Your favorite poem and why

[Popinjay]

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.

[diebitter]

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.

[Dominic]

[ 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.

[sirtimo]

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

[KilgoreTrout]

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.

[Kimbell175113]

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.

[Blarg]

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


[/ QUOTE ]

That was my favorite Seinfeld episode.

[clownassassin]

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.

[GinaSD]

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.

[Autocratic]

I'll be as cliche as possible - Howl.