Poems

[burstroman]

What are some poems that are special to you?  One of mine is "Naming of Parts" by Henry Reed.  There is a website devoted just to that one poem.  Shakespeare's "Sonnets" are a life-long favorite as well. Share your favorites.

[lichristine]

Sylvia Plath:
  "Cut"
  "Lady Lazarus"
  "The Moon And The Yew Tree"
  "Daddy"
  "The Hanging Man"
  "Edge"

Sonya Sones:
  "In The Morning"
  "Because Of John"

"The Conqueror Worm"-Edgar Allen Poe

"Dulce Et Decorum Est"-Wilfred Owen

"When I Put My Hands On Your Body"-David Wojnarowicz

and alot more...these are just the ones i can think or immediately.

[le_poete_mourant]

William Carlos Williams' "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower" is one of my favorite all-time poems.

I heard an excellent Billy Collins poem about love, read by the poet on I believe A Prarie Home Companion, but I have forgotten the title. 

[elspeth]

'When I am old I will wear purple' by Jenny Joseph

AA Milne's poetry from Winnie the Pooh

'The Lesson' by Roger McGough

If I'm allowed play texts or song lyrics there are a lot more...

[lichristine]

"Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"-Dylan Thomas

[ramseytheii]

O - I was hoping people woulda ctually type out their favorite poems!  I guess I will have to search for these myself.  Here is one I like,

Elysium is as far as to
The very nearest Room
If in that Room a Friend await
Felicity or Doom -

What fortitude the Soul contains,
That it can so endure
The accent of a coming Foot -
The opening of a Door -

-

Perhaps they do not go so far
As we who stay, suppose -
Perhaps come closer, for the lapse
Of their corporeal clothes -

It may be know so certainly
How short we have to fear
That comprehension antedates
And estimates us there -

Both by Emily Dickinson.  This next one is from a book I have called "The Moonlit Pond," classical Korean poems written in Chinese, and translated into English:

Upon the thick ice of midwinter
Let us spread the frosted bamboo leaves
Though I freeze to death with you,
I wish the cock would never crow.

Somehow it always brings to mind the German poem, "Stell' auf den Tisch die duftenden Reseden..."

And one can't leave out this perennial favorite (only an excerpt):

In a garden shady this holy lady
With reverent cadence and subtle psalm,
Like a black swan as death came on
Poured forth her song in perfect calm:
And by ocean's margin this innocent virgin
Constructed an organ to enlarge her prayer,
And notes tremendous from her great engine
Thundered out on the Roman air.

!

Walter Ramsey

[pianistimo]

prarie home companion.  funny you mentioned that one, le poete, as i happen to have lake woebegon days right before me. 

is it:

because God made the stars to shine,
because God made the ivy twine,
because God made the sky so blue.
because God made you, that's why i love you.

or housemans:
lovliest of trees, the cherry now
is hung with bloom along the bough.
it stands among the woodland ride,
wearing white for eastertide.
now, of my three-score years and ten,
twenty will not come again...

or 'this thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong.
to love that well which thou must leave er long.'

[pianistimo]

the chapter about winter from garrison keeler's 'lake wobegon days':

'when i was fifteen, a girl i wrote three poems for invited me to x-mas dinner so her parents could see that i wasn't as bad as many people said, and after a big meatball supper and a long thoughtful period between her dad and me as she and her mom cleared the dishes when he asked me what i intended to do with myself, we went to the ten o'clock candlelight service at lake wobegon lutheran.  my mind wasn't on christmas.  i was thinking about her.  she had never seen the poems because they were too personal, so she didn't know how much i loved her.

the lights went out, and the children's choir began its slow march up the aisle, holding candles and singing home on the prarie (in norwegian) - the song, the smell of pine boughs, the darkness, relased the tears they evidently had held back for a very long time.  her mother wept, her father who had given me stony looks for hours bent down and put his face in his hands, her lovely self drew out a hanky and held it to her eyes, and i too tried to cry--i wanted to cry right along with her and maybe slip my arm around her shoulders --and i couldn't.  i took out my handkerchief, thinking it would get me started, and blew my nose, but there was nothing there.

i only cried later, after i walked her home.  we stood on her steps, she opened the door, i leaned toward her for one kiss, and she turned and said, 'i hate to say this but you are one of the coldest people i ever met.'  i cried at home, in bed, in the dark...'

[pianowolfi]

This is a poem of one of my favorite poets, Christian Morgenstern, the only one I could find in English so far:


The Destiny of Love

Two roses
torn up
by the passing storm


now whirl
together
along the way,
their petals tossed about
in the breeze.


Without a home,
they dance
along the path of love,
shining only
for each other...


Until the evening
when the great
smiling street sweeper
whisks them up into his dustpan.

 

Actually I had another one in mind, if I find a translation I will post it.

[lichristine]

Cut
Lady Lazarus
Daddy
The Moon And The Yew Tree
Edge
Dulce Et Decorum Est

"When I Put My Hands On Your Body"
David Wojnarowicz

"When I put my hands on your body on your flesh I feel the history of that body. Not just the beginning of its forming in that distant lake but all the way beyond its ending. I feel the warmth and texture and simultaneously I see the flesh unwrap from the layers of fat and disappear. I see the fat disappear from the muscle. I see the muscle disappearing from around the organs and detaching itself from the bones. I see the organs gradually fade into transparency leaving a gloaming skeleton gleaming like ivory that slowly revolves until it becomes dust. I am consumed in the sense of your weight the way your flesh occupies momentary space the fullness of it beneath my palms. I am amazed at how perfectly your body fits to the curves of my hands. If I could attach our blood vessels so we could become each other I would. If I could attach our blood vessels in order to anchor you to the earth to this present time to me I would. If I could open up your body and slip inside your skin and look out your eyes and forever have my lips fused with yours I would. It makes me weep to feel the history of your flesh beneath my hands in a time of so much loss. It makes me weep to feel the movement of your flesh beneath my palms as you twist and turn over to one side to create a series of gestures to reach up around my neck to draw me nearer. All these memories will be lost in time like tears in the rain." - David Wojnarowicz  

[le_poete_mourant]

O - I was hoping people woulda ctually type out their favorite poems!  I guess I will have to search for these myself. 

William Carlos Williams

Asphodel, That Greeny Flower

Of asphodel, that greeny flower,
      like a buttercup
            upon its branching stem-
save that it's green and wooden-
      I come, my sweet,
            to sing to you.
We lived long together
      a life filled,
            if you will,
with flowers.  So that
      I was cheered
            when I came first to know
that there were flowers also
      in hell.
            Today
I'm filled with the fading memory of those flowers
      that we both loved,
            even to this poor
colorless thing-
      I saw it
            when I was a child-
little prized among the living
      but the dead see,
            asking among themselves:
What do I remember
      that was shaped
            as this thing is shaped?
while our eyes fill
      with tears.
            Of love, abiding love
it will be telling
      though too weak a wash of crimson
            colors it
to make it wholly credible.
      There is something
            something urgent
I have to say to you
      and you alone
            but it must wait
while I drink in
      the joy of your approach,
            perhaps for the last time.
And so
      with fear in my heart
            I drag it out
and keep on talking
      for I dare not stop.
            Listen while I talk on
against time.
      It will not be
            for long.
I have forgot
      and yet I see clearly enough
            something
central to the sky
      which ranges round it.
            An odor
springs from it!
      A sweetest odor!
            Honeysuckle!  And now
there comes the buzzing of a bee!
      and a whole flood
            of sister memories!
Only give me time,
      time to recall them
            before I shall speak out.
Give me time,
      time.
When I was a boy
      I kept a book
            to which, from time
to time,
      I added pressed flowers
            until, after a time,
I had a good collection.
      The asphodel,
            forebodingly,
among them.
      I bring you,
            reawakened,
a memory of those flowers.
      They were sweet
            when I pressed them
and retained
      something of their sweetness
            a long time.
It is a curious odor,
      a moral odor,
            that brings me
near to you.
      The color
            was the first to go.
There had come to me
      a challenge,
            your dear self,
mortal as I was,
      the lily's throat
            to the hummingbird!
Endless wealth,
      I thought,
            held out its arms to me.
A thousand tropics
      in an apple blossom.
            The generous earth itself
gave us lief.
      The whole world
            became my garden!
But the sea
      which no one tends
            is also a garden
when the sun strikes it
      and the waves
            are wakened.
I have seen it
      and so have you
            when it puts all flowers
to shame.
      Too, there are the starfish
            stiffened by the sun
and other sea wrack
      and weeds.  We knew that
            along with the rest of it
for we were born by the sea,
      knew its rose hedges
            to the very water's brink.
There the pink mallow grows
      and in their season
            strawberries
and there, later,
      we went to gather
            the wild plum.
I cannot say
      that I have gone to hell
            for your love
but often
      found myself there
            in your pursuit.
I do not like it
      and wanted to be
            in heaven.  Hear me out.
Do not turn away.
I have learned much in my life
      from books
            and out of them
about love.
      Death

            is not the end of it.
There is a hierarchy
      which can be attained,
            I think,
in its service.
      Its guerdon
            is a fairy flower;
a cat of twenty lives.
      If no one came to try it
            the world
would be the loser.
      It has been
            for you and me
as one who watches a storm
      come in over the water.
            We have stood
from year to year
      before the spectacle of our lives
            with joined hands.
The storm unfolds.
      Lightning
            plays about the edges of the clouds.
The sky to the north
      is placid,
            blue in the afterglow
as the storm piles up.
      It is a flower
            that will soon reach
the apex of its bloom.
      We danced,
            in our minds,
and read a book together.
      You remember?
            It was a serious book.
And so books
      entered our lives.
The sea!  The sea!
      Always
            when I think of the sea
there comes to mind
      the Iliad
            and Helen's public fault
that bred it.
      Were it not for that
            there would have been
no poem but the world
      if we had remembered,
            those crimson petals
spilled among the stones,
      would have called it simply
            murder.
The sexual orchid that bloomed then
      sending so many
            disinterested
men to their graves
      has left its memory
            to a race of fools
or heroes
      if silence is a virtue.
            The sea alone
with its multiplicity
      holds any hope.
            The storm
has proven abortive
      but we remain
            after the thoughts it roused
to
      re-cement our lives.
            It is the mind
the mind
      that must be cured
            short of death's
intervention,
      and the will becomes again
            a garden.  The poem
is complex and the place made
      in our lives
            for the poem.
Silence can be complex too,
      but you do not get far
            with silence.
Begin again.
      It is like Homer's
            catalogue of ships:
it fills up the time.
      I speak in figures,
            well enough, the dresses
you wear are figures also,
      we could not meet
            otherwise.  When I speak
of flowers
      it is to recall
            that at one time
we were young.
      All women are not Helen,
            I know that,
but have Helen in their hearts.
      My sweet,
            you have it also, therefore
I love you
      and could not love you otherwise.
            Imagine you saw
a field made up of women
      all silver-white.
            What should you do
but love them?
      The storm bursts
            or fades!  it is not
the end of the world.
      Love is something else,
            or so I thought it,
a garden which expands,
      though I knew you as a woman
            and never thought otherwise,
until the whole sea
      has been taken up
            and all its gardens.
It was the love of love,
      the love that swallows up all else,
            a grateful love,
a love of nature, of people,
      of animals,
            a love engendering
gentleness and goodness
      that moved me
            and that I saw in you.
I should have known,
      though I did not,
            that the lily-of-the-valley
is a flower makes many ill
      who whiff it.
            We had our children,
rivals in the general onslaught.
      I put them aside
            though I cared for them.
as well as any man
      could care for his children
            according to my lights.
You understand
      I had to meet you
            after the event
and have still to meet you.
      Love
            to which you too shall bow
along with me-
      a flower
            a weakest flower
shall be our trust
      and not because
            we are too feeble
to do otherwise
      but because
            at the height of my power
I risked what I had to do,
      therefore to prove
            that we love each other
while my very bones sweated
      that I could not cry to you
            in the act.
Of asphodel, that greeny flower,
      I come, my sweet,
            to sing to you!
My heart rouses
      thinking to bring you news
            of something
that concerns you
      and concerns many men.  Look at
            what passes for the new.
You will not find it there but in
      despised poems.
            It is difficult
to get the news from poems
      yet men die miserably every day
            for lack
of what is found there.
      Hear me out
            for I too am concerned
and every man
      who wants to die at peace in his bed
            besides.

I just love these lines:
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
      yet men die miserably every day
            for lack
of what is found there.

It's really such a beautiful poem, filled with that imagery of flowers & nature, the idea of a dying man saying farewell to his wife.  And that extended metaphor of asphodel, the flower of the dead!  It's wonderful, truly. 

[rc]

I occassionally dabble around in poetry, I finally got a taste for it, but I'm definitely a newbie.

I liked Destiny of Love, how the street sweeper was great and smiling

Here's a short one by Robert Richardson that Mark Twain adapted to put on his daughters tomb:

Warm summer sun shine kindly here;
Warm southern wind blow softly here;
Green sod above lie light, lie light-
Goodnight, dear heart, goodnight, goodnight.

William Blake (1757-1827) - The Garden of Love:

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen;
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut
And "Thou shalt not," writ over the door;
So I turned to the Garden of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be;
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires.