Years ago, in a college level math class, a professor recited the following when a student was having trouble remembering the difference between parallel and perpendicular:
Well, if music counts, as I like the lyrics better than the music, then the entire epic poem album of “Cruelty and the Beast” about the life of one Countess Erszbet Bathory. Some of the lines by Danny Davey I just can’t get over.
I also love a lot of poems by Emily Dickinson. “Because I could not stop for Death” comes to mind as a favorite.
And of course, anything by Dr. Seuss. He’s a poet-god.
In the same vein:
In days of old, when men were bold,
And paper had not been invented,
They wiped their ass with blades of grass
And walked away contented.
Also:
In days of old, when men were bold,
And condoms had not been invented,
They covered their cocks with dirty old socks
And babies were prevented.
Hart Crane’s Chaplinesque: http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=9462&poem=83998
“I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings”…Maya Angelou
Me too! I loved that poem SO much when I was a kid. I read it to my class in (I think) third or fourth grade. I had a little problem when I got to the part that goes
(quoting from memory)
“Look for me by moonlight. Watch for me by moonlight.
I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though Hell should bar the way”
because I wasn’t supposed to say “Hell.”
Stay with me, God - A Soldier’s Prayer
Stay with me, God. The night is dark,
The night is cold: my little spark
Of courage dies. The night is long;
Be with me, God, and make me strong.
I love a game; I love a fight.
I hate the dark; I love the light.
I love my child; I love my wife.
I am no coward. I love Life,
Life with its change of mood and shade.
I want to live. I’m not afraid,
But me and mine are hard to part;
Oh, unknown God, lift up my heart.
You stilled the waters at Dunkirk
And saved Your Servants. All Your work
Is wonderful, dear God. You strode
Before us down that dreadful road.
We were alone, and hope had fled;
We loved our country and our dead,
And could not shame them; so we stayed
The course, and were not much afraid.
Dear God that nightmare road! And then
That sea! We got there-we were men.
My eyes were blind, my feet were torn,
My soul sang like a bird at dawn!
I knew that death is but a door.
I knew what we were fighting for:
Peace for the kids, our brothers freed,
A kinder world, a cleaner breed.
I’m but the son my mother bore,
A simple man, and nothing more.
But-God of strength and gentleness,
Be pleased to make me nothing less.
Help me, O God, when Death is near
To mock the haggard face of fear,
That when I fall-if fall I must-
My soul may triumph in the Dust.
Regards,
Shodan
Of the ones previously mentioned, I’m a big fan of Prufrock, The Highwayman, and The Tiger.
I also like Wordsworth’s “Intimations of Immortality” and Yeats’ “Stolen Child.”
**The Lady of Shalott ** Boo yah!
My favorite poem. Tennyson has been so dissed by modern critics who regard him as a moron. What do they know?
I memorized The Lady of Shalott when I was 23, I’m almost 50, and I can still recite it, and I still love that poem.
Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote another of my favorite poems, Spring and Fall. I named my daughter Margaret after the girl in the poem.
I also loved The Highwayman when I was young. What drama!
I love “Prufrock,” but “The Waste Land” is my favorite bit of Eliot:
And Stevie Smith’s “Not Waving But Drowning” has described me at certain aprts of my life
Archergal,
My favorite part of that:
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
[Digression] Which is why I ain’t going to see the damn movie[/digression]
I wholly agree with you. This is a wonderful poem, when I saw the title of this thread , the first poem that sprung to my mind was The Lady of Shalott. Tennyson tells us so much about this lady and her relationship with Lancelot.
Long poem: The Illiad.
Short poem: [http://www.mythicalrealm.com/creatures/kraken.html]Tennyson’s The Kraken.
I just ordered a copy of Harold Bloom’s new anthology The Best Poems of the English Language, and I can’t wait to read it.
That is, Tennyson’s The Kraken.
On an entirely modest note, my favourite poems are some of my own. 
But seriously, Poe’s Raven is a classic, and recently we’ve been doing a lot of Keats and War Literature for A levels so I have a lot of favourites from that pile.
Also , even though Baz Luhrmann made a song out of it does Wear Sunscreen count?
All I know is that “The Passing of Arthur” (from Idylls of the King) invariably causes me to weep copiously and pathetically… 
From Anyone lived in a pretty how town
by e.e.cummings:
one day anyone died i guess
(and no-one stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was
all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
no-one and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.
The Spoon River Anthology, by Edgar Lee Masters.
That’s my favorite poem, it’s so poignant and empathetic. Like Margaret, I always used to cry in Autumn and when years changed; I felt sorry for the dying trees. I love that you named your daughter after her!
Spring and Fall to a Young Child, by Gerald Manley Hopkins
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, líke the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me… (Full Text)
And do Sonnets count? If so…
Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare
*Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken…
Ted Hughes, The Jaguar
… a cage where the crowd stands, stares, memerized,
As a child at a dream, at a dream, at a jaguar hurrying enraged
Through prison darkness after the drills of his eyes
On a short fierce fuse. Not in boredom -
The eye satisfied to be blind in fire,
By the bang of blood in the brain deaf the ear -
He spins from the bars, but there’s no cage to him
More than to the visionary his cell…
Full text here. Hughes had a quite extraordinary eye for nature poems.