Your Favorite Poem

Cafe Society
41

My favorite poem of all time is “Tenderness” by Stephen Dunn. I won’t type it here and it’s not availible on the internet, but I encourage everyone to look it up sometime. Dunn won a Pulitzer Prize for Different Hours, but I think Between Angels, which “Tenderness” is in, is far more worthy.

Also, “Bill’s Story” by Mark Doty is a sad, haunting, lovely masterpiece about a woman dying of AIDS. “Heaven” and “Brilliance” are also incredible poems. All are availible in My Alexandria, one of the most amazing collections of poetry ever, by any poet.

I love Eliot as well, but my favorite poem of his (and definitely in my top five list of all-time favorites) is “Marina”, part of which follows:

Sigh. It gives me goose bumps, it is so lovely.

42

Mother to Son

by Langston Hughes

Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor-
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landins,
And turnin corners,
And sometimes goin in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
‘Cause you find it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now-
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

43

I can’t decide on a favourite poem (usually it’s the last one I wrote), but here’s a very fine one by Pablo Neruda:

Love Sonnet XI
I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

44

Either T. S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” (too long to post in its entirety, but I’ll post the last section 'cause it rules):

Or Paradise Lost. It struck me, the last time I read it, that every time Satan speaks, it’s almost as though some very charismatic actor is reciting the lines. Somehow, Milton manages to suck us in with mere words on a page…

Oh, yeah (sorry, I like poetry and can’t name just two), and I gotta give a shout out to Yeats with “Sailing to Byzantium.” And Rilke’s Duino Elegies. And, oh, forget it, I’ll shut up now.

45

“Moon Folly” by Fannie Stearns Davis:

*I will go up the mountain after the Moon;
She is caught in a dead fir-tree.
Like a great pale apple of silver and pearl,
Like a great pale apple is she.

I will leap and will catch her with quick cold hands
And carry her home in my sack.
I will set her down safe on the oaken bench
That stands at the chimney-back.

And then I will sit by the fire all night,
And sit by the fire all day.
I will gnaw at the Moon to my heart’s delight
Till I gnaw her slowly away.

And while I go mad with the Moon’s cold taste
The World will beat at my door,
Crying, “Come out!” and crying “Make haste,
And give us the Moon once more!”

But I shall not answer them ever at all.
I shall laugh, as I count and hide
The great, black, beautiful seeds of the Moon
In a flower-pot deep and wide.

Then I shall lie down and go fast asleep,
Drunken with flame and aswoon.
But the seeds will sprout and the seeds will leap,
The subtle swift seeds of the Moon.

And some day, all of the World that cries
And beats at my door shall see
A thousand moon-leaves spring from my thatch
On a wonderful white Moon-tree!

Then each shall have Moons to his heart’s desire:
Apples of silver and pearl;
Apples of orange and copper fire
Setting his five wits aswirl!

And then they will thank me, who mock me now,
“Wanting the Moon is he,”—
Oh, I’m off to the mountain after the Moon,
Ere she falls from the dead fir-tree!*

46

Wow. Sorry to resurrect this old thread. It surfaced in an unrelated search. Some incredible stuff posted here. I’ll sixth (tenth?) that Prufrock nomination- it’s a doozy. I was absolutely delighted to see someone posted Braughtigan, may he R.I.P. I’ll add a short segment from Whitman’s Song of Myself, Stanza Four:

Trippers and askers surround me,
People I meet, the effect upon me of my early life or the ward and
city I live in, or the nation,
The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old
and new,
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues,
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love,
The sickness of one of my folks or of myself, or ill-doing or loss
or lack of money, or depressions or exaltations,
Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news,
the fitful events;
These come to me days and nights and go from me again,
But they are not the Me myself.

Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,
Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,
Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.

Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with
linguists and contenders,
I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait.

47

from Shel Silverstein,

 Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout
      (who would not take the garbage out...)

Hey – “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” was already taken!

48

SpoilerVirgin, thank you, that was wonderful and I’d never heard it before.

Here’s another of my favorites from Millay on the same theme:

Conscientious Objector
I shall die, but that is all I shall do for Death.
I hear him leading his horse out of the stall;
I hear the clatter on the barn-floor.
He is in haste: he has buisness in Cuba, buisness in the Balkans, many calls to make this morning.
But I will not hold the bridle while he cinches the girth.
And he may mount by himself; I will not give him a leg up.

Though he flick my shoulders with his whip, I will not tell him which way the fox ran.
With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where the black boy hides in the swamp.
I shall die, but that is all I shall do for Death;
I am not on his pay-roll.

I will not tell him the whereabouts of my friends
Nor of my enemies either.
Though he promise me much, I will not map him the route to any man’s door.
Am I a spy in the land of the living that I should deliver men to Death?
Brother, the password and the plans of the city are safe with me: never through me shall you be overcome.

49

“The Bells” by Edgar Allan Poe

50

I have two:

Baudelaire’s “Enivrez-Vous” and this poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay:

Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!
Give me back my book and take my kiss instead.
Was it my enemy or my friend I heard,
"What a big book for such a little head!’’
Come, I will show you now my newest hat,
And you may watch me purse my mouth and prink!
Oh, I shall love you still, and all of that.
I never again shall tell you what I think.
I shall be sweet and crafty, soft and sly;
You will not catch me reading any more:
I shall be called a wife to pattern by;
And some day when you knock and push the door,
Some sane day, not too bright and not too stormy,
I shall be gone, and you may whistle for me.

51

The Buried Life

Here’s an excerpt from Matthew Arnolds ‘The Buried Life’ which I have always found somewhat comforting in my times of despair!!

But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us–to know
Whence our lives come and where they go.