Favorite Poems?

[Oysters Rockefeller]

I'm thinkingabout starting a small blog of 100 or so poems for people who don't like poetry. Until recently all I hadn't liked it either, and I figure this might help a few people become a little more literate or...something.

So far I've got (among a scarce few others):

Departure- Sylvia Plath
When I Have Fears I may Cease to Be- John Keats
Thomas Hardy- Channel Firing
Oh, Blush Not So- John Keats
Brilliance- Mark Doty

[Placid Dingo]

I'll get booed off stage for this but I love 'the bells' by Edgar Allen Poe.

There's others but I can't name any of them.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Not going to name poems, but some of my favorites are Neruda, Angelou, Silko, and Sexton.

[Cain]

Sappho, Catullus, Alcaeus of Mytilene.

[Placid Dingo]

I'm very partial to nonsense; Ogden Nash does that well.

John Wilmot does dirty, gratuitous poetry very well.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

Do rap lyrics count? I mean good ones, like Dessa's The Crow.

[Oysters Rockefeller]

Do rap lyrics count? I mean good ones, like Dessa's The Crow.

I was actually thinking about this earlier, but in reference to Atmosphere's "Saves the Day."

I think all (good) music is poetry, but I'm not sure I should include lyrics (or else I should be ludicrously selective). The concern is that it would just end up with me writing about music. Cool song, though.

ETA: if anyone was wondering... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZwP7H2Fxn4

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

Do rap lyrics count? I mean good ones, like Dessa's The Crow.

I was actually thinking about this earlier, but in reference to Atmosphere's "Saves the Day."

I think all (good) music is poetry, but I'm not sure I should include lyrics (or else I should be ludicrously selective). The concern is that it would just end up with me writing about music. Cool song, though.

ETA: if anyone was wondering... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZwP7H2Fxn4

Yeah, I'd end up all about the tunes too. And it would be Dessa, Scroobius Pip, Immortal Technique, Ghost Poet, and Atmosphere.

I used to have a bunch of poems memorized but they were gradually replaced by commercial jingles and catchphrases. I only remember Emily Dickenson's Because I Could Not Stop For Death and Shakespeare's Sonnet 130. Oh, and Puck's last speech from A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Gotta read some more. Used to have some Robert Frost in there that I was fond of.

[Doktor Howl]

I'm thinkingabout starting a small blog of 100 or so poems for people who don't like poetry. Until recently all I hadn't liked it either, and I figure this might help a few people become a little more literate or...something.

So far I've got (among a scarce few others):

Departure- Sylvia Plath
When I Have Fears I may Cease to Be- John Keats
Thomas Hardy- Channel Firing
Oh, Blush Not So- John Keats
Brilliance- Mark Doty

The Widow Gave The Party - Rudyard Kipling
MacDonough's Song - Rudyard Kipling
Colossus - Percy Shelley
Litany for Dictatorships - Stephen Vincent Benet
Anything by James McGonnagal.

[Pope Pixie Pickle]

My favourites are The Wasteland- T.S Eliot,  Eve of St Agnes, John Keats, the one by Robert Frost that starts "nature's first green is gold", Phillip Larkin- This Be The Verse.

The first 2 aren't really beginners poetry, the Wasteland is somewhat impenetrable and a little intimidating for some, but defined Modernist poetry, so is kind of important. The Eve of St Agnes is beautifully sensual, and maybe less intimidating, but it's length may put some off, more fool them! (I've had a hard on for Keats since I was 17). The last two I mentioned are short poems, so for people who don't usually read poetry they are more accessible.

[Oysters Rockefeller]

I'm thinkingabout starting a small blog of 100 or so poems for people who don't like poetry. Until recently all I hadn't liked it either, and I figure this might help a few people become a little more literate or...something.

So far I've got (among a scarce few others):

Departure- Sylvia Plath
When I Have Fears I may Cease to Be- John Keats
Thomas Hardy- Channel Firing
Oh, Blush Not So- John Keats
Brilliance- Mark Doty

The Widow Gave The Party - Rudyard Kipling
MacDonough's Song - Rudyard Kipling
Colossus - Percy Shelley
Litany for Dictatorships - Stephen Vincent Benet
Anything by James McGonnagal.

Percy Shelley is such a boss. Song-To the Men of England is going in for sure. Haven't read colossus yet.

[Doktor Howl]

I'm thinkingabout starting a small blog of 100 or so poems for people who don't like poetry. Until recently all I hadn't liked it either, and I figure this might help a few people become a little more literate or...something.

So far I've got (among a scarce few others):

Departure- Sylvia Plath
When I Have Fears I may Cease to Be- John Keats
Thomas Hardy- Channel Firing
Oh, Blush Not So- John Keats
Brilliance- Mark Doty

The Widow Gave The Party - Rudyard Kipling
MacDonough's Song - Rudyard Kipling
Colossus - Percy Shelley
Litany for Dictatorships - Stephen Vincent Benet
Anything by James McGonnagal.

Percy Shelley is such a boss. Song-To the Men of England is going in for sure. Haven't read colossus yet.

That's his most famous poem.  I thought everyone had read it.

Edit:  FUCK.  I meant to say Ozymandius

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert...Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

[Oysters Rockefeller]

Oh, yeah. Ozymandius is good times.

[Doktor Howl]

Oh, yeah. Ozymandius is good times.

That was the result of a contest he had with another poet, on the idea of failure.

Interesting note:  The poem itself was a failure.  Ozymandius was the Greek name for Ramses II, who has left the most surviving monuments, etc, of all the pharoahs.

The other poet was named Horace Smith.  His version of Ozymandius read:

IN Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
      Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
      The only shadow that the Desert knows:—
    "I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
      "The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
    "The wonders of my hand."— The City's gone,—
      Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
    The site of this forgotten Babylon.

    We wonder,—and some Hunter may express
    Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
      Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
    He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
      What powerful but unrecorded race
      Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

[Oysters Rockefeller]

That's really interesting, and equally hilarious. Good things seem to come out of competitions with writers. Frankenstein (allegedly), Hemmingway's six word story, Ozymandias.

I imagine there are more examples, I just don't know any.