# any poems you cannot live without? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 2, 2003, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-poems-you-cannot-live-without/185827 "2003-07-02T18:04:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2003, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-poems-you-cannot-live-without/185827/21 "2003-07-03T03:34:46Z")
A few of my favourite poems: [i sing of Olaf glad and big](http://www.poets.org/poems/poems.cfm?prmID=1190) (e.e. cummings): > [@](#): > > …Olaf(upon what were once knees) > does almost ceaselessly repeat > “there is some shit I will not eat”… > > Christ(of His mercy infinite) > i pray to see;and Olaf,too > > preponderatingly because > unless statistics lie he was > more brave than me:more blond than you. [Tichborne’s Elegy](http://www.abluenature.com/poetry/Tichborne.shtml) (Chidiock Tichborne): > [@](#): > > …The day is past, and yet I saw no sun, > And now I live, and now my life is done… [Résumé](http://www.breakoutofthebox.com/resume.htm) (Dorothy Parker). ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2003, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-poems-you-cannot-live-without/185827/22 "2003-07-03T03:35:56Z")
Oh, by the way, CLI by William Shakespeare is more properly known as “Ode to My Willy.” ---
**Author:** ![Publius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c57346/32.png) [@Publius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Publius)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2003, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-poems-you-cannot-live-without/185827/23 "2003-07-03T03:42:28Z")
There’s a lot of poems I like, but [Richard Cory](http://www.medialab.chalmers.se/guitar/richard.cory.lyr.html) and Kipling’s [Recessional](http://www.boondocksnet.com/ai/kipling/kipling1897recessional.html) immediately come to mind. ---
**Author:** ![HDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/bb73d2/32.png) [@HDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HDS)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2003, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-poems-you-cannot-live-without/185827/24 "2003-07-03T03:43:19Z")
The Tyger by William Blake. Wonderful to read aloud. Jenny Kiss’d Me by Leigh Hunt. She Walks in Beauty by Lord Byron. _swoons_ La Belle Dame Sans Merci by Keats. A friend wrote a few lines from this in my yearbook. Annabel Lee. Perfect in every way. The Charge of the Light Brigade by Tennyson. Anything by Shel Silverstein and Ogden Nash. I love poems! ---
**Author:** ![Zenster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/cdc98d/32.png) [@Zenster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zenster)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2003, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-poems-you-cannot-live-without/185827/25 "2003-07-03T03:49:33Z")
[The Raven’s Story](http://www.herring.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/poetry/raven.htm) The Raven’s Story Swaggerin’ home in raven fashion, feelin’ rather bold and dashin’, Thought I’d do some poet-bashin’; saw this light above a door - A sign that E. A. Poe was porin’ o’er some problem bleak and borin’, Like how to rhyme with Ulalume, or find a maiden named Lenore. And when I heard the morbid nutter mutter, ‘Oh my lost Lenore!’ I tapped my beak against his door … I recite this one at parties with much ensuing hilarity. ---
**Author:** ![Hammerstein](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c4cdca/32.png) [@Hammerstein](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hammerstein)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2003, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-poems-you-cannot-live-without/185827/26 "2003-07-03T04:23:03Z")
I go along the same lines as **Marley23** The Wasteland (Yes, maybe I’m crazy) 🙂 Parts I and V always get me for some reason or another… Mostly the Hyacinth girl section and the thunder speaking at the end. > [@](#): > > ‘They called me the hyacinth girl.’ > -Yet when we came back, late, from the hyacinth garden, > Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not > Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither > Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, > Looking into the heart of light, the silence > Oed’ und leer das Meer. > [@](#): > > DA > Datta: what have we given? > My friend, blood shaking my heart > The awful daring of a moment’s surrender > Which an age of prudence can never retract… ---
**Author:** ![Grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b782af/32.png) [@Grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grey)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2003, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-poems-you-cannot-live-without/185827/27 "2003-07-03T04:24:14Z")
Ulysses by Lord Tennyson > [@](#): > > And this gray spirit yearning in desire > To follow knowledge like a sinking star, > Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. And The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock > [@](#): > > 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. ---
**Author:** ![I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/i_love_me_vol.i/32/521_2.png) [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Love_Me_Vol.I)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2003, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-poems-you-cannot-live-without/185827/28 "2003-07-03T04:39:23Z")
Yes, this one– At breakfast one day in Calcutta Sat a man with a bit of a stutter He said, “Pass the h-ham, And the j-j-j-jam, And the b-b-b-b-b-b-butter!” ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Doubt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/df705f/32.png) [@Peter\_Doubt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Doubt)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2003, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-poems-you-cannot-live-without/185827/29 "2003-07-03T04:39:32Z")
The Congo Vachel Lindsay The Cremation of Sam McGee Robert William Service Lots of Kipling \*was indoctrinated in poetry by a fairly raucous group 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2003, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-poems-you-cannot-live-without/185827/30 "2003-07-03T04:44:02Z")
**Marley23** , _Prufrock_ will never become a cliche, IMO. **Lissla** , _Ulysses_ was one of JFK’s favorite poems and Mrs. Kennedy once memorized it for him as a gift. This little love poem is just eight lines long, but I’ve loved it since I first found it at seventeen: [http://lovequote.com/lovequotesbody553.shtml](http://lovequote.com/lovequotesbody553.shtml) ---
**Author:** ![Ragiel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6de8d8/32.png) [@Ragiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ragiel)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2003, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-poems-you-cannot-live-without/185827/31 "2003-07-03T04:44:23Z")
Wonderful, wonderful topic for a thread! Thank you so much, maddiesilver! Yes, I have quite a few poems that reliably send chills all over me (even in summer with no air conditioning!) Just off the top of my head: W.H. Auden, “In Praise of Limestone,” “First Things First,” “Leap before you look” and many others. T.S. Eliot, “Four Quartets” and “The Waste Land.” The “Pervigilium Veneris” or Vigil of Venus, which is actually quoted in the “Waste Land”: (quando fiam uti chelidon.) Usually when a line just floats up it’s in Latin, but if I hadn’t read the translation I would know a lot less of it. I have a copy I wrote out 20+ years ago and read it every spring. I don’t have a link for it, but it’s out there somewhere. Last year I realized that lines from “Twink” by Robert Shure (Pub City Lights Books, ca. 1960) and from Roy Rogers, vol II (pub ca. 1971) also were echoing from my unconscious on a regular basis. I hadn’t had a copy of either in many years, but Alibris found both for me right away. The Roy Rogers is not actually a magazine, but a compilation of one-line poems collected by NY poet Bill Zavatsky. Oh, and A.E. Housman, just about anything. Hair-raising. Right on, this is a wonderful way to get acquainted! Oldbat ---
**Author:** ![HDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/bb73d2/32.png) [@HDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HDS)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2003, 10:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-poems-you-cannot-live-without/185827/32 "2003-07-03T10:24:15Z")
> [@](#): > > At breakfast one day in Calcutta Now that is a wonderful poem! 🙂 I used to talk like that (only on occasion now). I copied it down to read to my mom. ---
**Author:** ![AchimbaProphet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/2bfe46/32.png) [@AchimbaProphet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AchimbaProphet)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2003, 10:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-poems-you-cannot-live-without/185827/33 "2003-07-03T10:26:05Z")
Does this count as a poem? Ogden Nash - “Candy is dandy, liquor is quicker.” Allen Ginsberg - Howl Stephen Jesse Bernstein - More Noise Please William S Burroughs - Did I Ever Tell You About… ---
**Author:** ![An\_Arky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/87869e/32.png) [@An\_Arky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Arky)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2003, 10:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-poems-you-cannot-live-without/185827/34 "2003-07-03T10:55:01Z")
**Dulce Et Decorum Est** or **Anthem for Doomed Youth** by Wilfred Owen. ---
**Author:** ![Labdad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/439d5e/32.png) [@Labdad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Labdad)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2003, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-poems-you-cannot-live-without/185827/35 "2003-07-03T13:13:21Z")
Ever seen a field of daffodils in the springtime? Then how can you live without “I Wandered Lonley as a Cloud”: ``` *I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed--and gazed--but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.* ``` Do you still get a thrill looking at a rainbow? The you must have “My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold”: ``` *My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The Child is father of the Man; I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.* ``` I had a professor in college who told us, “Coleridge could make the supernatural seem familiar, bur Wordsworth could make the familiar seem supernatural!” ---
**Author:** ![look\_ninjas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b2d939/32.png) [@look\_ninjas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/look_ninjas)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2003, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-poems-you-cannot-live-without/185827/36 "2003-07-03T13:26:06Z")
Most of my favorites ( **Anthem for Doomed Youth** , **Prufrock** , **Stopping by Woods** ) have already been mentioned. Fortunately, **somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond** isn’t on the list, so I’ll add that (it’s e.e. cummings, though the lack of caps should have given that away.) ---
**Author:** ![Humble\_Servant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/47e85d/32.png) [@Humble\_Servant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Humble_Servant)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2003, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-poems-you-cannot-live-without/185827/37 "2003-07-03T16:01:17Z")
Links, people! Please either link or quote the poem so I can read and appreciate properly. Always nice to see old friends. Of the new, I like the Berry poems, and the St. Vincent Millay Casual Way one. [Here’s an alternate Kipling, also about war.](Http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/verse/p1/holywar.html) All enemy divisions, Recruits of every class, And highly-screened positions, For flame or poison gas; The craft that we call modern, The crimes that we call new, John Bunyan had 'em typed and filed In Sixteen Eighty-two. Kipling uses some conventions that seem odd to my ear (the poem I’ve just quoted for instance is an homage to an admired writer, which he does a number of), but there’s often a nugget of something to like–“craft that we call modern, crimes that we call new.” Someone always quotes Kubla Khan (His flashing eyes! His floating hair!), but I’ll give an [alternative “supernatural” Coleridge](http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/poems/Pains_of_Sleep.html) to go with **Labdad’s** Wordsworth: Such punishments, I said, were due, To natures deepliest stained with sin,– For aye entempesting anew The unfathomable hell within, The horror of their deeds to view To know and loathe, yet wish and do! Such griefs with such men well agree, But wherefore, wherefore fall on me? I wouldn’t call this poem a favorite because I don’t think I like the person voicing the poem, but it bugs me and I have always remembered it. ---
**Author:** ![vibrotronica](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/a9a28c/32.png) [@vibrotronica](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vibrotronica)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2003, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-poems-you-cannot-live-without/185827/38 "2003-07-03T16:12:27Z")
“The Parallax Mongraph for Rodin” by Norman Dubie. If you like poetry, do yourself a favor and seek out all the Dubie you can find. He’s still alive, even, and teaching at Arizona. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Arky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/87869e/32.png) [@An\_Arky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Arky)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2003, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-poems-you-cannot-live-without/185827/39 "2003-07-03T16:19:23Z")
[Dulce Et Decorum Est](http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/LostPoets/Dulce.html) and [Anthem for Doomed Youth](http://www.hcu.ox.ac.uk/jtap/warpoems.htm#7) by Wilfred Owen… ---
**Author:** ![Humble\_Servant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/47e85d/32.png) [@Humble\_Servant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Humble_Servant)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2003, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-poems-you-cannot-live-without/185827/40 "2003-07-03T16:45:04Z")
IMHO, there is no “better” expression of the horror of war than in poems. Books, music, movies, just don’t get to the point of what war means to an individual who lives it. I don’t think the same is true of love or birth–what is it about war that makes war poetry? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-poems-you-cannot-live-without/185827.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-poems-you-cannot-live-without/185827.md?page=3)