Men gets my vote.

NT

Woman... woe-man... whoooa-man. She was a thief, you got to believe, she stole my heart and my cat. Judy, Betty, Josie and those hot Pussycats... they made me horny, on Saturday morning... girls of cartoo-ins will leave me in ruins... I want to to be Betty's Barney. Jane... get me off this crazy thing... called love.

-Charlie Mackenzie
"So I Married an Axe Murderer"

[Shajen]

[ QUOTE ]
Woman... woe-man... whoooa-man. She was a thief, you got to believe, she stole my heart and my cat. Judy, Betty, Josie and those hot Pussycats... they made me horny, on Saturday morning... girls of cartoo-ins will leave me in ruins... I want to to be Betty's Barney. Jane... get me off this crazy thing... called love.

-Charlie Mackenzie
"So I Married an Axe Murderer"

[/ QUOTE ]

Under-rated, IMO.

[Paluka]

she being brand by ee cummings is a nice one

[calmasahinducow]

Most of my favorites have already been mentioned, but "Alone" by Poe and "The Man from Snowy River" and "Clancy of the Overflow" by Andrew Paterson need mentioning.

[censored] [censored], mother mother-[censored] mother mother [censored] [censored], mother [censored] mother [censored] noich noich noich

1,2
1,2,3,4 noich noich noich
Smokin weed, smokin weed.
Doin' coke, drinkin beers.
Drinkin beers, beers beers.
Rollin' fatties, smokin blunts.
Who smokes the blunts? We smoke the blunts.
Rollin' blunts and smokin th...


15 bucks, little man, put that [censored] in my hand.
If that money doesn't show then you owe me owe me owe.
My jungle love.
Oh e oh e oh.
I think I wanna know ya know ya ... yeah, what

the immortal words of Jay.

^^ I think we have a winner

I don't really have a favorite...


Cause And Effect
Charles Bukowski

the best often die by their own hand
just to get away,
and those left behind
can never quite understand
why anybody
would ever want to
get away
from
them

[2planka]

Twinkies:pastry as Bukowski:poetry

edit: Last night of the earth is okay.

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

"A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London" by Dylan Thomas

[jdl22]

As I said in a previous post more than 90% of poetry with which I'm familiar is in Spanish since I don't read much poetry but have read a lot in Spanish classes. My favorite poem is by Manuel Machado:

RETRATO

Esta es mi cara y ésta es mi alma: leed.
Unos ojos de hastío y una boca de sed...
Lo demás, nada... Vida... Cosas... Lo que se sabe...
Calaveradas, amoríos... Nada grave,
Un poco de locura, un algo de poesía,
una gota del vino de la melancolía...
¿Vicios? Todos. Ninguno... Jugador, no lo he sido;
ni gozo lo ganado, ni siento lo perdido.
Bebo, por no negar mi tierra de Sevilla,
media docena de cañas de manzanilla.
Las mujeres... -sin ser un tenorio, ¡eso no!-,
tengo una que me quiere y otra a quien quiero yo.

Me acuso de no amar sino muy vagamente
una porción de cosas que encantan a la gente...
La agilidad, el tino, la gracia, la destreza,
más que la voluntad, la fuerza, la grandeza...
Mi elegancia es buscada, rebuscada. Prefiero,
a olor helénico y puro, lo "chic" y lo torero.
Un destello de sol y una risa oportuna
amo más que las languideces de la luna
Medio gitano y medio parisién -dice el vulgo-,
Con Montmartre y con la Macarena comulgo...
Y antes que un tal poeta, mi deseo primero
hubiera sido ser un buen banderillero.
Es tarde... Voy de prisa por la vida. Y mi risa
es alegre, aunque no niego que llevo prisa.

[jesusarenque]

Instantes

Jorge Luis Borges

Si pudiera vivir nuevamente mi vida.
En la próxima trataría de cometer más errores.
No intentaría ser tan perfecto, me relajaría más.
Sería más tonto de lo que he sido, de hecho
tomaría muy pocas cosas con seriedad.
Sería menos higiénico.
Correría más riesgos, haría más viajes, contemplaría
más atardeceres, subiría más montañas, nadaría más ríos.
Iría a más lugares adonde nunca he ido, comería
más helados y menos habas, tendría más problemas
reales y menos imaginarios.
Yo fui una de esas personas que vivió sensata y prolíficamente
cada minuto de su vida; claro que tuve momentos de alegría.
Pero si pudiera volver atrás trataría de tener
solamente buenos momentos.
Por si no lo saben, de eso está hecha la vida, sólo de momentos;
no te pierdas el ahora.
Yo era uno de esos que nunca iban a ninguna parte sin termómetro,
una bolsa de agua caliente, un paraguas y un paracaídas;
Si pudiera volver a vivir, viajaría más liviano.
Si pudiera volver a vivir comenzaría a andar descalzo a principios
de la primavera y seguiría así hasta concluir el otoño.
Daría más vueltas en calesita, contemplaría más amaneceres
y jugaría con más niños, si tuviera otra vez la vida por delante.
Pero ya tengo 85 años y sé que me estoy muriendo.

[codewarrior]

If you like Howl, and want some Ginsburg most people may not have already heard, try "Witchita Vortex Sutra". Good stuff, done shortly before his death, I believe.