# What is your favorite poem? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 8, 2008, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802 "2008-02-08T15:39:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![vison](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/e47774/32.png) [@vison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vison)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2008, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/81 "2008-02-09T06:10:31Z")
Housman’s every word is lovely. One of the greatest poets ever, IMHO. ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2008, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/82 "2008-02-09T16:34:47Z")
'Nother Housman, from me: Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries \*These, in the days when heaven was falling, the hour when Earth’s foundations fled, followed their mercenary calling, And took their wages, and are dead Their shoulders held the skies suspended, they stood, and Earth’s foundations stay, What God abandoned, these defended, and saved the sum of things for pay.\* The only poem I know well enough to type from memory. (Though, to be fair, I forgot the second “and.” Sorry.) ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2008, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/83 "2008-02-09T16:44:22Z")
Oh! How could I almost forget my close second favorite, [Tränen des Vaterlands (Tears of the Fatherland)](http://rodekohrancestors.com/prauner_web_pages/breuner_hans_1604-1637.htm). Which, alas, I haven’t commited to memory. Though I do have [the song. (er…mournful German chanting absent from that version, I’m afraid. Check iTunes.)](http://youtube.com/watch?v=xEqAACkbaNQ) ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2008, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/84 "2008-02-09T17:13:23Z")
Well, I was going to post [Jabberwocky](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabberwocky) and anything by Dr. Suess, but I changed my mind. ---
**Author:** ![vison](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/e47774/32.png) [@vison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vison)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2008, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/85 "2008-02-09T19:06:49Z")
[QUOTE=Annie-Xmas] Well, I was going to post [Jabberwocky](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabberwocky) and anything by Dr. Suess, but I changed my mind. [/QUOTE] _speaks sadly_ . . .oh, frabjous day, caloo, callay . . . ---
**Author:** ![jimmmy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/73ab20/32.png) [@jimmmy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jimmmy)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2008, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/86 "2008-02-09T19:29:52Z")
According to Michael Wood in his PBS series In Search of Shakespeare, in Shakespeare’s King John, Constance’s grief is referring to Shakespeare’s loss of his son Hamnet. I know that is controversial and (because I have researched it a bit since) not everyone agrees, and non-crazy smart folks disagree. But I choose to accept that this is exactly (or exactlye as Shakespeare might say) what he was talking about. \* Grief fills the room up of my absent child, Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, Remembers me of all his gracious parts, Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form. Then have I reason to be fond of grief.\* ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2008, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/87 "2008-02-09T19:49:48Z")
I can’t say I have one favorite poem. But this part of Blake’s _Auguries of Innocence_ is one of my all time favorite images. > [@](#): > > To see a world in a grain of sand > And a heaven in a wild flower, > Hold infinity in the palm of your hand > And eternity in an hour. ---
**Author:** ![MarcusF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/67e7ee/32.png) [@MarcusF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MarcusF)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2008, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/88 "2008-02-09T20:42:55Z")
Masefield’s _Cargoes_ is definitely one of my favourites: \*Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir, Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, With a cargo of ivory, And apes and peacocks, Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine. Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus, Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores, With a cargo of diamonds, Emeralds, amythysts, Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores. Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack, Butting through the Channel in the mad March days, With a cargo of Tyne coal, Road-rails, pig-lead, Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays\* On different tack I also go for the prolific write Anon and _Birds, Bags, Bears and Buns_ _The common cormorant or shag Lays eggs inside a paper bag The reason you will see, no doubt, It is to keep the lightning out, But what these unobservant birds Have never noticed is that herds Of wandering bears may come with buns And steal the bags to hold the crumbs._ ---
**Author:** ![Shryn\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c2a13f/32.png) [@Shryn\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shryn_King)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2008, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/89 "2008-02-09T21:21:17Z")
I had always been the “good girl.” I met a boy my senior year in high school who became an amazing part of my life. Through our relationship, I discovered that I had another side of my personality that I needed to explore. I found this poem early in our relationship and it has stayed with me for the last 23 years…it still moves me. I still feel like this woman. > [@](#): > > ‘Pictures of the Gone World’ - Number 8 > > Lawrence Ferlinghetti > > It was a face which darkness could kill > in an instant > a face as easily hurt > by laughter or light > > ‘We think differently at night’ > she told me once > lying back languidly > > And she would quote Cocteau > > ‘I feel there is an angel in me’ she’d say > ‘whom I am constantly shocking’ > > Then she would smile and look away > light a cigarette for me > sigh and rise > > and stretch > her sweet anatomy > > let fall a stocking ---
**Author:** ![Kythereia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e8c25b/32.png) [@Kythereia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kythereia)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2008, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/90 "2008-02-09T22:18:11Z")
Dorothy Parker’s _Resume_ has gotten me through some pretty bad days. But my favourite, hands down, is Dylan Thomas’s _Fern Hill_: - Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means, Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea.\* ---
**Author:** ![vison](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/e47774/32.png) [@vison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vison)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2008, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/91 "2008-02-09T22:58:30Z")
Poetry does matter. I always knew it did. But there are deniers. Yes, there are. And I don’t mean the sheerness of stockings . . . ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2008, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/92 "2008-02-10T01:06:57Z")
[QUOTE=koeeoaddi] [**The Shrinking Lonesome Sestina**](http://www.geocities.com/bjlandry_00/Otherwriters/williamsshrinkingsestina.html), 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. [/QUOTE] Stunning. Just wanted to note that. I can’t bring myself to pick a favorite right now…maybe in a later post. Sailboat ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2008, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/93 "2008-02-10T01:20:15Z")
[“Spring & Fall”,](http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1048.html) by Gerard Manley Hopkins. It is very nearly perfect; my only criticism is extremely geeky: the comma at the end of the next-to-last-line should be a colon. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2008, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/94 "2008-02-10T02:01:11Z")
Okay, I’ve got a couple of candidates…that’s not cheating, is it? First up is Gerard Manley Hopkins, a Victorian religious poet whom I am surprised to like. He simply doesn’t let language get in the way of his feelings, but beats it and bends it to suit his needs. See T_he Windhover, Pied Beauty,_ and _God’s Grandeur._ On preview, I see **Skald the Rhymer** is also a Hopkins fan. Good pick. Then W. D. Sondgrass, whose other works I generally do not appreciate, except for the piercing _Heart’s Needle_. But I don’t come here to show you that one – instead, I love his [April Inventory](http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15301). It’s not too long, and well worth the click…I especially recommend it to men who are no longer feeling so young. Next comes Robert Haas, whose works I was exposed to in college. Again, I find most of them exasperating, except this gem: [Meditiation at Lagunitas](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=177014) Lastly, Sharon Olds, whose works I came to on my own, almost by accident. In contrast to my experiences above, I love tons of her poems. She has a way of seeming direct and plain-spoken, even too direct for comfort, and then delivering a knockout blow. I’m a huge fan of the way she uses linebreaks to set up pacing and delivery. I should caveat that Olds spent a long time (and several volumes of poetry) struggling with her anger at her parents, until she finally came to terms with it…those poems probably speak to some folks, but not so much to me. However, she’s brilliant on topics other than her rage at her parents; don’t make the mistake of giving up on her if you don’t like those poems. I don’t know Olds peom to call my favorite. I especially like _The Race, The Protestor, Gerbil Funeral,_ and _Cambridge Elegy._ But I guess I’ll pick the first poem of Olds’ I ever read. In October 1981, while feeling very alone at school, I picked up Poetry magazine, and was pretty much unimpressed by what I was reading in it…until I got to _The Signal_. **The Signal** _for Col. J. P. Phillips_ When they brought his body back from Dieppe they told his wife how he’d died: his General thought they had taken the beach, and sent in his last reserves. Under cover of the smoke-screen the wooden boats moved toward shore loaded with Commandoes. Her husband was the leader, the first man in the first boat to break through the smoke and see the sand dark with bodies, the tanks burning, the guns thrown down, the landing craft destroyed and filled with blood. In a rain of bullets and shells from the shore, her husband had put on a pair of white gloves and turned his back to the enemy, motioning to the following boats to turn back. Long after everyone else on his boat was dead he continued to signal, then he too was killed, but all the other boats had seen him and turned back. They gave his wife the medal and she buried him and every night for thirty years she floated through a wall of smoke and then saw him at a distance, standing in a boa facing her, the white gloves blazing on his hands as he motioned her back toward her life. Sailboat ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2008, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/95 "2008-02-10T02:14:05Z")
Oh, and I have to plug Alan Dugan’s [Love Song: I and Thou](http://www.ftrain.com/poem_lovesong.html). And Kenneth Fearing’s [Love, 20¢ the First Quarter Mile](http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/fearing/additional_poems.htm). And speaking as I did of female poets with a problem with their fathers, Sylvia Plath’s wonderfully compact [Mushrooms](http://plagiarist.com/poetry/1416/). I’m well beyond “a favorite,” aren’t I? Sailboat ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2008, 8:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/96 "2008-02-10T08:39:05Z")
Two by Will: _**Let me not to the marriage of true minds (Sonnet CXVI)**_ 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. Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come: Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved. **Prospero:** Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air: And like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp’d tow’rs, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. _The Tempest_, Act IV, scene i, 148–158 ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2008, 8:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/97 "2008-02-10T08:48:55Z")
And then, for pure fun and economy, there’s [Baseball’s Sad Lexicon](http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1649.html): These are the saddest of possible words: “Tinker to Evers to Chance.” Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds, Tinker and Evers and Chance. Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble, Making a Giant hit into a double – Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble: “Tinker to Evers to Chance.” – Franklin Pierce Adams ---
**Author:** ![Nzinga\_Seated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2008, 9:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/98 "2008-02-10T09:12:17Z")
I wrote this poem for my daughter. It may not be real poetry (I know nothing of meter and such), but it was a good way to get her to memorize some things that I wanted to instill in her, and get her to think about. It became my favorite ‘poem’ as soon as she memorized it and _really seemed to get it._ I will learn my past through questions and reading I will love myself, and God, within I will give my neighbor whatever he’s needing… To do any less would be a great sin I will honor my elders, and father and mother; and ancestors buried in Africa’s sand I will humble myself before sister and brother; I will get up and fight when I must take a stand I will savor each drop of each day that I see; I will notice the land and the sea and the sky I will live with laughter and honor and peace; and love and respect till the day that I die My real favorite poem is Claude McKay, “If We Must Die” IF we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at our accursed lot. If we must die, O let us nobly die, So that our precious blood may not be shed In vain; then even the monsters we defy Shall be constrained to honor us though dead! O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe! Though far outnumbered let us show us brave, And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow! What though before us lies the open grave? Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back! ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2008, 9:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/99 "2008-02-10T09:25:12Z")
[Cherrylog Road](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=171426) by James Dickey And I to my motorcycle Parked like the soul of the junkyard Restored, a bicycle fleshed With power, and tore off Up Highway 106 continually Drunk on the wind in my mouth Wringing the handlebar for speed Wild to be wreckage forever ---
**Author:** ![Osip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/4491bb/32.png) [@Osip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Osip)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2008, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802/100 "2008-02-10T14:43:44Z")
Here is mine. With my favored translation The Last Toast I drink to the ruined house, To the evil of my life, To our shared loneliness And I drink to you– To the lie of lips that betrayed me, To the deadly coldness of the eyes, To the fact that the world is cruel and depraved, To the fact that God did not save. by Anna Akhmatova June 27, 1934 Translated by Judith Hemschemeyer [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-favorite-poem/436802.md?page=6)