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
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.
Not going to name poems, but some of my favorites are Neruda, Angelou, Silko, and Sexton.
Sappho, Catullus, Alcaeus of Mytilene.
I'm very partial to nonsense; Ogden Nash does that well.
John Wilmot does dirty, gratuitous poetry very well.
Do rap lyrics count? I mean good ones, like Dessa's The Crow (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djSlUIrAnC4).
Quote from: Cardinal Pizza Deliverance. on April 02, 2012, 05:08:36 AM
Do rap lyrics count? I mean good ones, like Dessa's The Crow (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djSlUIrAnC4).
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 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZwP7H2Fxn4)
Quote from: Oysters Rockefeller on April 02, 2012, 05:13:39 AM
Quote from: Cardinal Pizza Deliverance. on April 02, 2012, 05:08:36 AM
Do rap lyrics count? I mean good ones, like Dessa's The Crow (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djSlUIrAnC4).
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 (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 (http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/stop.html) and Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3GSwrb9_NQ). Oh, and Puck's last speech from A Midsummer Night's Dream (http://shakespeare-navigators.com/dream/T.5.1.html#423).
Gotta read some more. Used to have some Robert Frost in there that I was fond of.
Quote from: Oysters Rockefeller on April 01, 2012, 03:15:16 PM
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.
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.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 02, 2012, 02:21:05 PM
Quote from: Oysters Rockefeller on April 01, 2012, 03:15:16 PM
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.
Quote from: Oysters Rockefeller on April 02, 2012, 07:03:17 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 02, 2012, 02:21:05 PM
Quote from: Oysters Rockefeller on April 01, 2012, 03:15:16 PM
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
OzymandiusI 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."
Oh, yeah. Ozymandius is good times.
Quote from: Oysters Rockefeller on April 02, 2012, 07:42:29 PM
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.
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.
Quote from: Oysters Rockefeller on April 02, 2012, 08:01:17 PM
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.
Frankenstien was based on a nightmare Mary Shelley had.
It is also the very first science fiction novel.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 02, 2012, 08:03:40 PM
Quote from: Oysters Rockefeller on April 02, 2012, 08:01:17 PM
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.
Frankenstien was based on a nightmare Mary Shelley had.
It is also the very first science fiction novel.
Well, yeah. The story, as far as I know, is that Percy, Mary, Byron, and some other shmuck were competeing to see who could write the best horror story. Mary couldn't think of what she wanted to write until she had a dream and ended up (supposedly) writing the whole thing in one night.
Quote from: Oysters Rockefeller on April 02, 2012, 08:20:05 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 02, 2012, 08:03:40 PM
Quote from: Oysters Rockefeller on April 02, 2012, 08:01:17 PM
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.
Frankenstien was based on a nightmare Mary Shelley had.
It is also the very first science fiction novel.
Well, yeah. The story, as far as I know, is that Percy, Mary, Byron, and some other shmuck were competeing to see who could write the best horror story. Mary couldn't think of what she wanted to write until she had a dream and ended up (supposedly) writing the whole thing in one night.
Balls. The outline, maybe.
It was apparently inspired by the works of Galvani, whom she had been reading. That led her to speculate what might be possible with the new technology of the time, electricity...and what effects it would have on society.
And that's the best definition of science fiction I've heard yet.
Sonnet 18
Anything by Vinicius de Moraes
"Not waving but drowning" Stevie Smith
Its short
eta so is "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas
Short but deep, maybe a good intro for people who aren't really into pomes.
Gunga Din by Rudyard Kipling. I love the ending lines of it.
"Though I've belted you and flayed you,
By the livin' Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!"
This is technically a song*, but I'm partial to The Ball of Kirriemuir
(http://www.turoks.net/Bordello/TheBallOfKirriemuir.php (http://www.turoks.net/Bordello/TheBallOfKirriemuir.php))
*Personally though, I encountered the lyrics and came to love it as a poem before I ever heard it actually performed and I think that others may as well.
Quote from: ThatGreenGentleman on May 20, 2012, 04:57:43 AM
Gunga Din by Rudyard Kipling. I love the ending lines of it.
"Though I've belted you and flayed you,
By the livin' Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!"
Now read
Cleared.