Young Writers Society

There's a rumor floating about that first person is bad for poetry, but I don't that is necessarily true. So here is a list of good first person poems that I like.

Feel free to add to the list.

"Terrence, this is Stupid Stuff" by A. E. Housman

"The Flea" by John Donne

"Daddy" by Sylvia Plath

"since feeling is first" by e.e. cummings

"Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe

"Because I Could Not Stop for Death" by Emily Dickinson

"This Is Just to Say" by William Carols Williams

"My Makeup" by Rochelle Kraut

"The Naked and the Nude" by Robert Graves

"When my love swears that she is made of truth" by William Shakespeare

"The Mirror" by Sylvia Plath

"A Study of Reading Habits" by Philip Larkin

"Traveling Through the Dark" by William Stafford



...that's all for now.

I'm not sure it's entirely relevant, but most songs are in first person. Admittedly, most songwriters aren't stellar poets, but some are and there's some good stuff out there.

(Also, thank you so much for linking "Terrence, This is Stupid Stuff." I've been looking for it for ages.)

I think that first person is great for poetry as long as it's done well. I love it when people write from first person as a persona and I think the negative view of them is mostly concerning poems that are written from the view of the writer and feature around the writer's personal troubles and feelings which is fine as long as there is something of interest to the reader as well.

I think first person poetry has some of the same advantages and pitfalls of first person fiction; it can be an amazing insight into a mind or a very personal, close way to get into another character ... but it can also end up being closed minded or self-indulgent.

EDIT:

Fork by Jeffrey Harrison
The Black Snake by Mary Oliver
Mending Wall by Robert Frost
Hazel Tells LaVerne by Katharyn Howd Machan

Some of my favorite first person poetry. I am planning on putting a pdf of poetry together for people to download, since Clau asked me for some poetry recommendations a while back. Since there is quite a lot I'm not going to put up the links, since I don't have the time right now.

homage to my hips by Lucille Clifton
"She Lies Within an Icy Vault..." by Robert Service
(I Want) Something To Show For It by Isobel Dixon
All-Purpose Apology Poem by Austin Straus
Teaching Poetry with Pictures by Dorianne Laux
China by Dorianne Laux (mature audiences)
"Adieu, Adieu! My Native Shore" by George Gordon, Lord Byron
"Corners of the Curving Sky" by Anonymous
"From Mirror's Plane Where..." by Marina Tsvetaeva
"Arcturus" is his other name by Emily Dickinson
"Like Undistinguishable Horses" by Nikolay Gumilev
A Sunset of the City by Gwendolyn Brooks
Alchemy by Sarah Teasdale
At Baia by H.D.
Atavism by Elinor Wylie
Back in the Benighted Kingdom by Isobel Dixon
The Pomegranate by Eavan Boland
Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney
Bregeman (Bridgemaster) by Tsead Bruinja
Dark House by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Dear Captain Poetry by bpNichol
December is the Coolest Month by Albertina Soepboer
Dream Variation by Langston Hughes
Dreams are Best by Robert Service
Far Seeing Places by Arthur Davidson Ficke
Gacela of the Dark Death by Federico Garcia Lorca
GERS DAT ALFÊST LAKET (Grass That's Already Laughing) by Tsead Bruinja
Howl by Allen Ginsberg
I can't wait for summer any longer by Xing Sheng
I felt a funeral in my brain by Emily Dickinson
I Held a Shelley Manuscript by Gregory Corso
My Papa's Waltz by Theodore Roethke
I Knew A Woman by Theodore Roethke
I See Chile in My Rearview Mirror by Agha Shahid Ali
I'll Never Be Your Maggie May by Albertina Soepboer
In Answer to a Request by Amy Lowell
It's Raining in Love by Richard Brautigan
La Belle Dame Sans Merci by John Keats
Love Sonnet XI by Pablo Neruda
Mandalay by Rudyard Kipling
Moonlight Sonata by Yiannis Ritsos
Morning Song of Senlin by Conrad Aiken
Musketaquid by Ralph Waldo Emerson
my father moved through dooms of love by E.E Cummings
My Hero Bares His Nerves by Dylan Thomas
On An Apple-Ripe September Morning by Patrick Kavanagh
On a Poet's Lips I Slept by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Origins by Keorapetse Kgositsile
Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I'll come back and post some more...



Ta,
Cal.

I'm overjoyed that someone else knows Philip Larkin! Great stuff.

I think that first person is like a magnifying glass: used well, it can reveal a lot of things that would have otherwise gone unnoticed... but in the wrong hands, it ends up frying ants on a sidewalk.

Anyway, here are a few of my favorites:

Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins
The Secret by Denise Levertov
Mother to Son by Langston Hughes
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud by William Wordsworth
Blue Girls by John Crowe Ransom
White Shoulders by Carl Sandburg
Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
Sonnet 29 by William Shakespeare

And I know they're lyrics, but it's such a good song that it has to count for something:
American Pie by Don McLean

The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost is good.

Ah, beat me to it, Dreamer. I was just going to mention good ol' Frost. A lot of his poems are in first person, and they're all gorgeous.

Oh, now I understand your poem about the flea better.