Favorite Poems

[Selkie]

One of mine, may not be my favorite.

Sonnet 18 (Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?) by Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

[Samus Aran]

Well, the ever-famous "Ode to a Nightingale" is one of my favorites, though I think I'll refrain from posting that since everyone's already read it and it's very long.

"Thanatopsis" is another one of my favorites. Also very well-known and considered by many to be tedious. But I love it so.

However, I could go on and on about poems I love and such, and it would never really end. But I want to talk about something more recent...a recent interest in prose poetry, and in particular, Russell Edson.

"Counting Sheep" by Russell Edson

A scientist has a test tube full of sheep. He
wonders if he should try to shrink a pasture
for them.
  They are like grains of rice.
  He wonders if it is possible to shrink something
out of existence.
  He wonders if the sheep are aware of their tininess,
if they have any sense of scale. Perhaps they think
the test tube is a glass barn ...
  He wonders what he should do with them; they
certainly have less meat and wool than ordinary
sheep. Has he reduced their commercial value?
  He wonders if they could be used as a substitute
for rice, a sort of wolly rice . . .
  He wonders if he shouldn't rub them into a red paste
between his fingers.
  He wonders if they are breeding, or if any of them
have died.
He puts them under a microscope, and falls asleep
counting them . . .

[Thyme]

Evidently, I prefer the original, but for the sake of convenience here's a translation:

"The Giantess" by Charles Baudelaire, translation by George Dillon

In times of old when Nature in her glad excess
Brought forth such living marvels as no more are seen,
I should have loved to dwell with a young giantess,
Like a voluptuous cat about the feet of a queen;

To run and laugh beside her in her terrible games,
And see her grow each day to a more fearful size,
And see the flowering of her soul, and the first flames
Of passionate longing in the misty depths of her eyes;

To scale the slopes of her huge knees, explore at will
The hollows and the heights of her ââ,¬â€� and when, oppressed
By the long afternoons of summer, cloudless and still,

She would stretch out across the countryside to rest,
I should have loved to sleep in the shadow of her breast,
Quietly as a village nestling under a hill.

[spoiler][/spoiler]

[YPrrrr]

To Make A Dadist Poem by Tristan Tzara
   

  Take a newspaper.
Take some scissors.
Choose from this paper an article the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Next carefully cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them all in a bag.
Shake gently.
Next take out each cutting one after the other.
Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resemble you.
And there you are--an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd

[Skylark]

The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter by Ezra Pound

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the lookout?

At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-en, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fo-Sa.

[LCK]

Shakespeare's Sonnet 130
It may be one of his well known sonnets, but I really love how it's written.

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare

[Sam]

I'm really not a fan of reading poetry. I just do not like it. I'm also opposed to letting other people read my poetry. And I write kind of a lot.

I guess I feel that my poetry is too personal to let others see, and a lot of the metaphors I use are just fancy ways of conveying different feelings and emotions, just put there to give a certain mood. And it really bugs me when we read a poem and someone stars bringing up bizarre examples about what it could possibly mean. And yeah, I'm aware that some poetry does have a sort of 'plot', but I think at least half of the stuff we do in school is like the stuff that I write. There's not some huge storyline behind it, ths is just how the author felt at the time. The images in the poems are simply little images that came to mind.

When I read poetry, unless in school when it's necessary that I do otherwise, I read it strictly for the emotions. That way it's personal.
I don't honestly give a shit about how the poet themselves felt on one particular night, and I don't understand who would.

I don't know what my favorite poem is, but I guess I prefer to read Sylvia Plath over most other poets.

[Samus Aran]

I'm really not a fan of reading poetry. I just do not like it. I'm also opposed to letting other people read my poetry. And I write kind of a lot.

You don't really see what your own work is missing until you start reading a lot of poetry. When I compare my current work to my work before I started taking poetry classes and reading poetry volumes, I shudder.

I guess I feel that my poetry is too personal to let others see, and a lot of the metaphors I use are just fancy ways of conveying different feelings and emotions, just put there to give a certain mood.

All good poetry is personal to some degree. And your way of using metaphors is pretty common. Nothing wrong or unusual about that.

There's not some huge storyline behind it, ths is just how the author felt at the time. The images in the poems are simply little images that came to mind.

There's not some "huge storyline" behind almost any poem that I can think of, honestly, unless it serves the purpose of portraying a plot, like an epic (blech) or something. Most poems are, or at least start out as, "little images." They may not be physical, tangible images...but they're images nonetheless.

tl;dr: you're not doing anything unusual with your poetry and you're generalizing too much about the way poetry is written by others and how the readers absorb it

also read more poetry. it's fun.

[Houdini]

(lots of words)

i think the problem is that a lot of people approach poetry the wrong way. my theory is that the people who don't get poetry are expecting it to tell some kind of linear story, which most poems don't. i think a poem should be approached more like a painting done with words instead of paint

[Geno]

The Raven

So

[Sam]

You don't really see what your own work is missing until you start reading a lot of poetry. When I compare my current work to my work before I started taking poetry classes and reading poetry volumes, I shudder.

All good poetry is personal to some degree. And your way of using metaphors is pretty common. Nothing wrong or unusual about that.

There's not some "huge storyline" behind almost any poem that I can think of, honestly, unless it serves the purpose of portraying a plot, like an epic (blech) or something. Most poems are, or at least start out as, "little images." They may not be physical, tangible images...but they're images nonetheless.

tl;dr: you're not doing anything unusual with your poetry and you're generalizing too much about the way poetry is written by others and how the readers absorb it

also read more poetry. it's fun.

I think you're just not getting what I'm saying.

First off, I'm in AP English. I read plenty of poetry, rest assured. I'm not just satying this because I never read poetry and it's a good excuse. I DO NOT LIKE READING POETRY.

Second, I don't think anything about my "methods" are unusual. I was using them as an example so I wouldn't be generalizing about poetry in too broad a sense.

Bottom line; I feel like poety is more about gaining a certain feeling than anything else. All I look for is the surface, initial sense from each poem. I do not enjoy picking apart each line and how everything fits together and learning all the terminology and blah.

[Houdini]

I think you're just not getting what I'm saying.

First off, I'm in AP English. I read plenty of poetry, rest assured. I'm not just satying this because I never read poetry and it's a good excuse. I DO NOT LIKE READING POETRY.

Second, I don't think anything about my "methods" are unusual. I was using them as an example so I wouldn't be generalizing about poetry in too broad a sense.

Bottom line; I feel like poety is more about gaining a certain feeling than anything else. All I look for is the surface, initial sense from each poem. I do not enjoy picking apart each line and how everything fits together and learning all the terminology and blah.

well there's your problem. ap english sucks, they make you meticulously pick apart and scrutinize everything until no mystery remains. they essentially teach you to desecrate art, plus the poems they show you are usually crap anyway

[Sam]

well there's your problem. ap english sucks, they make you meticulously pick apart and scrutinize everything until no mystery remains. they essentially teach you to desecrate art, plus the poems they show you are usually crap anyway

I never enjoyed reading poetry though. It spawned long before I ever studied it in school.

[Houdini]

I never enjoyed reading poetry though. It spawned long before I ever studied it in school.

well then you're just a poo head

[Samus Aran]

Bottom line; I feel like poety is more about gaining a certain feeling than anything else. All I look for is the surface, initial sense from each poem. I do not enjoy picking apart each line and how everything fits together and learning all the terminology and blah.

To each his/her own, but I still think you're generalizing too much. Not all poetry is intended to create a feeling.