What’s your favorite poem? Mine’s e.e. cummings’s poem that starts “somewhere i have never travelled” and this haiku from Fight Club:
a tiger will grin
a snake will say it loves you
lies make us evil
A Dream Within A Dream by Edgar Allan Poe
*Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flow away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep-while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?*
Ode on a Grecian Urn by Keats
especially the last stanza
When old age shall this generation waste
Thou shalt remain in midst of other woe than ours
A friend to man to whom thou say’st
Beauty is truth, truth beauty
That is all ye know on earth
And all ye need to know.
Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries
THESE, in the day 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 sky suspended; They stood, and earth’s foundations stay; What God abandoned, these defended, And saved the sum of things for pay.
A.E. Housman
One of my favourites would be Do No Go Gentle into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas:
*Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. *
my father moved through dooms of love, by E. E. Cummings. I hope my kid can honestly say that of me when I die.
Rudyard Kipling’s * The Ladies *
"I’ve taken my fun where I found it
I’ve roughed and I’ve roamed in my time
I’ve had my pickin’ o’ sweethearts,
And four o’ the lot was prime
…"
The closing section of T.S. Eliot’s “Little Gidding” will always stay with me:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always-
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
The Raven, by E.A.P. The evil sixth grade teacher had all these books on the wall, including a collection of Poe’s work. I took the book down, happened across this poem, and fell in love. Wow, poetry could be cool. This was confimed when I got in trouble for reading this book . . . it was for decoration, not student perusal.
Coming in second is Jim Morrison’s “Horse Latitudes,” mostly because when I first heard it I couldn’t make heads or tails of what it was about. And then I learned the true meaning of the poem and thought, “Wow, how cool!”
I’m going to move this thread over to Cafe Society, where it can nuzzle up against “Your Favorite Painting,” “Your Favorite Sculpture,” “Your Favorite Architectural Style,” and all the others.
One of my very favoritest is T.S. Eliot’s early work “Mr. Apollinax.”
WHEN Mr. Apollinax visited the United States
His laughter tinkled among the teacups.
I thought of Fragilion, that shy figure among the birch-trees,
And of Priapus in the shrubbery
Gaping at the lady in the swing.
In the palace of Mrs. Phlaccus, at Professor Channing-Cheetah’s
He laughed like an irresponsible foetus.
His laughter was submarine and profound
Like the old man of the sea’s
Hidden under coral islands
Where worried bodies of drowned men drift down in the green silence,
Dropping from fingers of surf.
I looked for the head of Mr. Apollinax rolling under a chair
Or grinning over a screen
With seaweed in its hair.
I heard the beat of centaur’s hoofs over the hard turf
As his dry and passionate talk devoured the afternoon.
“He is a charming man”—“But after all what did he mean?”—
“His pointed ears…. He must be unbalanced,”—
“There was something he said that I might have challenged.”
Of dowager Mrs. Phlaccus, and Professor and Mrs. Cheetah
I remember a slice of lemon, and a bitten macaroon.
Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I absolutely love everything about it. To me, it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever read.
This is followed closely by Yeat’s The Second Coming
Mine are the many tiny ones of Steven Crane. Eat them like popcorn.
heptapod
Your favt poem. Susanne Abbuehl sings it and other ee cummings poems to a jazz setting on “April” ECM records ECM1766. Search it out!
Our favt poem?
Lord Pineapple
“What was it, a boy or a girl?”
(For Luke Robbins, b/d 23.02.99)
As she held
Her still-born child
In the middle of a dream,
She held back the tears
So as not to disturb
That beautiful dead face.
“This is just to say” by William Carlos Williams. Deceptively simple, but with a lot to say about relationships and love – without ever mentioning relationships or love.
“To His Mistress Going to Bed,” the seductive, strip-tease masterpiece by John Donne. It contains the two sexiest lines of poetry anywhere:
License my roving hands, and let them go
Before, behind, between, above, below.
I also must second The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, as well as add Frost’s “Fire and Ice,” Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress,” and John Boyle O’Reilly’s “A White Rose” as a short list of other favourites.
Desiderata - Max Ehrmann 1927
Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others,
even to the dull and ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.
‘Mathilda, Who Told Lies and Was Burned to Death’ by Hillaire Belloc.
A timeless moral lesson, especially for little kids who tell fibs.
“Mad Girls Lovesong” by Sylvia Plath
Heres a snippet of it …
*I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)*
Or a truly cannibalisitic poem by Charles Swinburne named "DOLORES (NOTRE-DAME DES SEPT DOULEURS) "
My favorite poem is titled Mien Kampf , and is written by David Lerner. It is about 4 pages long so I wont type out the whole thing but it can be found in the book “The Outlaw Bible Of American Poetry”. Here is a piece of it.
"I did not come to bury poetry
but to blow it up
not to dandle it on my knee
like a retarded child with
beautiful eyes
but
throw it off a cliff into
icy seas and
see if the motherfucker can
swim for its life
because love is a beautiful thing
surely we need it"
that comes from the middle of the poem but its one of the many parts that hit me deep. The rythm and stress on the lines when spoken outloud brings you and the listener to a peak of bohemian frenzy. Wonderful.
good morning friends,
Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious bandersnatch!
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought~
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came wiffling through the tulgey wood
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with it’s head
He went galumphing back.
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
He chortled in his joy.
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.