Please tell us all ‘bout your favorite poem.
What is it that makes it really hit home?
It can be short or it can be long
(But please don’t use lyrics you found in a song).
It could be by Shakespeare or Shelley or Dunne
Or maybe a poet with a fan base of one.
It could be free verse or with rhyming scheme
Or any variant you find in between.
It could be a haiku, a limerick or sonnet.
Please share so we can ponder upon it.
Sorry I put this OP in verse.
I better quit now before it gets worse.
“There once was a man from Nantucket…”
Tie between these two:
Now hollow fires burn out to black,
And lights are guttering low.
Square your shoulders, lift your pack,
And leave your friends, and go.
Oh never fear, man, nought’s to dread,
Look not left nor right:
In all the endless road you tread
There’s nothing but the night.
—A.E. Houseman, “A Shropshire Lad”
and
So we’ll go no more a’roving,
So late into the night,
Thought the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself must rest.
Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we’ll go no more a’roving,
By the light of the moon.—“So We’ll Go No More A’Roving,” Lord Byron
I’m rather partial to Evolution by Langdon Smith.
A man said to the universe:
“Sir I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”
-- Stephen CraneAs a compliment to this thread, people may want to check out the website of the Favorite Poem project: www.favoritepoem.org/
I have found some wonderful poems through this great website, and the books published through it. Check it out!
I have so many favorites. I’ll come back when I decide on one.
I think Byron’s “Oh! Snatched Away in Beauty’s Bloom.” I like melancholy, for some reason.
Oh! snatched away in beauty’s bloom,
On thee shall press no ponderous tomb;
But on thy turf shall roses rear
Their leaves, the earliest of the year;
And the wild cypress wave in tender gloom:
And oft by yon blue gushing stream
Shall Sorrow lean her drooping head,
And feed deep thought with many a dream,
And lingering pause and lightly tread;
Fond wretch! as if her step disturbed the dead!
Away! ye know that tears are vain,
That death nor heeds nor hears distress:
Will this unteach us to complain?
Or make one mourner weep the less?
And thou -who tell’st me to forget,
Thy looks are wan, thine eyes are wet.
Top three, in order? I’m boring so here it goes…
Something For The Touts, The Nuns, The Grocery Clerks, And You . . . - Bukowski
Atlantis - WH Auden
Song of Myself - Whitman
I’ve always been fond of Ozymandias, and often think of it when visiting ruins in “antique lands”.
My favorite poem is Sitting in a Small Screenhouse on a Summer Morning, by James Wright, but I can’t find a direct link, so I’ll go with my second favorite, The Shrinking Lonesome Sestina, by Miller Williams. Sestina’s are like Rubik’s cubes – the hardest poem in the world to write and this one is just plain brilliant. The structure of the poem amazed me (each stanza really shrinks as the poem progresses). It’s beautiful, fascinatingly intricate, made me laugh for a moment and then broke my heart. What more can you ask?
I think I actually gasped the first time I read it.
Imperial
Don Paterson
Is it normal to get this wet? Baby, I’m frightened–
I covered her mouth with my own;
She lay in my arms till the storm-window brightened
And stood at our heads like a stone
After months of jaw jaw, determined that neither
Win ground, or be handed the edge
We gave ourselves up, one to the other
Like prisoners over a bridge
And no trade was ever so fair or so tender;
So where was the flaw in the plan,
The night we lay down on the flag of surrender
And woke on the flag of Japan
(Courtesy roboto - belated thanks!)
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T.S. Eliot. Great imagery, wonderful language and sound, and it just connects with me on a deep level.
My favorites are so totally literature anthology, but I’ve always been very fond of “Dulce et Decorum Est”:
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.
GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.–
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
And I also love that old saw, “This is Just to Say”:
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.
That poem just made me cry.
My favorite poem changes depending on my mood. I love a bunch of the ones already mentioned here, but one of my favorite poems for a long time has been Birches by Robert Frost. Mainly because when I read it in college, this part:
described exactly how I felt at that point in my life.
The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled
His Mum had told him what to do
But he’s forgotten what she’d said.
Mr. Prufrock can’t decide what to do:
Dare I eat? Dare I speak? Dare I screw?
I shall sing of sweet peaches
And walks along beaches
And my heart which is laden with rue.
Ooops, wrong thread.
The Eve of St. Agnes by John Keats.
Keats at the height of his powers, choosing to work within an immensely challenging format because he could, choosing a good story to tell and telling it well, with beautiful language throughout and a wonderful sense of both narrative and atmosphere. As deeply romantic as anything else ever written, and at the same time rather racy for its day (his first publishers wouldn’t touch it because they thought certain passages were immoral bordering on obscene - and they weren’t wrong). Richly expressive, rhythmically seductive almost to the point of being hypnotic, almost epic in scale and a technical masterpiece that comes close to being on a par with, say, Pushkin’s Onegin.
The Listeners by Walter de le Mere.
Not so much for the beautiful language, although it’s certainly a masterpiece on that score, but because it’s such a clever idea and I’m not aware of many other works that manage the same trick. It’s a poem story in miniature, in which the reader is only shown the final scene. The poem is full of intrigue and mystery, with the entire back story left to the reader’s imagination, guided only by a few paltry clues. Plus, of course, it’s a ghost story, and very satisfyingly spooky. Well worth reading aloud by candlelight on Hallowe’en. If you want to scare your friends silly, that is.
The first time I heard this was on Benny Hill:
I’m glad I didn’t offend. I happen to like doggerel, limericks and nonsense verse (e.g. Edward Lear).
There was an orthodox poem I liked too:
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.) 
Was going to mention that one. An amazing poem.
With that taken, I’ll go with Louis Macneice’s Bagpipe Music. I love the way every line almost rhymes.