What's your favorite poem? (free, cover, best, poems)

[Dayton Sux]

I like TS Eliots "Four Quartets" a lot.

Then, "The Peppertrees"' by Denise Levertov, " After Anacreon" by Lew Welch, and "Chicago Poem", aslo by Lew Welch.

[gizmo980]

Here are a few of my favorites...

"Howl," "Kaddish" & "America" - Allen Ginsberg
"Negro Speaks of Rivers" & "The Weary Blues" (and just about all of his poems) - Langston Hughes
"Phenomenal Woman" & "Still I Rise" - Maya Angelou

Negro Speaks of Rivers
"I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human rivers
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset

I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers."

[Sparklez_304]

It's Just Me
margina smith

I will not apologize
for being me.
But if I'm aloof at times
or hard to understand,
it's because previous
encounters have left me
wounded...so I hide in
primal spaces to cover
them with band-aids.

If I've been your friend
I still am.
If I've loved you
I still do.
If I seem guardedly quiet,
I've just retreated to a
safer place to heal...

If I stand apart
I have not left you,
Look inside yourself
You'll find bits and
pieces of me...
stuck inside your heart.


her and jon francis are two of my favorite poets.

[freezengirl]

Reading all of the poems in this thread today was like visiting old friends of the heart.

[elston]

by emily dickinson

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us — don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

[melaniej65]

My favorite poem is also by Emily Dickinson:

I never saw a moor
I never saw the sea;
yet I know what heather is
and what a wave must be.

I never spoke with God,
nor visited in Heaven;
yet certain am I of the spot
as if the place was given.

[kevxu]

Two of many:

from Good Night by Thomas Kinsella

...Would you agree, then, we won't
find truths, or any certainties...

where monsters lift soft
self-conscious voices, and feed us
and feed in us, and coil
and uncoil in our substance,
so that in that they are there
we cannot know them, and that,
daylit, we are the monsters of our night
and somewhere the monsters of our night are...

here...in daylight that our nightnothing
feeds in and feeds, wandering
out of the cavern, a low cry
echoing -- Camacamacamac...

that we need as we don't need truth...

and ungulfs a Good Night, smiling.



And The God Forsakes Anthony by Constantine Cavafy

When suddenly at the midnight hour
an invisible troupe is heard passing
with exquisite music, with shouts --
do not mourn in vain your fortune failing you now,
your works that have failed you, the plans of your life
that have all turned out to be illusions.
....
approach the window with firm step,
and listen with emotion, but not
with the entreaties and complaints of the coward,
as a last enjoyment listen to the sounds,
the exquisite instruments of the mystical troupe,
and bid her farewell, the Alexandria you are losing.

[elston]

"This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor...Welcome and entertain them all. Treat each guest honorably. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond."
— Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

[LauraC]

I've always liked Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade." I like the rythm of the poem. I like the urgency of it. I can hear it read aloud.

"Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred."

I also like Poe's "The Raven" for the same rythm reason although it's a different rythm.

"Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'"

[haggardhouseelf]

Desiderata