# Favorite Poem **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 13, 2000, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-poem/33055 "2000-09-13T18:27:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2000, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-poem/33055/21 "2000-09-14T17:17:14Z")
I have a lot of favorite poems but some which have affected me deeply would include Stevie Smith’s [Not Waving But Drowning](http://www.artofeurope.com/smith/smi1.htm) > [@](#): > > “Oh, no no no, it was too cold always > (Still the dead one lay moaning) > I was much too far out all my life > And not waving but drowning.” and T.S.Eliot’s [“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”](http://www.deathclock.com/thunder/framer.cfm?frame=http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html) > [@](#): > > 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; and W.B. Yeats’s [“When You Are Old”](http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~martinh/poems/yeats.html#old) > [@](#): > > 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; ---
**Author:** ![Motorgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e36b37/32.png) [@Motorgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Motorgirl)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2000, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-poem/33055/22 "2000-09-14T17:20:11Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Black12 \* > \*\*My favorite poem is “For Strong Women” by Margaret Atwood. I think it first appeared in The Moon is Always Female. > > I’m at work so I don’t have it with me, but it ends: > > “Until we are all strong together > a strong woman is a woman strongly afraid.” \*\* Black12, _The Moon is Always Female_ is by Marge Piercy. T ---
**Author:** ![Sea\_Sloth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Sea\_Sloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sea_Sloth)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2000, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-poem/33055/23 "2000-09-14T17:28:04Z")
OOPS! I always switch their names. :o ---
**Author:** ![Sea\_Sloth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Sea\_Sloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sea_Sloth)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2000, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-poem/33055/24 "2000-09-14T17:29:23Z")
Also, I’m reading The Robber Bride at the moment so I have her on the brain. ---
**Author:** ![Why\_A\_Duck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/13edae/32.png) [@Why\_A\_Duck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Why_A_Duck)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2000, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-poem/33055/25 "2000-09-14T17:57:08Z")
I’ve always liked **“The Second Coming” by Yeats:** \*Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, … And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? \* Although in a fix, Anne Sexton does just fine. pcubed. ---
**Author:** ![Odieman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a87d85/32.png) [@Odieman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odieman)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2000, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-poem/33055/26 "2000-09-14T18:21:39Z")
Like Goboy my favorite poem is “The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock” My favorite lines are: "I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me. " Other favorites include “Jabberwocky” By Lewis Carroll and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” Keith ---
**Author:** ![Kepi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kepi/32/7251_2.png) [@Kepi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kepi)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2000, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-poem/33055/27 "2000-09-14T18:39:10Z")
My favorite poem is Robert Frost’s _Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening_. To me it’s a beautiful way of saying “stop and smell the roses”. In other words, don’t get bogged down in your busy life without stopping every once in a while to reflect on the moment. I’m also partial to Carl Sandburg’s _Chicago_ - a love poem to the author’s hometown that really captures the life of the city and why he loves it. ---
**Author:** ![Helen\_s\_Eidolon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Helen\_s\_Eidolon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Helen_s_Eidolon)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2000, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-poem/33055/28 "2000-09-14T23:10:44Z")
“Stopping by Woods” (as I mentioned before is one of my favorites too, for pretty much the same reason. But in grade 11 by english teacher parsed and analyzed it so hard she made the conclusion that the man was about to commit suicide. I was TERRIBLY upset! Good thing I am… ---
**Author:** ![jessicala](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/eb9ed0/32.png) [@jessicala](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jessicala)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2000, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-poem/33055/29 "2000-09-14T23:50:15Z")
Tennyson’s _Ulysses_: [http://www.raingod.com/angus/Poetry/Poems/a\_tennyson.html](http://www.raingod.com/angus/Poetry/Poems/a_tennyson.html) “Come, my friends ‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world […] and tho’ We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven: that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2000, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-poem/33055/30 "2000-09-15T03:34:14Z")
_Ozymandias_ by PB Shelley _Jabberwocky_ (as mentioned by many people) (hijack: try to come up with a commonly known melody to which one can sing Jabberwocky… 'tis not easy) _Oh Captain My Captain_ by Walt Whitman _The Cremation of Sam McGee_ by Robert Service and a really beautiful poem that I read in high school about trumpets rolling over water on a Scottish lake or something… I’m usually not much for “beauty of language” and all that, but this was just so musical… anyone have any idea what I’m talking about? ---
**Author:** ![Saturn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e19b73/32.png) [@Saturn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saturn)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2000, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-poem/33055/31 "2000-09-15T04:42:58Z")
Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti…Very disturbing and beautiful at the same time. ---
**Author:** ![2sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/2/e47774/32.png) [@2sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2sense)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2000, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-poem/33055/32 "2000-09-15T05:23:47Z")
_The Fly_ by Ogden Nash. And no bandwith concerns here; the poem is only 2 lines long. ---
**Author:** ![Kat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b19c9b/32.png) [@Kat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kat)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2000, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-poem/33055/33 "2000-09-16T00:35:27Z")
Whose woods these are I think I know His house is in the village though He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow… And Two road diverged in a yellow wood And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood… ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2000, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-poem/33055/34 "2000-09-16T07:05:27Z")
I kvell over virtually anything by Dorothy Parker. I also like: Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116; Browning’s “My Last Duchess;” a lot of Emily Dickinson; Ginsburg’s “Please Master”; Catullus’s Carmen 16; and various others that I can’t think of right now because I’m too tired and sick. Goodnight. ---
**Author:** ![Adriatic\_Ionian\_AEgean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Adriatic\_Ionian\_AEgean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Adriatic_Ionian_AEgean)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2000, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-poem/33055/35 "2000-09-16T07:34:30Z")
Anything by A.E.Woodhouse ---
**Author:** ![Snooooopy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Snooooopy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snooooopy)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2000, 9:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-poem/33055/36 "2000-09-16T09:46:36Z")
In elementary school, I learned cursive by copying Shel Silverstein poems my teacher wrote on the board. So he’s my favorite poet. ---
**Author:** ![Osakadave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/f07891/32.png) [@Osakadave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Osakadave)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2000, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-poem/33055/37 "2000-09-16T11:16:07Z")
I’ve always loved these: The Cremation of Sam McGee\_by Robert Service Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes ---
**Author:** ![quasar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/48db29/32.png) [@quasar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/quasar)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2000, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-poem/33055/38 "2000-09-17T02:39:45Z")
My vote goes to “Casey at the bat”. I almost cried when he struck out the first time I read it. Now, if it had been McGwire at the plate it might have been a different story… ---
**Author:** ![Flutterby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Flutterby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flutterby)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2000, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-poem/33055/39 "2000-09-17T04:24:39Z")
Mine would have to be The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes and The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert Service There is another one but I can’t remember its title. I need to dig out my Children’s collection again to find it. ---
**Author:** ![Biotop](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biotop/32/321_2.png) [@Biotop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biotop)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2000, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-poem/33055/40 "2000-09-17T15:01:13Z")
“anyone lived in a pretty howtown” by e.e. cummings [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-poem/33055.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-poem/33055.md?page=3)