Poetry Forum

Hello!!

Do you have favourite poems? I do. To many to narrow it down to just one all time fav. What ones do you like the most?

Some of my favs are:

1) The Raven, by Edgar Allan Poe
2) Cow by Selima Hill
3) Oh Tell Me The Truth About Love by W.H. Auden.
4) Warning by Jenny Joseph.


Wonder what that says about me? lol

Impossible really but here are a few:

1. Swifts by Ted Hughes
2. The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy
3. Dead Man Walking by Thomas Hardy
4. At Castle Botterel by Thomas Hardy
5. The Sea and the Skylark by GM Hopkins
6. Triple Time by Philip Larkin
7. To the Virgins by Robert Herrick
8. To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell
9. A Marriage by RS Thomas
10. On the Farm by RS Thomas

Could go on and on

Cheers
Cam

Hi Cam,

Quite a few favs there. I'll have to take a look at them. Have you ever read any of those I mentioned?

Rach

Here are a few:

The Way Through the Woods by Kipling

Shakespeare's Sonnet 127

Kubla Kahn by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

one of: when you are old, yeats.

Here's a few:

I Say I Say I Say - Simon Armitage
Full moon and little Frieda - Ted Hughes
You're - Sylvia Plath
The Flight - Theodore Roethke
The Waking - Theodore Roethke
Days - Philip Larkin
Poetry of departures - Philip Larkin
There's a certain slant of light - Emily Dickinson
Summer with Monika - Roger McGough
Follower - Seamus Heaney
Mid-Term Break - Seamus Heaney

Living by Denise Levertov

The fire in leaf and grass
so green it seems
each summer the last summer.

The wind blowing, the leaves
shivering in the sun,
each day the last day.

A red salamander
so cold and so
easy to catch, dreamily

moves his delicate feet
and long tail. I hold
my hand open for him to go.

Each minute the last minute.

at the risk of sounding retro or a heretic
"The Waste Land" -T.S. Eliot
I can't think of anything that comes close, except some of his later stuff.
Damn, I must escape from the shadow

My favourite poems are

The Balled Of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde
The Rhyme Of The Ancient Mariner by S.T. Coleridge

They were read to me as a child and i just liked hearing the voice of someone reading to me, i never cared who wrote them or who they were about. But after writing many poems i got poets for Birthdays and Christmas and i found them again and like a childhood song, there was something about it now and something of my childhood brought back. They are my favourite poets but that does not mean i understand all of what they write but maybe i am not supposed to.

One of my favourite poems is The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, which in many ways is a Song of Praise to Wine and drowning your sorrows.
But they say that truth is often spoken when drunk:

'Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days
Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:
Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.
......
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on; nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.


Possibly very out of fashion, and not to everyone's taste, but it certainly paints a picture and contains more than a grain of truth.

Sue

Into her lying down head-dylan thomas

Easy...

Somewhere I have never travelled by e.e.cummings

On The Booze by John Hegley makes me laugh.

Also, I know it's a lyric to a song but I love the words of Hey, that's no way to say goodbye by Leonard Cohen.

/

Harold Pinter poems.

Primo Levi poems.

I don't know if someone can ever have one unchanging "favorite" poem... but here are a few that stood out for me:

Days - Philip Larkin
The Ballad of Reading Gaol - Oscar Wilde
Adlestrop - Edward Thomas
Pied Beauty - G.M.Hopkins
Hawk Roosting - Ted Hughes
The Terrible Path - Brian Patten
The Highwayman - Alfred Noyes

The Emperor of Ice-Cream, by Wallace Stevens
To His Coy Mistress, by Andrew Marvell
The Tyger, by William Blake
The Chimney Sweeper, by William Blake
Apprehensions, by Sylvia Plath
Dover Beach, by Matthew Arnold
My Last Duchess, by Robert Browning
Kubla Khan, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge