Your favorite poem and why
 

Things I Didn't Know I Loved by Nazim Hikmet

found this randomly in Barnes and Noble back in high school. opened a top 500 poems book to this somehow, read it and was astounded. i could relate so much even though he's long dead and i'm not turkish. there is just so much beauty in the world... i think we see it when we are young but gradually the harsh pains of life distort our vision. it's easy to forget, and incredibly important to remember. this poem grounds me, and reminds me that afterall, life isn't that bad... in fact as roberto benigni says: life is beautiful.

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

I have lots of favourites, but mostly it's love poetry for reasons that escape me.

I think this one by Donne is probably my favourite - and I embolden the lines I like most particularly:

The Good Morrow

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.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear ;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone ;
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown ;
Let us possess one world ; each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest ;
Where can we find two better hemispheres
Without sharp north, without declining west ?
Whatever dies, was not mix'd equally ;
If our two loves be one, or thou and I
Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die.




Also, I have a sort of guilty pleasure one - I like some of the tub-thumping, dramatic poetry of Tennyson and suchlike, and this is one I actually had to memorise and recite at school, but I really dig it:

Invictus, by William Henry

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.



Yes, I know it's cheesy, but I like it.

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

[ QUOTE ]
Things I Didn't Know I Loved by Nazim Hikmet

found this randomly in Barnes and Noble back in high school. opened a top 500 poems book to this somehow, read it and was astounded. i could relate so much even though he's long dead and i'm not turkish. there is just so much beauty in the world... i think we see it when we are young but gradually the harsh pains of life distort our vision. it's easy to forget, and incredibly important to remember. this poem grounds me, and reminds me that afterall, life isn't that bad... in fact as roberto benigni says: life is beautiful.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's a really cool poem.

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

My favorite poem, because I wrote it. It's written in a Norse style of meter and alliteration. Longfellow's "Song of Hiawatha" was written in a similar style.

My Valkyrie

at my feet, what lies before me
submits without being conquered

fanning flames in want to quench them
in her fullness yet is sparking

still we dance upon the morrow
songs we've sung with many voices

chorus, forms both fond and friendly
verse, we write anew each evening

boldly brazen does she wander
'cross the span of my soul's shelter

little changed, her journey takes her
past receding ice of winter

into melted marrow waters
standing still awaiting raindrops

love's light falls upon us 'twineing
knots by no one hand untieing

fettered by my mortal being
Midgard ails for my arrival

flowing as I follow footsteps
of her green-eyed gaze of glory

past the loves-breath singing quicker
harkens unto my arrival

hurry now in haste to sentry
wounding that which I would succor

skalds of sighing now do beckon
waters steaming from the Kragger

smiling does she sing the chorus
as the dance is doomed to ending

in faith follows flows my offer
ending with a quiet murmur

once again we lie together
thankful of our blessed stillness

Gods above do grant the lovers
joy of of hearing Asgard's music

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

If I had to pick just one, it would be Digging, by Seamus Heaney.

It's beautifully written, of course, and the lovely contrast of "men of the land" versus "a man of letters" provides the tension. The piece lauds the strength of the turf cutter by painting pastoral/romantic images of the men digging peat and potatoes - I can smell a peat fire as I read it.

The narrator is starting a new branch on the family tree - he's a man of letters, not a man of the earth. His lament, "But I've no spade to follow men like them" avows a yearning for paternal approval. He resolutely vows to use his tool - the pen - to keep their memory, their pastoral beauty, their workman's pride alive, and indeed immortalized on the written page.

Other favorites:

Beale Street

The dream is vague
And all confused
By 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

This one is so simply written yet so complex. We are bombarded by distractions as we pursue our dreams. Dice, women, jazz, booze, America's Top Model, Dancing With the Stars, baseball, football, poker.... so many diversions intended to entertain can obviate our dreams. Feeling good can eventually be good enough. We lose some of our humanity when we lose our dreams or sacrifice them for the immediate payoff.


Another Hughes piece that I love is in direct contrast to Beale Street:

Advice:

Folks I'm tellin' you:
Birthing is hard
And dying is mean
So you better get yourself
A little loving
In between.

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

This one came up in an older poetry thread by GA (in OOT, I think it was), and it's where I took my 2p2 location from, and, well, I just love it:

One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

[ QUOTE ]
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.


[/ QUOTE ]

That was my favorite Seinfeld episode.

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

The Panther by Rilke

I believe he wrote this while at the zoo. This is from memory and translated from German(?)

From seeing the bars, his seeing is so exhausted that it no longer holds anything anymore. For him the world is bars, a thousand bars and beyond the bars nothing.

The lythe swinging of his rythmical easy stride which circles down to the tiniest hub, is like a dance of energy in which a great will stands stunned and numb.

Only at times to the curtains of the pupils rise without a sound. A shape enters, slips past the tightened silence of the shoulders, reaches the heart and dies.

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

When You are Old - Keats

I love this poem because I have loved, and lost. I had the wild and crazy youth. I've had that one incredible love that was intense, short-lived, amazing...and I don't know that I'll ever experience anything like that again. The bittersweet tone of this poem strikes a chord with me.


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 amid a crowd of stars.

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

I'll be as cliche as possible - Howl.

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

There are so many, but the one that comes immediately to my mind is.....


Edgar Allan Poe: El Dorado


Why? To me it brilliantly reflects the endless search of Man for Meaning.

Tell me what you think..........


Gaily bedight,
A gallant night
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of El Dorado.

But he grew old --
This knight so bold --
And -- o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like El Dorado.

And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow --
"Shadow," said he,
"Where can it be --
This land of El Dorado?"

"Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied --
"If you seek for El Dorado."

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

Emily Bronte's The Prisoner

Stuck with me for year's after reading it in college. In my naivety, I was surprised to find the prisoner a woman. I thought of women of that era romantically, and incapable of warranting such treatment. We don't know why she's imprisoned, and it's a fact we can forgo as her faith, will, and spirit take over the poem. Beautiful and tragic. My favorite line:

"When Joy grew mad with awe, at counting future tears."

Runner-ups include just about anything by A.E. Housman, particularly:


With Rue My Heart Is Laden

WITH rue my heart is laden
For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden
And many a lightfoot lad.

By brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot boys are laid;
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
In fields where roses fade.

And Sara Teasdale, particularly:

Barter

Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children's faces looking up
Holding wonder like a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit's still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

Very nice.

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

[ QUOTE ]
Emily Bronte's The Prisoner

[/ QUOTE ]
Hey thanks for the link, I'd never even heard of that before. It's great.

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

John Clare: I Am


I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am, and live - like vapors tossed

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
Even the dearest, that I loved the best,
Are strange - nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smiled or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling, and untroubled where I lie,
The grass below - above the vaulted sky.
--------------------------------------------

I stumbled upon Clare during my first year in college after a friend suggested reading some of his works. "I Am" was the first poem I read by him and still remember having this odd feeling after reading the poem that it was somehow describing myself.

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

George Herbert's wonderful sonnet:

The Answer

My comforts drop and melt away like snow:
I shake my head, and all the thoughts and ends,
Which my fierce youth did bandie, fall and flow
Like leaves about me: or like summer friends,
Flyes of estates and sunne-shine. But to all,
Who think me eager, hot, and undertaking,
But in my prosecutions slack and small;
As a young exhalation, newly waking,
Scorns his first bed of dirt, and means the sky;
But cooling by the way, grows pursie and slow,
And setling to a cloud, doth live and die
In that dark state of tears: to all, that so
Show me, and set me, I have one reply,
Which they that know the rest, know more then I.

It's the poem of an older man who hasn't forgotten the convictions of his youth. Note how perfectly Herbert uses the three run on lines in the poems (they're the lines without punctuation at the end), pay attention to its lovely rhythm, and feel the force of the final couplet. A perfectly realized sonnet, I think.

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

Once I would have started this by quoting "It is an ancient Mariner, and he stoppeth one of three" but times have changed, and I with them. Instead, perhaps the least-appreciated Pulitzer prize winner last century: Edna St Vincent Millay.

Despite being the first woman to win the Pulitzer for poetry, and being celebrated (perhaps notorious is a better word - having an open marriage, being publicly bisexual, feminist, pro-America leading up to WWII, and generally scornful of public norms did nothing for her career) in her day, she is almost unknown now.

I have trouble picking one, and some are short, so let me quote a couple from A Few Figs from Thistles:

FIRST FIG
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--
It gives a lovely light!

SECOND FIG
Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!

THURSDAY
And if I loved you Wednesday,
Well, what is that to you?
I do not love you Thursday--
So much is true.

And why you come complaining
Is more than I can see.
I loved you Wednesday,--yes--but what
Is that to me?

Sonnet III
Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow!
Faithless am I save to love's self alone.
Were you not lovely I would leave you now:
After the feet of beauty fly my own.
Were you not still my hunger's rarest food,
And water ever to my wildest thirst,
I would desert you--think not but I would!--
And seek another as I sought you first.
But you are mobile as the veering air,
And all your charms more changeful than the tide,
Wherefore to be inconstant is no care:
I have but to continue at your side.
So wanton, light and false, my love, are you,
I am most faithless when I most am true.

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

Being "pro-America" made her less than popular? Pre WW2? OK

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

Also, I find 'If' by Kipling more inspirational than a dozen bibles.


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!

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

more of a prayer then a poem, but I like it - of all the ones I know, this one came to me right away.

Bless My Enemies O Lord
Bp. Nikolai Velimirovich

Bp. Nikolai Velimirovich was a Serbian bishop in the last century who spoke out courageously against Nazism until he was arrested and taken to Dachau.


Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

Enemies have driven me into your embrace more than friends have.

Friends have bound me to earth, enemies have loosed me from earth and have demolished all my aspirations in the world.

Enemies have made me a stranger in worldly realms and an extraneous inhabitant of the world. Just as a hunted animal finds safer shelter than an unhunted animal does, so have I, persecuted by enemies, found the safest sanctuary, having ensconced myself beneath your tabernacle, where neither friends nor enemies can slay my soul.

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

They, rather than I, have confessed my sins before the world.

They have punished me, whenever I have hesitated to punish myself.

They have tormented me, whenever I have tried to flee torments.

They have scolded me, whenever I have flattered myself.

They have spat upon me, whenever I have filled myself with arrogance.

Bless my enemies, O Lord, Even I bless them and do not curse them.

Whenever I have made myself wise, they have called me foolish.

Whenever I have made myself mighty, they have mocked me as though I were a dwarf.

Whenever I have wanted to lead people, they have shoved me into the background.

Whenever I have rushed to enrich myself, they have prevented me with an iron hand.

Whenever I thought that I would sleep peacefully, they have wakened me from sleep.

Whenever I have tried to build a home for a long and tranquil life, they have demolished it and driven me out.

Truly, enemies have cut me loose from the world and have stretched out my hands to the hem of your garment.

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

Bless them and multiply them; multiply them and make them even more bitterly against me:

so that my fleeing to You may have no return;

so that all hope in men may be scattered like cobwebs;

so that absolute serenity may begin to reign in my soul;

so that my heart may become the grave of my two evil twins, arrogance and anger;

so that I might amass all my treasure in heaven;

ah, so that I may for once be freed from self-deception, which has entangled me in the dreadful web of illusory life.

Enemies have taught me to know what hardly anyone knows, that a person has no enemies in the world except himself.

One hates his enemies only when he fails to realize that they are not enemies, but cruel friends.

It is truly difficult for me to say who has done me more good and who has done me more evil in the world: friends or enemies.

Therefore bless, O Lord, both my friends and enemies.

A slave curses enemies, for he does not understand. But a son blesses them, for he understands.

For a son knows that his enemies cannot touch his life.

Therefore he freely steps among them and prays to God for them.

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

I am a simple person with simple pleasures [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img].

Shel Silverstein - Smart


My dad gave me a dollar
`Cause I'm his smartest son
And I swapped it for two shiny quarters
`Cause two is more than one!

And then I took the quarters
And traded them to Lou
For three dimes --- I guess he don't know
That three is more than two!

Just then, along came old blind Bates
And just ‘cause he can't see
He gave me four nickels for my three dimes,
And four is more than three!

And I took the nickels to Hiram Coombs
Down at the feed-seed store,
And the fool gave me five pennies for them,
And five is more than four!

And then I went and showed my dad,
And he got red in the cheeks
And closed his eyes and shook his head ---
Too proud of me to speak!




But in truth, I really loved The Highwayman, By Alfred Noyes.

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

[ QUOTE ]
Being "pro-America" made her less than popular? Pre WW2? OK

[/ QUOTE ]

From wikipedia:
Her reputation was damaged by poetry she wrote in support of the Allied war effort during World War II. Merle Rubin noted: "She seems to have caught more flak from the literary critics for supporting democracy than Ezra Pound did for championing fascism."

Without knowing exactly why, I would guess it has something to do with many of the cultural concepts popular at the time, such as eugenics and "Europe's war," being things she vehemently, and publicly, opposed. While "pro-America" was a quote, I suspect it was meant in a similar way to people who suggest that the current US regime is anti-American - it all depends on what your idea of things American is. It might be more accurate to describe her as pro-democracy, pro-global citizenship, pro opposing the ideals that are (and were then) popularly associated with fascism, and in the specifics of the time, pro joining the war. Not a popular viewpoint.

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

I could see how being pro-interventionist could irritate a lot of people. We were pretty sick of Europe's constant costly wars and it seemed like we had only just finished one before they were starting to screw up all over again. I confess complete ignorance regarding this lady's life, even to the point of not knowing whether she was American or not.

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

That's a pretty good one, whiskeytown. A simple but unusual concept well done.

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

I can't really say why this is my favorite. I really like Clampitt's style though and she is probably my favorite poet.


A Whippoorwill in the Woods

by Amy Clampitt



Night after night, it was very nearly enough,
they said, to drive you crazy: a whippoorwill
in the woods repeating itself like the stuck groove
of an LP with a defect, and no way possible
of turning the thing off.

And night after night, they said, in the insomniac
small hours the whipsawing voice of obsession
would have come in closer, the way a sick
thing does when it’s done for—or maybe the reason
was nothing more melodramatic



than a night-flying congregation of moths, lured in
in their turn by house-glow, the strange heat
of it—imagine the nebular dangerousness, if one
were a moth, the dark pockmarked with beaks, the great
dim shapes, the bright extinction—

if moths are, indeed, after all, what a whippoorwill
favors. Who knows? Anyhow, from one point of view
insects are to be seen as an ailment, moths above all:
the filmed-over, innumerable nodes of spun-out tissue
untidying the trees, the larval

spew of such hairy hordes, one wonders what use
they can be other than as a guarantee no bird
goes hungry. We’re like that. The webbiness,
the gregariousness of the many are what we can’t abide.
We single out for notice

above all what’s disjunct, the way birds are,
with their unhooked-up, cheekily anarchic
dartings and flashings, their uncalled-for color—
the indelible look of the rose-breasted grosbeak
an aunt of mine, a noticer

of such things before the noticing had or needed
a name, drew my five-year-old attention up to, in
the green deeps of a maple. She never married,
believed her cat had learned to leave birds alone,
and for years, node after node,

by lingering degrees she made way within for
what wasn’t so much a thing as it was a system,
a webwork of error that throve until it killed her.
What is health? We must all die sometime.
Whatever it is, out there

in the woods, that begins to seem like
a species of madness, we survive as we can:
the hooked-up, the humdrum, the brief, tragic
wonder of being at all. The whippoorwill out in
the woods, for me, brought back

as by a relay, from a place at such a distance
no recollection now in place could reach so far,
the memory of a memory she told me of once:
of how her father, my grandfather, by whatever
now unfathomable happenstance,

carried her (she might have been five) into the breathing night.
“Listen!” she said he’d said. “Did you hear it?
That was a whippoorwill.” And she (and I) never forgot.

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

Very nice.

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

BTW, I'm sure it's a typo, but the poem is by Yeats, a sort of free style version of a poem by Ronsard.

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

Here's a Poem by the translator of Hikmet's poem--in case you're interested.



Visionary Company

Last night when our son said, "The two of you
are beautiful," I knew he wasn't falling
for how the shadows at our candle-lit

dinner for three erased the lines the years
have raked across our faces, but perhaps
buttering us up & learning to trade

words for love. Putting myself in his place,
I sat back at the right hand of my father,
who manfully watched me play his opposite

versus his understudy, as when, my hair
silvered for King Lear's Kent like his, it happened
I kissed him good-bye on the mouth for good,

& across the blond table from my mother,
whose blue shadow-box hung over my head
& in whose teal-flecked eyes I could do no wrong,

wrong as I was in so much that I did
or failed to do, like telling her the fall
she died I'd be a father in the spring.

I saw my parents vanish in the time
it took our candle to burn down to nothing
—both, to my mind, beautiful in that light.

--Randy Blasing

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

siegfried sassoon- 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.






i just love all poetry from the 1st WW

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

I'm fascinated by that time too, and Sassoon can really be great.

Here's one from Philip Larkin that I often paste in whenever favorite poetry threads pop up:

High Windows

When I see a couple of kids
And guess he's f*cking her and she's
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives--
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if
Anyone looked at me, forty years back,
And thought, That'll be the life;
No God any more, or sweating in the dark

About hell and that, or having to hide
What you think of the priest. He
And his lot will all go down the long slide
Like free bloody birds. And immediately

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.


------------

"The sun-comprehending glass" might be my favorite thing I've ever read.

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

[ QUOTE ]
When You are Old - Keats


[/ QUOTE ]
[literature nit]It's actually by W.B. Yeats [/nit]

Mine would be The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot. I read it for the first time over 4 years ago and it still is the poem that resonates the most with me. It is such a popular poem because almost anybody can relate to Prufrock in one way.


S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo 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 that 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.

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

"O Mistress Mine" by William Shakespeare - Why? Because I am in love with a 20 year old.


O MISTRESS mine, where are you roaming?
O stay and hear! your true-love’s coming
That can sing both high and low;
Trip no further, pretty sweeting,
Journeys end in lovers’ meeting— 5
Every wise man’s son doth know.

What is love? ’tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What’s to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty,— 10
Then come kiss me, Sweet-and-twenty,
Youth’s a stuff will not endure.

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

This has just always been one of my favorites since I was young....

Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.


I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

There are some poems that I like. The poems of Emily Dickinson taken as a whole, although some of the charm may be how some people hate her so. A certain poem whose title would probably be censored by the software here because it is the plural of a slang term for a feminine body part, written by John Updike.

However, the poem that most sticks in my mind, one of the few I can still recite from memory, is "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe. It's sad and beautiful and written to be read aloud.

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

Yes it was a typo... er... tKpo. lol.

But since I'm on this thread again reading these great poems, I'll add a poem by my favorite poet.

e e cummings

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

Lady Murasaki - I first saw this in the book Hannibal. I wasn't aware she was a real person. Evidently, many credit her with writing the first novel.

The memories of long love
Gather like drifting snow.
Poignant as the mandarin ducks
Who float side by side in sleep.

Stephen Crane - I liked The Red Badge of Courage and was very interested in his poetry:

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."

Kurt Corbain - This pretty much sums up his angst right before he blew his brains out with a shotgun.

She eyes me like a Pisces when I am weak
I've been locked inside your heart-shaped box for weeks
I was drawn into your magnet tar-pit trap
I wish I could eat your cancer when you turn black

Hey!
Wait!
I've got a new complaint
Forever in debt to your priceless advice

Meat-eating orchids forgive no one just yet
Cut myself on angel hair and baby's breath
Broken hymen of your highness, I'm left black
Throw down your umbilical noose so I can climb right back

Hey!
Wait!
I've got a new complaint
Forever in debt to your priceless advice

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

Nice one Blarg!

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass.

-EP

I know I already posted, but I'm posting this as well to contrast with Eliot. The third line is this poem is so simple but is the greatest imagery I've ever read. Comparatively Prufrock has long, complex images to complement the poem's tone. Both are effective but I think Pound's simplicity is his greatest asset. He can say in 4 lines what it takes some poets an anthology of work to convey.

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

The Silverstein post reminded me of my mantra in high school:

Listen to the Mustn'ts, child, listen to the Don'ts
Listen to the Shouldn'ts, the Impossibles, the Won'ts.
Listen to the Never Haves, then listen close to me.
Anything can happen, child, Anything can be.

Re: Your favorite poem and why
 

Listen to the street beat
Hear the sound pound
Plug yo'r ears
Mask yo'r fears
Something weirds going down

Listen to the street beat
Listen to the box shock
Listen... or I'll kill ya!

-
Raphael De La Ghetto