# Share your favorite poems **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 4, 2004, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-poems/263101 "2004-09-04T08:07:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2004, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-poems/263101/1 "2004-09-04T08:07:05Z")
FYI, it’s not kosher hereabouts to post copyrigted material. Better ask a mod to truncate it, and then you can link to it. ---
**Author:** ![Fatwater\_Fewl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/4491bb/32.png) [@Fatwater\_Fewl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fatwater_Fewl)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2004, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-poems/263101/2 "2004-09-04T19:35:18Z")
By the way, **lavenderlemon** , One Art is one of all-time favourites. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2004, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-poems/263101/3 "2004-09-04T20:22:50Z")
It’s odd, but all three favorite poems of mine are sonnets. Two are from Shakespeare, #116"Let me not to the marriage of true minds" and #26"Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage" The other is that sonnet about the joy of flight “Oh I have slipped the surly bonds of earth” ---
**Author:** ![CurlyD](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ee7513/32.png) [@CurlyD](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurlyD)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2004, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-poems/263101/4 "2004-09-05T03:27:38Z")
Speaking of Shel Silverstein (RIP), how about “Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout”? I can’t find complete lyrics on the web. I expect the copyright is still in force. It has some great rhymes. Among others: Brown bananas and rotten peas Chunks of sour cottage cheese Bacon rinds and chicken bones Drippy ends of ice cream cones Prune pits, peach pits, orange peels, Gloppy glumps of cold oatmeal Cold french fries and rancid meat Yellow lumps of cream of wheat ---
**Author:** ![LavenderBlue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e95f7d/32.png) [@LavenderBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LavenderBlue)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2004, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-poems/263101/5 "2004-09-05T05:16:17Z")
I saw the Elizabeth Bishop poem on a blog, remembered how much I adored that one and was inspired to start this thread. I had no idea what copyright laws were involved. Sorry 'bout that. The poems I like best here are the ones from e.e. cummings, Mark Strand, T.S. Eliot and Sylvia Plath. Doesn’t everyone miss formal literature classes so badly sometimes . . . ? ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2004, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-poems/263101/6 "2004-09-05T12:13:09Z")
The Moderator speaketh: “Share your favorite poems” SHOULD mean “provide links or references.” It should NOT mean, quote the whole poem. Fair usage would allow you to copy a few lines to give the flavor of the poem, but copying the whole work is a no-no. I have therefore split off all the posts that quoted a whole poem – there were about 20 such, including **lavenderlemon** ’s initial post. I’m not about to edit the posts to cut down each of those poems to the two or three lines you think are most exemplary. If you tell me (via email) that you really only quoted a small portion, or that the copyright has run out (like Shakespeare), I’ll restore your post to this thread. Or if you tell me which two or three lines you’d like kept from your post, I’ll edit it down and restore it. But, please, gang, remember that we do not permit quoting an entire work, nor even a major portion of an entire work. ---
**Author:** ![Fatwater\_Fewl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/4491bb/32.png) [@Fatwater\_Fewl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fatwater_Fewl)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2004, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-poems/263101/7 "2004-09-05T14:37:29Z")
Sorry, folks. If I had taken a few moment to reflect I would’ve realized that I’d posted too much of the Hughes and Milosz poems. I’ll try again with much shorter excerpts. from Czeslaw Milosz’s [Ars Poetica](http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=6685&poem=183289) … What reasonable man would like to be a city of demons, who behave as if they were at home, speak in many tongues … from Ted Hughes’ [Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days](http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=6616&poem=31443) … They keep taking each other to the sun, they find they can easily To test each new thing at each new step … from Pablo Neruda’s [XX (part of Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)](http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=6638&poem=195870) I can write the saddest lines tonight. Write for example: ‘The night is fractured and they shiver, blue, those stars, in the distance’ … ---
**Author:** ![Rubystreak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Rubystreak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rubystreak)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2004, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-poems/263101/8 "2004-09-05T18:01:14Z")
My two favorites are [“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,”](http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html) by T.S. Eliot and ["Song of Myself"](http://www.bartleby.com/142/14.html)by Walt Whitman. [Here](http://www.unc.edu/~unclng/public-d.htm) is a chart that outlines when a piece of writing has passed into the public domain. The work I posted in total was not copyrighted, as it was published in 1917. ---
**Author:** ![flamingbananas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f4b2a3/32.png) [@flamingbananas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flamingbananas)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2004, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-poems/263101/9 "2004-09-05T19:19:30Z")
My favorite poem is from the book The Perks of Being a Wallflower. [Here](http://www.geocities.com/cutterslut/poem.html) it is. I hope that counts as a site. I can’t really quote a bit from the poem, because it doesn’t really make sense without the rest. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2004, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-poems/263101/10 "2004-09-05T19:24:21Z")
_Would you, could you, in a boat? Would you, could you, with a goat?_ **Man,** that Theodore Geissel was one perverse motherfucker. ---
**Author:** ![Shadez](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/90ced4/32.png) [@Shadez](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shadez)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-poems/263101/11 "2004-09-06T04:54:02Z")
One of the poems I’ve read of late was Anne Sexton’s [Wanting to die](http://www.geocities.com/infinitum_poetry/wantingtodie.html). But suicides have a special language. Like carpenters they want to know _which tools_. They never ask _why build_. … (end stanza) leaving the page of the book carelessly open, something unsaid, the phone off the hook and the love, whatever it was, an infection. And then Gwendolyn Brooks’ [We Real Cool](http://www.poets.org/poems/poems.cfm?prmID=1233) (too short to give you a taste) and, the ever popular/hated, [so much depends](http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem2316.html) by William Carlos Williams (also to short to give a taste). and so many more… /S ---
**Author:** ![Sternvogel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Sternvogel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sternvogel)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-poems/263101/12 "2004-09-06T05:50:27Z")
If someone told me he/she only had time to read five poems, I’d recommend this quintet: William Butler Yeats, [_The Second Coming_](http://www.poets.org/poems/poems.cfm?prmID=1369) Robert Browning, [_My Last Duchess_](http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem288.html) Percy Bysshe Shelley, [_Ozymandias_](http://www.savagenet.com/oz/Oz/) Wystan Hugh Auden, [_The Unknown Citizen_](http://www.poets.org/poems/poems.cfm?prmID=1395) Robert Frost, [_Mending Wall_](http://www.bartleby.com/118/2.html) Of course, I’d be **very** disappointed if that selection failed to whet my interlocutor’s appetite for more… ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 11:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-poems/263101/13 "2004-09-06T11:24:02Z")
[Wallace Stevens](http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/stevens1.html) generally, but especially _The Emperor of Ice-Cream_ and _Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird_ > [@Wallace Stevens](#): > > ``` > V > > ``` > > I do not know which to prefer, > The beauty of inflexions > Or the beauty of innuendos, > The blackbird whistling > Or just after. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-poems/263101/14 "2004-09-06T12:35:37Z")
Not only am I a sap, I’m an unoriginal sap. [This one.](http://www.gober.net/victorian/ulysses.html) ---
**Author:** ![jinty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/dbc845/32.png) [@jinty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jinty)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-poems/263101/15 "2004-09-06T12:39:21Z")
One of Tom Leonard’s [Unrelated Incidents](http://www.languagehat.com/archives/000855.php), short & sweet and best read with a thick Glasgow accent, (like mine). “this is thi six a clock news thi man said…” And even shorter, but quite brutal, posted in the War Poems thread a month or so ago: [The Death of the Ball-Turret Gunner](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=5161073&postcount=21) “From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State, And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. Six miles from earth, loosed from the dream of life, I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.” ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-poems/263101/16 "2004-09-06T16:35:21Z")
[Strange Meeting](http://www.englishverse.com/poems/strange_meeting) by Wilfred Owen. Possibly the most haunting piece of war poetry ever. ---
**Author:** ![Heart\_On\_My\_Sleeve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/77aa72/32.png) [@Heart\_On\_My\_Sleeve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heart_On_My_Sleeve)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-poems/263101/17 "2004-09-06T17:55:43Z")
Not that I’m very educated on poetry, but one that strikes me in particular is “Are You the New person, drawn towards me?” by Walt Whitman. [http://www.bartleby.com/142/45.html](http://www.bartleby.com/142/45.html) ---
**Author:** ![Tentacle\_Monster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ba9def/32.png) [@Tentacle\_Monster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tentacle_Monster)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-poems/263101/18 "2004-09-06T17:58:42Z")
I’ve got a book of poetry called _Cruelty/Killing Floor_ by someone named Ai. A bit disturbing, but good. ---
**Author:** ![caligynephobia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7feea3/32.png) [@caligynephobia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/caligynephobia)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-favorite-poems/263101/19 "2004-09-06T18:11:33Z")
Wallace McRae’s cowboy poetry classic [Reincarnation](http://www.cowboypoetry.com/mcrae.htm#Rein). Great for a funeral.