Skip to main content

Forums » Smalltalk » Favourite poems?

Personally, I can't write poetry, but I find it fascinating to read. If you have any favourite pieces (whether it's things you wrote or things you found elsewhere) feel free to share them!

Please. Enable my procrastination.
haunt

i'm a big loser for stopping by woods on a snowy evening but i have a love-hate relationship with it because i had to write a huge analysis paper for it my sophomore year that i got an F on for a really dumb reason so. y'know. it's still my favorite though.

do not go gentle into that good night is another classic that i love

if you're into slam poetry this one has stuck with me for years (strong themes and strong language warning)
more slam poetry: i love pretty much everything i've heard from neil hilborn but this is my fave (but warning for suicide and more strong language)

also this is a song so idk if it counts but the lyrics in this song have actually made me cry. but also more warnings for suicide and drugs. real sad hours.

i'm honestly kind of a secret poetry geek and i write my own from time to time? so, like, feel free to hmu about poetry whenever because i'm a nerd dork loser.
I am a HUGE poetry nerd, I write it in my free time but I've never posted any of it. But my favorite poem would be A Star In A Stoneboat by Robert Frost
I don't really read poems, but once in class we were analyzing A poison tree by William Blake and I grew to enjoy the poem quite a lot. I wouldn't say it's my favorite since it's probably the only one I know by name, but there's something about it I find captivating.
While I should be doing the dishes or replying to some private correspondence on here, after a days work, I find myself lacking energy for the aforementioned two things that I should be doing, and always have energy for spreading the love of literature. That being said, the floodgates have opened, and I am sorry.. not sorry? >>;

Starting off, seeing as psoliver has already mentioned Dylan Thomas with Do not go gentle into that good night, I find myself needing to tag on In my craft or sullen art, as well.

If you find yourself fancying the presentation, and themes of Thomas, I highly suggest checking out Miyazawa Kenji. Particularly his two most famous poems; The morning of the last (final) farewell & Be not defeated by rain.

An all time favourite of mine, (even though it's terribly hard to narrow down even to a top 10 for me), has to be Alfred Noyes' The Highwayman. A fabulous addition is that the singer and musician Loreena McKennitt took Noyes' poem and made it into music, which is phenomenal. She also did this with Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem The Lady of Shalott, which admittedly is probably more well known by the painting done by Waterhouse.

Another one, (as the list keeps building, oops), is by Sir Thomas Wyatt. Now because it's about the infamous Anne Boleyn, it's probably one of his most famous, but nonetheless it doesn't take away from it's beauty and of course, if nothing else, speaks to the beauty and charmer that Anne Boleyn was said to be. The poem is called Whoso List To Hunt.

If religious poems might interest you, albeit with a dash of what seems like a lusting of some kind, but more than likely shoved off as rapture, despite Donne's less than clean history before he found Christ, is in particular his Holy Sonnet 14, which starts off unabashedly with
"Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;"
- ugh, I love it! Wrap me up in it like a big fuzzy blanket. Okay, okay, enough-- Almost!

I will toss in one last, and still on the topic of Donne (mind the pun), which is his Holy Sonnet 10, the ever famous, Death, Be Not Proud. Which is highly and lovingly featured in Wit, a glorious film starring Emma Thompson. You can see a clip of it here, and it actually pertains to Holy Sonnet 10. I love this film to pieces, and I'm pretty sure my gushing is apparent. Not sorry. <3


There are plenty of other fabulous poets out there, so some quick referrals would be Margaret Atwood's Variation on the word sleep (another favourite), and Mary Oliver's The summer day.

Hope you enjoy! :D
I'm not really that into poetry, but I do quite like this poem. Good memories attached...

(The poem is To Romance but George Gordon and Lord Bryon!)
A Psalm of Life by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I've been reading this ollld poetry book I scrounged from the back of an antique store called "THE HARP-WEAVER AND OTHER POEMS" compiled by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Its this unassuming little book with unexpectedly macabre poems subtly warning against things like hubris, greed, and lack of compassion.
AUTUMN CHANT wrote:
Now the autumn shudders
In the rose's root.
Far and wide the ladders
Lean among the fruit.

Now the autumn clambers
Up the trellised frame,
And the rose remembers
The dust from which it came.

Brighter than the blossom
On the rose's bough
Sits the wizened, orange,
Bitter berry now;

Beauty never slumbers;
All is in her name;
But the rose remembers
The dust from which it came.
FEAST wrote:
I DRANK at every vine.
The last was like the first.
I came upon no wine
So wonderful as thirst.

I gnawed at every root.
I ate of every plant.
I came upon no fruit
So wonderful as want.

Feed the grape and bean
To the vintner and monger;
I will lie down lean
With my thirst and my hunger.
NEVER MAY THE FRUIT BE PLUCKED wrote:
Never, never may the fruit be plucked from the bough
And gathered into barrels.
He that would eat of love must eat it where it hangs.
Though the branches bend like reeds,
Though the ripe fruit splash in the grass or wrinkle on the tree,
He that would eat of love may bear away with him
Only what his belly can hold,
Nothing in the apron,
Nothing in the pockets.
Never, never may the fruit be gathered from the bough
And harvested in barrels.
The winter of love is a cellar of empty bins,
In an orchard soft with rot.
SIEGE wrote:
THIS I do, being mad:
Gather baubles about me,
Sit in a circle of toys, and all the time
Death beating the door in.

White jade and an orange pitcher,
Hindu idol, Chinese god,-
Maybe next year, when I'm richer-
Carved beads and a lotus pod . . . .


And all this time
Death beating the door in.
Yersinia Topic Starter

All of these are all really interesting and nice.
PrinceLacrima wrote:
It's no where near as sophisticated as the poetry I'd imagine you were referring to but its still rather neat.
No worries! I'm the least cultured person around lmao. A lot of my favourite poems are those small 2 - 4 panel comics that express a single sentiment (I won't post any atm because it's difficult to find ones that are properly credited.)

Strictly speaking this isn't poetry, but there's this part in Faust (by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe) where Faust is lamenting how dumb and human he is:

This moth-eaten world with its oddments and trash,
It's the reason I feel shut up in jail.
And here I'll discover what it is that I lack?
Devour thousands of books so as to learn, shall I,
Mankind has always been stretched on the rack,
With now and then somebody, somewhere, who's been happy?
You, empty skull there, smirking so, I know why--
What does it tell me if not that your brain,
Whirling like mine, sought the bright sun of truth,
Only to wander, night-bewildered, in vain.
And all that apparatus, you mock me, you laugh
With your every wheel, cylinder, cog and ratchet;
I stood at the door, sure you provided the key,
Yet for all the bit's cunning design I couldn't unlatch it.


For an English translation, I think the Norton Anthology did a decent job of it.
I love a lot of the German Romanticism, such as Heinrich Heine or E.T.A. Hoffmann, or Heinrich von Kleist.

One of my most fav. German poets is one represantative of the "Literarische Moderne" Rainer Maria Rilke

This is one of my most fave poems :

Blaue Hortensie (Blue Hydrangea)


So wie das letzte Grün in Farbentiegeln
sind diese Blätter, trocken, stumpf und rauh,
hinter den Blütendolden, die ein Blau
nicht auf sich tragen, nur von ferne spiegeln.

Sie spiegeln es verweint und ungenau,
als wollten sie es wiederum verlieren,
und wie in alten blauen Briefpapieren
ist Gelb in ihnen, Violett und Grau;

Verwaschnes wie an einer Kinderschürze,
Nichtmehrgetragnes, dem nichts mehr geschieht:
wie fühlt man eines kleinen Lebens Kürze.

Doch plötzlich scheint das Blau sich zu verneuen
in einer von den Dolden, und man sieht
ein rührend Blaues sich vor Grünem freuen.

----

Just like the last green in a colour pot
So are these leaves, withered and wrecked
Behind the flower umbels, which reflect
A hue of blue only, more they do not.


Reflections are tear-stained, inaccurate,
As if they were about to cease,
And like old blue notepaper sheets
They wear some yellow, grey and violet,


Washed-out like on a children's apron,
Outworn and now no more in use:
We contemplate a small life's short duration.


But suddenly some new blue seemingly is seen
In just one umbel, and we muse
Over a moving blue delighting in the green.


Translation © by Guntram Deichsel, 2003-12-03




In the English speaking world Edgar Alan Poe clearly holds 1st place when it comes to poems and here his poem The Raven is my all-time favorite

It has even been made into a song by the Dutch Band Omnia:

Find the Song-Video here
I always liked Pablo Neruda but when I saw his work from my girlfriend's eyes and read her favourite excerpts that's when I really fell in love! I'll post some here later.

You are on: Forums » Smalltalk » Favourite poems?

Moderators: Mina, Keke, Cass, Auberon, Claine, Ilmarinen, Ben, Darth_Angelus