Favorite Poem/Poet

My favourite poem...probably Billy Collins' 'Litany'. Snarky and sweet at once.

I'd say Seamus Heaney is one of my favourites overall, and I was privileged to be able to see him read once! Margaret Atwood's poems are also very good, and I've read loads of other individual poems that I've loved but can't recall authors.

i really like Sylvia Plath, Allen Ginsberg, e.e. cummings. Federico García Lorca is wonderful, too!

I've never read any of Thomas Hardy's poetry. Which ones would you rec?

'The Convergence of the Twain' is a good Hardy poem, at least in my opinion, it's about the sinking of the Titanic and explores the relationship between nature and culture and criticizes human's arrogance for believing they could tame nature

'The Haunter' explores the relationship with his dead wife. Thomas Hardy and Emma Hardy had quite a difficult marriage and it was only after she died that he realized how much he loved her. After her death he wrote so many poems exploring his relationship with her.

'The Darkling Thrush' is one of Hardy's better known poems. It is set at the turn of the century and is a reflection on that. It is fairly pessimistic but there is potential optimism in it depending on how you understand the thrush.

Some really great poem recommendation here so far. I'm hoping to read all of them when I get some time. They've been added to my ever growing 'to-read' list!

I could never choose just one, that would be like trying to choose a favourite song...

I keep a notebook full of quotes and extracts and poems, mainly to leave a trace of what I have read and liked - sometimes we read these little sentences, fall in love with them, and then they just get closed back up inside the book and absorbed into the shelf with all the other beautifully crafted sentences, and we forget which ones we really liked or where they are.

Here are a few from there:

Love in the Asylum - Dylan Thomas
Maiden Name - Peter Larkin
Beautiful Cosmos - Ivor Cutler
The Windhover - Gerard Manly Hopkins
You - Dennis Driscoll
Open and Closed Space - Thomas Transtromer

'The earth is an old canvas painted over many times...' - Daniel Johnston

'One must learn to have patience with everything unsolved in one's heart and try to love the questions themselves' - Rainer M. Rilke

There's loads of Whitman, Ginsberg, Tom Waits lyrics, Spike Milligan, Stephen Wright jokes (which are perfect and gorgeous, and I managed to sneak this one into a Post-Structuralism essay: 'I dropped spot remover on my dog, and now he's gone...), and extracts from textbooks, manifestos, Bruno Schulz' stories. If you've never read any Schulz, please do, he was a Surrealist and had an amazing way with imagery. I might even type an extract up later this afternoon to share with you, it's just gorgeous stuff.

These two poems I have loved for a very long time: the second one was written by my Pa, and it used to be on the bottom of the receipts at the coffeeshop I used to run. I think I have a handwritten copy in my bag still, thinking about it. The first one really quickly sums up everything I want to study, and got sneaked into my Inception essay which I was quite pleased to get away with:

Dreams are cages
within which we observe
the cages without

- William Wantling

The Hostess

Come in
she said
sit down
and be
easy, take
the world
from your
shoulders, put
it down
by the
bed with
the other
planets people
have left

- Mart Ward

Thanks for starting this thread Sophie, it's nice to share stuff like this.

Beth, can we have some of your poems? Or shall we start a new thread for everyone to share things they have written?

Sophie, just read The Haunter--I'd only read Tess, when it came to Hardy, so that poem was fantastic.

Riv, that poem's also fantastic, so evocative. I envy people who can do that.

Beth--it was eight years ago now (time passing so much oh my god) so names haven't stuck with me as well as I'd wished, though I do recall reading several pieces by Bobi Jones. I know we read a lot of modern Welsh language poets in translation; we were quite focused on nationalist poetry and the reclamation of writing in Welsh.

On a slight tangent, I read The Mabinogion ages back, then again in original Welsh for a class I took as an undergraduate in Medieval Welsh translation.

^ That's lovely and very thought provoking.

What does anyone here think about haikus? (i.e the 3 line/17 syllable poem)

A very famous one is by Matsuo Basho (the translation varies):


I always find it so amazing how the writers of these haikus can convey so much in so few words. It really makes me think about the ways and the quantity in which we use our language to communicate.

this thread is relevant to our interests:

www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1akoqj/what_is_your_favorite_poem_of_all_time/