Poetry

Poetry

For the poetry writer, reader and lover.

  • 12 forum topics
  • 167 wall posts
  • Created Thu Jul 15, 2010 11:54 pm

← Back to Forum

What is Your Favourite Poem of all time?

20 posts in this topic.

  1. Right now I couldn't even say which is my very favourite. But there are some beautiful Australian poems I can usually never get out of my head. Most by John O'Brien (Check him out in the database! He should be there!)

    How about yours?
  2. It's impossible for me to choose one poem to call my favourite. But here is my latest evidence that e. e. cummings is an absolute genius:

    l(a

    le
    af
    fa
    ll

    s)
    one
    l

    iness
  3. It varies, but one that always sticks with me is Pablo Neruda's "Poetry" --

    And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
    in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
    it came from, from winter or a river.
    I don't know how or when,
    no they were not voices, they were not
    words, nor silence,
    but from a street I was summoned,
    from the branches of night,
    abruptly from the others,
    among violent fires
    or returning alone,
    there I was without a face
    and it touched me.

    I did not know what to say, my mouth
    had no way
    with names,
    my eyes were blind,
    and something started in my soul,
    fever or forgotten wings,
    and I made my own way,
    deciphering
    that fire,
    and I wrote the first faint line,
    faint, without substance, pure
    nonsense,
    pure wisdom
    of someone who knows nothing,
    and suddenly I saw
    the heavens
    unfastened
    and open,
    planets,
    palpitating plantations,
    shadow perforated,
    riddled
    with arrows, fire and flowers,
    the winding night, the universe.

    And I, infinitesimal being,
    drunk with the great starry
    void,
    likeness, image of
    mystery,
    felt myself a pure part
    of the abyss,
    I wheeled with the stars,
    my heart broke loose on the wind.

    (It's even more beautiful in the original Spanish.)
  4. Favorite poem is Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen.
  5. Don't have a favorite, But if I had to pick my favorite poet, its Henry Wadsworth, I would choose his poems as my favorite!!!!
  6. Hadda Been Playin' On The Jukebox, by Allen Ginsberg. What a mastermind of beat poetry.
  7. My all-time favorite poem is The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot. I love the imagery in it and how it is very narrative-like. A very well-written poem, indeed!
  8. The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes, Anabelle Lee by Edgar Allan Poe, or Ego Trippin' by Nikki Giovanni. i LOOOOOOVE those
  9. One of my favourites is 'The Erl-king' by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. :D
  10. so many poems i dont know
  11. My favorite poem of all time is the one I wrote about my dad who passed away eleven years ago. I would love to share it, sometime soon. It is entitled AN ADMIRABLE SOUL.
  12. The Rainy Day by Longfellow is my all time favorite.
  13. The Tiger by William Blake

    Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
    In the forest of the night
    What immortal hand or eye
    Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

    In what distant deeps or skies
    Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
    On what wings dare he aspire?
    What the hand dare seize the fire?

    And What shoulder, and what art,
    Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
    And when thy heart began to beat,
    What dread hand? and what dread feet?

    What the hammer? what the chain?
    In what furnace was thy brain?
    What the anvil? what dread grasp
    Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

    When the stars threw down their spears,
    And watered heaven with their tears,
    Did he smile his work to see?
    Did he who made the lamb make thee?

    Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
    In the forests of the night,
    What immortal hand or eye
    Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

    Also every single hilarious poem in the collection of cat poems "I Could Pee On This." If you like cats, you will crack up reading it.
  14. I unfortunately haven't been exposed to much poetry, but I do enjoy Shakespeare's "All The World's a Stage", especially the final line.
  15. Introduction to Poetry
    Billy Collins

    I ask them to take a poem
    and hold it up to the light
    like a color slide

    or press an ear against its hive.

    I say drop a mouse into a poem
    and watch him probe his way out,

    or walk inside the poem's room
    and feel the walls for a light switch.

    I want them to waterski
    across the surface of a poem
    waving at the author's name on the shore.

    But all they want to do
    is tie the poem to a chair with rope
    and torture a confession out of it.

    They begin beating it with a hose
    to find out what it really means.


I wish literally anything else I ever said made it into the quote generator.
— CowLogic