# What's your favorite free-verse poem?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-free-verse-poem/747075>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [February 25, 2016, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-free-verse-poem/747075 "2016-02-25T07:21:49Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Blackstock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/c77e96/32.png) [@Blackstock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blackstock)\
**Post date:** [February 25, 2016, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-free-verse-poem/747075/1 "2016-02-25T07:21:49Z")

</div>

Here’s mine:

“I Was Mean To You Today”

Things were difficult  
and I was impatient.  
You were trying to explain  
why I must reorganize the files  
on my computer, why  
they all have to have project numbers,  
why I can’t put them  
where they’ve always been,  
what the tax consultant said,  
what you need for your report  
to the Board of Directors,  
and it boiled down to my files  
have to be re-filed, and they  
have to have titles with no more  
than twelve letters to leave room  
for project numbers,  
and I said, Well, dammit.  
And you said, Don’t talk like that.

You sounded pained  
and I was mean to you.  
I was bored and tired  
and mad, and you were  
trying hard. Later,  
I went out in the rain.  
I went to the mall  
and bought us both really  
expensive pillows. Down  
pillows with 100 per cent  
cotton covers, 400 thread count.  
I have lusted after them for years,  
ever since Mama told me  
that she asked Grandma,  
who was 86 and dying,  
“If you could have anything  
in the world, what would it be?”  
and Grandma answered,  
“A down pillow” and Mama  
didn’t have enough money.  
I bought two down pillows for us all,  
to say I’m sorry.

by Pat Schneider

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**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:** [February 25, 2016, 10:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-free-verse-poem/747075/2 "2016-02-25T10:36:05Z")

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[You Begin,](https://readalittlepoetry.wordpress.com/2011/03/22/you-begin-by-margaret-atwood/) by Margeret Atwood:

> [@](#):
>
> This is the world, which is fuller  
> And more difficult to learn than I have said.  
> You are right to smudge it that way  
> With the red and then  
> The orange: the world burns.

I’m also partial to her “you fit into me” and “This Is a Photograph of Me”

---

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**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\
**Post date:** [February 25, 2016, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-free-verse-poem/747075/3 "2016-02-25T13:08:38Z")

</div>

I Chop Some Parsley While Listening To Art Blakey’s Version Of “Three Blind Mice” by Billy Collins

Which begins

> [@](#):
>
> And I start wondering how they came to be blind.  
> If it was congenital, they could be brothers and sister,  
> and I think of the poor mother  
> brooding over her sightless young triplets.
> 
> Or was it a common accident, all three caught  
> in a searing explosion, a firework perhaps?  
> If not,  
> if each came to his or her blindness separately,

The rest can be read [here.](http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/i-chop-some-parsley-while-listening-to-art-blake/)

---

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**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\
**Post date:** [February 25, 2016, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-free-verse-poem/747075/4 "2016-02-25T13:19:09Z")

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Gotta be _Howl_ by Allen Ginsberg

> **[Howl by Allen Ginsberg | Poetry Foundation](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49303/howl)**
>
> I

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**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\
**Post date:** [February 25, 2016, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-free-verse-poem/747075/5 "2016-02-25T13:50:49Z")

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I don’t know if I have a single favorite, but this e.e. cummings poem is high on my list:

```auto

Buffalo Bill ’s
defunct
               who used to
               ride a watersmooth-silver
                                                                  stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
                                                                           Jesus

he was a handsome man 
                                                  and what i want to know is
how do you like your blue-eyed boy
Mister Death 

```

---

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**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\
**Post date:** [February 25, 2016, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-free-verse-poem/747075/6 "2016-02-25T14:06:24Z")

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“[This is just to say](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/just-say)” by William Carlos Williams. It’s so sweet.

---

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**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:** [February 25, 2016, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-free-verse-poem/747075/7 "2016-02-25T14:10:22Z")

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[That the Science of Cartography is Limited](http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/scribe?showdoc=53;doctype=review) by Eavan Boland.

> [@](#):
>
> Look down you said: this was once a famine road.
> 
> I looked down at the ivy and the scutch grass  
> rough-cast stone had  
> disappeared into as you told me  
> in the second winter of their ordeal, in
> 
> 1847, when the crop had failed twice,  
> Relief Committees gave  
> the starving Irish such roads as this to build.

I don’t usually like free verse, but the form is so _right_ for this one – you can see the slowly vanishing road to nowhere in the blurring of lines and stanzas into each other, even the way the title merges with the rest of the poem.

---

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**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\
**Post date:** [February 25, 2016, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-free-verse-poem/747075/8 "2016-02-25T14:28:53Z")

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I’ve had a soft spot for this one since I read it in college:

> [@](#):
>
> The Best Slow Dancer  
> by David Wagoner
> 
> Under the sagging clotheslines of crepe paper  
> By the second string of teachers and wallflowers  
> In the school gym across the key through the glitter  
> Of mirrored light three-second rule forever  
> Suspended you danced with her the best slow dancer  
> Who stood on tiptoe who almost wasn’t there  
> In your arms like music she knew just how to answer  
> The question mark of your spine your hand in hers  
> The other touching that place between her shoulders  
> Trembling your countless feet lightfooted sure  
> To move as they wished wherever you might stagger  
> Without her she turned in time she knew where you were  
> In time she turned her body into yours  
> As you moved from thigh to secrets to breast yet never  
> Where you could be for all time never closer  
> Than your cheek against her temple her ear just under  
> Your lips that tried all evening long to tell her  
> You weren’t the worst one not the boy whose mother  
> Had taught him to count to murmur over and over  
> One slide two slide three slide now no longer  
> The one in the hallway after class the scuffler  
> The double clubfoot gawker the mouth breather  
> With the wrong haircut who would never kiss her  
> But see her dancing off with someone or other  
> Older more clever smoother dreamier  
> Not waving a sister somebody else’s partner  
> Lover while you went floating home through the air  
> To lie down lighter than air in a moonlit shimmer  
> Alone to whisper yourself to sleep remember.

---

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**Author:** ![Les\_Espaces\_Du\_Sommeil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/les_espaces_du_sommeil/32/308_2.png) [@Les\_Espaces\_Du\_Sommeil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Les_Espaces_Du_Sommeil)\
**Post date:** [February 25, 2016, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-free-verse-poem/747075/9 "2016-02-25T15:16:41Z")

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> [@RTFirefly](#):
>
> I don’t know if I have a single favorite, but this e.e. cummings poem is high on my list:
> 
> ```auto
> 
> Buffalo Bill ’s
> defunct
> who used to
> ride a watersmooth-silver
> stallion
> and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
> Jesus
> 
> he was a handsome man 
> and what i want to know is
> how do you like your blue-eyed boy
> Mister Death 
> 
> ```

Also from **e.e. cummings**

> [@](#):
>
> l(a  
> le  
> af  
> fa  
> ll  
> s)  
> one  
> l  
> iness

---

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**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\
**Post date:** [February 25, 2016, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-free-verse-poem/747075/10 "2016-02-25T15:34:06Z")

</div>

> [@RTFirefly](#):
>
> I don’t know if I have a single favorite, but this e.e. cummings poem is high on my list:
> 
> ```auto
> 
> Buffalo Bill ’s
> defunct
> who used to
> ride a watersmooth-silver
> stallion
> and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
> Jesus
> 
> he was a handsome man 
> and what i want to know is
> how do you like your blue-eyed boy
> Mister Death 
> 
> ```

Count me as another e.e. cummings fan.

The one that comes to my mind most frequently is this one by the author of the _Red Badge of Courage_:

[QUOTE=Stephen Crane]

A man said to the universe:  
“Sir, I exist!”  
“However,” replied the universe,  
“The fact has not created in me  
A sense of obligation.”

[/QUOTE]

---

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**Author:** ![Nonsuch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nonsuch/32/2922_2.png) [@Nonsuch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nonsuch)\
**Post date:** [February 25, 2016, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-free-verse-poem/747075/11 "2016-02-25T15:50:13Z")

</div>

I could never pick a favorite as such, but this one stuck with me ever since I first read it:

> [@](#):
>
> “Naughty Boy,” Robert Creeley
> 
> When he brings home a whale  
> she laughs and says, that’s not for real.
> 
> And if he won the Irish sweepstakes,  
> she would say, where were you last night?
> 
> Where are you now, for that matter? Am  
> I always (she says) to be looking
> 
> at you? She says,  
> If I thought it would get any better I
> 
> would shoot you, you  
> nut, you. Then pats her hair
> 
> into place, and waits  
> for Uncle Jim’s deep-fired, all-fat, real gone
> 
> whale steaks.

---

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**Author:** ![Sattua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sattua/32/11906_2.png) [@Sattua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sattua)\
**Post date:** [February 25, 2016, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-free-verse-poem/747075/12 "2016-02-25T16:36:55Z")

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[Punishment by Seamus Heaney](http://creativewritingguild.com/sl/analysis/punishment-seamus-heaney-full-text/) has haunted my imagination since I first read it in college. All his bog poems do, but it’s the standout.

> [@](#):
>
> …  
> who would connive  
> in civilized outrage  
> yet understand the exact  
> and tribal, intimate revenge

---

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**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\
**Post date:** [February 25, 2016, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-free-verse-poem/747075/13 "2016-02-25T19:20:59Z")

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> [@WordMan](#):
>
> The one that comes to my mind most frequently is this one by the author of the _Red Badge of Courage_:

As long as we’re quoting Crane poems, this is my favorite by him and probably evenly tied with the one I quoted above:

> [@](#):
>
> In the Desert  
> By Stephen Crane
> 
> In the desert  
> I saw a creature, naked, bestial,  
> Who, squatting upon the ground,  
> Held his heart in his hands,  
> And ate of it.  
> I said, “Is it good, friend?”  
> “It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;
> 
> “But I like it  
> “Because it is bitter,  
> “And because it is my heart.”

---

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**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\
**Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-free-verse-poem/747075/14 "2016-02-26T20:49:40Z")

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If I leave here tomorrow  
Would you still remember me?  
For I must be traveling on now  
'Cause there’s too many places I’ve got to see.

(rereads thread title–oops)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![koeeoaddi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/koeeoaddi/32/408_2.png) [@koeeoaddi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/koeeoaddi)\
**Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-free-verse-poem/747075/15 "2016-02-26T21:34:01Z")

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My favorite and two runners up. 🙂

[Sitting in a Small Screenhouse on a Summer Morning](http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2001/03/29), by James Wright

[The Shrinking Lonesome Sestina](https://justadeadpoet.wordpress.com/poetry/editors-pick/the-shrinking-lonesome-sestina-miller-williams/), by Miller Williams

[At The Smithville Methodist Church](http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/712/at_the_smithville_methodist_church), by Stephen Dunn

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**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\
**Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-free-verse-poem/747075/16 "2016-02-26T22:27:11Z")

</div>

honour corruption villainy holiness  
riding in fragrance of sunlight(side by side  
all in a singing wonder of blossoming yes  
riding) to him who died that death should be dead  
humblest and proudest eagerly wandering

(equally all alive in miraculous day)  
merrily moving through sweet forgiveness of spring  
(over the under the gift of the earth of the sky  
knight and ploughman pardoner wife and nun  
merchant frere clerk somnour miller and reve

and geoffrey and all)come up from the never of when  
come into the now of forever come riding alive  
down while crylessly drifting through vast most  
nothing’s own nothing children go of dust

---

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**Author:** ![Sternvogel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Sternvogel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sternvogel)\
**Post date:** [February 27, 2016, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-free-verse-poem/747075/17 "2016-02-27T04:59:14Z")

</div>

Taking a cue from **koeeoaddi** , I also offer three favorites:

[_Ex-Basketball Player_](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172264) by John Updike

[_Chicago_](http://carl-sandburg.com/chicago.htm) by Carl Sandburg

[_At Woodward’s Gardens_](http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=At_Woodward%27s_Gardens_by_Robert_Frost) by Robert Frost

---

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**Author:** ![Infovore](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infovore/32/420_2.png) [@Infovore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Infovore)\
**Post date:** [February 27, 2016, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-free-verse-poem/747075/18 "2016-02-27T05:24:00Z")

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> [@RealityChuck](#):
>
> “[This is just to say](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/just-say)” by William Carlos Williams. It’s so sweet.

I don’t know very many free-verse poems, but I do like this one.

---

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**Author:** ![Elemenopy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b5e925/32.png) [@Elemenopy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elemenopy)\
**Post date:** [February 27, 2016, 6:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-free-verse-poem/747075/19 "2016-02-27T06:11:13Z")

</div>

> [@Max\_Torque](#):
>
> As long as we’re quoting Crane poems, this is my favorite by him and probably evenly tied with the one I quoted above: (In the Desert)

You’ve saved me the trouble of digging up one of my favorites.

There are others mentioned above that I enjoy. But I’ll always treasure this poem called “Goblin Market” by C. Rossetti (poet, artists’ model, teacher, nun-practically):

> **[Goblin Market](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44996/goblin-market)**
>
> Poems, readings, poetry news and the entire 110-year archive of POETRY magazine.

Maybe not quite free-verse…I argued about this in school, but close, given her contemporaries.

---

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**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\
**Post date:** [February 27, 2016, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-free-verse-poem/747075/20 "2016-02-27T06:48:17Z")

</div>

_Hey, Look! Hotcakes! No tip for you, Shit-hook!_

- **Gatopescado** , somewhere around 1988

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