As someone who has struggled with depression throughout much of my adult life, the poem ‘Richard Cory’ has always resonated strongly.
Yeah, that’s a heavy!
Happy you are winning the battle.
It’s worth it.
I can’t believe there’s been no love for The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:
*And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume? *
and
*
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid. *
Posts #58, #59 and #65.
Oh dear. I really did look for it, just not closely enough.
Thanks, it’s by far my most successful thread! I’ve wanted to do it for a while, just never got around to it. I am really glad so many people are enjoying it, and there’s been such a great variety of work mentioned.
One of my favourites. A stunner.
More Frost from me. His simplicity is so deceptive, so perfect.
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
And:
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
I’m not a big fan of Frost, but I love this one! Something about the rhythm.
My favorite love poems
ee cummings:
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
==========================
And another ee one
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
My reading (influenced by the professor in whose class I first encountered the poem) is that the “last duchess” was one of those people whose obituaries feature such lines as “she treated everybody with the same courtesy, whether the CEO or the janitor.” The duke, meanwhile, is so pompous that he figures his “favor at her breast” should outweigh anything from the “bough of cherries some officious fool/ Broke in the orchard for her” to the beauty of a sunset.
While the actions of those you love should be seen as special, the duke’s marriages have not been romantic, but motivated by money and status. It’s no accident that the narrator’s parting words refer to an object – the man has already mentally “moved on” from his last duchess as he focuses on flaunting, and adding to, his wealth.
I humbly present a competitor:
Really, the whole poem as a unit, but since I can’t quote whole works, here’s a sample:
Haul them off! Hide them!
The heart winces
For junk and gimcrack,
for jerrybuilt things
And the men who make them
for a little money,
Bartering pride
like the bought boxer
Who pulls his punches,
or the paid-off jockey
Who in the home stretch
holds in his horse.
Yet the things themselves
in thoughtless honor
Have kept composure,
like captives who would not
Talk under torture.
Someone else mentioned the old Anglo-Saxon strong-stress rhythm and alliteration, this is a wonderful example.
Hurt Hawks, by Robinson Jeffers:
Look at the key transition:
The line break is perfect (helped by the capitalization of “Soared”) for conveying the rising sound of the shot and the simultaneous release of spirit of the bird.
Gerard Manley Hopkins has been mentioned. He is a guilty pleasure of mine – I’d disagree with his theology, and yes, he can be “quaint” and sentimental, but I love his total abandon when using language. Or, more precisely, the way his carefully-controlled language gives way, when he reaches a crescendo, to his love of sound and rhythm. He makes up words and phrases and practically babbles and it’s so, so good.
The Windhover is the most famous example:
…and how’s this for a description of a soaring raptor’s flight (read it fast for best effect):
Hopkins also wrote a wonderfully world-weary passage in God’s Grandeur…but again, the flow of the language is just so…well, look:
Speaking of words, here’s another poem that really has to be enjoyed in its entirety:
Meditation at Lagunitas, by Robert Haas.
It’s about the meaning of words, and he takes a word, and by telling you a story, gives that word new layers of meaning.
.
Sharon Olds. I love a lot of her work…except for the extensive “I hated my father” series of poems, that is. But with everything else she’s so good, so direct…she “goes there” instead of tiptoeing around the truth. She’s unafraid to look at things we’d rather not. An example:
Gerbil Funeral, by Sharon Olds (hope the link works…it’s hard to find online…that’s a Google Books sample page.
She is watching her daughter burying beloved pet gerbils:
Nice to see Robinson Jeffers in a thread like this. I love his work, and he seems largely forgotten.
O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer
Are you the leaf, the blossom, or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
– William Butler Yeats, “Among School Children”
Beyond a mortal man impassioned far
At these voluptuous accents, he arose
Ethereal, flushed, and like a throbbing star
Seen 'mid the sapphire heaven’s deep repose;
Into her dream he melted, as the rose
Blended its odor with the violet, –
Solution sweet: meantime the frost-wind blows
Like Love’s alarum pattering the sharp sleet
Against the window panes; St. Agnes moon hath set.
– John Keats, “The Eve of Saint Agnes”
BEST FUCK STANZA IN POETRY FORM
The famous epitaph of Simonides of Ceos for the heroic Greek dead at Thermopylae:
Tell them in Sparta, passerby,
that here, obedient to their laws, we lie.
“None of them knew the color of the sky.” Crane is not normally thought of as a poet, but here he burned his viewpoint into eight words.
Your lordship, your depression is deserved ;):
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!
“Charge for the guns!” he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
If it’s any comfort, dropmom thought this was suitable bedtime fare. :eek:
This was my Dad’s favorite, we had it read at his funeral in June. I love it too.
My Mom’s favorite was an excerpt:
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
– Robert Frost
[/QUOTE]
and,
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
I’ve seen fire, and I’ve seen rain,
I’ve seen sunny days I thought would never end.
I’ve seen days when I could not find a friend,
But I never thought I’d never see you again…
Song lyric writers should not be ignored
I can’t believe I forgot about Mary Oliver. From “Hallelujah”: