<p>Rainer Maria Rilke. I love her Eurydice/Orpheus poems.</p>
<p>Oh gosh, I just realized I called Rilke a "her". Sorry.</p>
<p>emyla- I actually like the one stanza on michelangelo but the rest of it i really disliked. I got the feeling from reading it that the narrator was the most anti-social guy I have ever heard. It was just a little corny and long winded for me. </p>
<p>And I agree to disagree too =) </p>
<p>what did you like about it?</p>
<p>lucille clifton, marilyn hacker, keats - yessssss.</p>
<p>emily dickinson - everytime i see one of her poems, i cry. they are pains in the behind to explicate...</p>
<p>see "sonnet ending with a film subtitle" for one of the best poems ever written. no, really. it's good.</p>
<p>What about this poem by Langston Hughes? I'm sure lots of ppl CC on relate to it :P</p>
<p>A Dream Deferred
by Langston Hughes</p>
<p>What happens to a dream deferred?</p>
<p>Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?</p>
<p>Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.</p>
<p>Or does it explode?</p>
<p>we had to pick 5 Langston Hughes poems and rewrite them for my English. One that I picked was A Dream Deferred. I thought it sucked but I actually got a 100. I guess somethings are never understandable in this world.</p>
<p>PurpoisePal, we just read that Bishop poem in class! It's great. then we had to write our own villanelles, which was kind of a nightmare...</p>
<p>my favorite favorite poem in the world...</p>
<p>The Quiet World (Jeffrey McDaniel)
In an effort to get people to look
Into each other’s eyes more,
The government has decided to allot
Each person exactly one hundred
And sixty-seven words per day.</p>
<p>When the phone rings, I put it
To my ear without saying hello.
In the restaurant I point
At chicken noodle soup. I am
Adjusting well to the new way.</p>
<p>Late at night I call my long-
Distance lover and proudly say:
I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.</p>
<p>When she doesn’t respond, I know
She’s used up all her words,
So I slowly whisper I love you,
Thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
And listen to each other breathe.</p>
<p>i once heard dr seuss only used 263 words from the english language (sooo not including seussian words). thats impressive. i dont think many poets can do what he could do with such style, grace, and genius.</p>
<p>also, william carlos williams ftw.</p>
<p>Blackberries by Seamus Hearney</p>
<p>My favourite poem's T. S. Eliot's 'Burnt Norton', definitely. Also rather like William Carlos Wiliams's 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus', and Carl Phillips -- 'Leda after the Swan' (anyone noticing a Greek myth theme here? :D); Edna St. Vincent Millay's 'Dirge Without Music' is beautiful, too.</p>
<p>I studied a lot of Tennyson in high school for some reason, and I still really like his poetry (with the exception of 'Charge of the Light Brigade').</p>
<p>My two favorites of his are 'Crossing the Bar' (which I also sang in choir), and Ulysses (my favorite interpretation The Odyssey).</p>
<p>I am in love with Carl Sandburg's poetry. My favorite is his Definitions of Poetry.
"Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits."</p>
<p>e. e. cummings is my favorite.
[quote]
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;</p>
<p>wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world</p>
<p>my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says</p>
<p>we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph</p>
<p>And death i think is no parenthesis
[/quote]
and
[quote]
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near</p>
<p>your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose</p>
<p>or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing</p>
<p>(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Karen61990--I thought the poem dealt really well with the ideas of indecision and bitter aging. I saw it as a reflection of the narrator's life as he sees himself 'slowly going bald' and wonders whether life is worthwhile. I guess the concept really appealed to me, and I love Eliot's style in all of his poems. </p>
<p>^ and I really like those e. e. cummings poems too, though I never know the correct way to write his name :)</p>
<p>A number of my favorite poems have already been mentioned, but I can't let this thread go on without some Matthew Arnold. He's not as popular a poet as some, but I think his work is amazing.</p>
<p>Dover Beach</p>
<p>The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.</p>
<p>Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.</p>
<p>The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.</p>
<p>Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.</p>
<p>^ i like that one too.
here's a funny parody/ response to it:
<a href="http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16424%5B/url%5D">http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16424</a></p>
<p>Fire and Ice - Robert Frost...</p>
<p>enough said</p>
<p>heres my favorite:</p>
<p>I'm a Dream Weaver
Shading you from your own glory
From mirages to mirrors, and anything in between
I'll be there, like the suns glare
Cascading over your shadow</p>
<p>I'm an enigma
The wake of California
I'm a fault line, upheaving and arrogant
I'm the shore, the waves, the caged tranquil
I'm the beached whale</p>
<p>I'm a Renaissance man
I'm a lullaby, soothing but bittersweet
I'm your crash-course apathy
I'm not offensive, yet harboring hostile air
The essence of today, now, and forever.</p>