the poet within

[solgroupie]

post AND discuss your favorite poetry here. it doesn't even have to rhyme!



Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn
Indicative that suns go down;
The notice to the startled grass
That darkness is about to pass.

~emily dickinson

emily dickinson has never been my number one favorite poet, but i do like how much she can say with just a few short lines. for someone who didn't leave the house very much, she had an instinct about human emotions, nature and our inner demons.

[Shep]

Bryon has been my favorite since high school.

[Don Quixote]

J.K. Robertson is my favorite poet.

[Afgncaap5]

While he's not my favorite poet per se, I wanna toss out Lewis Carroll. I've been able to quote Jabberwocky verbatim for ages, and there was a time when I could recite four of the eight fits of Hunting of the Snark just as well (I could try now, I suppose, but I've got a feeling that a good hunk of the lines would be misremembered.)

[mummifiedstalin]

Passing Remark
by William Stafford

In scenery I like flat country.
In life I don’t like much to happen.

In personalities I like mild colorless people.
And in colors I prefer gray and brown.

My wife, a vivid girl from the mountains,
says, “Then why did you choose me?”

Mildly I lower my brown eyes—
there are so many things admirable people do not understand.

[callipygias]

Porphyria's Lover. A spooky poem about a beautiful woman told by a demented man who loves her enough to preserve their moment together by killing her.
Here's an excerpt:


Be sure I looked up at her eyes
Happy and proud; at last I knew
Porphyria worshiped me: surprise
Made my heart swell, and still it grew
While I debated what to do.
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string l wound
Three times her little throat around


And here's the whole thing. (It isn't long.) www.love-poems.me.uk/browning_robert_porphyrias_lover_l.htm

[Mr. Atari]

I once knew a man from Nantucket.

Turns out, the stories about him are grossly exaggerated.

[callipygias]

I'm not sure your opinion is to be trusted in such matters.

[inlovewithcrow]

Oooh, I could go on and on but won't. I'm a poet, 60 or 70 published poems in literary mags, and I do like my own stuff. Is that egotistical enough for ya? I like Billy Collins a lot. I read almost entirely contemporary poetry. Though Whitman in "I Sing the Body Electric" is still contemporary enough for me. Was listening to Writer's Alamac on NPR one day and was totally blown away by James Tate's "Making the Best of the Holidays" writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2009/03/10 . But reading two of his books didn't show me anything as good. I like individual poems by various people. For instance, Mary Oliver's "Ice" made me weep and weep and motivated a couple of my own poems:

My father spent his last winter
Making ice-grips for shoes

Out of strips of inner tube and scrap metal.
(A device which slips over the instep

And holds under the shoe
A section of roughened metal, it allows you to walk

Without fear of falling
Anywhere on ice or snow.) My father

Should not have been doing
All that close work

In the drafty workshop, but as though
He sensed travel at the edge of his mind,

He would not be stopped. My mother
Wore them, and my aunt, and my cousins.

He wrapped and mailed
A dozen pairs to me, in the easy snows

Of Massachusetts, and a dozen
To my sister, in California.

Later we learned how he'd given them away
To the neighbors, an old man

Appearing with the cold blue cheeks at every door.
No one refused him,

For plainly the giving was an asking,
A petition to be welcomed and useful --

Or maybe, who knows, the seed of a desire
Not to be sent alone out over the black ice.

Now the house seems neater: books,
Half-read, set back on the shelves;

Unfinished projects put away.
This spring

Mother writes to me: I am cleaning the workshop
And I have found

So many pairs of the ice-grips,
Cartons and suitcases stuffed full,

More than we can ever use.
What shall I do? And I see myself

Alone in that house with nothing
But darkly gleaming cliffs of ice, the sense

Of distant explosions,
Blindness as I look for my coat --

And I write back: Mother, please
Save everything.

[solgroupie]

half moon
by federico garcia lorca (1898-1936)

the moon goes over the water.
how tranquil the sky is!
she goes scything slowly
the old shimmer from the river;
meanwhile a young frog
takes her for a little mirror.

[mummifiedstalin]

Apr 14, 2009 15:41:59 GMT -5 inlovewithcrow said:

Oooh, I could go on and on but won't. I'm a poet, 60 or 70 published poems in literary mags, and I do like my own stuff. Is that egotistical enough for ya? I like Billy Collins a lot. I read almost entirely contemporary poetry. Though Whitman in "I Sing the Body Electric" is still contemporary enough for me. Was listening to Writer's Alamac on NPR one day and was totally blown away by James Tate's "Making the Best of the Holidays" writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2009/03/10 . But reading two of his books didn't show me anything as good. I like individual poems by various people. For instance, Mary Oliver's "Ice" made me weep and weep and motivated a couple of my own poems:

My father spent his last winter
Making ice-grips for shoes

Out of strips of inner tube and scrap metal.
(A device which slips over the instep

And holds under the shoe
A section of roughened metal, it allows you to walk

Without fear of falling
Anywhere on ice or snow.) My father

Should not have been doing
All that close work

In the drafty workshop, but as though
He sensed travel at the edge of his mind,

He would not be stopped. My mother
Wore them, and my aunt, and my cousins.

He wrapped and mailed
A dozen pairs to me, in the easy snows

Of Massachusetts, and a dozen
To my sister, in California.

Later we learned how he'd given them away
To the neighbors, an old man

Appearing with the cold blue cheeks at every door.
No one refused him,

For plainly the giving was an asking,
A petition to be welcomed and useful --

Or maybe, who knows, the seed of a desire
Not to be sent alone out over the black ice.

Now the house seems neater: books,
Half-read, set back on the shelves;

Unfinished projects put away.
This spring

Mother writes to me: I am cleaning the workshop
And I have found

So many pairs of the ice-grips,
Cartons and suitcases stuffed full,

More than we can ever use.
What shall I do? And I see myself

Alone in that house with nothing
But darkly gleaming cliffs of ice, the sense

Of distant explosions,
Blindness as I look for my coat --

And I write back: Mother, please
Save everything.

I'm a fan of Oliver, too. I like how this one ends with the talk through letters. It keeps that sense of touching across distances. And "the sense Of distant explosions"...holy crap.

Oliver's book on how to read poetry is a great book of poetry in itself.

[KyrieEleison]

I have managed to crank out one good poem of my own, which I have shared elsewhere, but Blake has to be one of my favorite poets, just for his Songs of Innocence and Experience, which, thanks to Dr. Prior's British Survey II and British Romanticism classes, I have studied extensively.

One of my favorites:
Love seeketh not Itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care;
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hells despair.

So sang a little Clod of Clay,
Trodden with the cattles feet:
But a Pebble of the brook,
Warbled out these metres meet.

Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to Its delight:
Joys in anothers loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heavens despite.

**ETA: It took me this long to realize that I, once again, confused George Gordon, Lord Byron with William Blake. After this, I will be turning in my English Nerd ID card and mailing my degree back.

[mrsphyllistorgo]

No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Then you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell.
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it; for I love you so
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
O, if, I say, you look upon this verse,
When I, perhaps, compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse,
But let your love even with my life decay.
Lest the wise world look into your moan,
And mock you with me, after I am gone.



I cry every single time.

[MonsterX]

The Eagle
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring’d with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

I read this poem in eighth grade in my English textbook and it had a profound impact on my life. Until that point poetry had been off my radar although I was starting to get interested in creative writing. When I read it, it was like I could actually hear the poets voice in my head, and the images he spoke of were both triumphant and sad at the same time.

It blew my mind that in only 40ish words he was able to evoke so many thoughts and emotions. I started writing poetry shortly after that and I still do. I write all my poetry so it can be read aloud, which was influenced by this particular poem as well. It really made an impression on me.

[KyrieEleison]

Just found this poem again... "Thou art indeed just" by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end?

Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,
How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost
Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust
Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,
Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes
Now leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again
With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes
Them; birds build—but not I build; no, but strain,
Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.
Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.

This poem really struck me while all this stuff was happening in my family - grandpa got sick, mom and dad got thrown under the bus in a church ministry that they had supported for years, family got told our landlord was going to sell our house - and I was 2,000 miles away at school. I was really hurting for encouragement, and secretly dreading the next phone call from home, and I found this poem in my Brit Lit book. Without trying to sound over-emo, it gave words to my pain.