Poetry

[The Thrashmeister]

I've seen books, movies, TV shows, and music discussed on this board... but how about poetry? I know everyone has at least one poem that they especially like. Share and talk about your favorite poems here.

My top three favorite poems are as follows:

Antigonish by Hughes Mearns
As I was walking up the stair
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I wish, I wish he'd stay away.

-I actually learned about this poem from the user PkmnTrainerJ, who had it in his sig.
_________

The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

-Narrated on Heroes ftw. I've liked it ever since.
________

Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

- Poe is my favorite poet, and Annabel Lee is my favorite poem of his other than The Raven. I actually recited this for a freshman english class. I just really like this poem; it's sadly melodic.

 

[Profesco]

The first and third poems you gave, Thrashmeister, I enjoy as well. I don't really pay much attention to poetry as a whole, though, and Poe, while a favorite of mine, is simply a pleasure I enjoy every once in a while.

When it comes to writing poetry, the only sort I ever consider is haiku. And to be honest, that's only because it's so simple and easy. (Assuming you forego depth and meaning. )

 

[palingensia]

Who doesn't love a bit of Shakespeare? Sonnets are great, I've tried writing a couple but I'm not too sure how they went...
I read quite a few poems that I like about four years ago, so I can't remember them... One I do remember is "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost, that's a great poem. Also "Snake" by D. H. Lawrence is a goodie. Don't remember many more...

 

[Ethan]

I wrote a poem. Ahem.

*clears throat*

cat
fat
hat
bat
pat
mat
****
brat
sat

Don't task yourself too much trying to decipher all of the complex and hidden symbolism.


k guyz imma be srs nao.


This is one of my favorites. Mainly due to the fact that I like anything that makes me laugh. If you can do it in the form of poetry, that takes talent.

The taxis, bikes and minis all screech to a halt
As a big BMW breaks the law
He's heading for the social club
Foot pressed to the floor

The Wheel-Spinners' & Grunters' Social Club
Only 4x4's allowed
And sports cars (if they're big enough)
'Cause the crucial bit is - LOUD

Two thousand million years
To bury carbon 'neath the clay
Now it's burnt in twenty decades
'Cause we need BIG toys for play

Oral, anal, genital
Old Sigmund's in a daze
'Cause he missed 'The Biggest Conker'
- The adolescent phase

They've a fondness for bananas
(Skins are thrown into the drain)
There's a stance that says 'Each testicle
Is bigger than my brain.'

There's tornadoes in Bermuda
Sandstorms in the middle east
The sea's invaded Alabama
Alligators have a feast

As the goddess tries to cleanse the Earth
Of this greedy parasite
And restore a sort of balance
To the earthly paradise

One swam over the cuckoo's nest -
(There's no sight of land in Devon)
Hear that midsummer night's scream
In Stratford under Avon

There's lightning in Leipzig
And mud in place of floor
They're sleepless in Seattle
As the rain lashes the door

They're witless in Wigan
At the petrol-shortage news
As they leap into their grunt-mobiles
Engines fuming, stand in queues

We're waking up in Woking
And we're gonna join in too
If the TV says 'materialism'
Then I'm bound to. Aren't you?

The people that made it are some social group that I can't remember the name of. Ah well.

Satire> Doom and gloom

 

[palingensia]

They've a fondness for bananas
(Skins are thrown into the drain)
There's a stance that says 'Each testicle
Is bigger than my brain.'

That made me laugh, it's so true though!

Satire> Doom and gloom

Who could possibly disagree with that.

 

[Putty]

Who could possibly disagree with that.

i would. satirical poetry can be really, really bad and the writers usually don't need to even bother think about what they're doing. a four year old could write a poem bashing the US government. besides, miserable poetry is the best.

 

[palingensia]

i would. satirical poetry can be really, really bad and the writers usually don't need to even bother think about what they're doing. a four year old could write a poem bashing the US government. besides, miserable poetry is the best.

True, but I was meaning the professionals. They know what they're doing, and it usually works out.

 

[RayRay]

I adore Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, and perhaps ever so slightly controversially, Carol Ann Duffy. 90% of my year hated her when we studied her poems at school, but i love her I'm also a big fan of Poe, The Raven is tres wonderful I also like his short stories - The Tell Tale Heart etc.

I'll give an example of one of my favourite poems from Plath, Sexton and Duffy. I have many favourites for each, so hard to choose lol.

Mirror by Sylvia Plath

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see, I swallow immediately.
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike
I am not cruel, only truthful –
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me.
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

The Death Baby - Anne Sexton

1. DREAMS

I was an ice baby.
I turned to sky blue.
My tears became two glass beads.
My mouth stiffened into a dumb howl.
They say it was a dream
but I remember that hardening.

My sister at six
dreamt nightly of my death:
"The baby turned to ice.
Someone put her in the refrigerator
and she turned as hard as a Popsicle."

I remember the stink of the liverwurst.
How I was put on a platter and laid
between the mayonnaise and the bacon.
The rhythm of the refrigerator
had been disturbed.
The milk bottle hissed like a snake.
The tomatoes vomited up their stomachs.
The caviar turned to lave.
The pimentos kissed like cupids.
I moved like a lobster,
slower and slower.
The air was tiny.
The air would not do.
*
I was at the dogs' party.
I was their bone.
I had been laid out in their kennel
like a fresh turkey.

This was my sister's dream
but I remember that quartering;
I remember the sickbed smell
of the sawdust floor, the pink eyes,
the pink tongues and the teeth, those nails.
I had been carried out like Moses
and hidden by the paws
of ten Boston bull terriers,
ten angry bulls
jumping like enormous roaches.
At first I was lapped,
rough as sandpaper.
I became very clean.
Then my arm was missing.
I was coming apart.
They loved me until
I was gone.

2. THE DY-DEE DOLL

My Dy-dee doll
died twice.
Once when I snapped
her head off
and let if float in the toilet
and once under the sun lamp
trying to get warm
she melted.
She was a gloom,
her face embracing
her little bent arms.
She died in all her rubber wisdom.

3. SEVEN TIMES

I died seven times
in seven ways
letting death give me a sign,
letting death place his mark on my forehead,
crossed over, crossed over

And death took root in that sleep.
In that sleep I held an ice baby
and I rocked it
and was rocked by it.
Oh Madonna, hold me.
I am a small handful.

4.MADONNA

My mother died
unrocked, unrocked.
Weeks at her deathbed
seeing her thrust herself against the metal bars,
thrashing like a fish on the hook
and me low at her high stage,
letting the priestess dance alone,
wanting to place my head in her lap
or even take her in my arms somehow
and fondle her twisted gray hair.
But her rocking horse was pain
with vomit steaming from her mouth.
Her belly was big with another child,
cancer's baby, big as a football.
I could not soothe.
With every hump and crack
there was less Madonna
until that strange labor took her.
Then the room was bankrupt.
That was the end of her paying.

5. MAX

Max and I
two immoderate sisters,
two immoderate writers,
two burdeners,
made a pact.
To beat death down with a stick.
To take over.
To build our death like carpenters.
When she had a broken back,
each night we built her sleep.
Talking on the hot line
until her eyes pulled down like shades.
And we agreed in those long hushed phone calls
that when the moment comes
we'll talk turkey,
we'll shoot words straight from the hip,
we'll play it as it lays.
Yes,
when death comes with its hood
we won't be polite.

6. BABY

Death,
you lie in my arms like a cherub,
as heavy as bread dough.
Your milky wings are as still as plastic.
Hair soft as music.
Hair the color of a harp.
And eyes made of glass,
as brittle as crystal.
Each time I rock you
I think you will break.
I rock. I rock.
Glass eye, ice eye,
primordial eye,
lava eye,
pin eye,
break eye,
how you stare back!

Like the gaze if small children
you know all about me.
You have worn my underwear.
You have read my newspaper.
You have seen my father whip me.
You have seen my stroke my father's whip.

I rock. I rock.
We plunge back and forth
comforting each other.
We are stone.
We are carved, a pietà
that swings.
Outside, the world is a chilly army.
Outside, the sea is brought to its knees.
Outside, Pakistan is swallowed in a mouthful.

I rock. I rock.
You are my stone child
with still eyes like marbles.
There is a death baby
for each of us.
We own him.
His smell is our smell.
Beware. Beware.
There is a tenderness.
There is a love
for this dumb traveler
waiting in his pink covers.
Someday,
heavy with cancer or disaster
I will look up at Max
and say: It is time.
Hand me the death baby
and there will be
that final rocking.

Shooting stars - by Carol Ann Duffy

After I no longer speak they break our fingers
to salvage my wedding ring. Rebecca Rachel Ruth
Aaron Emmanuel David, stars on all our brows
Beneath the gaze of men with guns. Mourn for our daughters,

upright as statues, brave. You would not look at me.
You waited for the bullet. Fell. I say, Remember.
Remember those appalling days which make the world
forever bad. One saw I was alive. Loosened

his belt. My bowels opened in a ragged gape of fear.
Between the gap of corpses I could see a child.
The soldiers laughed. Only a matter of days separate
this from acts of torture now. They shot her in the eye.

How would you prepare to die, on a perfect April evening
with young men gossiping and smoking by the graves?
My bare feet felt the earth and urine trickled
down my legs. I heard the click. Not yet. A trick.

After immense suffering someone takes tea on the lawn.
After the terrible moans a boy washes his uniform.
After the history lesson children run to their toys the world
turns in its sleep the spades shovel soil Sara Ezra…

Sister, if seas part us, do you not consider me?
Tell them I sang the ancient psalms at dusk
inside the wire and strong men wept. Turn thee
unto me with mercy, for I am desolate and lost.

It's hard to say what i like about these poems. They connect with a deeper part of me, one which does not usually speak and has no mastery of words. Take from them what you will.

And sorry about the UBER long post!!

 

[Kthleen]

Yeah, I'm not really a poetry person, but here's one I like (though it's in French...):

"Le Cancre" - Jacques Prévert

Il dit non avec la tête
Mais il dit oui avec le coeur
Il dit oui à ce qu'il aime
Il dit non au professeur
Il est debout
On le questionne
Et tous les problèmes sont poséé
Soudain le fou rire le prend
Et il efface tout
Les chiffres et les mots
Les dates et les noms
Les phrases et les piéges
Et malgré les menaces du maître
Sous les huées des enfants prodiges
Avec des craies de toutes les couleurs
Sur le tableau noir du malheur
Il dessine le visage du bonheur.


It translates to something like this:

"The Dunce"

He says no with his head
but he says yes with his heart.
He says yes to that which he likes.
He says no to the teacher.
He stands.
They question him
and all problems are posed.
Suddenly, mad laughter takes him
and he erases everything:
numbers and words,
sentences and trick questions.
And despite the teacher's threats,
under the jeers of the child prodigies,
with chalks of all colors,
on the blackboard of unhappiness
he draws a happy face.


There's not much I can say besides "lol."

 

[Hammerheart]

I was tempted to post all twelve books of Milton's Paradise Lost, but then thaught better of it.

 

[The Thrashmeister]

I don't really pay much attention to poetry as a whole, though, and Poe, while a favorite of mine, is simply a pleasure I enjoy every once in a while.

Yeah, I'm not really a poetry buff either. The only times I actually make an effort to read poetry are when it's assigned for school. But nevertheless, I do enjoy poetry.

I was tempted to post all twelve books of Milton's Paradise Lost, but then thaught better of it.

Lulz... that was probably a good idea.

 

[kirby8933083]

Poetry....what can I say....well, due to my 7th grade english teacher, I had to memorize a few poems in my day. My friend and I even had an inside joke with one of the lines ~

The Lamb By: William Blake

Little lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee,
Gave thee life, and bade thee feed. By the stream and o’er the mead
Gave thee clothing of delight, softest clothing, wooly, bright.
Gave thee such a tender voice, Making all the vales rejoice?
Little lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee?

Little lamb, I’ll tell thee, Little lamb, I’ll tell thee
He is called by thy name, For He calls Himself a lamb,
He is meek, and He is mild, He became a little child
I a child, and thee a Lamb, We are called by His Name.
Little lamb, God bless thee! Little lamb, God bless thee!


It was either this poem to memorize, or the one that starts off, "Tiger, tiger, burning bright. In the forests of the night. What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symetry?" I can't remember exactly what that was call though, perhaps "The Tiger" maybe? Not bad, I still like things to rhyme. But Edger Allen Poe is one of my favorites.

 

[pirate555]

A lot of William Blake's poetry is really beautiful, I studied a couple for my English classes.
Anyone in Britain used that English Anthology for GCSE? There were quite a few good poems in there, as far as I remember =D

This one by Yeats, called Stolen Child, is especially pretty, I find:

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scare could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than he can understand.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And this is the poem I like to think about on a personal level:
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

From Tolkien. I just love the idea of going wandering and following whatever roads you find, and it feels really positive and progressive. Life as something you don't rigorously plan for, that's how I like it!

And finally, my random attempt and poetry, because I like to have a go at everything:

I saw a black crow, omen of old;
Yet the sun beamed upon its wings,
Streaks of white and dazzling gold;
How strange that my eyes should
Fix upon such radiant things.

Pirate

 

[Tim the turtle]

I was tempted to post all twelve books of Milton's Paradise Lost, but then thaught better of it.

I would reccomend rethinking that position. Paradise Lost is awesome. I can't type it all obviously but here are some of my favourite pieces that I have memorised:

"What when we fled amain? Persued and struck by heavens afflicting thunder"

"Medusa with gorgonian fury guards the ford, and of itself the water runs, all taste of living wyght, as once it fled the lip of tantalus"

"As when heavens fire hath scathed the forest oak, or mountain pines, with singed tops their stately growth, though bare stands on the blasted heath"

"In high recess and secret conclave sat, a thousand demi-gods on golden seats"

"And he rose up high to survey his legions, angel forms who lay entranced, thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks"

"These thoughts that wander eternity, to perish rather. Swallowed up and lost in the wide womb of uncreated night"

Paradise Lost - John Milton

Also Carol Anne Duffy is the worst excuse for a human being I have ever encountered. The femenist movement would be far more popular if she wasn't a member of it.

 

[Hammerheart]

I would reccomend rethinking that position. Paradise Lost is awesome. I can't type it all obviously but here are some of my favourite pieces that I have memorised:

"What when we fled amain? Persued and struck by heavens afflicting thunder"

"Medusa with gorgonian fury guards the ford, and of itself the water runs, all taste of living wyght, as once it fled the lip of tantalus"

"As when heavens fire hath scathed the forest oak, or mountain pines, with singed tops their stately growth, though bare stands on the blasted heath"

"In high recess and secret conclave sat, a thousand demi-gods on golden seats"

"And he rose up high to survey his legions, angel forms who lay entranced, thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks"

"These thoughts that wander eternity, to perish rather. Swallowed up and lost in the wide womb of uncreated night"

Paradise Lost - John Milton

Also Carol Anne Duffy is the worst excuse for a human being I have ever encountered. The femenist movement would be far more popular if she wasn't a member of it.

i didnt mean because it was bad, I ment because it was so long

 

[Tim the turtle]

Yeah, that's certainly true, I'm only half way through right now, but I would definitely say that it's worth it.