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Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

• webyacusa 12y ago
  Leon DeGreiff http://www.banrepcultural.org/blaavirtual/literatura/antolo/antol26.htm http://www.banrepcultural.org/blaavirtual/literatura/antolo/...
• scmoore 12y ago
  It's been a long time since my last college English class, but I enjoyed Derek Walcott: "...I loved them, my children, my wife, my home; I loved them as poets love the poetry that kills them, as drowned sailors the sea." http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177932 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177932 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Walcott http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Walcott
  • bcostlow 12y ago
    A fellow Walcott fan! "The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other's welcome..."
• memonkey 12y ago
  Dylan Thomas My tears are like the quiet drift Of petals from some magic rose; And all my grief flows from the rift Of unremembered skies and snows. I think, that if I touched the earth, It would crumble; It is so sad and beautiful, So tremulously like a dream. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylan_Thomas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylan_Thomas http://www.poemhunter.com/dylan-thomas/ http://www.poemhunter.com/dylan-thomas/
  • raphaelss 12y ago
    Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on that sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
• 0xdeadbeefbabe 12y ago
  Henry James made it into the original (for me) Hack FAQ https://w2.eff.org/Net_culture/Hackers/hacking.faq https://w2.eff.org/Net_culture/Hackers/hacking.faq But also Neruda: Of the many men whom I am, whom we are, I cannot settle on a single one. They are lost to me under the cover of clothing They have departed for another city. When everything seems to be set to show me off as a man of intelligence, the fool I keep concealed on my person takes over my talk and occupies my mouth.
  • peri 12y ago
    Is this the same (American) Henry James that I think of as a novelist?
    • 0xdeadbeefbabe 12y ago
      This one wrote the middle years http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_James http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_James where you can find: We work in the dark We do what we can We give what we have Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task The rest is the madness of art.
      • peri 12y ago
        Ah, we were thinking of the same one. It's worth noting that his brother, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James , wrote some of the most lyrical philosophy and psychology works of the late 19th century.
• cafard 12y ago
  As measured by lines remembered, I suppose that Yeats has to top the list. In no particular other order, Eliot, Ransom, Wyatt, Hardy, J.V. Cunningham, Bunting.
• aareet 12y ago
  Omar Khayyam “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.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Khayy%C3%A1m https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Khayy%C3%A1m -- Thomas Gray Presumptuous Maid! with looks intent Again she stretch'd, again she bent, Nor knew the gulph between; (Malignant Fate sat by, and smil'd.) The slippery verge her feet beguil'd; She tumbled headlong in. http://www.potw.org/archive/potw90.html http://www.potw.org/archive/potw90.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Gray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Gray
  • ridiculous_fish 12y ago
    Omar Khayyam is wonderful. I have the first stanza of the Rubaiyat painted and framed in khatam style. This quatrain makes me think Khayyam was a HN reader: Myself when young did eagerly frequent Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument About it and about: but evermore Came out by the same door where in I went.
• throwaway43 12y ago
  Neruda is my favourite. I want to do to you , what the spring does to the cherry trees. Here's another one Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. How he is able construct such powerful verse out of simple words and concepts always blows me away. Though it looks easy I've never seen a good imitation of his style. Then there's this poem by Phillip Larkin that I like. They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another’s throats. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don’t have any kids yourself. Shakespeare's sonnets are good. Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O no; it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests, and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved. Classical poetry is just really hardcore when you consider how hard it is to write within the constraints of rhyme , meter and the chosen form. It's definitely in the hacker spirit of doing things like the JS1K contest , or maybe crazy assembly optimised demos. Also checkout Charles Bukowski and Coleridge. Genius.com is a wonderful way to read poetry.
  • 0xdeadbeefbabe 12y ago
    Hurray, I've been looking for that Larkin poem since college.
  • ta82828 12y ago
    Neruda + Pop band: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWnM45HLe_A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWnM45HLe_A
    • tapichu 12y ago
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• cgtyoder 12y ago
  Please don't turn HN into Quora.
• harperlee 12y ago
  Jorge Luis Borges Edgar Allan Poe Jorge Manrique. This might be the less known so: http://users.ipfw.edu/jehle/POESIA/COPLASEN.HTM http://users.ipfw.edu/jehle/POESIA/COPLASEN.HTM It doesn't sound the same in english, though :( And I can only add another vote for Neruda!
  • macu 12y ago
    Richard Wilbur has done exquisite translations, like this one... Everness, Jorge Luis Borges One thing does not exist: Oblivion. God saves the metal and he saves the dross, And his prophetic memory guards from loss The moons to come, and those of evenings gone. Everything is: the shadows in the glass Which, in between the day’s two twilights, you Have scattered by the thousands, or shall strew Henceforward in the mirrors that you pass. And everything is part of that diverse Crystalline memory, the universe; Whoever through its endless mazes wanders Hears door on door click shut behind his stride, And only from the sunset’s farther side Shall view at last the Archetypes and the Splendors.
• rboyd 12y ago
  “Come to the edge," he said. "We can't, we're afraid!" they responded. "Come to the edge," he said. "We can't, We will fall!" they responded. "Come to the edge," he said. And so they came. And he pushed them. And they flew.” ― Guillaume Apollinaire close second: I am Ebenezer Bleezer, I run BLEEZER’S ICE CREAM STORE, there are flavors in my freezer you have never seen before, twenty-eight divine creations too delicious to resist, why not do yourself a favor, try the flavors on my list: COCOA MOCHA MACARONI TAPIOCA SMOKED BALONEY CHECKERBERRY CHEDDAR CHEW CHICKEN CHERRY HONEYDEW TUTTI-FRUTTI STEWED TOMATO TUNA TACO BAKED POTATO LOBSTER LITCHI LIMA BEAN MOZZARELLA MANGOSTEEN ALMOND HAM MERINGUE SALAMI YAM ANCHOVY PRUNE PASTRAMI SASSAFRAS SOUVLAKI HASH SUKIYAKI SUCCOTASH BUTTER BRICKLE PEPPER PICKLE POMEGRANATE PUMPERNICKEL PEACH PIMENTO PIZZA PLUM PEANUT PUMPKIN BUBBLEGUM BROCCOLI BANANA BLUSTER CHOCOLATE CHOP SUEY CLUSTER AVOCADO BRUSSELS SPROUT PERIWINKLE SAUERKRAUT COTTON CANDY CARROT CUSTARD CAULIFLOWER COLA MUSTARD ONION DUMPLING DOUBLE DIP TURNIP TRUFFLE TRIPLE FLIP GARLIC GUMBO GRAVY GUAVA LENTIL LEMON LIVER LAVA ORANGE OLIVE BAGEL BEET WATERMELON WAFFLE WHEAT I am Ebenezer Bleezer, I run BLEEZER’S ICE CREAM STORE, taste a flavor from my freezer, you will surely ask for more. -- Jack Prelutsky
  • anilgulecha 12y ago
    Natalie merchant has a wonderful song using the second poem as the lyrics. Enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrJHrc-ABp4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrJHrc-ABp4
  • deleted 12y ago
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    • kshay 12y ago
      This is not better.
  • gws 12y ago
    it's not Apollinaire, it's Christopher Logue, an English poet
• trequartista 12y ago
  Rabindranath Tagore: Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake
• cousin_it 12y ago
  Pushkin, Lermontov, Nekrasov... Yeah, I'm Russian :-p Among English poems, I rather like this one by Laurie Lee: A golden fish like a pint of wine Rolls the sea undergreen, Glassily balanced on the tide Only the skin between. Fish and water lean together, Separate and one, Till a fatal flash of the instant sun Lazily corkscrews down. Did fish and water drink each other? The reed leans there alone; As we, who once drank each other's breath, Have emptied the air, and gone. And of course W.H. Auden: ...I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.
  • fallinghawks 12y ago
    I'm not Russian and I like Lermontov :)
    • realitygrill 12y ago
      Same, but I'm more partial to Pushkin :)
      • anonymfus 12y ago
        https://youtu.be/FH73RSxaqgU?t=115 https://youtu.be/FH73RSxaqgU?t=115
        • anonymfus 12y ago
          This was a scene from the movie "Бакенбарды" ("Backenbardy", literary "sideburns") where Pushkin cultists encounter Lermontov fanboys. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099097/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099097/
  • macho_pikachu 12y ago
    What Auden couldn't find On hornbooks or in verses Is whether it is our condition Only stirring with the curses
  • shirman 12y ago
• rdtsc 12y ago
  I like George Bacovia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bacovia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bacovia) Here is his probably most known one: Plumb Dormeau adanc sicriele de plumb, Si flori de plumb si funerar vesmant - Stam singur in cavou ... si era vant ... Si scartaiau coroanele de plumb. Dormea intors amorul meu de plumb Pe flori de plumb, si-am inceput sa-l strig - Stam singur langa mort ... si era frig ... Si-i atarnau aripile de plumb. (Translation from: http://www.aboutromania.com/bacovia1.html http://www.aboutromania.com/bacovia1.html) Lead The coffins of lead were lying sound asleep, And the lead flowers and the funeral clothes - I stood alone in the vault ... and there was wind ... And the wreaths of lead creaked. Upturned my lead beloved lay asleep On the lead flower ... and I began to call - I stood alone by the corpse ... and it was cold ... And the wings of lead drooped. Translating poems is pretty hard. That was an ok translation. It doesn't quite sound quite right.
  • harperlee 12y ago
    Regarding poetry translation (and a lot more), there is this book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Ton_beau_de_Marot By Douglas Hofstadter, that I quite like and recommend!
    • peri 12y ago
      This is (arguably) a better book than GEB ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel,_Escher,_Bach http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel,_Escher,_Bach ) for the literature-minded folks out there. I can't recommend it enough.
• a5seo 12y ago
  Billy Collins http://www.poemhunter.com/billy-collins/ http://www.poemhunter.com/billy-collins/
  • jordanjustice 12y ago
    Yes! Also a fan of Mary Oliver.
  • atourgates 12y ago
    I like him in-person even more than on the page. A couple recordings: Where Dogs Come From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOvbl3ZPPV4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOvbl3ZPPV4 A reading from Prairie Home Companion in February, dealing with cats: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTxpQCY7df8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTxpQCY7df8 If you get a chance tosee him live, don't miss it. He's delightful.
• pvaldes 12y ago
  cats make great poets
  • rustbeltower 12y ago
    Glad people still read poetry! Surprised no one's mentioned Byron yet: Lo! where the Giant on the mountain stands, His blood-red tresses deep'ning in the sun, With death-shot glowing in his fiery hands, And eye that scorcheth all it glares upon; Restless it rolls, now fixed, and now anon Flashing a far,—and at his iron feet Destruction cowers to mark what deeds are done. For on this morn three potent nations meet, To shed before his shrine the blood he deems most sweet. Also only one rapper?
• arethuza 12y ago
  Cecil Day Lewis: Tempt me no more, for I Have known the lightning's hour, The poet's inward pride, The certainty of power. And, of course being a Scot, Robert Burns: What though on hamely fare we dine, Wear hoddin grey, an' a that; Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine; A Man's a Man for a' that: For a' that, and a' that, Their tinsel show, an' a' that; The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor, Is king o' men for a' that. and: By oppression's woes and pains! By your sons in servile chains! We will drain our dearest veins, But they shall be free! Lay the proud usurpers low! Tyrants fall in every foe! Liberty's in every blow!— Let us do or die! [Apologies for the bloodthirsty nature of Scots Wha Hae - but I was taught this stuff from an early age and it kind of stuck even though it's describing events of 700 years ago.] Edit: Farewell to the mountains, high-cover'd with snow, Farewell to the straths and green vallies below; Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods, Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods. My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here, My heart's in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer; Chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe, My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go.
  • amouat 12y ago
    Burn's Selkirk Grace is about the only thing I've tried to memorise; I'll check afterwards how far away I was: Some hae meat and cannae eat, And some wid eat that want it, But we hae meat and we can eat, And sae the Lord be thankit
    • amouat 12y ago
      Not too far off, but it turns out there are several versions. From http://www.rampantscotland.com/poetry/blpoems_grace.htm http://www.rampantscotland.com/poetry/blpoems_grace.htm: Some hae meat and canna eat, And some wad eat that want it; But we hae meat, and we can eat, Sae let the Lord be thankit. The last line is often varied to read- And sae the Lord be thankit
  • colomon 12y ago
    Inspiring bold John Barleycorn! What dangers thou canst make us scorn! Wi' tippenny, we fear nae evil; Wi' usquabae, we'll face the devil!
• nmyk 12y ago
  E.E. Cummings, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. One of Cummings's short poems that I enjoy: should this fool die let someone fond of living lay in his left hand a flower whose glory by no mind ever was taught how to grow
  • peteretep 12y ago
    A few mentions of Hopkins in this thread, but too few examples. So, Heaven Haven: I have desired to go Where springs not fail, To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail, And a few lilies blow. And I have asked to be Where no storms come, Where the green swell is in the havens dumb, And out of the swing of the sea. And then: "The Habit of Perfection": ELECTED Silence, sing to me And beat upon my whorlèd ear, Pipe me to pastures still and be The music that I care to hear. Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb: It is the shut, the curfew sent From there where all surrenders come Which only makes you eloquent. Be shellèd, eyes, with double dark And find the uncreated light: This ruck and reel which you remark Coils, keeps, and teases simple sight. Palate, the hutch of tasty lust, Desire not to be rinsed with wine: The can must be so sweet, the crust So fresh that come in fasts divine! Nostrils, your careless breath that spend Upon the stir and keep of pride, What relish shall the censers send Along the sanctuary side! O feel-of-primrose hands, O feet That want the yield of plushy sward, But you shall walk the golden street And you unhouse and house the Lord. And, Poverty, be thou the bride And now the marriage feast begun, And lily-coloured clothes provide Your spouse not laboured-at nor spun.
• jseliger 12y ago
  Billy Collins.
• JohnGB 12y ago
  here’s a toast to Alan Turing born in harsher, darker times who thought outside the container and loved outside the lines and so the code-breaker was broken and we’re sorry yes now the s-word has been spoken the official conscience woken – very carefully scripted but at least it’s not encrypted – and the story does suggest a part 2 to the Turing Test: 1. can machines behave like humans? 2. can we?” ― Matt Harvey
• jgrahamc 12y ago
  For me it's Sir John Betjeman. Very English of course. But... A man on his own in a car Is revenging himself on his wife; He open the throttle and bubbles with dottle and puffs at his pitiful life She's losing her looks very fast, she loses her temper all day; that lorry won't let me get past, this Mini is blocking my way. "Why can't you step on it and shift her! I can't go on crawling like this! At breakfast she said that she wished I was dead- Thank heavens we don't have to kiss. "I'd like a nice blonde on my knee And one who won't argue or nag. Who dares to come hooting at me? I only give way to a Jag. "You're barmy or plastered, I'll pass you, you bastard- I will overtake you. I will!" As he clenches his pipe, his moment is ripe And the corner's accepting its kill.
  • deleted 12y ago
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• iamcurious 12y ago
  Mario Benedetti: Don’t Play it Safe Don’t stand idle at the side of the road don’t hold off on happiness don’t love with half a heart don’t play it safe now or ever don’t play it safe don’t fill up with calm don’t take cover from the world in a quiet corner don’t let your eyelids come down like a weighty sentence don’t forget you have lips don’t sleep but to rest don’t ignore the blood in your veins don’t think you have no time but if in any case you can’t help it and hold off on happiness and love with half a heart and play it safe now and fill up with calm and take cover from the world in a quiet corner and let your eyelids come down like a weighty sentence and dry up without lips and sleep not to rest and ignore the blood in your veins and think you have no time and stand idle at the side of the road and play it safe in that case don’t hold on to me.
• kafkian 12y ago
  Emily Dickinson: All life to know each other Whom we can never learn
• DanielBMarkham 12y ago
  Dickinson, Tennyson, Yeats, Whitman
• tjradcliffe 12y ago
  Thomas Grey ("Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," with its lyric celebration of ordinary life, is arguably the greatest English poem). TS Elliot, on his good days (Prufrock counts as a good day, as do the Landscape poems. He oversteps in "The Waste Land".) Tennyson, when in the mood for melancholy. Robert Herrick, when in the mood for insouciance, contemplation and the poet's struggle.
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• cupitoris 12y ago
  I don't pay attention to the world Ending. It has ended for me many Times and began again in the morning. ― Nayyirah Waheed
• matt_morgan 12y ago
  Adrienne Rich: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrienne_Rich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrienne_Rich
• ely-s 12y ago
  Desert Places by Robert Frost Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast In a field I looked into going past, And the ground almost covered smooth in snow, But a few weeds and stubble showing last. The woods around it have it-it is theirs. All animals are smothered in their lairs. I am too absent-spirited to count; The loneliness includes me unawares. And lonely as it is, that loneliness Will be more lonely ere it will be less- A blanker whiteness of benighted snow With no expression, nothing to express. They cannot scare me with their empty spaces Between stars-on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home To scare myself with my own desert places. Ode by Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy. WE are the music-makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers, And sitting by desolate streams; World-losers and world-forsakers, On whom the pale moon gleams: Yet we are the movers and shakers Of the world for ever, it seems. With wonderful deathless ditties We build up the world's great cities, And out of a fabulous story We fashion an empire's glory: One man with a dream, at pleasure, Shall go forth and conquer a crown; And three with a new song's measure Can trample an empire down. We, in the ages lying In the buried past of the earth, Built Nineveh with our sighing, And Babel itself with our mirth; And o'erthrew them with prophesying To the old of the new world's worth; For each age is a dream that is dying, Or one that is coming to birth.
• xekul 12y ago
  T.S. Eliot. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" perfectly captures the essence of a middle-aged man's insecurities, and Eliot wrote it when he was 23.
  • peri 12y ago
    Eliot is amazing; folks who love his work do themselves a disservice, however, if they aren't also reading Ezra Pound ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Pound http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Pound ) for a very different perspective on most of the same inspirations that made Eliot's early work so powerful.
    • mwadams 12y ago
      Alec Guinness reading the Wasteland is amazing. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xbunup_t-s-eliot-the-waste-land-alec-guinn_creation http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xbunup_t-s-eliot-the-waste-... "Hurry up please, it's time."
  • mbrock 12y ago
    If you haven't already, you should watch this lecture by Nick Mount on Eliot's "The Waste Land": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxF9xkB5o04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxF9xkB5o04 April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. I recently reread Christopher Alexander's foreword to "Patterns of Software" and remembered his mention of this poem. He asks, with something that could be called optimism: "Can you write a program which overcomes the gulf between the technical culture of our civilization, and which inserts itself into our human life as deeply as Eliot's poems of the wasteland or Virginia Woolf's The Waves?"
• alphaBetaGamma 12y ago
  No Mention of the Bard? That time of year thou may'st in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. In me thou see'st the twilight of such day, As after sunset fadeth in the west, Which by-and-by black night doth take away, Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, As the death-bed whereon it must expire Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by. This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong, To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
• CoryG89 12y ago
  William Butler Yeats: Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
• campo 12y ago
  I discovered The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran around 2009 and it quickly became and has remained one of my favorites. I appreciate the descriptiveness and beauty of the language along with the continuing relevance of the advice. It's very easy reading and enjoyable to pick up for a short time and enjoy in small bits or read straight through. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prophet_%28book%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prophet_%28book%29 A couple favorites of mine are: On Pain - http://www.katsandogz.com/onpain.html http://www.katsandogz.com/onpain.html On Reason & Passion - http://www.katsandogz.com/onreason.html http://www.katsandogz.com/onreason.html
• nosuchthing 12y ago
  William S. Burroughs Dead City Radio (1990) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Pn79iNS-Js https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Pn79iNS-Js Discipline of Do Easy (1982) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pjQ0FNzkLQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pjQ0FNzkLQ Ah Pook (1979-Poem, 1994-Animation) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3kz4AUHe1M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3kz4AUHe1M One of the 'beat poets' and pioneer of the "cut up", a semi-randomized collage of slicing, duplicating, and splicing media. The effect seems to create awareness of the medium itself. (The Cut Ups, 1966) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq_hztHJCM4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq_hztHJCM4 Speaking on his Cut Ups (1983) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NU3dIdqIBw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NU3dIdqIBw
• cschmidt 12y ago
  Ted Kooser. http://tedkooser.net/ http://tedkooser.net/ He was the US Poet Laureate for a few years. He is from Nebraska, and writes about Midwestern life, among other things. His most recent volume just came out, and I thought it was great. http://www.amazon.com/Splitting-Order-Ted-Kooser/dp/1556594690 http://www.amazon.com/Splitting-Order-Ted-Kooser/dp/15565946... From "Splitting an Order": I like to watch an old man cutting a sandwich in half … and then to see him lift half onto the extra plate that he asked the server to bring, and then to wait, offering the plate to his wife while she slowly unrolls her napkin and places her spoon, her knife and her fork in their proper places, then smoothes the starched white napkin over her knees and meets his eyes and holds out both old hands to him.
• daw___ 12y ago
  Velimir Chlebnikov, 1885 - 1922. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velimir_Khlebnikov http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velimir_Khlebnikov My favorite poem: Once again, once again I’m a star for you. Woe to the sailor who has taken The wrong angle of the ship On a star: He will be shattered on the rocks, On the underwater sandbanks. Woe to you also who have taken The heart’s wrong angle on me. You will be shattered on the rocks, And rocks will laugh At you As you laught At me.
• anon1986-1 12y ago
  I stumbled across this in a high school magazine left in a youth hostel in Maroochydore, Queensland in 1986, and have never seen another reference to it since. It's attribution was 'anonymous', and googling key lines bring up nothing. I've always liked it, and posting it here might give it some longevity beyond that of my hard drive. Running on the front line Leading the way to uncertainty. With the shadow of a dream to guide you, Following a gleaming ray Picked from another’s closed mind. Why will you lead the way while Others show no taste for adventure? Alone and self-exiled In the midst of a crowd Something not quite a thought flickers and is gone Leaving just enough to tell it came But not enough to remember. Somehow it is connected To what you don’t know But must find out. Go forward, relish the unusual, And question the normal. Push yourself always to the edge And the edge will move with you. A blur of consciousness, knowledge, Experience, prediction, guesses and lies The elusive unknown and The excitingly uncertain. - Anonymous
• dgraunke 12y ago
  Cavafy! http://www.cavafy.com/poems/list.asp?cat=1 http://www.cavafy.com/poems/list.asp?cat=1
  • miked 12y ago
    Thank you so much for reminding me of his writing. I fell in love with a Greek woman on Crete many years ago. It was one of the most painful times of my life when I realized that I could not stay there with her, or she with me. Cavafy's poem Ithaca has haunted me whenever I'm reminded of it: http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=74&cat=1 http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=74&cat=1 I am a muted Ulysses. [Update] Looks like I'm not the only one who loves this poem. See the follow-on comment for some background. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9292200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9292200
• niche 12y ago
  John Burroughs
• bzalasky 12y ago
  One Art Elizabeth Bishop, 1911 - 1979 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bishop http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bishop) The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn’t hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn’t hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster. —Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident the art of losing’s not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
• peri 12y ago
  As somebody who studied lit, this is an impossible question to answer, so I'll just link to my favorite John Donne ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Donne http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Donne ) poem from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Sonnets http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Sonnets, number 14 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Holy_Sonnets#Holy_Sonnet_14 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Holy_Sonnets#Holy_Sonnet_14 Batter my heart, three-person'd God; for you As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new. I, like an usurp'd town, to another due, Labour to admit you, but O, to no end. Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captived, and proves weak or untrue. Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain, But am betroth'd unto your enemy: Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again, Take me to you, imprison me, for I, Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me. It's set to music in the fantastic Doctor Atomic by John Adams, with a superb recording available from http://www.metopera.org http://www.metopera.org Edits: still not good at HN formatting, should be good now.
  • peri 12y ago
    And one poet I never appreciated when introduced to her, but love now: Edna St. Vincent Millay http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edna_St._Vincent_Millay http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edna_St._Vincent_Millay Renaissance and Other Poems is full of just staggering work: http://books.google.com/books?id=vxUpAAAAYAAJ http://books.google.com/books?id=vxUpAAAAYAAJ
    • heurist 12y ago
      Since you studied it - what do you look for in great poetry?
      • peri 12y ago
        Parsimony.
• rb2k_ 12y ago
  I don't particularly enjoy poetry (or poets for that matter), but I always liked reading "Algorhyme" by Radia Perlman, the inventor of spanning tree network protocol Algorhyme I think that I shall never see A graph more lovely than a tree. A tree whose crucial property Is loop-free connectivity. A tree that must be sure to span So packets can reach every LAN. First, the root must be selected. By ID, it is elected. Least-cost paths from root are traced. In the tree, these paths are placed. A mesh is made by folks like me, Then bridges find a spanning tree. - Radia Perlman
  • peri 12y ago
    This is a great one, and one that often comes up when I tutor students. It's even better if you can teach it as a sing-along.
    • sp332 12y ago
      What's the tune?
      • peri 12y ago
        I wish I had a better answer than "I make one up as needed", but I have more of a filking ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filk_music http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filk_music ) background than any actual musical training.
        • zem 12y ago
          nice to see another filker on here :)
• segf4ult 12y ago
  Jenny Kissed Me by Leigh Hunt Jenny kissed me when we met, Jumping from the chair she sat in. Time, you thief! who love to get Sweets into your list, put that in. Say I'm weary, say I'm sad; Say that health and wealth have missed me; Say I'm growing old, but add- Jenny kissed me!
  • RBerenguel 12y ago
    I'm surprised no-one said Keats (which is mine) but Hunt is, in some sense, close enough
  • brownesauce 12y ago
    Fantastic
• robtani 12y ago
  Omar Khayyam, the Persian poet is by far my favorite. His writings are absolutely riveting and awe-inspiring!! He was so ahead of his time and genius polymath as well.
  • peri 12y ago
    Do you have any particular poems, or collections that you would suggest?
• hotgoldminer 12y ago
  Gerard Manley Hopkins: "[..] sheer plod makes plough down sillion shine."
• Tomasoo 12y ago
  Issa.
  • mbrock 12y ago
    this world of dew just a world of dew and yet...
• nsns 12y ago
  Ghalib[0], whose every poem is like a heartbreaking Koan, although it's very hard to find good English translations: Let awareness spread wide its net of comprehension, In my world of words, meaning is a bird of dreams. A thousand wishes thus, that each demands a life, I've done the best I could, but couldn't do too much. (My translations) [0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghalib http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghalib, http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ghalib/index.html?#index http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ghalib/index....
  • sharjeel 12y ago
    And here is a famous one from Ghalib: Rekhta k tum he nahi ustaad Ghalib Kehte hain Aglay Zamanay mein koi Mir[1] bhi tha Rough translation: You aren't alone the master of Rekhta, Ghalib It is said that there was also someone called Mir[1] in the previous era [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_Taqi_Mir http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_Taqi_Mir
  • lubujackson 12y ago
    Not the blossom of song not the veil of music I am the sound of my own breaking You toy with the length of your dark curls I am captive to my own dark thoughts We brag to ourselves that we are different this weakness has burdened our simple grief Now you have come and I find myself bowing this blessing a sadness this prayer a longing I am a fragment sounding the dawn you are the walls of my every echo
• rogerallen 12y ago
  Wislawa Szymborska. Until I read her poems, I thought people that fawned over poetry were just making it up. Here is the one that I read first http://bettinamay.com/poem/2008/10/view-with-a-grain-of-sand-wislawa-szymborska.html http://bettinamay.com/poem/2008/10/view-with-a-grain-of-sand...
• santiagobasulto 12y ago
  Charles Baudelaire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Baudelaire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Baudelaire): You have to be always drunk. That’s all there is to it it’s the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk. But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.
  • r0naa 12y ago
    Baudelaire is an incredibly powerful poet. My favorite is "L'Albatros", this poem leaves me speechless every time. The Albatross Often, to amuse themselves, the men of a crew Catch albatrosses, those vast sea birds That indolently follow a ship As it glides over the deep, briny sea. Scarcely have they placed them on the deck Than these kings of the sky, clumsy, ashamed, Pathetically let their great white wings Drag beside them like oars. That winged voyager, how weak and gauche he is, So beautiful before, now comic and ugly! One man worries his beak with a stubby clay pipe; Another limps, mimics the cripple who once flew! The poet resembles this prince of cloud and sky Who frequents the tempest and laughs at the bowman; When exiled on the earth, the butt of hoots and jeers, His giant wings prevent him from walking.
    • AceJohnny2 12y ago
      I studied this poem back in high school (in France). I have mixed feeling about it. I said "studied", but I really meant "had to study". There's something about school's treatment of the subject that just robs the poem of any power. Maybe it's because as teenagers we likely didn't have the life experience for it to resonate with us. Even now, I can vaguely sense it but am numb to it. On the other hand, I'm glad I have been introduced to such poetry, as I think it helps me later in life to appreciate the finer things. Also, did you know Baudelaire's translation of Poe's work brought it french recognition? (I earlier got it the wrong way around, thinking Poe had translated Baudelaire)
      • r0naa 12y ago
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• pearjuice 12y ago
  God. Though you probably have to read/hear/understand the Quran in Arabic to fully appreciate its beauty. Nothing worldly has even come close to the poetic and literatural quality of God's word.
  • acqq 12y ago
    I'm sorry, but reading the translation of Quran, I can't believe it: Those who wander from the way of Allah have an awful doom.--38:36 Take them [unbelivers] and kill them wherever ye find them. Against such We have given you clear warrant.--4:91 O ye who believe! Fight those of the disbelievers who are near to you, and let them find harshness in you--9:123 Those who strive against Our revelations, challenging (Us), theirs will be a painful doom of wrath.--34:5 Those who disbelieve will be gathered unto hell.--8:36 A painful doom will fall on those of them who disbelieve.--9:90 As for the Disbelievers, Whether thou warn them or thou warn them not it is all one for them; they believe not. Allah hath sealed their hearing and their hearts, and on their eyes there is a covering. Theirs will be an awful doom.--2:6-7 We have placed upon their hearts veils, lest they should understand, and in their ears a deafness.---6:25 Let not the believers take disbelievers for their friends in preference to believers--3:28 What can be pretty and poetic in that?
    • pearjuice 12y ago
      You are cherry picking verses completely pulled out of their context for the sake of bashing the theological believes of Islam, I was talking about the poetic quality. Here is a video to illustrate the poetic quality of the Quran: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPnS4_kmr0w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPnS4_kmr0w
      • acqq 12y ago
        Wow. Sincerely thank you for that video. I honestly can't recommend it enough. I gave you my upvote for posting it. It was really instructive. Now I understand how you came to your opinions.
      • vacri 12y ago
• soneca 12y ago
  Fernando Pessoa (great portuguese language poet) TOBACCO SHOP - (excerpts) I'm nothing. I'll allways be nothing. I can't even wish to be something. Aside from that, I've got all the world's dream inside me. Windows of my room, The room of just one of the millions in the world nobody knows (And what would they know, if they knew that?), You open on the mistery of a street people are constantly crossing, A street blocked off to all though, A street that's real, impossibly real, and right, unconsciously right, With the mistery of things lying under live beings and stones, With death spreading darkness on walls and white hair on heads, With fate driving the cart of everything down nothingness road. Today I'm bowled over, as though hit by the truth. Today I'm clearheaded, as though I were going to die, Having no more brotherly feeling for things Than to say good-bye, turning this house and this side of the street Into a line of coaches in a long train with its whistle shrieking good-bye From inside my head, And a nerve-wracking, bone-cracking jerk as it moves off. Today I'm mixed up, like someone who thought something and grasped it, then lost it. Today I'm torn between the allegiance I owe Something real outside me - The Tobacco Shop across the street, And something real inside me - the feeling that it's all a dream. I failed in everything. Since I was up to nothing, maybe it was all really nothing. From learning and training for anything useful I escaped By slipping off to the country with great plans, By found only grass and threes there, And when there were people, they were just like any others. I leave the window, sit down in a chair. What should I think about? [....] (Eat your chocolates, little girl! Eat your chocolates! Look, there's no metaphysics on earth but chocolates. Look, all religions on earth have nothing more to teach us than a candy store does. Eat, dirty little girl, eat them up! If I could gobble down those chocolates as trustily as you do! But I think, peeling off the silver wrapper, it's only tinfoil, And toss it in the floor, just as I've tossed away my life.) But at least, out of my bitterness at what I'll never be, There's the quick calligraphy of these lines, The broken archway to the Impossible. And at least I reserve for myself this dry-eyed contempt- Noble, at least, in the great gesture I make Flinging out the dirty clothes I am, with no laundry list, into the drift of things, And stay at home, shirtless. [....]
• justifier 12y ago
  Walt Whitman .. AH POVERTIES, WINCINGS, AND SULKY RETREATS. AH poverties, wincings, and sulky retreats, Ah you foes that in conflict have overcome me, (For what is my life or any man's life but a conflict with foes, the old, the incessant war?) You degradations, you tussle with passions and appetites, You smarts from dissatisfied friendships, (ah wounds the sharpest of all!) You toil of painful and choked articulations, you meannesses, You shallow tongue-talks at tables, (my tongue the shallowest of any;) You broken resolutions, you racking angers, you smother'd ennuis! Ah think not you finally triumph, my real self has yet to come forth, It shall yet march forth o'ermastering, till all lies beneath me, It shall yet stand up the soldier of ultimate victory. http://www.whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/index.html http://www.whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/index.html original manuscripts :: http://www.whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/transcriptions/index.html http://www.whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/transcriptions/ind...
• kornish 12y ago
  I'm a fan of Invictus, by William Ernest Henley: Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the Shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds and shall find me, unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.
  • tremendo 12y ago
    I always loved Invictus. it was also my Father's favorite, and I remember how I felt "offended" when I learned Timothy McVeigh had chosen it for his last words.
• boundring 12y ago
  THAT is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees - Those dying generations - at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect. … An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium. … O sages standing in God's holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity. … Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come. - W B Yeats
  • miked 12y ago
    > be the singing-masters of my soul Those have to be seven of the most powerful words ever written in any language.
• rsync 12y ago
  Victor Segalen: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Segalen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Segalen In particular, the book of Steles: http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/?s=tag&t=victor-segalen http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/?s...
• shenanigoat 12y ago
  Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geisel) “Think and wonder, wonder and think.”
• maligree 12y ago
  Czesław Miłosz, "Campo di fiori": In Rome on the Campo dei Fiori baskets of olives and lemons, cobbles spattered with wine and the wreckage of flowers. Vendors cover the trestles with rose-pink fish; armfuls of dark grapes heaped on peach-down. On this same square they burned Giordano Bruno. Henchmen kindled the pyre close-pressed by the mob. Before the flames had died the taverns were full again, baskets of olives and lemons again on the vendors' shoulders. I thought of the Campo dei Fiori in Warsaw by the sky-carousel one clear spring evening to the strains of a carnival tune. The bright melody drowned the salvos from the ghetto wall, and couples were flying high in the cloudless sky. At times wind from the burning would drift dark kites along and riders on the carousel caught petals in midair. That same hot wind blew open the skirts of the girls and the crowds were laughing on that beautiful Warsaw Sunday. Someone will read as moral that the people of Rome or Warsaw haggle, laugh, make love as they pass by the martyrs' pyres. Someone else will read of the passing of things human, of the oblivion born before the flames have died. But that day I thought only of the loneliness of the dying, of how, when Giordano climbed to his burning he could not find in any human tongue words for mankind, mankind who live on. Already they were back at their wine or peddled their white starfish, baskets of olives and lemons they had shouldered to the fair, and he already distanced as if centuries had passed while they paused just a moment for his flying in the fire. Those dying here, the lonely forgotten by the world, our tongue becomes for them the language of an ancient planet. Until, when all is legend and many years have passed, on a new Campo dei Fiori rage will kindle at a poet's word. Warsaw, 1943
• joshuacc 12y ago
  Aside from Tolkien's poetry in-world poetry, my favorite is probably Tennyson. Ulysses in particular is awesome. This is the final stanza. There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail: There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me— That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old; Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, 'T is not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
  • deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
• Peroni 12y ago
  Seamus Heaney & Patrick Kavanagh Heaney was a literary genius. Kavanagh was a master at capturing the bleak reality of working class Ireland. Both very different in their own right but both are prime examples of the immense variety within Irish poetry.
• monroepe 12y ago
  Mihai Eminescu - "Si Daca" (And If in English) And if the branches tap my pane And the poplars whisper nightly, It is to make me dream again I hold you to me tightly. And if the stars shine on the pond And light its sombre shoal, It is to quench my mind's despond And flood with peace my soul. And if the clouds their tresses part And does the moon outblaze, It is but to remind my heart I long for you always.
• bradleysmith 12y ago
  Desiderata by Max Ehrmann: Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.
• broabprobe 12y ago
  Richard Brautigan!! ~All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace I like to think (and the sooner the better!) of a cybernetic meadow where mammals and computers live together in mutually programming harmony like pure water touching clear sky. I like to think (right now, please!) of a cybernetic forest filled with pines and electronics where deer stroll peacefully past computers as if they were flowers with spinning blossoms. I like to think (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace.
• atmosx 12y ago
  My favourite poet is K. P. Cavafy and my favorite poem is Ithaca: As you set out for Ithaka hope the voyage is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery. Laistrygonians and Cyclops, angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them: you’ll never find things like that on your way as long as you keep your thoughts raised high, as long as a rare excitement stirs your spirit and your body. Laistrygonians and Cyclops, wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them unless you bring them along inside your soul, unless your soul sets them up in front of you. Hope the voyage is a long one. May there be many a summer morning when, with what pleasure, what joy, you come into harbors seen for the first time; may you stop at Phoenician trading stations to buy fine things, mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony, sensual perfume of every kind— as many sensual perfumes as you can; and may you visit many Egyptian cities to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars. Keep Ithaka always in your mind. Arriving there is what you are destined for. But do not hurry the journey at all. Better if it lasts for years, so you are old by the time you reach the island, wealthy with all you have gained on the way, not expecting Ithaka to make you rich. Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey. Without her you would not have set out. She has nothing left to give you now. And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you. Wise as you will have become, so full of experience, you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean. This translation is by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Cavafy is a Greek poet who lived in Alexandria in the beginning of the century. He was very shy, he never sold any of his poets. He made copies and distributed his poetry to friends only. He was a perfectionists. Reports say that he would literally work up to 20 years to a single poem, changing words, syllables or entire lines accordingly. His poetry greatly improved as he grew older. Personally, I enjoyed this version[1] by Sir Sean Connery. Then I also admire deeply Shakespeare. To me Shakespeare is like a crossroad between, poetry, philosophy, love, wisdom. An unbelievably refreshing, well-made cocktail of thought and art. Those two poets are the ones that touch my spirit the most :-) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n3n2Ox4Yfk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n3n2Ox4Yfk
  • sebkomianos 12y ago
    As this is my favourite poem as well and you beat me to sharing it, I may as well add some context to it for the people not familiar with names and situations: Ithaca[1] is where Odysseus[2], one of the greek heroes in the Trojan War, came from. After the war was over he set, along with his crew, to return home but this took him ten whole years and Homer wrote about his adventures and misfortunes in the epic that is known as Odyssey[3]. Now, as this consists of dangerous situations, very bad luck, betrayal and a couple of other bad things, the word "odyssey" has become one with which modern greeks describe a long and difficult period until something (a goal, a destination, etc) is reached. However, Kavafis (greek for Cavafy) turned this around and is describing all the great things that one can benefit from during such journeys: new harbours, Phoenician goods, Egyptian cities - all these pictures are used to demonstrate how rich one will be after an "odyssey" even if he/she has to face Laistrygonians, Cyclops and angry Poseidons. In the end, Kavafis tells us about what Ithaca really is about: not reaching your destination but experiencing the journey. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithaca http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithaca [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odysseus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odysseus [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odyssey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odyssey
• tech-no-logical 12y ago
  not really a favorite poet, but a favorite poem : 'Cat in an empty apartment' Die--you can't do that to a cat. Since what can a cat do in an empty apartment? Climb the walls? Rub up against the furniture? Nothing seems different here but nothing is the same. Nothing's been moved but there's more space. And at nighttime no lamps are lit. Footsteps on the staircase, but they're new ones. The hand that puts fish on the saucer has changed, too. Something doesn't start at its usual time. Something doesn't happen as it should. Someone was always, always here, then suddenly disappeared and stubbornly stays disappeared. Every closet's been examined. Every shelf has been explored. Excavations under the carpet turned up nothing. A commandment was even broken: papers scattered everywhere. What remains to be done. Just sleep and wait. Just wait till he turns up, just let him show his face. Will he ever get a lesson on what not to do to a cat. Sidle toward him as if unwilling and ever so slow on visibly offended paws, and no leaps or squeals at least to start. -- Wislawa Szymborska it never fails to get to me.
  • lukasm 12y ago
    this, absolutely! My favourite as a kid A big locomotive has pulled into town, Heavy, humungus, with sweat rolling down, A plump jumbo olive. Huffing and puffing and panting and smelly, Fire belches forth from her fat cast iron belly. Poof, how she's burning, Oof, how she's boiling, Puff, how she's churning, Huff, how she's toiling. She's fully exhausted and all out of breath, Yet the coalman continues to stoke her to death. Numerous wagons she tugs down the track: Iron and steel monsters hitched up to her back, All filled with people and other things too: The first carries cattle, then horses not few; The third car with corpulent people is filled, Eating fat frankfurters all freshly grilled. The fourth car is packed to the hilt with bananas, The fifth has a cargo of six grand pi-an-as. The sixth wagon carries a cannon of steel, With heavy iron girders beneath every wheel. The seventh has tables, oak cupboards with plates, While an elephant, bear, two giraffes fill the eighth. The ninth contains nothing but well-fattened swine, In the tenth: bags and boxes, now isn't that fine? There must be at least forty cars in a row, And what they all carry -- I simply don't know: But if one thousand athletes, with muscles of steel, Each ate one thousand cutlets in one giant meal, And each one exerted as much as he could, They'd never quite manage to lift such a load. First a toot! Then a hoot! Steam is churning, Wheels are turning! More slowly - than turtles - with freight - on their - backs, The drowsy - steam engine - sets off - down the tracks. She chugs and she tugs at her wagons with strain, As wheel after wheel slowly turns on the train. She doubles her effort and quickens her pace, And rambles and scrambles to keep up the race. Oh whither, oh whither? go forward at will, And chug along over the bridge, up the hill, Through mountains and tunnels and meadows and woods, Now hurry, now hurry, deliver your goods. Keep up your tempo, now push along, push along, Chug along, tug along, tug along, chug along Lightly and sprightly she carries her freight Like a ping-pong ball bouncing without any weight, Not heavy equipment exhausted to death, But a little tin toy, just a light puff of breath. Oh whither, oh whither, you'll tell me, I trust, What is it, what is it that gives you your thrust? What gives you momentum to roll down the track? It's hot steam that gives me my clickety-clack. Hot steam from the boiler through tubes to the pistons, The pistons then push at the wheels from short distance, They drive and they push, and the train starts a-swooshin' 'Cuz steam on the pistons keeps pushin' and pushin'; The wheels start a rattlin', clatterin', chatterin' Chug along, tug along, chug along, tug along! . . . . Julian Tuwim
• tremendo 12y ago
  Gustavo Adolfo Becquer, about poetry itself (sorry, Spanish is my language, still wanted to share): No digáis que agotado su tesoro, de asuntos falta enmudeció la lira: podrá no haber poetas, pero siempre habrá poesía. Mientras las ondas de la luz al beso palpiten encendidas, mientras el sol las desgarradas nubes de fuego y oro vista, mientras el aire en su regazo lleve perfumes y armonías, mientras haya en el mundo primavera, ¡habrá poesía! Mientras la ciencia a descubrir no alcance las fuentes de la vida, y en el mar o en el cielo haya un abismo que al cálculo resista, mientras la humanidad siempre avanzando no sepa a do camina, mientras haya un misterio para el hombre, ¡habrá poesía! Mientras se sienta que se ríe el alma sin que los labios rían, mientras se llore, sin que el llanto acuda a nublar la pupila, mientras el corazón y la cabeza batallando prosigan, mientras haya esperanzas y recuerdos, ¡habrá poesía! Mientras haya unos ojos que reflejen los ojos que los miran, mientras responda el labio suspirando al labio que suspira, mientras sentirse puedan en un beso dos almas confundidas, mientras exista una mujer hermosa, ¡habrá poesía!
• FleursDuMal 12y ago
  A Poison Tree William Blake, 1757 - 1827 I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow. And I watered it in fears Night and morning with my tears, And I sunned it with smiles And with soft deceitful wiles. And it grew both day and night, Till it bore an apple bright, And my foe beheld it shine, And he knew that it was mine,-- And into my garden stole When the night had veiled the pole; In the morning, glad, I see My foe outstretched beneath the tree.
• snikeris 12y ago
  William Blake, especially Auguries of Innocence.
• aezell 12y ago
  "Digging" by Seamus Heaney. One of my favorites. Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun. Under my window, a clean rasping sound When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging. I look down Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds Bends low, comes up twenty years away Stooping in rhythm through potato drills Where he was digging. The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft Against the inside knee was levered firmly. He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep To scatter new potatoes that we picked, Loving their cool hardness in our hands. By God, the old man could handle a spade. Just like his old man. My grandfather cut more turf in a day Than any other man on Toner’s bog. Once I carried him milk in a bottle Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up To drink it, then fell to right away Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods Over his shoulder, going down and down For the good turf. Digging. The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge Through living roots awaken in my head. But I’ve no spade to follow men like them. Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests. I’ll dig with it.
• tokenadult 12y ago
  Andrew Marvell and John Donne. Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" and Donne's "The Ecstasy" are both classic love poems. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173355 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173355
• arkokoley 12y ago
  This is one of my favourite poems. Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell tonight? Whom else from rapture’s road will you expel tonight? Those “Fabrics of Cashmere—” “to make Me beautiful—” “Trinket”—to gem—“Me to adorn—How tell”—tonight? I beg for haven: Prisons, let open your gates— A refugee from Belief seeks a cell tonight. God’s vintage loneliness has turned to vinegar— All the archangels—their wings frozen—fell tonight. Lord, cried out the idols, Don’t let us be broken; Only we can convert the infidel tonight. Mughal ceilings, let your mirrored convexities multiply me at once under your spell tonight. He’s freed some fire from ice in pity for Heaven. He’s left open—for God—the doors of Hell tonight. In the heart’s veined temple, all statues have been smashed. No priest in saffron’s left to toll its knell tonight. God, limit these punishments, there’s still Judgment Day— I’m a mere sinner, I’m no infidel tonight. Executioners near the woman at the window. Damn you, Elijah, I’ll bless Jezebel tonight. The hunt is over, and I hear the Call to Prayer fade into that of the wounded gazelle tonight. My rivals for your love—you’ve invited them all? This is mere insult, this is no farewell tonight. And I, Shahid, only am escaped to tell thee— God sobs in my arms. Call me Ishmael tonight. - Agha Shahid Ali Khan
• jboggan 12y ago
  John Donne. "The Anagram" is probably one of the cleverest poems ever written; I have never seen such an elaborate put-down in any form. http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?18947-Elegy-II-The-Anagram-by-John-Donne http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?18947...
• fasouto 12y ago
  I love Neruda, specially "No culpes a nadie". It helped me a lot to stop complaining. C&P a possibly wrong translation ## Don't Blame Anyone Never complain about anyone, nor anything, because basically you have done what you wanted in your life. Accept the difficulty of improving yourself and the courage to start changing yourself. The triumph of the true man emerges from the ashes of his mistake. Never complain about your loneliness or your luck, face it with courage and accept it. In one way or another it is the outcome of your acts and the thought that you always have to win. Don't be embittered by your own failure or blame it on another, accept yourself now or you'll keep making excuses for yourself like a child. Remember that any time is a good time to begin and that nobody is so horrible that they should give up. Don't forget that the cause of your present is your past, as well as the cause of your future will be your present. Learn from the bold, the strong, those who don't accept situations, who will live in spite of everything. Think less in your problems and more in your work and your problems, without eliminating them, will die. Learn how to grow from the pain and to be greater than the greatest of those obstacles. Look at yourself in the mirror and you will be free and strong and you will stop being a puppet of circumstances because you yourself are your own destiny. Arise and look at the sun in the mornings and breathe the light of the dawn. You are part of the force of your life; now wake up, fight, get going, be decisive and you will triumph in life. Never think about luck because luck is the pretext of losers.
  • thomson 12y ago
    This poem (and the original spanish) is one of my favourites! Thank you for posting.
• emson 12y ago
  The Little Dog's Day by Rupert Brooke All in the town were still asleep, When the sun came up with a shout and a leap. In the lonely streets unseen by man, A little dog danced. And the day began. All his life he'd been good, as far as he could, And the poor little beast had done all that he should. But this morning he swore, by Odin and Thor And the Canine Valhalla—he'd stand it no more! So his prayer he got granted—to do just what he wanted, Prevented by none, for the space of one day. "Jam incipiebo, sedere facebo," In dog-Latin he quoth, "Euge! sophos! hurray!" He fought with the he-dogs, and winked at the she-dogs, A thing that had never been heard of before. "For the stigma of gluttony, I care not a button!" he Cried, and ate all he could swallow—and more. He took sinewy lumps from the shins of old frumps, And mangled the errand-boys—when he could get 'em. He shammed furious rabies, and bit all the babies, And followed the cats up the trees, and then ate 'em!" They thought 'twas the devil was holding a revel, And sent for the parson to drive him away; For the town never knew such a hullabaloo As that little dog raised—till the end of that day. When the blood-red sun had gone burning down, And the lights were lit in the little town, Outside, in the gloom of the twilight grey, The little dog died when he'd had his day.
• m_alexgr 12y ago
  THE TYGER (from Songs Of Experience) By William Blake Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare sieze the fire? And what shoulder, & what art. Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? & what dread feet? What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp? When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? 1794
  • csvlt 12y ago
    I've always enjoyed Blake's poems. One of my favourites from that collecion is The Fly: Little Fly Thy summer's play, My thoughtless hand Has brush'd away. Am not I A fly like thee? Or art not thou A man like me? For I dance And drink & sing; Till some blind hand Shall brush my wing. If thought is life And strength & breath; And the want Of thought is death; Then am I A happy fly, If I live, Or if I die.
• abathur 12y ago
  Plenty of great poets mentioned here. Figured I'd add a pair of my favorite contemporary poets, Sarah Lindsay and Paul Guest: Sarah Lindsay - Elegy for the Quagga (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/182245 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/182245) Krakatau split with a blinding noise and raised from gutted, steaming rock a pulverized black sky, over water walls that swiftly fell on Java and Sumatra. Fifteen days before, in its cage in Amsterdam, the last known member of Equus quagga, the southernmost subspecies of zebra, died. Most of the wild ones, not wild enough, grazing near the Cape of Good Hope, had been shot and skinned and roasted by white hunters. When a spider walked on cooling Krakatau's skin, no quagga walked anywhere. While seeds pitched by long winds onto newborn fields burst open and rooted, perhaps some thistle flourished on the quagga's discarded innards. The fractured island greened and hummed again; handsome zebras tossed their heads in zoos, on hired safari plains. Who needs to hear a quagga's voice? Or see the warm hide twitch away a fly, see the neck turn, curving its cream and chestnut stripes that run down to plain dark haunches and plain white legs? A kind of horse. Less picturesque than a dodo. Still, we mourn what we mourn. Even if, when it sank to its irreplaceable knees, when its unique throat closed behind a sigh, no dust rose to redden a whole year's sunsets, no one unwittingly busy two thousand miles away jumped at the sound, no ashes rained on ships in the merciless sea. Paul Guest - User’s Guide to Physical Debilitation (http://www.theparisreview.org/poetry/5874/two-poems-paul-guest http://www.theparisreview.org/poetry/5874/two-poems-paul-gue...) Should the painful condition of irreversible paralysis last longer than forever or at least until your death by bowling ball or illegal lawn dart or the culture of death, which really has it out for whoever has seen better days but still enjoys bruising marathons of bird watching, you, or your beleaguered caregiver stirring dark witch’s brews of resentment inside what had been her happy life, should turn to page seven where you can learn, assuming higher cognitive functions were not pureed by your selfish misfortune, how to leave the house for the first time in two years. An important first step, with apologies for the thoughtlessly thoughtless metaphor. When not an outright impossibility or form of neurological science fiction, sexual congress will either be with tourists in the kingdom of your tragedy, performing an act of sadistic charity; with the curious, for whom you will be beguilingly blank canvas; or with someone blindly feeling their way through an extended power outage caused by summer storms you once thought romantic. Page twelve instructs you how best to be inspiring to Magnus next door as he throws old Volkswagens into orbit above Alberta. And to Betty in her dark charm confiding a misery, whatever it is, that to her seems equivalent to yours. The curl of her hair that her finger knows better and beyond what you will, even in the hypothesis of heaven when you sleep. This guide is intended to prepare you for falling down and declaring détente with gravity, else you reach the inevitable end of scaring small children by your presence alone. Someone once said of crushing helplessness: it is a good idea to avoid that. We agree with that wisdom but gleaming motorcycles are hard to turn down or safely stop at speeds that melt aluminum. Of special note are sections regarding faith healing, self-loathing, abstract hobbies like theoretical spelunking and extreme atrophy, and what to say to loved ones who won’t stop shrieking at Christmas dinner. New to this edition is an index of important terms such as catheter, pain, blackout, pathological deltoid obsession, escort service, magnetic resonance imaging, loss of friends due to superstitious fear, and, of course, amputation above the knee due to pernicious gangrene. It is our hope that this guide will be a valuable resource during this long stretch of boredom and dread and that it may be of some help, however small, to cope with your new life and the gradual, bittersweet loss of every God damned thing you ever loved.
• manlio 12y ago
  One day somebody sent me this. It still gets me every time. I will try to live on earth without you. I will try to live on earth without you. I will become any object, I don’t care what— I will be this speeding train. This smoke or a beautiful gay man laughing in the front seat. A human body is defenseless on earth. It’s a piece of fire-wood. Ocean water hits it. Lenin puts it on his official shoulder. And therefore, in order not to suffer, a human spirit lives inside the wind and inside the wood and inside the shoulder of a great dictator. But I will not be water. I will not be a fire. I will be an eyelash. A sponge washing your neck-hairs. Or a verb, an adjective, I will become. Such a word slightly lights your cheek. What happened? Nothing. Something visited? Nothing. What was there you cannot whisper. No smoke without fire, they whisper. I will be a handful of smoke over this lost city of Moscow. I will console any man, I will sleep with any man, under the army’s traveling horse carriages. -- Polina Barskova
• bambax 12y ago
  Not my absolute favorite poem but one I always liked. Madame quel est votre mot Et sur le mot et sur la chose On vous a dit souvent le mot On vous a fait souvent la chose Ainsi de la chose et du mot Vous pouvez dire quelque chose Et je gagerais que le mot Vous plaît beaucoup moins que la chose Pour moi voici quel est mon mot Et sur le mot et sur la chose J'avouerai que j'aime le mot J'avouerai que j'aime la chose Mais c'est la chose avec le mot Mais c'est le mot avec la chose Autrement la chose et le mot A mes yeux seraient peu de chose Je crois même en faveur du mot Pouvoir ajouter quelque chose Une chose qui donne au mot Tout l'avantage sur la chose C'est qu'on peut dire encore le mot Alors qu'on ne fait plus la chose Et pour peu que vaille le mot Mon Dieu c'est toujours quelque chose De là je conclus que le mot Doit être mis avant la chose Qu'il ne faut ajouter au mot Qu'autant que l'on peut quelque chose Et que pour le jour où le mot Viendra seul hélas sans la chose Il faut se réserver le mot Pour se consoler de la chose Pour vous je crois qu'avec le mot Vous voyez toujours autre chose Vous dites si gaiement le mot Vous méritez si bien la chose Que pour vous la chose et le mot Doivent être la même chose Et vous n'avez pas dit le mot Qu'on est déjà prêt à la chose Mais quand je vous dis que le mot Doit être mis avant la chose Vous devez me croire à ce mot Bien peu connaisseur en la chose Et bien voici mon dernier mot Et sur le mot et sur la chose Madame passez-moi le mot Et je vous passerai la chose It's by an 18th century libertine priest who was called l'Abbé de Lattaignant.
• donatj 12y ago
  Buddy Wakefield. Slam poet, spoken word. He got be through some really hard times. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLoRyBj0Jzo9rTFW1XGTkG3WFAKf0nBh-r&v=bHX3qtJlmdU https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLoRyBj0Jzo9rTFW1XGTkG3WF...
• probinso 12y ago
  Edward Gorey
  • jhedwards 12y ago
    Nice! I grew up near him and my dad used to act in his plays. He was such a great artist and interesting person. I like this line "A hissing swarm of hair bugs has got the baby and its rugs" from the evil garden.
• deleted 12y ago
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• endriju 12y ago
  Felix Dennis (†2014) What’s It Like Then, Being Rich? What’s it like then, being rich, Knitting gold to warm an itch? Very much like being poor; Wealth is just a key — no more. Why not share this magic key To luxury — and start with me! Surely better that you earn it; Could I trust you to return it? How does one become your ilk? Is it bred in mothers’ milk? Many paths can lead to riches, Few in sunlight, most in ditches. Wherein lies the difference From us — this odd ambivalence? Envy, malice, obligations; Toadying from poor relations. Grown far richer than his neighbour, Why would any rich man labour? Wealth is salt in wine immersed, Quaffing but excites the thirst. Salt my arse! It’s filthy greed — How many homes does one man need? For some the trick’s in trading it; For others, in parading it. I’ve seen. But surely, comfort pales Perched on padded Chippendales? When affluence holds no surprise, Wonders come in other guise. Aye, the eyes of tart and whore! What might you miss, if you were poor? Time. The luxury of choices. First editions. Old Rolls-Royces. Except his poems, I also recommend his great book on becoming rich http://www.felixdennis.com/books/how-to-get-rich/ http://www.felixdennis.com/books/how-to-get-rich/
• deleted 12y ago
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• pkfrank 12y ago
  Seamus Heaney - Digging Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun. Under my window a clean rasping sound When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging. I look down Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds Bends low, comes up twenty years away Stooping in rhythm through potato drills Where he was digging. The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft Against the inside knee was levered firmly. He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep To scatter new potatoes that we picked, Loving their cool hardness in our hands. By God, the old man could handle a spade. Just like his old man. My grandfather could cut more turf in a day Than any other man on Toner's bog. Once I carried him milk in a bottle Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up To drink it, then fell to right away Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods Over his shoulder, digging down and down For the good turf. Digging. The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge Through living roots awaken in my head. But I've no spade to follow men like them. Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests. I'll dig with it.
  • plug 12y ago
    Great to see Heaney mentioned by several people here! Recently voted Ireland's favourite poet of the last 100 years. This poem is a great example of his talent to document the small but evocative, quintessential elements of Irish experience. I'm having some wonderful childhood flashbacks of days on the bog right now :)
• deleted 12y ago
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• Amorymeltzer 12y ago
  I love Edgar Allen Poe, but one particular reason is because of his essay "The Philosophy of Composition".[1] It's a long piece basically describing the methodical and mathematical way he developed The Raven. It's a really cool look at his process for creation. Plus it pisses off your run-of-the-mill literary types. 1: http://www.eapoe.org/works/essays/philcomp.htm http://www.eapoe.org/works/essays/philcomp.htm
• AlexMuir 12y ago
  The Men Who Don't Fit In - Robert Service http://alexmuir.com/the-men-who-dont-fit-in http://alexmuir.com/the-men-who-dont-fit-in
• techload 12y ago
  Happy Dust By Aleister Crowley For Margot Snow that fallest from heaven, bear me aloft on thy wings To the domes of the star-girdled Seven, the abode of ineffable things, Quintessence of joy and of strength, that, abolishing future and past, Mak'st the Present an infinite length, my soul all-One with the Vast, The Lone, the Unnameable God, that is ice of His measureless cold, Without being or form or abode, without motion or matter, the fold Where the shepherded Universe sleeps, with nor sense nor delusion nor dream, No spirit that wantons or weeps, no thought in its silence supreme. I sit, and am utterly still; in mine eyes is my fathomless lust Ablaze to annihilate Will, to crumble my being to dust, To calcine the dust to an ash, to burn up the ash to an air, To abolish the air with a flash of the final, the fulminant flare. All this I have done, and dissolved the primordial germ of my thought; I have rolled myself up, and revolved the wheel of my being to Naught. Is there even the memory left? That I was, that I am? It is lost. As I utter the Word, I am cleft by the last swift spear of the frost. Snow! I am nothing at last; I sit, and am utterly still; They are perished, the phantoms, and past; they were born of my weariness-will When I craved, craved being and form, when the consciousness-cloud was a mist Precurser of stupor and storm, when I and my shadow had kissed, And brought into life all the shapes that confused the clear space with their marks, Vain spectres whose vapour escapes, a whirlwind of ruinous sparks, No substance have any of these; I have dreamed them in sickness of lust, Delirium born of disease-ah, whence was the master, the "must" Imposed on the All? is it true, then, that something in me Is subject to fate? Are there two, after all, that can be? I have brought all that is to an end; for myself am sufficient and sole. Do I trick myself now? Shall I rend once again this homologous Whole? I have stripped every garment from space; I have strangled the secret of Time, All being is fled from my face, with Motion's inhibited rime. Stiller and stiller I sit, till even Infinity fades; 'Tis an idol-'tis weakness of wit that breeds, in inanity, shades! Yet the fullness of Naught I become, the deepest and steadiest Naught, Contains in its nature the sum of the functions of being and thought. Still as I sit, and destroy all possible trace of the past, All germ of the future, nor joy nor knowledge alive at the last, It is vain, for the Silence is dowered with a nature, the seed of a name: Necessity, fearfully flowered with the blossom of possible Aim. I am Necessity? Scry Necessity mother of Fate! And Fate determines me "I"; and I have the Will to create. Vast is the sphere, but it turns on itself like the pettiest star. And I am the looby that learns that all things equally are. Inscrutable Nothing, the Gods, the cosmos of Fire and of Mist. Suns, atoms, the clouds and the clouds ineluctably dare to exist- I have made the Voyage of Thought, the Voyage of Vision, I swam To the heart of the Ocean of Naught from the source of the Spring of I am: I know myself wholly the brother alike of the All and the One; I know that all things are each other, that their sum and their substance is None; But the knowledge itself can excel, its fulness hath broken its bond; All's Truth, and all's falsehood as well, and-what of the region beyond? So, still though I sit, as for ever, I stab to the heart of my spine; I destroy the last seed of endeavour to seal up my soul in the shrine Of Silence, Eternity, Peace; I abandon the Here and the Now; I cease from the effort to cease; I absolve the dead I from its Vow, I am wholly content to be dust, whether that be a mote or a star, To live and to love and to lust, acknowledge what seem for what are, Not to care what I am, if I be, whence I came, whither go, how I thrive, If my spirit be bound or be free, save as Nature contrive. What I am, that I am, 'tis enough. I am part of a glorious game. Am I cast for madness or love? I am cast to esteem them the same. Am I only a dream in the sleep of some butterfly? Phantom of fright Conceived, who knows how, or how deep, in the measureless womb of the night? I imagine impossible thought, metaphysical voids that beget Ideas intagible wrought to things less conceivable yet. It may be. Little I reck -but, assume the existence of earth. Am I born to be hanged by the neck, a curse from the hour of my birth? Am I born to abolish man's guilt? His horrible heritage, awe? Or a seed in his wantoness spilt by a jester? I care not a straw, For I understand Do what thou wilt; and that is the whole of the Law.
• koevet 12y ago
  Wislawa Szymborska THE RAILROAD STATION My nonarrival in the city of N. took place on the dot. You'd been alerted in my unmailed letter. You were able not to be there at the agreed-upon time. The train pulled up at platform 3. A lot of people got out. My absence joined the throng as it made its way toward the exit. Several women rushed to take my place in all that rush. Somebody ran up to one of them. I didn't know him, but she recognized him immediately. While they kissed with not our lips, a suitcase disappeared, not mine. The railroad station in the city of N. passed its exam in objective existence with flying colors. The whole remained in place. Particulars scurried along the designated tracks. Even a rendezvous took place as planned. Beyond the reach of our presence. In the paradise lost of probability. Somewhere else. Somewhere else. How these little words ring.
• cantrememberid 12y ago
  Didn't see Rumi in the list. Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about language, ideas, even the phrase each other doesn't make any sense.
• elwell 12y ago
  Edwin Arlington Robinson - Richard Cory Whenever Richard Cory went down town, We people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentleman from sole to crown, Clean favored, and imperially slim. And he was always quietly arrayed, And he was always human when he talked; But still he fluttered pulses when he said, "Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked. And he was rich – yes, richer than a king – And admirably schooled in every grace: In fine, we thought that he was everything To make us wish that we were in his place. So on we worked, and waited for the light, And went without the meat, and cursed the bread; And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, Went home and put a bullet through his head
• donohoe 12y ago
  Patrick Kavanagh - Stony Grey Soil O stony grey soil of Monaghan The laugh from my love you thieved; You took the gay child of my passion And gave me your clod-conceived. You clogged the feet of my boyhood And I believed that my stumble Had the poise and stride of Apollo And his voice my thick tongued mumble. You told me the plough was immortal! O green-life conquering plough! The mandril stained, your coulter blunted In the smooth lea-field of my brow. You sang on steaming dunghills A song of cowards' brood, You perfumed my clothes with weasel itch, You fed me on swinish food You flung a ditch on my vision Of beauty, love and truth. O stony grey soil of Monaghan You burgled my bank of youth! Lost the long hours of pleasure All the women that love young men. O can I stilll stroke the monster's back Or write with unpoisoned pen. His name in these lonely verses Or mention the dark fields where The first gay flight of my lyric Got caught in a peasant's prayer. Mullahinsa, Drummeril, Black Shanco- Wherever I turn I see In the stony grey soil of Monaghan Dead loves that were born for me.
• calebm 12y ago
  [anyone lived in a pretty how town] (e.e. cummings): anyone lived in a pretty how town (with up so floating many bells down) spring summer autumn winter he sang his didn't he danced his did. Women and men(both little and small) cared for anyone not at all they sowed their isn't they reaped their same sun moon stars rain children guessed(but only a few and down they forgot as up they grew autumn winter spring summer) that noone loved him more by more when by now and tree by leaf she laughed his joy she cried his grief bird by snow and stir by still anyone's any was all to her someones married their everyones laughed their cryings and did their dance (sleep wake hope and then)they said their nevers they slept their dream stars rain sun moon (and only the snow can begin to explain how children are apt to forget to remember with up so floating many bells down) one day anyone died i guess (and noone stooped to kiss his face) busy folk buried them side by side little by little and was by was all by all and deep by deep and more by more they dream their sleep noone and anyone earth by april wish by spirit and if by yes. Women and men(both dong and ding) summer autumn winter spring reaped their sowing and went their came sun moon stars rain To One In Paradise (Edgar Allen Poe): Thou wast all that to me, love, For which my soul did pine- A green isle in the sea, love, A fountain and a shrine, All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, And all the flowers were mine. Ah, dream too bright to last! Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise But to be overcast! A voice from out the Future cries, "On! on!"- but o'er the Past (Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies Mute, motionless, aghast! For, alas! alas! me The light of Life is o'er! "No more- no more- no more-" (Such language holds the solemn sea To the sands upon the shore) Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree Or the stricken eagle soar! And all my days are trances, And all my nightly dreams Are where thy grey eye glances, And where thy footstep gleams- In what ethereal dances, By what eternal streams. Do not stand at my grave and weep (by Mary Elizabeth Frye): Do not stand at my grave and weep I am not there. I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glints on snow. I am the sunlight on ripened grain. I am the gentle autumn rain. When you awaken in the morning's hush I am the swift uplifting rush Of quiet birds in circled flight. I am the soft stars that shine at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry; I am not there. I did not die.
• sanoli 12y ago
  I've been reading poetry ever since I read one by Cocteau that physically moved me. Yes, I felt it in my body, not only in my mind. Since then, I've read too many. Here are some of my favorites. Delve deep into the greats and then the lesser known, you'll find the ones that move you. Fernando Pessoa (if he were a french or english poet, he would be considered, I have absolutely no doubt about it, one of the greatest poets to have ever written) W.H. Auden Robert Desnos Homer Ovid I'm not that much of a fan of beat poetry, but I recently got a hold of Mexico City Blues by Kerouac and discovered how much more I like his poetry than his prose.
• esja 12y ago
  So many... but recently... Shelley, Ozymandias: I met a traveller 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. Yeats, The Second Coming: Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand; A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
  • ternaryoperator 12y ago
    The Second Coming. It is beyond extraordinary. The power of the images is utterly breathtaking. However, your version does not have the words of the poem as it's generally published. I've never seen your version. Italics below show the more common wording. "When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi / Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert / A shape with lion body and the head of a man, / A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,..."
    • esja 12y ago
      You're right... I copied it from the top search result (http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html), which seems to be the 1920 version. There have been others since, and Wikipedia uses the newer wording.
• jordigh 12y ago
  Anne Michaels, Skin Divers. I don't think I can publish this poem here (or the collection of poems it refers to), but I love her imagery. She's also written prose, but she writes it in a way that sounds almost like poetry, full of metaphor and imagery.
• calebm 12y ago
  "Passion not spent" What's my great fear? I'll tell you; come near... To lay down in death with so much left. Passion not spent - Oh cowardly regret! For fear of others? The thousand deaths. I'm afraid to die With no twinkle in my eye - To pass meagerly by Yet hidden inside. To walk through life Not truly alive, And to pass in the night With an unfelt "goodbye".
  • javajosh 12y ago
    That's fantastic. Who wrote it?
    • stultus 12y ago
      I think he himself wrote that :) Caleb Madriga. and it is indeed fantastic :)
    • chillax 12y ago
      Op it seems. :-) http://calebmadrigal.com/passion-not-spent/ http://calebmadrigal.com/passion-not-spent/
      • calebm 12y ago
        Thanks :) Yes, it's a personal poem.
    • kgrytoyr 12y ago
      http://calebmadrigal.com/passion-not-spent/ http://calebmadrigal.com/passion-not-spent/
    • eflowers 12y ago
      he did
• neduma 12y ago
  Checkout http://haiku.nytimes.com/ http://haiku.nytimes.com/ Sample Haiku: Gusts of wind rising up the chimney face blow his feathers the wrong way.
• thom 12y ago
  Plath and Dorothy Parker, never could choose between them.
• alfiedotwtf 12y ago
  Eminem: No more games, I'ma change what you call rage Tear this motherfucking roof off like two dogs caged I was playing in the beginning, the mood all changed I've been chewed up and spit out and booed off stage But I kept rhyming and stepped right into the next cypher Best believe somebody's paying the pied piper All the pain inside amplified by the fact That I can't get by with my 9 to 5 And I can't provide the right type of life for my family Cause man, these goddamn food stamps don't buy diapers And it's no movie, there's no Mekhi Phifer, this is my life And these times are so hard, and it's getting even harder Trying to feed and water my seed, plus Teeter totter caught up between being a father and a prima donna Baby mama drama's screaming on and Too much for me to wanna Stay in one spot, another day of monotony Has gotten me to the point, I'm like a snail I've got to formulate a plot or I end up in jail or shot Success is my only motherfucking option, failure's not Mom, I love you, but this trailer's got to go I cannot grow old in Salem's lot So here I go it's my shot. Feet, fail me not, this may be the only opportunity that I got
  • arrowgunz 12y ago
    Eminem has written some really good lines. His play with words is just fantastic.
    • deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
  • pariya 12y ago
    Major points for dropping rap lines. I like you.
• taylord608 12y ago
  Charles Bukowski, Charles Bukowski, and Charles Bukowski. Shakespeare is lame.
• Spooky23 12y ago
  I always come back to Frost's "The Road Not Taken" TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5 Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, 10 And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. 15 I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
  • david_shaw 12y ago
    I'm a Frost fan as well. My favorite is Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound’s the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.
    • tokenrove 12y ago
      Mine is: Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• evo_9 12y ago
  Bukowski. http://hellopoetry.com/charles-bukowski/ http://hellopoetry.com/charles-bukowski/
• dsrguru 12y ago
  I'm not sure who the poet was, but here's an old Chinese poem that I love. My translation doesn't quite do it justice, but... 少小離家老大回 鄉音無改鬢毛衰 兒童相見不相識 笑問客從何處來 I left my hometown as a young boy and returned as an old man. The local speech hadn't changed, but the hair on my head had. The children looked at me but recognized me not. Laughing, they asked from where this visitor had come.
  • peri 12y ago
    Do you mind sharing the original author's name? It sounds gorgeous, but I can only read Japanese, so I'm not sure if I'm just completely wrong in getting the images from the Chinese.
    • contingencies 12y ago
      Search engine yielded both the rest of the poem and the identity of the author. 少小離家老大回，鄉音無改鬢毛衰。 兒童相見不相識，笑問客從何處來。 (as above) 離別家鄉歲月多，近來人事半消磨。 惟有門前鏡湖水，春風不改舊時波。 I have left home for so long, society has lost its meaning. There are only the waters of Mirror Lake before the door, and the spring winds cannot change the ripples of the past. [my translation] The author is Hè​ Zhī​zhāng​ (賀知章), a Tang Dynasty poet. The poem comes from the second part of his book Images of Homecoming (回鄉偶書). He is one of the Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup (ie. alcohol-loving Tang poets): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Immortals_of_the_Wine_Cup http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Immortals_of_the_Wine_Cup Coming from Japanese or modern Chinese you can use http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php to understand the relationships between words. Also try http://chinesenotes.com/classical_chinese.php http://chinesenotes.com/classical_chinese.php for grammatical background. More Tang poems @ http://chinesenotes.com/classics.php http://chinesenotes.com/classics.php
      • peri 12y ago
        Thanks so much! I only got a brief overview of Chinese poetry in school, so getting to appreciate more is really awesome.
      • davorb 12y ago
• charliefg 12y ago
  Jehst and Kate Tempest, for me they're mind bending
• bdevine 12y ago
  Wallace Stevens is a favorite of mine. His work has been described as "rigorous", which I would agree with. He is an inspiration to me due to his ability to straddle two worlds: his day job was mainly as an insurance executive, but he flowered late and won a Pulitzer for his poetry. I particularly like "The Emperor of Ice Cream": Call the roller of big cigars, The muscular one, and bid him whip In kitchen cups concupiscent curds. Let the wenches dawdle in such dress As they are used to wear, and let the boys Bring flowers in last month's newspapers. Let be be finale of seem. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream. Take from the dresser of deal, Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet On which she embroidered fantails once And spread it so as to cover her face. If her horny feet protrude, they come To show how cold she is, and dumb. Let the lamp affix its beam. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
  • planetmcd 12y ago
    The Snow Man is quite good: One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves, Which is the sound of the land Full of the same wind That is blowing in the same bare place For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
  • foxhedgehog 12y ago
    This poem does in two stanzas at least part of what Hamlet does in five acts. It's even more brilliant once you 'decode' it, one of my favorites.
  • zorked 12y ago
    Of Mere Being The palm at the end of the mind, Beyond the last thought, rises In the bronze distance. A gold-feathered bird Sings in the palm, without human meaning, Without human feeling, a foreign song. You know then that it is not the reason That makes us happy or unhappy. The bird sings. Its feathers shine. The palm stands on the edge of space. The wind moves slowly in the branches. The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.
• smprk 12y ago
  I love many poets and poetry.Two that I would like to share with HN commuity at this time would be - Rumi and Gulzar Rumi said things like Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious. Rumi: Meet you there Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field.I 'll meet you there. Rumi: Silence There is a way between voice and presence where information flows. In disciplined silence it opens. With wandering talk it closes. Gulzar: Dil toh bachcha hai ji (hindi) Dil toh bachcha hai ji (english) Heart is such a child Gulzar: Your name (hindi) Nazm uljhi hui hai seene mein misare atke hue hain hothon par udate phirte hain titaliyon ki tarah lafz kaagaz pe baithate hi nahin kab se baithaa hun main jaanam saade kaagaz pe likh ke naam tera bas tera naam hi mukammal hai isse behtar bhi nazm kyaa hogi (english) A poem is entangled in my heart. lines are stuck on my lips. Fluttering like butterflies, words refuse to settle on paper. I have labored for hours my darling, writing your name on this blank sheet of paper. Your name itself suffices; What other poem can excel that ? Rumi - http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/875661.Rumi http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/875661.Rumi Gulzar - http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10289313-selected-poems http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10289313-selected-poems
  • anon012012 12y ago
    I love it, mostly Rumi. It's like motivational poetry, for the nerds from 800 years ago. “If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?” - Rumi “Sit, be still, and listen, because you're drunk and we're at the edge of the roof.” ― Rumi
    • smprk 12y ago
      And one of the best ones from Rumi What you seek is seeking you - Rumi
    • 616c 12y ago
      If you ever take a Sufi Islam class, it is introductions to quotes of Rumi like these that will ruin you forever. God I love his work. There is a whole school of Sufi sects known as drunk Sufis, drunk on their love of God, so to speak, and Rumi is a fantastic artistic characterization of their mindset.
• scottjad 12y ago
  This guy reads a lot of poems and I like his voice: https://www.youtube.com/user/spokenverse/videos?sort=dd&shelf_id=1&view=0 https://www.youtube.com/user/spokenverse/videos?sort=dd&shel... Yes I know that doesn't answer your question. I've been reading and enjoying John Clare the past few days. One of his poems, read by the guy above, is in this video: https://vimeo.com/121024561 https://vimeo.com/121024561 I love the poem and the music but I don't think the footage connects that well.
• wanda 12y ago
  Vincas Mykolaitis-Putinas http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincas_Mykolaitis-Putinas http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincas_Mykolaitis-Putinas Goethe is fine too, and some Russian poets. I'm from England but I gladly concede that the best poetry tends to come from countries east of my own.
• smorrow 12y ago
  Angus O'Reilly O'Patrick McGinney.
• cschep 12y ago
  Great thread. Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. - Rainer Rilke (http://www.onbeing.org/program/wild-love-world/feature/go-limits-your-longing/1448 http://www.onbeing.org/program/wild-love-world/feature/go-li...)
• AlecSchueler 12y ago
  Belfast man checking in, poetry is one of the main traditions here and has a thriving local community, so I thought I would recommend some of my favourites from this part of the world. Paul Muldoon, Maybe something of a "poet's poet" but certainly worth checking out. His style is a casual one, but bursts with sidelong allusions to history, literature, art and etymological punnery. Perhaps of particular interest to people here, might be his novel-length poem Madoc, an hallucinogenic journey through time and place, in which "[he] supposes that Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey took up their (actual) fancy of founding a Pantisocratic community in North America." Ciaran Carson, Took a break from writing through most of the 70s to travel with his wife playing traditional music and steep himself in the Irish storytelling tradition. His books since then have been an, at time excitingly precarious, marriage of traditional storytelling and a modernist mock pedanticism. Worth checking out is his Belfast Confetti, a mix of essays and poems which explore the psychological relationship one has to one's city. Leontia Flynn, A much younger poet, of the generation of artists who have had to deal with adapting to life and working in the 21st Century. Her last book, from 2011, Profit & Loss is a striking meditation on the changing role of memory in pre- and post- Internet society. And for something different that I would particularly recommend to the HN crowd, Sam Riviere, An English poet of the current generation who deals with the cognitive fallout of the ever varied linguistic and cultural deluge one experiences day to day in 2015. I don't want to say too much about his writing as he is still so young, but certainly seek out his latest book, Kim Kardashian's Marriage.
• foxhedgehog 12y ago
  Tear It Down We find out the heart only by dismantling what the heart knows. by redefining the morning, we find a morning that comes just after darkness. we can break through marriage into marriage. by insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond affection and wade mouth-deep into love. we must unlearn the constellations to see the stars. but going back toward childhood will not help. the village is not better than pittsburgh. only pittsburgh is more than pittsburgh. rome is better than rome in the same way the sound of racoon tongues licking the inside walls of the garbage tub is more than the stir of them in the muck of the garbage. love is not enough. we die and are put into the earth forever. we should insist while there is still time. we must eat through the wildness of her sweet body already in our bed to reach the body within the body. -Jack Gilbert
  • schoen 12y ago
    The poetic reference to Rome being better than Rome reminds me of Edmund Spenser's adaptation of Bellay's poem about Rome. http://www.bartleby.com/153/23.html http://www.bartleby.com/153/23.html I think the most famous stanza (an excerpt from a much, much longer poem) is Thou stranger, which for Rome in Rome here seekest, And nought of Rome in Rome perceiv’st at all, These same olde walls, olde arches, which thou seest, Olde palaces, is that which Rome men call. Behold what wreake, what ruine, and what wast, And how that she, which with her mightie powre Tam’d all the world, hath tam’d herselfe at last, The pray of Time, which all things doth devowre. Rome now of Rome is th’ onely funerall, And onely Rome of Rome hath victorie; Ne ought save Tyber hastning to his fall Remaines of all: O worlds inconstancie! That which is firme doth flit and fall away, And that is flitting doth abide and stay. Bellay (and Spenser) claim that the only city that was ultimately able to conquer ancient Rome is ... modern Rome. I found that a striking observation.
• Excluse 12y ago
  "Without haste, but without rest." "The only means to gain one's ends with people are force and cunning. Love also, they say, but that is to wait for sunshine, and life needs every moment." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• qute 12y ago
  Kendrick Lamar: If I think and act like you do The world would die From not seeing something new And if I don't speak on how I feel The world would lose out on What's really real And if should die before I wake I pray my music will take my place The World The Relevant Сергей Есенин and Immortal Technique: Love...doesn't need a complicated metaphor And sometimes nothing needs to be said at all Sometimes a person you with is not your one and only And you just fuck with them because you afraid to be lonely And when you come back its too late So you overcompensate Like victims of rape Full of self hate Lost in the affection to strangers around you Instead of the only person that ever gave a fuck about you
• zem 12y ago
  millay and kipling. very different poets, but both resonate very strongly with me.
• zserge 12y ago
  Definitely, Brodsky. Unfortunately, not many of his poems were written in English, and only a few were translated. All the huskies are eaten. There is no space left in the diary And the beads of quick words scatter over his spouse's sepia-shaded face adding the date in question like a mole to her lovely cheek. Next the snapshot of his sister. He doesn't spare his kin: what's been reached is the highest possible latitude! And like the silk stocking of a burlesque half-nude queen it climbs up his thigh: gangrene.
• keshuv 12y ago
  Hehehehehe.
• snoopybbt 12y ago
  Charles Baudelaire.
• argimenes 12y ago
  John Milton Thomas Campion Samuel Taylor Coleridge Robert Bridges Ted Hughes Seamus Heaney Charles Baudelaire Paul Verlaine Edgar Allan Poe ... just for fun Clark Ashton Smith for projecting a Lovecraftian view of the cosmos into poetic form.
• killtheliterate 12y ago
  Hart Crane, far and away... Ted Hughes's Metamorphosis. Such a sick translation of Ovid.
• galfarragem 12y ago
  My ex-girlfriend (not Portuguese) when she wanted to "paper cut me" used to say that every Portuguese is a poet. Seeing Portugal with the distance of an expat this is (un)fortunately true. The most relevant of us is certainly Fernando Pessoa.[1] [1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_Pessoa http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_Pessoa
• walshemj 12y ago
  Keith Douglas ww2 war poet "The noble horse with courage in his eye, clean in the bone, looks up at a shellburst: away fly the images of the shires but he puts the pipe back in his mouth. Peter was unfortunately killed by an 88; it took his leg away, he died in the ambulance. I saw him crawling on the sand, he said It's most unfair, they've shot my foot off."
• thomson 12y ago
  David Huerta is one of my all time favourites. Check out "Abres y Cierras" (Open and Close)[1] http://www.beforesaying.com/images2/Open%20and%20Close%20(English).jpg http://www.beforesaying.com/images2/Open%20and%20Close%20(En...
• wiresurfer 12y ago
  Thats a tough question to answer. Between bukowsky , Edgar Alan Poe, Shakespeare, a few of miltons work, Gulzar, Tolkien, you can imagine the choice to be tough! But here is an unlikely candidate I find particularly interesting because of his simplicity and yet intricacy of expression. Vikram Seth. His work "golden gate" is just a masterpiece with so many hidden gems. To have a story spannig a good 700pages in verse itself is astounding. Here are some of his smaller beauties Awake *Awake for hours and staring at the ceiling Through the unsettled stillness of the night He grows possessed of the obsessive feeling That dawn has come and gone and brought no light.* And this, which happens to be the name of the small book of his selected short poems *All you who sleep tonight Far from the ones you love, No hand to left or right And emptiness above - Know that you aren't alone The whole world shares your tears, Some for two nights or one, And some for all their years.* PS: pardon the bad formatting. Long form text entry via a tiny screen is still a pain point :)
• ericweinstein 12y ago
  Dean Young. Elegy on Toy Piano is a phenomenal book.
• bdr 12y ago
  A correspondence: Python - Robert Frost Ruby (Matz) - Kay Ryan Ruby (dhh) - Fred Seidel JavaScript - e e cummings Brainfuck - John Ashbery Java - Auden C - Shakespeare Haskell - Anne Carson Pascal - Longfellow
• nakkiel 12y ago
  I really don't know what to do with this. It's from a Spanish poet, I discovered it in French and got to prefer the Spanish original. I haven't been able to find the English translation. DEDICATORIA Más allá de donde aún se esconde la vida, queda un reino, queda cultivar como un rey su agonía, hacer florecer como un reino la sucia flor de la agonía: yo que todo lo prostituí, aún puedo prostituir mi muerte y hacer de mi cadáver el último poema. – Leopoldo María Panero
  • comrade1 12y ago
    Of course it's Spanish and about sex, indirectly. I think I prefer the German poets and their poems about nature, the human struggle, etc. (I'm sure someone will provide some examples of German poets that write about sex)
• ianamartin 12y ago
  My favorite single book of poetry was actually written by my best friend. It's called God's Livestovk Policy, and it's a completely brilliant commentary on how we relate to each other and power figures. It's brutally funny as well as beatiful language. http://www.lesfigues.com/book/gods-livestock-policy/ http://www.lesfigues.com/book/gods-livestock-policy/ Other than that, I'm a huge fan of romantic era German poetry. Heine's Wenn ich in deine Augen seh is haunting Wenn ich in deine Augen seh, So schwindet all mein Leid und Weh; Doch wenn ich küsse deinen Mund, So werd ich ganz und gar gerund. Wenn ich mich lehn an deine Brust, Kommts über mich wie Himmelslust; Doch wenn du sprichst: Ich liebe dich! So muß ich weinen bitterlich.
• ph4 12y ago
  The heart can think of no devotion Greater than being shore to ocean - Holding the curve of one position, Counting an endless repetition. Robert Frost
• dsego 12y ago
  Sergei Yesenin
• nickbauman 12y ago
  1) Catullus 2) Robinson Jeffers 3) Rimbaud 4) Shakespeare Catullus is the greatest, though.
• bazzargh 12y ago
  I'm partial to Larkin and Heaney, but I have to say my favourite poem is this one by Lawrence Raab - Attack of the Crab Monsters Even from the beach I could sense it--- lack of welcome, lack of abiding life, like something in the air, a certain lack of sound. Yesterday there was a mountain out there. Now it's gone. And look at this radio, each tube neatly sliced in half. Blow the place up! That was my advice. But after the storm and the earthquake, after the tactic of the exploding plane and the strategy of the sinking boat, it looked like fate and I wanted to say, "Don't you see? So what if you're a famous biochemist! Lost with all hands is an old story." Sure, we're on the edge of an important breakthrough, everyone hearing voices, everyone falling into caves, and you're out wandering through the jungle in the middle of the night in your negligée. Yes, we're way out there on the edge of science, while the rest of the island continues to disappear until nothing's left except this cliff in the middle of the ocean, and you, in your bathing suit, crouched behind the scuba tanks. I'd like to tell you not to be afraid, but I've lost my voice. I'm not used to all these legs, these claws, these feelers. It's the old story, predictable as fallout---the re-arrangement of molecules. And everyone is surprised and no one understands why each man tries to kill the thing he loves, when the change comes over him. So now you know what I never found the time to say. Sweetheart, put down your flamethrower. You know I always loved you. Hilarious, sad, and sweet. It wasn't until decades after I first read this that I found out that this wasn't just metaphor, it's pretty much an accurate synopsis of the Roger Corman film of the same name.
• dang 12y ago
  At dawn, the moon, like a creature of fantasy, stole into my room and woke me from some lazy and unproductive sleep. Her face quickly illuminated the underside of my soul and my own being stood revealed in the naked light. Sighing in wonder, I faced my Self, which said: "Your life so far has chased the illusion of control: You will not meet me on that path. One flash of my glance is worth a thousand years of piety." Overcome by waste and loss, my soul endarkened itself with shame. But my moon-faced Self, whose radiance equaled the sun, filled a cup of Direct Experience and urged me to drown my despair: "No bouquet... no flavor... but this wine can wash away your being's whole historical library." I finished the cup in one gulp, and, intoxicated by its purity, fell to the earth. Since then I am not sure whether I am here or not. Neither sober nor drunk, sometimes I feel the joy of my soul's eyes looking through mine. Other times I feel the curl of its hair and my life bobs and weaves. Sometimes, from sheer habit, I'm back on the compost heap. And sometimes, when that glance finds me again, I am back in the Rose Garden. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmud_Shabistari http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmud_Shabistari
• jebediah 12y ago
  THE ROAD TO WISDOM The road to wisdom? -- Well, it's plain and simple to express: Err and err and err again but less and less and less. ~Piet Hein
• wishinghand 12y ago
  I've always been fond of Albert Goldbarths' "Budget Travel Through Time and Space". He's an old timer with modern sensibilities, narratives that criss-cross eras with ease and a cosmological perspective. Science is inflected in a lot of his work. "The Sciences Sing a Lullabye" Physics says: go to sleep. Of course you’re tired. Every atom in you has been dancing the shimmy in silver shoes nonstop from mitosis to now. Quit tapping your feet. They’ll dance inside themselves without you. Go to sleep. Geology says: it will be all right. Slow inch by inch America is giving itself to the ocean. Go to sleep. Let darkness lap at your sides. Give darkness an inch. You aren’t alone. All of the continents used to be one body. You aren’t alone. Go to sleep. Astronomy says: the sun will rise tomorrow, Zoology says: on rainbow-fish and lithe gazelle, Psychology says: but first it has to be night, so Biology says: the body-clocks are stopped all over town and History says: here are the blankets, layer on layer, down and down.
  • schoen 12y ago
    It's a lot more metaphorical and more fanciful but there's "Evolution" by Langdon Smith: https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/int/evolution.html https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/int/evolution.html When you were a tadpole and I was a fish In the Paleozoic time, And side by side on the ebbing tide We sprawled through the ooze and slime, Or skittered with many a caudal flip Through the depths of the Cambrian fen, My heart was rife with the joy of life, For I loved you even then. [...]
    • wishinghand 12y ago
      How do I format text like that on HN? Use <pre> tags?
      • schoen 12y ago
        Two spaces in front of each line should work. One space is not enough, Yet two suffice.
• mzh 12y ago
  I like Rimbaud quite a lot: "The star wept rose-colored [. . .]" The star wept rose-colored in the heart of your ears, The infinite rolled white from your nape to your loins The sea turned ruddy at your vermilion nipples And Man bled black on your sovereign flank. Another: "The wolf howled under the leaves [. . .]" The wolf howled under the leaves As he spat out the fine feathers Of his meal of fowl: Like him I consume myself. Lettuce and fruit Wait only to be picked; But the spider of the hedge Eats only violets. Let me sleep! Let me boil At the altars of Solomon. Boiling water courses over the rust, And mixes with the Kidron. These are translated from the French by Wallace Fowlie.
  • olifante 12y ago
    Rimbaud: “Jadis, si je me souviens bien, ma vie était un festin où s'ouvraient tous les coeurs, où tous les vins coulaient.”
• rodgerd 12y ago
  Wilfred Owen: Parable of the Old Man and the Young So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went, And took the fire with him, and a knife. And as they sojourned both of them together, Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father, Behold the preparations, fire and iron, But where the lamb for this burnt-offering? Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps, and builded parapets and trenches there, And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son. When lo! an angel called him out of heaven, Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad, Neither do anything to him. Behold, A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns; Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him. But the old man would not so, but slew his son, And half the seed of Europe, one by one. DULCE ET DECORUM EST Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind. Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling, And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime... Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori. Smile, Smile, Smile Head to limp head, the sunk-eyed wounded scanned Yesterday's Mail; the casualties (typed small) And (large) Vast Booty from our Latest Haul. Also, they read of Cheap Homes, not yet planned; For, said the paper, "When this war is done The men's first instinct will be making homes. Meanwhile their foremost need is aerodromes, It being certain war has just begun. Peace would do wrong to our undying dead, -- The sons we offered might regret they died If we got nothing lasting in their stead. We must be solidly indemnified. Though all be worthy Victory which all bought, We rulers sitting in this ancient spot Would wrong our very selves if we forgot The greatest glory will be theirs who fought, Who kept this nation in integrity." Nation? -- The half-limbed readers did not chafe But smiled at one another curiously Like secret men who know their secret safe. This is the thing they know and never speak, That England one by one had fled to France (Not many elsewhere now save under France). Pictures of these broad smiles appear each week, And people in whose voice real feeling rings Say: How they smile! They're happy now, poor things. A more pleasant piece by Sir Philip Sydney: My true-love hath my heart, and I have his, By just exchange one for the other given: I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss; There never was a bargain better driven. His heart in me keeps me and him in one, My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides; He loves my heart for once it was his own; I cherish his because in me it bides. His heart his wound receivèd from my sight; My heart was wounded with his wounded heart; For as from me on him his hurt did light, So still methought in me his hurt did smart: Both equal hurt, in this change sought our bliss, My true love hath my heart and I have his.
• mathattack 12y ago
  Shel Silverstein [0] has been on my bookshelf. I enjoyed reading Falling Up [1] as a way to help my kids understand that poetry is more than rhyming. From The Little Boy And the Old Man [2]: Said the little boy, "Sometimes I drop my spoon." Said the old man, "I do that too." The little boy whispered, "I wet my pants." "I do that too," laughed the little old man. Said the little boy, "I often cry." The old man nodded, "So do I." "But worst of all," said the boy, "it seems Grown-ups don't pay attention to me." And he felt the warmth of a wrinkled old hand. "I know what you mean," said the little old man. [0] http://www.shelsilverstein.com/ http://www.shelsilverstein.com/ [1] http://www.shelsilverstein.com/books/falling/ http://www.shelsilverstein.com/books/falling/ [2] http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poems/best/shel_silverstein http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poems/best/shel_silverstein
• F_J_H 12y ago
  Philip Larkin has been mentioned already in this thread. The following two poems by Larkin inspire me in a backwards sort of way. This first one, "Next, Please" reminds me that we can't just wait for something amazing to happen in our lives, thinking that some day it surely will all on its own. We need to be proactive and make things happen. Next, Please Always too eager for the future, we Pick up bad habits of expectancy. Something is always approaching; every day Till then we say, Watching from a bluff the tiny, clear Sparkling armada of promises draw near. How slow they are! And how much time they waste, Refusing to make haste! Yet still they leave us holding wretched stalks Of disappointment, for, though nothing balks Each big approach, leaning with brasswork prinked, Each rope distinct, Flagged, and the figurehead with golden tits Arching our way, it never anchors; it's No sooner present than it turns to past. Right to the last We think each one will heave to and unload All good into our lives, all we are owed For waiting so devoutly and so long. But we are wrong: Only one ship is seeking us, a black- Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back A huge and birdless silence. In her wake No waters breed or break. Second is Larkin's Poem "To Failure", which remindes me that I likely will not fail spectacularly, but slowly everyday, almost without notice, when I let the day slip away without achieving at least one small step towards a goal. To Failure You do not come dramatically, with dragons That rear up with my life between their paws And dash me butchered down beside the wagons, The horses panicking; nor as a clause Clearly set out to warn what can be lost, What out-of-pocket charges must be borne, Expenses met; nor as a draughty ghost That’s seen, some mornings, running down a lawn. It is these sunless afternoons, I find, Instal you at my elbow like a bore. The chestnut trees are caked with silence. I’m Aware the days pass quicker than before, Smell staler too. And once they fall behind They look like ruin. You have been here some time. Finally, as technical people, we can get so absorbed in what we are doing that we forget the importance of fostering the relationships around us with those we love: Without Mercy, the Rains Continued (by David St. John) There had been A microphone hidden Beneath the bed Of course I didn't realize it At the time & in fact Didn't know for years Until one day a standard Khaki book mailer Arrived & within it An old Stained cassette tape Simply labeled in black marker "Him / Me / September 1975" & as I listened I knew something Had been asked of me Across the years & loneliness To which I simply responded With the same barely audible Silence that I had chosen then
• milkcircle 12y ago
  I have this one tacked up on my wall. Not only is it inspirational, but I am impressed by the syllabic structure of the poem (alternating 11/10 syllables, iambic). Having never really studied poetry before, I found this really cool. If, by Rudyard Kipling If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools: If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’ If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
• moo 12y ago
  Images by Tyrone Green Dark and lonely on a summer's night. Kill my landlord. Kill my landlord. Watchdog barking. Do he bite? Kill my landlord. Kill my landlord. Slip in his window. Break his neck. Then his house I start to wreck. Got no reason. What the heck? Kill my landlord. Kill my landlord. C-I-L my land lord! (as performed by Eddie Murphy on SNL)
• MattyRad 12y ago
  Gerard Manley Hopkins: God’s Grandeur THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs— Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings. I don't actually liken the poem to god's grandeur... more the seemingly unending bounty of the world, and its perseverance in spite of a harsh and unforgiving universe.
  • beigeotter 12y ago
    I love this poem. It's also one of my favorites. As a non-religious person, the poem inspires me to always look for hope, no matter what. Thanks for posting!
• raldi 12y ago
  I think the highest forum of poetry is the double-dactyl (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_dactyl http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_dactyl). Here's one I wrote in 2010 about reddit: Hexis-a-plexis, A- -lexis Ohanian Started a website with His best friend Steve. Then after selling it, Conde Nast management's Ultrashortsightedness Forced them to leave
  • schoen 12y ago
    Don't forget the clerihew. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerihew https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerihew I once wrote one about Jon Johansen (although that was only my second-best-known poem about him).
• warrenpeace 12y ago
  Robinson Jeffers! You can visit the stone Tor House in Carmel, just 90 minutes south of the SF Bay Area: http://www.torhouse.org/ http://www.torhouse.org/ ~ ~ ~ ~ The Beauty of Things To feel and speak the astonishing beauty of things — earth, stone and water, Beast, man and woman, sun, moon and stars — The blood-shot beauty of human nature, its thoughts, frenzies and passions, And unhuman nature its towering reality — For man’s half dream; man, you might say, is nature dreaming, but rock And water and sky are constant — to feel Greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the natural Beauty, is the sole business of poetry. The rest’s diversion: those holy or noble sentiments, the intricate ideas, The love, lust, longing: reasons, but not the reason.
• schoen 12y ago
  For people who live in Brooklyn or have connections to it, you might be interested in Walt Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" where he emphasizes his power to, through his poetry, be mentally or spiritually united with future generations crossing the East River: http://www.bartleby.com/142/86.html http://www.bartleby.com/142/86.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_Brooklyn_Ferry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_Brooklyn_Ferry It's one of the more intensely second-person poems I've come across, with its repeated focus on the reader's presence and what the reader has in common with the poet. I learned about this poem from the novel 10:04 by Ben Lerner, in which it figures prominently. The novel is an interesting meditation on nostalgia, modernity, introspection, and being a writer (although I fear readers might like it much less if they don't share some of the author's nostalgias). http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/books/review/1004-by-ben-lerner.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/books/review/1004-by-ben-l...
• beigeotter 12y ago
  I love Kipling, especially his more humorous work. Case in point: I go to concert, party, ball -- What profit is in these? I sit alone against the wall And strive to look at ease. The incense that is mine by right They burn before her shrine; And that's because I'm seventeen And She is forty-nine. I cannot check my girlish blush, My color comes and goes; I redden to my finger-tips, And sometimes to my nose. But She is white where white should be, And red where red should shine. The blush that flies at seventeen Is fixed at forty-nine. I wish I had Her constant cheek; I wish that I could sing All sorts of funny little songs, Not quite the proper thing. I'm very gauche and very shy, Her jokes aren't in my line; And, worst of all, I'm seventeen While She is forty-nine. The young men come, the young men go Each pink and white and neat, She's older than their mothers, but They grovel at Her feet. They walk beside Her 'rickshaw wheels -- None ever walk by mine; And that's because I'm seventeen And She is foty-nine. She rides with half a dozen men, (She calls them "boys" and "mashers") I trot along the Mall alone; My prettiest frocks and sashes Don't help to fill my programme-card, And vainly I repine From ten to two A.M. Ah me! Would I were forty-nine! She calls me "darling," "pet," and "dear," And "sweet retiring maid." I'm always at the back, I know, She puts me in the shade. She introduces me to men, "Cast" lovers, I opine, For sixty takes to seventeen, Nineteen to foty-nine. But even She must older grow And end Her dancing days, She can't go on forever so At concerts, balls and plays. One ray of priceless hope I see Before my footsteps shine; Just think, that She'll be eighty-one When I am forty-nine.
• tokenrove 12y ago
  All the "classics" have been listed already, so I'll mention someone more modern who I think programmers would enjoy: Christian Bök. Check out Crystallography and Eunoia.
• calinet6 12y ago
  So many. To name a few: Marge Piercy (see below) Robert Frost (if you read him carefully) Philip Larkin William Stafford --- To be of use – by Marge Piercy http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2006/09.. http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2006/09.... The people I love the best jump into work head first without dallying in the shallows and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight. They seem to become natives of that element, the black sleek heads of seals bouncing like half-submerged balls. I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart, who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience, who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward, who do what has to be done, again and again. I want to be with people who submerge in the task, who go into the fields to harvest and work in a row and pass the bags along, who are not parlor generals and field deserters but move in a common rhythm when the food must come in or the fire be put out. The work of the world is common as mud. Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust. But the thing worth doing well done has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident. Greek amphoras for wine or oil, Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums but you know they were made to be used. The pitcher cries for water to carry and a person for work that is real.
• skraojuno 12y ago
  HW Longfellow : Psalm of life Rudyard kipling; If
• blatherard 12y ago
  Galway Kinnell
• knowuh 12y ago
  Just had to add my favorite, William Carlos Williams: so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens. You should all subscribe to the writers almanac podcast. A free poem & other good stuff in < 5 minutes every day. http://writersalmanac.org/podcast/ http://writersalmanac.org/podcast/
• adregan 12y ago
  Did a quick search for a few poets (the usual, Robert Creeley, William Carlos Williams, George Oppen, Lorraine Neidecker, Robert Zukofsky), thinking about trying to champion at least one of them (Neidecker, probably). Then I remembered, this is hacker news, these are programmers. Before I was a programmer, I was a poet and a poetry teacher. One of the things that started drawing me towards programming and technology were poets like bpNichol and his fantastic "First Screening". He wrote it on an Apple IIe using BASIC in 83-84 and folks have been "translating" it throughout the past 30 years to keep it accessible on newer PCs. There's a lot of poetry and hacker ethos coming together to keep this little gem alive: I recommend the .mov[1] version as the Javascript[2] version is a bit too nice (fonts, no flickering, etc), but you can also run the original code[3] in an emulator. Or, for an entirely different experience, read the source code[4]. Read all about it here: http://vispo.com/bp/introduction.htm http://vispo.com/bp/introduction.htm 1: http://vispo.com/bp/firstscreening.mov http://vispo.com/bp/firstscreening.mov 2: http://vispo.com/bp/first-screening-javascript-version/firstscreening.html http://vispo.com/bp/first-screening-javascript-version/first... 3: http://vispo.com/bp/emulatedversion.htm http://vispo.com/bp/emulatedversion.htm 4: http://vispo.com/bp/download/FirstScreeningBybpNichol.txt http://vispo.com/bp/download/FirstScreeningBybpNichol.txt
• paperwork 12y ago
  Some non-English poets: Faiz: Your feet bleed, Faiz, something surely will bloom as you water the desert simply by walking through it. Ahmad Faraz: ... All those with outspoken mouths have become torn bodies. Those with unbowed heads have been led to the gallows and the rope. All the Sufis and saints, every Sheikh and Imam hope to find favour at the court of the rulers. The dignitaries of the law courts wait to take oaths like beggars squatting at the side of the road. ... Look at the principles of those unworldly loyalists who are with you look around! So the condition of saving your life is to place your pen and slate in the killing fields. If not you will be the only target of the archers this time. Therefore surrender your integrity. Seeing the treaty I spoke to the messenger. He does not know what history teaches. When the night martyrs the sun the morning sculpts a new one. ... My pen does not commend that protector who is proud of besieging his own city. My pen is not the bowl of the simple fool who renders praise-poems to the usurpers. My pen is not the tool of the housebreaker who makes a hole in the roof of his own home. My pen is not the friend of the midnight thief who scales the walls of lamp less houses. My pen is not the prayer beads of the missionary who always keeps account of his worshipful deeds. My pen is not the scale of the judge who places a double veil over his face. My pen is the pious gift of my people. My pen is the court of my conscience. ...
• gbog 12y ago
  Houellebecq: ~~~ De jeunes bourgeoises circulent entre les rayonnages du Monoprix, élégantes et sexuelles comme des oies. Il y a probablement des hommes, aussi; je m'en fiche pas mal. On a beau ne plus imaginer de mots possibles entre soi et le reste de l'humanité, le vagin reste une ouverture. ~~~
• nngrey 12y ago
  David E. Howerton. He's not well known but one of my favorites. tajpe’ joj ‘oy’wI’Daq boS yabwImey legh choSmeyDaq nuqDaq Hon e’be’ pa’ Qoy ghoghmey tun retlh HeH yabmey ghIH nuqDaqvIpbe’ And the translation: Torn between pains, the gathering of my mind, seeing shadows move, which aren’t there. Hear the voices whispering along the edge of minds coming out of nowhere.
  • aerovistae 12y ago
    what on earth language is that?
    • schoen 12y ago
      It's Klingon.
• alexmorse 12y ago
  Poems > Poets "The Abnormal is Not Courage" The Poles rode out from Warsaw against the German tanks on horses. Rode knowing, in sunlight, with sabers, A magnitude of beauty that allows me no peace. And yet this poem would lessen that day. Question the bravery. Say it's not courage. Call it a passion. Would say courage isn't that. Not at its best. It was impossible, and with form. They rode in sunlight, Were mangled. But I say courage is not the abnormal. Not the marvelous act. Not Macbeth with fine speeches. The worthless can manage in public, or for the moment. It is too near the whore's heart: the bounty of impulse, And the failure to sustain even small kindness. Not the marvelous act, but the evident conclusion of being. Not strangeness, but a leap forward of the same quality. Accomplishment. The even loyalty. But fresh. Not the Prodigal Son, nor Faustus. But Penelope. The thing steady and clear. Then the crescendo. The real form. The culmination. And the exceeding. Not the surprise. The amazed understanding. The marriage, Not the month's rapture. Not the exception. The beauty That is of many days. Steady and clear. It is the normal excellence, of long accomplishment. -Jack Gilbert
  • ajuc 12y ago
    Minor disclaimer - the incident this poem is about had not happened. It's German war propaganda. More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_at_Krojanty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_at_Krojanty Not that it matters for poetry.
• m0nastic 12y ago
  Lots of other people have suggested Neruda, which makes me happy, because he's fantastic. I think my favorite poem is probably "Under Milk Wood", by Dylan Thomas (folks have posted some of his other work, which sheepishly I don't really like). I love this poem so much that even hearing it in a VW ad didn't diminish it. It's quite long, but the beginning is my favorite part: To begin at the beginning: It is Spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible- black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and- rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea. The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine to-night in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds. And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now. Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers, the tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher, postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman, drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, \ policeman, the webfoot cocklewomen and the tidy wives. Young girls lie bedded soft or glide in their dreams, with rings and trousseaux, bridesmaided by glow-worms down the aisles of the organplaying wood. The boys are dreaming wicked or of the bucking ranches of the night and the jollyrogered sea. And the anthracite statues of the horses sleep in the fields, and the cows in the byres, and the dogs in the wet-nosed yards; and the cats nap in the slant corners or lope sly, streaking and needling, on the one cloud of the roofs. You can hear the dew falling, and the hushed town breathing. Only your eyes are unclosed to see the black and folded town fast, and slow, asleep. And you alone can hear the invisible starfall, the darkest-before- dawn minutely dewgrazed stir of the black, dab-filled sea where the Arethusa, the Curlew and the Skylark, Zanzibar, Rhiannon, the Rover, the Cormorant, and the Star of Wales tilt and ride. Listen. It is night moving in the streets, the processional salt slow musical wind in Coronation Street and Cockle Row, it is the grass growing on Llareggub Hill, dewfall, starfall, the sleep of birds in Milk Wood. Listen. It is night in the chill, squat chapel, hymning in bonnet and brooch and bombazine black, butterfly choker and bootlace bow, coughing like nannygoats, suckling mintoes, fortywinking hallelujah; night in the four-ale, quiet as a domino; in Ocky Milkman's lofts like a mouse with gloves; in Dai Bread's bakery flying like black flour. It is to-night in Donkey Street, trotting silent, with seaweed on its hooves, along the cockled cobbles, past curtained fernpot, text and trinket, harmonium, holy dresser, watercolours done by hand, china dog and rosy tin teacaddy. It is night neddying among the snuggeries of babies.
• bufordtwain 12y ago
  Another good one by Philip Larkin: Vers de Société My wife and I have asked a crowd of craps To come and waste their time and ours: perhaps You’d care to join us? In a pig’s arse, friend. Day comes to an end. The gas fire breathes, the trees are darkly swayed. And so Dear Warlock-Williams: I’m afraid— Funny how hard it is to be alone. I could spend half my evenings, if I wanted, Holding a glass of washing sherry, canted Over to catch the drivel of some bitch Who’s read nothing but Which; Just think of all the spare time that has flown Straight into nothingness by being filled With forks and faces, rather than repaid Under a lamp, hearing the noise of wind, And looking out to see the moon thinned To an air-sharpened blade. A life, and yet how sternly it’s instilled All solitude is selfish. No one now Believes the hermit with his gown and dish Talking to God (who’s gone too); the big wish Is to have people nice to you, which means Doing it back somehow. Virtue is social. Are, then, these routines Playing at goodness, like going to church? Something that bores us, something we don’t do well (Asking that ass about his fool research) But try to feel, because, however crudely, It shows us what should be? Too subtle, that. Too decent, too. Oh hell, Only the young can be alone freely. The time is shorter now for company, And sitting by a lamp more often brings Not peace, but other things. Beyond the light stand failure and remorse Whispering Dear Warlock-Williams: Why, of course—
• forkandwait 12y ago
  WH Auden. I can't quote, but he has a poem in which he is thankful for a well developed super ego. I wanted to find a poem of his for our wedding, but he is too cynical even as he is moral.
• bnomis 12y ago
  Simon Armitage. Lovely northern English rhythms. http://simonarmitage.com/ http://simonarmitage.com/ My Party Piece from Book of Matches My party piece: I strike, then from the moment when the matchstick conjures up its light, to when the brightness moves beyond its means, and dies, I say the story of my life - dates and places, torches I carried, a cast of names and faces, those who showed me love, or came close, the changes I made, the lessons I learnt - then somehow still find time to stall and blush before I'm bitten by the flame, and burnt. A warning, though, to anyone nursing an ounce of sadness, anyone alone: don't try this on your own; it's dangerous, madness.
• aminorex 12y ago
  George Herbert, Du Fu, T S Eliot, Ezra Pound, Wm Blake, WB Yeats, Li Po, Mallarme, 2 Dylans, Dante, Sappho, Homer
• aminorex 12y ago
  George Herbert, Du Fu, T S Eliot, Ezra Pound, Wm Blake, WB Yeats, Li Po, Mallarme, Dante, Sappho, Homer
• vijayr 12y ago
  Great thread. Emily Dickinson I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there's a pair of us -- don't tell! They'd banish -- you know! How dreary to be somebody! How public like a frog To tell one's name the livelong day To an admiring bog!
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• lateguy 12y ago
  Charles Bukowski: All The Way, one of the most motivational poem i have experienced in life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6_QUhUPrF4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6_QUhUPrF4
• init0 12y ago
  Don't imitate me; it's as boring as the two halves of a melon. poet Matsuo Basho
• mesofile 12y ago
  Almost all of the poetry I know well came from a single audio collection that I was happily exposed to many years ago; it's called Exact Change and each track is still available on the U.Penn web site [0]. All of the poets are well-known in their fields, some well-known enough to be known to the public, and I have wound up taking many to heart. Among my favorites are the ones by Jack Spicer, John Godfrey, and Kamau Brathwaite. Take a moment to listen, it's very revealing to hear a poem read by its author. [0] http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Exact-Change.html http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Exact-Change.html
• jordhy 12y ago
  Pablo Neruda, Nicanor Parra and Pablo Picasso (he wrote great prose poems). I also like Fransisco de Quevedo and Miguel de Cervantes (yes, Cervantes was also a poet).
• tapichu 12y ago
  John Peale Bishop is pretty hilarious: Famously she descended, her red hair Unbound and bronzed by sea-reflections, caught Crinkled with sea-pearls. The fine slender taut Knees that let down her feet upon the air, Young breasts, slim flanks and golden quarries were Odder than when the young distraught Unknown Venetian, painting her portrait, thought He'd not imagined what he painted there. And I too commenced with that golden cloud: Lipped her delicious hands and had my ease Faring fantastically, perversely proud. All loveliness demands our courtesies. Since she was dead I praised her as I could Silently, among the Barberini bees.
• Zigurd 12y ago
  Philip Larkin. Kate Tempest.
• ridgeguy 12y ago
  As I age, I grow ever fonder of Tennyson, particularly his "Ulysses", from which: ...Come, my friends, 'T is not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174659 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174659 edit: sorry, can't format correctly
• JackFr 12y ago
  Stephen Crane In the desert I saw a creature, naked, bestial, Who, squatting upon the ground, Held his heart in his hands, And ate of it. I said, “Is it good, friend?” “It is bitter—bitter,” he answered; “But I like it “Because it is bitter, “And because it is my heart.”
• ISL 12y ago
  Wislawa Syzmborska, for me. When lighthearted, she has depth, and when dark, she keeps a glimmer of light. The Joy of Writing Why does this written doe bound through these written woods? For a drink of written water from a spring whose surface will xerox her soft muzzle? Why does she lift her head; does she hear something? Perched on four slim legs borrowed from the truth, she pricks up her ears beneath my fingertips. Silence - this word also rustles across the page and parts the boughs that have sprouted from the word "woods." Lying in wait, set to pounce on the blank page, are letters up to no good, clutches of clauses so subordinate they'll never let her get away. Each drop of ink contains a fair supply of hunters, equipped with squinting eyes behind their sights, prepared to swarm the sloping pen at any moment, surround the doe, and slowly aim their guns. They forget that what's here isn't life. Other laws, black on white, obtain. The twinkling of an eye will take as long as I say, and will, if I wish, divide into tiny eternities, full of bullets stopped in mid-flight. Not a thing will ever happen unless I say so. Without my blessing, not a leaf will fall, not a blade of grass will bend beneath that little hoof's full stop. Is there then a world where I rule absolutely on fate? A time I bind with chains of signs? An existence become endless at my bidding? The joy of writing. The power of preserving. Revenge of a mortal hand.
• luk3thomas 12y ago
  ~~~ The Palace ~~~ by Rudyard Kipling, 1902 When I was a King and a Mason -- a Master proven and skilled -- I cleared me ground for a Palace such as a King should build. I decreed and dug down to my levels. Presently, under the silt, I came on the wreck of a Palace such as a King had built. There was no worth in the fashion -- there was no wit in the plan -- Hither and thither, aimless, the ruined footings ran -- Masonry, brute, mishandled, but carven on every stone: "After me cometh a Builder. Tell him, I too have known." Swift to my use in my trenches, where my well-planned ground-works grew, I tumbled his quoins and his ashlars, and cut and reset them anew. Lime I milled of his marbles; burned it, slacked it, and spread; Taking and leaving at pleasure the gifts of the humble dead. Yet I despised not nor gloried; yet, as we wrenched them apart, I read in the razed foundations the heart of that builder's heart. As he had risen and pleaded, so did I understand The form of the dream he had followed in the face of the thing he had planned. When I was a King and a Mason -- in the open noon of my pride, They sent me a Word from the Darkness. They whispered and called me aside. They said -- "The end is forbidden." They said -- "Thy use is fulfilled. "Thy Palace shall stand as that other's -- the spoil of a King who shall build." I called my men from my trenches, my quarries, my wharves, and my sheers. All I had wrought I abandoned to the faith of the faithless years. Only I cut on the timber -- only I carved on the stone: "After me cometh a Builder. Tell him, I too have known!"
• sanxiyn 12y ago
  I am fond of alliterative poetry, and I think this poem is relevant to HN: http://alliteration.net/poetry/website.htm http://alliteration.net/poetry/website.htm
• thallian 12y ago
  Georg Trakl, an austrian. The following was written a few days before his death and is an expression of his experience as a medic after the battle of Gródek in the first world war (translated from german by Eric Plattner & Joseph Suglia): Grodek This evening the autumn woods are alive with exploding arms, the golden fields and blue lakes—and above it all the sun unfurls the dark. Night surrounds the dying men, the unhinged moan of crushed mouths. And still, in the willows, the red cloud, the abiding God, bloodshed itself, begins the harvest in mute fury, the moon’s coolness. All roads rupture into black rot. Under the golden spray of night and stars the sister’s shadow staggers across the acquiescent grove to greet the ghosts of heroes, their blossoming skulls. And beyond human ears the dark flutes of autumn whisper. O noble mourning!—you brazen altars, the searing flame of the spirit nurtures a vaster ache, the grandsons unborn.
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• gao8a 12y ago
  High Flight By John Gillespie Magee, Jr. Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there, I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air. . . . Up, up the long, delirious burning blue I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace Where never lark, or ever eagle flew — And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod The high untrespassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
• pratiksaha 12y ago
  Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=elcc http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=elcc
• michaelsbradley 12y ago
  Gerard Manley Hopkins[1], G.K. Chesterton[2] and John Bradburne[3]. Spring and Fall to a young child Margaret, are you grieving Over Goldengrove unleaving? Leaves, like the things of man, you With your fresh thoughts care for, can you? Ah! as the heart grows older It will come to such sights colder By and by, nor spare a sigh Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; And yet you will weep know why. Now no matter, child, the name: Sorrow’s springs are the same. Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed What heart heard of, ghost guessed: It is the blight man was born for, It is Margaret you mourn for. – Hopkins, 1880 A Little Litany When God turned back eternity and was young, Ancient of Days, grown little for your mirth (As under the low arch the land is bright) Peered through you, gate of heaven—and saw the earth. Or shutting out his shining skies awhile Built you about him for a house of gold To see in pictured walls his storied world Return upon him as a tale is told. Or found his mirror there; the only glass That would not break with that unbearable light Till in a corner of the high dark house God looked on God, as ghosts meet in the night. Star of his morning; that unfallen star In that strange starry overturn of space When earth and sky changed places for an hour And heaven looked upwards in a human face. Or young on your strong knees and lifted up Wisdom cried out, whose voice is in the street, And more than twilight of twiformed cherubim Made of his throne indeed a mercy-seat. Or risen from play at your pale raiment's hem God, grown adventurous from all time's repose, Or your tall body climbed the ivory tower And kissed upon your mouth the mystic rose. – Chesterton Love Love is a short disease, a long desire, A strong and lasting healing; love is like An angler landing fish, a hand at lyre, A roadhog flogging home his motor-bike; Love is a deep unsleeping thing, leaps time And steeps amidst eternity for rest And love is like three candles lighting rhyme And metre I am making for the best; An Alleluiatic sequence shows A little of love's eloquence that lasts; Love has three lights, one to another glows, A third proceeds between: naught overcasts True love because it knows that it possesses, Being possessed, a zest above distresses. – Bradburne, 1971 There are a couple of rare recordings of John Bradburne reciting his own poetry[4]. Much of his work was completely unknown until after his death in 1979 – he wrote about 6,000 poems. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Manley_Hopkins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Manley_Hopkins [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton [3] http://www.johnbradburnepoems.com/ http://www.johnbradburnepoems.com/ [4] http://vimeo.com/michaelbradleyjr/love http://vimeo.com/michaelbradleyjr/love [&] http://vimeo.com/michaelbradleyjr/mombe http://vimeo.com/michaelbradleyjr/mombe
• omeid2 12y ago
  From Westerners, Raymond Carver, he is just plain raw. I like that. From east, Molana Rumi, Sohrab Sepehri.
• ScottBurson 12y ago
  Edna St. Vincent Millay is certainly one of my favorites. Here's one: I, being born a woman and distressed By all the needs and notions of my kind, Am urged by your propinquity to find Your person fair, and feel a certain zest To bear your body's weight upon my breast: So subtly is the fume of life designed, To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind, And leave me once again undone, possessed. Think not for this, however, the poor treason Of my stout blood against my staggering brain, I shall remember you with love, or season My scorn wtih pity, -- let me make it plain: I find this frenzy insufficient reason For conversation when we meet again.
• rabz 12y ago
  I like extended figures, but also sumptuous language and formal rigor. Ah heck, I love each poet for their own quirks and idiosyncrasies. Stephen Dobyns. John Bricuth. Wallace Stevens. Weldon Kees. Shakespeare. Donne. Marvell.
• brunorsini 12y ago
  Poetry often goes way beyond just the naked words. Understanding the context around the writer, including background on his or her place and time matters a lot. In this sense, this amazing iOS app completely changed my understanding of T.S. Eliot and his classic "The Waste of the Land": https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-waste-land/id427434046?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-waste-land/id427434046?m... Highly recommended. It makes it pretty obvious that there is still so much opportunity to do more things with augmented content.
  • sal9000 12y ago
    Aehm, it's "The Waste Land".
    • brunorsini 12y ago
      You're right, sorry for the typo
• vRava1234 12y ago
  Seems appropriate about now: Spring, by Edna St Vincent Millay. To what purpose, April, do you return again? Beauty is not enough. You can no longer quiet me with the redness Of little leaves opening stickily. I know what I know. The sun is hot on my neck as I observe The spikes of the crocus. The smell of the earth is good. It is apparent that there is no death. But what does that signify? Not only under ground are the brains of men Eaten by maggots, Life in itself Is nothing, An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs. It is not enough that yearly, down this hill, April Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.
• copsarebastards 12y ago
  Clouds Gathering by Charles Simic It seemed the kind of life we wanted. Wild strawberries and cream in the morning. Sunlight in every room. The two of us walking by the sea naked. Some evenings, however, we found ourselves Unsure of what comes next. Like tragic actors in a theater on fire, With birds circling over our heads, The dark pines strangely still, Each rock we stepped on bloodied by the sunset. We were back on our terrace sipping wine. Why always this hint of an unhappy ending? Clouds of almost human appearance Gathering on the horizon, but the rest lovely With the air so mild and the sea untroubled. The night suddenly upon us, a starless night. You lighting a candle, carrying it naked Into our bedroom and blowing it out quickly. The dark pines and grasses strangely still. Japan by Billy Collins Today I pass the time reading a favorite haiku, saying the few words over and over. It feels like eating the same small, perfect grape again and again. I walk through the house reciting it and leave its letters falling through the air of every room. I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it. I say it in front of a painting of the sea. I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf. I listen to myself saying it, then I say it without listening, then I hear it without saying it. And when the dog looks up at me, I kneel down on the floor and whisper it into each of his long white ears. It's the one about the one-ton temple bell with the moth sleeping on its surface, and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating pressure of the moth on the surface of the iron bell. When I say it at the window, the bell is the world and I am the moth resting there. When I say it at the mirror, I am the heavy bell and the moth is life with its papery wings. And later, when I say it to you in the dark, you are the bell, and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you, and the moth has flown from its line and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.
• zipwitch 12y ago
  “You may forget but let me tell you this: someone in some future time will think of us” ― Sappho, The Art of Loving Women
• hristov 12y ago
  Charles Bukowski, Leonard Cohen, and a lot of poets in another language that few people on here will know.
• e12e 12y ago
  Favourite? I don't know... Blake? Poe? Various Japanese classics? Currently reading "Paradise Lost" by Milton. But what I've probably listened to most, lately, is Kate Tempest: I know now, first hand, That regretting love will empty you Of all that makes you love And all that lovers pay attention to. (Verse from "Best Intentions", Kate Tempest) It's interesting to see that many seem to have fallen in love with poetry that's been translated to English. While there's nothing wrong with translation, I do think it is a little curious that some seem to prefer translated poetry, to native language authors (Much as it'd be a bit curious to hold up Blake as one's favourite poet in Spanish). At least one should make note of not just the original author, but also the translator -- as the end result is very much a team effort. [edit: Somewhat apropos, perhaps: "Kate Tempest - 13 Commandments" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DktpzYOHTXo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DktpzYOHTXo ]
• annie_ab 12y ago
  Rudyard Kipling, William Wordsworth, Edgar Allan Poe
• annie_ab 12y ago
  William Wordsworth, Edgar Allan Poe and Rudyard Kipling
• tomgruner 12y ago
  elicura chihuailaf
• gabemart 12y ago
  Georgia Dusk (by Jean Toomer) The sky, lazily disdaining to pursue The setting sun, too indolent to hold A lengthened tournament for flashing gold, Passively darkens for night’s barbecue, A feast of moon and men and barking hounds, An orgy for some genius of the South With blood-hot eyes and cane-lipped scented mouth, Surprised in making folk-songs from soul sounds. The sawmill blows its whistle, buzz-saws stop, And silence breaks the bud of knoll and hill, Soft settling pollen where plowed lands fulfill Their early promise of a bumper crop. Smoke from the pyramidal sawdust pile Curls up, blue ghosts of trees, tarrying low Where only chips and stumps are left to show The solid proof of former domicile. Meanwhile, the men, with vestiges of pomp, Race memories of king and caravan, High-priests, an ostrich, and a juju-man, Go singing through the footpaths of the swamp. Their voices rise . . the pine trees are guitars, Strumming, pine-needles fall like sheets of rain . . Their voices rise . . the chorus of the cane Is caroling a vesper to the stars . . O singers, resinous and soft your songs Above the sacred whisper of the pines, Give virgin lips to cornfield concubines, Bring dreams of Christ to dusky cane-lipped throngs.
• ekianjo 12y ago
  Baudelaire, a une passante: La rue assourdissante autour de moi hurlait. Longue, mince, en grand deuil, douleur majestueuse, Une femme passa, d'une main fastueuse Soulevant, balançant le feston et l'ourlet ; Agile et noble, avec sa jambe de statue. Moi, je buvais, crispé comme un extravagant, Dans son oeil, ciel livide où germe l'ouragan, La douceur qui fascine et le plaisir qui tue. Un éclair... puis la nuit ! - Fugitive beauté Dont le regard m'a fait soudainement renaître, Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l'éternité ? Ailleurs, bien loin d'ici ! trop tard ! jamais peut-être ! Car j'ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais, Ô toi que j'eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais !
  • bwghughes 12y ago
    Hovis Presley is my favourite: I rely on you I rely on you like a Skoda needs suspension like the aged need a pension like a trampoline needs tension like a bungee jump needs apprehension I rely on you like a camera needs a shutter like a gambler needs a flutter like a golfer needs a putter like a buttered scone involves some butter I rely on you like an acrobat needs ice cool nerve like a hairpin needs a drastic curve like an HGV needs endless derv like an outside left needs a body swerve I rely on you like a handyman needs pliers like an auctioneer needs buyers like a laundromat needs driers like The Good Life needed Richard Briers I rely on you like a water vole needs water like a brick outhouse needs mortar like a lemming to the slaughter Ryan's just Ryan without his daughter I rely on you
• infinity 12y ago
  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Der Zauberlehrling Hat der alte Hexenmeister Sich doch einmal wegbegeben! Und nun sollen seine Geister Auch nach meinem Willen leben. Seine Wort´ und Werke Merkt ich und den Brauch, Und mit Geistesstärke Tu ich Wunder auch. Walle! walle Manche Strecke, Daß, zum Zwecke, Wasser fließe Und mit reichem, vollem Schwalle Zu dem Bade sich ergieße. Und nun komm, du alter Besen! Nimm die schlechten Lumpenhüllen; Bist schon lange Knecht gewesen: Nun erfülle meinen Willen! Auf zwei Beinen stehe, Oben sei ein Kopf, Eile nun und gehe Mit dem Wassertopf! Walle! walle Manche Strecke, Daß, zum Zwecke, Wasser fließe Und mit reichem, vollem Schwalle Zu dem Bade sich ergieße. Seht, er läuft zum Ufer nieder, Wahrlich! ist schon an dem Flusse, Und mit Blitzesschnelle wieder Ist er hier mit raschem Gusse. Schon zum zweiten Male! Wie das Becken schwillt! Wie sich jede Schale Voll mit Wasser füllt! Stehe! stehe! Denn wir haben Deiner Gaben Vollgemessen! - Ach, ich merk es! Wehe! wehe! Hab ich doch das Wort vergessen! Ach, das Wort, worauf am Ende Er das wird, was er gewesen. Ach, er läuft und bringt behende! Wärst du doch der alte Besen! Immer neue Güsse Bringt er schnell herein, Ach! und hundert Flüsse Stürzen auf mich ein. Nein, nicht länger Kann ichs lassen; Will ihn fassen. Das ist Tücke! Ach! nun wird mir immer bänger! Welche Miene! welche Blicke! O, du Ausgeburt der Hölle! Soll das ganze Haus ersaufen? Seh ich über jede Schwelle Doch schon Wasserströme laufen. Ein verruchter Besen, Der nicht hören will! Stock, der du gewesen, Steh doch wieder still! Willsts am Ende Gar nicht lassen? Will dich fassen, Will dich halten Und das alte Holz behende Mit dem scharfen Beile spalten. Seht, da kommt er schleppend wieder! Wie ich mich nur auf dich werfe, Gleich, o Kobold, liegst du nieder; Krachend trifft die glatte Schärfe. Wahrlich! brav getroffen! Seht, er ist entzwei! Und nun kann ich hoffen, Und ich atme frei! Wehe! wehe! Beide Teile Stehn in Eile Schon als Knechte Völlig fertig in die Höhe! Helft mir, ach! ihr hohen Mächte! Und sie laufen! Naß und nässer. Wirds im Saal und auf den Stufen. Welch entsetzliches Gewässer! Herr und Meister! hör mich rufen! - Ach, da kommt der Meister! Herr, die Not ist groß! Die ich rief, die Geister Werd ich nun nicht los. "In die Ecke, Besen! Besen! Seids gewesen. Denn als Geister Ruft euch nur, zu seinem Zwecke, Erst hervor der alte Meister."
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• davorb 12y ago
  I've been reading a lot of Aleksa Šantić for the past few years, but I haven't seen any translations to English that really do him justice (not that I've been looking for them). Last night, returning from the warm hamam I passed by the garden of the old Imam And lo, in the garden, in the shade of a jasmine, There with a pitcher in her hand stood Emina. What beauty! By iman I could swear, She would not be ashamed if she were at the sultan’s! And the way she walks and her shoulders move... -- Not even an Imam’s amulet could help me! I offered her salaam, but by my dīn, Beautiful Emina would not even hear it. Instead, scooping water in her silver pitcher, Around the garden she went to water the roses. A wind blew from the branches down her lovely shoulders Unraveling those thick braids of hers. Her hair gave off a scent of blue hyacinths, Making me giddy and confused! I nearly stumbled, I swear by my faith, But beautiful Emina did not come to me. She only gave me a frowning look, Not caring, the naughty one, that I am crazy for her! This entry contains links to articles explaining some of the more archaic words: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emina_%28poem%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emina_%28poem%29
• Singletoned 12y ago
  I adore the nonsense poems of Edward Lear. He's most famous for The Owl and The Pussycat, but The Nutcracker and The Sugartongs is one of my favourites to read aloud: http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/ns/nutcrackers.html http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/ns/nutcrackers.html When read aloud, the rhythm is impeccable and almost addictive. Another shout out has to go to A A Milne, particularly for Disobedience, which again is a delight to read aloud: http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~ridge/local/disobedience.html http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~ridge/local/disobedience.html
• arunabh 12y ago
  Recently been into Bukowski, alongside Shelley, Frost and Tennyson remain favs 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. – Percy Shelley if you’re going to try, go all the way. otherwise, don’t even start. if you’re going to try, go all the way. this could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs and maybe your mind. go all the way. it could mean not eating for 3 or 4 days. it could mean freezing on a park bench. it could mean jail, it could mean derision, mockery, isolation. isolation is the gift, all the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. and you’ll do it despite rejection and the worst odds and it will be better than anything else you can imagine. if you’re going to try, go all the way. there is no other feeling like that. you will be alone with the gods and the nights will flame with fire. do it, do it, do it. do it. all the way all the way. you will ride life straight to perfect laughter, its the only good fight there is.
• brownesauce 12y ago
  I've always enjoyed the Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll. It is full of emotive gibberish that creates wonderful imagery and feeling out of meaningless sounds. Which is all poetry really is in the end! ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. “Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!” He took his vorpal sword in hand; Long time the manxome foe he sought— So rested he by the Tumtum tree And stood awhile in thought. And, as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came! One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back. “And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” He chortled in his joy. ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.
• mikorym 12y ago
  Ek herhaal jou Ek herhaal jou sonder begin of einde herhaal ek jou liggaam Die dag het ’n smal skadu en die nag geel kruise die landskap is sonder aansien en die mense ’n ry kerse terwyl ek jou herhaal met my borste wat die holtes van jou hand namaak - Ingrid Jonker The poem is in Afrikaans and the poet is South African. For those who are interested, an English language Dutch film about her was made a few years ago called Black Butterflies. I can however not say that I have seen any translations that do justice to the original.
• _mc 12y ago
  MY PRAYER ANSWERED I asked for Strength, God gave me difficulties to face. I asked for Wisdom, God gave me problems to solve. I asked for Courage, God gave me danger to overcome. I asked for Love, God gave me troubled people to help. I asked for Favours, God gave me opportunities. I received nothing I wanted; I received everything I needed. My PRAYER has been answered. -Vedanta Kesari
• ajuc 12y ago
  Adam Asnyk - "Daremne żale" Daremne żale - próżny trud, Bezsilne złorzeczenia! Przeżytych kształtów żaden cud Nie wróci do istnienia. Świat wam nie odda, idąc wstecz, Znikomych mar szeregu - Nie zdoła ogień ani miecz Powstrzymać myśli w biegu. Trzeba z żywymi naprzód iść, Po życie sięgać nowe... A nie w uwiędłych laurów liść Z uporem stroić głowę. Wy nie cofniecie życia fal! Nic skargi nie pomogą - Bezsilne gniewy, próżny żal! Świat pójdzie swoją drogą. I love the rhytm of this poem. My rough translation. Useless remorses, toil in vain Impotent spells and curses. Outlived shapes won't be back. There will be no miracles. World won't return you, going back, translucent ghosts and spirits. Neither with sword nor with fire you'll stop a thought that's running. You're to go forward with alive ones You're to reach for a new life. Instead of wearing stubbornly withered crown of laurels. You won't turn back the waves of life Complains won't be of help. Impotent angers, remorse in vain World will go its own way. Also Jacek Kaczmarski songs are great. And I loved the poems in Stanisław Lem "Cyberiad". Translated by Michael Kandel. Come, let us hasten to a higher plane, Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn, Their indices bedecked from one to n, Commingled in an endless Markov chain! Come, every frustum longs to be a cone, And every vector dreams of matrices. Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze: It whispers of a more ergodic zone. In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways. Our asymptotes no longer out of phase, We shall encounter, counting, face to face. I'll grant thee random access to my heart, Thou'lt tell me all the constants of thy love; And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove, And in our bound partition never part. For what did Cauchy know, or Christoffel, Or Fourier, or any Boole or Euler, Wielding their compasses, their pens and rulers, Of thy supernal sinusoidal spell? Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain? Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes, A root or two, a torus and a node: The inverse of my verse, a null domain. Ellipse of bliss, converse, O lips divine! The product of our scalars is defined! Cyberiad draws nigh, and the skew mind cuts capers like a happy haversine. I see the eigenvalue in thine eye, I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh. Bernoulli would have been content to die, Had he but known such a squared cosine 2 phi!
• V-2 12y ago
  Zbigniew Herbert. http://wchambliss.tumblr.com/post/107743541105/apollo-and-marsyas-the-real-duel-of-apollo-with http://wchambliss.tumblr.com/post/107743541105/apollo-and-ma... http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/zbigniew-herbert/why-the-classics/ http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/zbigniew-herbert/why-th... https://books.google.pl/books?id=nqeWAwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.pl/books?id=nqeWAwAAQBAJ&printsec=front...
• andyjohnson0 12y ago
  Czeslaw Milosz. "Gift" [1] and "A Song on the End of the World" [2]. Philip Larkin. Almost everything he wrote. Robert Frost. Ted Hughes. The Birthday Letters. Esp. "You Hated Spain" [3] T S Elliot. Four Quartets. Preludes. [1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17245-2004Aug19_2.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17245-2004Aug... [2] http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/179559 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/179559 [3] https://philosopherpoet.wordpress.com/2008/04/05/you-hated-spain-%E2%80%93-ted-hughes/ https://philosopherpoet.wordpress.com/2008/04/05/you-hated-s...
• V-2 12y ago
  While hardly a pleasant person himself, Berthold Brecht had some compelling ones (especially as an antidote for all the roses and moons and lips ;)) THE CRUTCHES Seven years I could not walk a step. When I to the great physician came He demanded: Why the crutches? And I told him: I am lame. He replied: That's not surprising. Be so good and try once more. If you're lame, it's those contraptions. Fall then! Crawl across the floor! And he took my lovely crutches Laughing with a fiend's grimace Broke them both across my back and Threw them in the fireplace. Well, I'm cured now: I can walk. Cured by nothing more than laughter. Sometimes, though, when I see sticks I walk worse for some hours after.
• foxhedgehog 12y ago
  Lullaby W. H. Auden, 1907 - 1973 Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm; Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral: But in my arms till break of day Let the living creature lie, Mortal, guilty, but to me The entirely beautiful. Soul and body have no bounds: To lovers as they lie upon Her tolerant enchanted slope In their ordinary swoon, Grave the vision Venus sends Of supernatural sympathy, Universal love and hope; While an abstract insight wakes Among the glaciers and the rocks The hermit’s carnal ecstasy. Certainty, fidelity On the stroke of midnight pass Like vibrations of a bell, And fashionable madmen raise Their pedantic boring cry: Every farthing of the cost, All the dreaded cards foretell, Shall be paid, but from this night Not a whisper, not a thought, Not a kiss nor look be lost. Beauty, midnight, vision dies: Let the winds of dawn that blow Softly round your dreaming head Such a day of welcome show Eye and knocking heart may bless, Find the mortal world enough; Noons of dryness find you fed By the involuntary powers, Nights of insult let you pass Watched by every human love.
• bitdiddle 12y ago
  Noah Warren - http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/248624 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/248624
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• cel1ne 12y ago
  Goethe (german), here's a translation of the Zauberlehrling (The Sorcerer's Apprentice) That old sorcerer has vanished And for once has gone away! Spirits called by him, now banished, My commands shall soon obey. Every step and saying That he used, I know, And with sprites obeying My arts I will show. Flow, flow onward Stretches many Spare not any Water rushing, Ever streaming fully downward Toward the pool in current gushing. Come, old broomstick, you are needed, Take these rags and wrap them round you! Long my orders you have heeded, By my wishes now I've bound you. Have two legs and stand, And a head for you. Run, and in your hand Hold a bucket too. Flow, flow onward Stretches many, Spare not any Water rushing, Ever streaming fully downward Toward the pool in current gushing. See him, toward the shore he's racing There, he's at the stream already, Back like lightning he is chasing, Pouring water fast and steady. Once again he hastens! How the water spills, How the water basins Brimming full he fills! Stop now, hear me! Ample measure Of your treasure We have gotten! Ah, I see it, dear me, dear me. Master's word I have forgotten! Ah, the word with which the master Makes the broom a broom once more! Ah, he runs and fetches faster! Be a broomstick as before! Ever new the torrents That by him are fed, Ah, a hundred currents Pour upon my head! No, no longer Can I please him, I will seize him! That is spiteful! My misgivings grow the stronger. What a mien, his eyes how frightful! Brood of hell, you're not a mortal! Shall the entire house go under? Over threshold over portal Streams of water rush and thunder. Broom accurst and mean, Who will have his will, Stick that you have been, Once again stand still! Can I never, Broom, appease you? I will seize you, Hold and whack you, And your ancient wood I'll sever, With a whetted axe I'll crack you. He returns, more water dragging! Now I'll throw myself upon you! Soon, 0 goblin, you'll be sagging. Crash! The sharp axe has undone you. What a good blow, truly! There, he's split, I see. Hope now rises newly, And my breathing's free. Woe betide me! Both halves scurry In a hurry, Rise like towers There beside me. Help me, help, eternal powers! Off they run, till wet and wetter Hall and steps immersed are Iying. What a flood that naught can fetter! Lord and master, hear me crying! - Ah, he comes excited. Sir, my need is sore. Spirits that I've cited My commands ignore. "To the lonely Corner, broom! Hear your doom. As a spirit When he wills, your master only Calls you, then 'tis time to hear it."
• zecg 12y ago
  The recently passed Tomas Tranströmer, I love his writing. He can go from personal headspace to outer space in a cherry blossom in a moment during a car crash: -- After a Death (translated by Robert Bly) Once there was a shock that left behind a long, shimmering comet tail. It keeps us inside. It makes the TV pictures snowy. It settles in cold drops on the telephone wires. One can still go slowly on skis in the winter sun through brush where a few leaves hang on. They resemble pages torn from old telephone directories. Names swallowed by the cold. It is still beautiful to hear the heart beat but often the shadow seems more real than the body. The samurai looks insignificant beside his armor of black dragon scales.
• bwghughes 12y ago
  Hovis Presley: I rely on you I rely on you like a Skoda needs suspension like the aged need a pension like a trampoline needs tension like a bungee jump needs apprehension I rely on you like a camera needs a shutter like a gambler needs a flutter like a golfer needs a putter like a buttered scone involves some butter I rely on you like an acrobat needs ice cool nerve like a hairpin needs a drastic curve like an HGV needs endless derv like an outside left needs a body swerve I rely on you like a handyman needs pliers like an auctioneer needs buyers like a laundromat needs driers like The Good Life needed Richard Briers I rely on you like a water vole needs water like a brick outhouse needs mortar like a lemming to the slaughter Ryan's just Ryan without his daughter I rely on you
• divs1210 12y ago
  Rumi (on Conscience) This that we are now created the body, cell by cell, like bees building a honeycomb. The human body and the universe grew from this, not this from the universe and the human body. ... and Allen Ginsberg
• seejay 12y ago
  Happy indeed we live, friendly amidst the hostile. Amidst hostile men we dwell free from hatred. Happy indeed we live, friendly amidst the afflicted (by craving). Amidst afflicted men we dwell free from affliction. Happy indeed we live, free from avarice amidst the avaricious. Amidst the avaricious men we dwell free from avarice. Happy indeed we live, we who possess nothing. Feeders on joy we shall be, like the Radiant Gods. Victory begets enmity; the defeated dwell in pain. Happily the peaceful live, discarding both victory and defeat. There is no fire like lust and no crime like hatred. There is no ill like the aggregates (of existence) and no bliss higher than the peace (of Nibbana). [17] Hunger is the worst disease, conditioned things the worst suffering. Knowing this as it really is, the wise realize Nibbana, the highest bliss. Health is the most precious gain and contentment the greatest wealth. A trustworthy person is the best kinsman, Nibbana the highest bliss. Having savored the taste of solitude and peace (of Nibbana), pain-free and stainless he becomes, drinking deep the taste of the bliss of the Truth. Good is it to see the Noble Ones; to live with them is ever blissful. One will always be happy by not encountering fools. Indeed, he who moves in the company of fools grieves for longing. Association with fools is ever painful, like partnership with an enemy. But association with the wise is happy, like meeting one's own kinsmen. Therefore, follow the Noble One, who is steadfast, wise, learned, dutiful and devout. One should follow only such a man, who is truly good and discerning, even as the moon follows the path of the stars. -- Sukhavagga: Happiness http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/dhp/dhp.15.budd.html http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/dhp/dhp.15.budd.h...
• Kliment 12y ago
  Ogden Nash, for his skill in turning pain into absurdity
• haddr 12y ago
  William Blake - The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
• sireat 12y ago
  Lots of good poets already mentioned so I should mention Alexander Blok: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Blok http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Blok Unfortunately, the English translations are not really as moving as Russian originals.
• sososoko 12y ago
  Dambudzo Marechera - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dambudzo_Marechera http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dambudzo_Marechera The lives of small men are like spiders' webs; they are studded with minute skeletons of greatness. Excerpt from House of Hunger THE BAR-STOOL EDIBLE WORM I’m against everything Against war and those against War. Against whatever diminishes Th’ individual’s blind impulse. Shake the peaches down from The summer poem, Rake in ripe Luminosity; dust; taste. Lunchtime News – pass the Castor Oil, Alice. THERE’S A DISSIDENT IN THE ELECTION SOUP! I have no ear for slogans You may as well shut up your arse I run when it’s I LOVE YOU time Don’t say it I’ll stick around I run when it’s A LUTA time I run when it’s FORWARD time Don’t say it we’ll fuck the whole night The moon won’t come down At first awkwardly, excruciatingly embarrassing But with Venus ascending, a shout and leap of joy When the sheets are at last silent Don’t ask “What are you thinking?” Don’t ask “Was it good?” Don’t feel bad because I’m smoking They ask and feel bad who are insecure Who say after the act “Tell me a story” And you may as well know Don’t talk of “MARRIAGE” if this reconciliation is to last. SHOCK: FOR BETTINA Like meteorites, through my long Isolated heart-atmosphere, you Burst incandescent over my platinum history. My future in earthquake reeled; my present only on Seismograph could point to the cataclysm – no Evidence of you attached to my stone and flesh, Only nightmarish passions which I can still hear When you shake your head. Shake it vigorously. Nuclear tests of underground love!
• dopamean 12y ago
  Langston Hughes is the only poet to get me interested in poetry. I'm surprised that not a single other person here has mentioned him. Perhaps I shouldn't be.
• ttctciyf 12y ago
  Some really inspiring versification in here, and it would be difficult to surpass the aesthetic and philosophic achievements already mentioned. However, for sheer technical brilliance, perhaps a word should be said for the ElectroBard from Stanislaw Lem's Cyberiad, whose verbal virtuosity was such that when challenged: “compose a poem- a poem about a haircut! But lofty, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter S!!" the response was instant: Seduced, shaggy Samson snored. She scissored short. Sorely shorn, Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed, Silently scheming Sightlessly seeking Some savage, spectacular suicide." ... and if you think that's good, just imagine how great it was before being translated into English! (By Michael Kandel iirc)
• Correasa 12y ago
  Nicanor Parra
• shove 12y ago
  Sekou Sundiata blew my mind when I was introduced to his work in the mid-90s. To me he's the bridge from Ginsberg, kerouac, Boroughs etc to more modern stuff like Saul Williams, Buddy Wakefield, etc
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• fsethi 12y ago
  Rumi, Bukowski, Gibran, Poe. One of my favourite poems is by Charles Bukowski and it has this wonderful recursive quality to it. It's called "Oh Yes". there are worse things than being along but it often takes decades to realize this and most often when you do it's too late and there's nothing worse than too late.
• brandonlipman 12y ago
  Henry David Thoreau & Walt Whitman Nature Poem by Henry David Thoreau O Nature! I do not aspire To be the highest in thy choir, - To be a meteor in thy sky, Or comet that may range on high; Only a zephyr that may blow Among the reeds by the river low; Give me thy most privy place Where to run my airy race. In some withdrawn, unpublic mead Let me sigh upon a reed, Or in the woods, with leafy din, Whisper the still evening in: Some still work give me to do, - Only - be it near to you! For I'd rather be thy child And pupil, in the forest wild, Than be the king of men elsewhere, And most sovereign slave of care; To have one moment of thy dawn, Than share the city's year forlorn. Pioneers! O Pioneers! by Walt Whitman It's a long one so here is the first part: COME, my tan-faced children, Follow well in order, get your weapons ready; Have you your pistols? have you your sharp edged axes? Pioneers! O pioneers! For we cannot tarry here, We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers! ...
• paulvs 12y ago
  A physicist's poem: To wonder as we wander through this world of mysteries many, is to fulfill the purpose of man's creation and destiny; and he who does not wonder, or the mysteries have not moved, should be interred in the dampest earth, for he is dead and never lived. (Source: the author of a very old Penguin book I once had on relativity)
• mlitchard 12y ago
  http://www.brainpickings.org/2013/07/12/buckminster-fuller-ever-rethinking-the-lords-prayer/ http://www.brainpickings.org/2013/07/12/buckminster-fuller-e...
• pariya 12y ago
  I love Bukowski's "Pulled Down Shade" "what I like about you she told me is that you're crude -- look at you sitting there a beercan in your hand and a cigar in your mouth and look at your dirty hairy belly sticking out from under your shirt. you've got your shoes off and you've got a hole in your right stocking with the big toe sticking out. you haven't shaved in 4 or 5 days. your teeth are yellow and your eyebrows hang down all twisted and you've got enough scars to scare the shit out of anybody. there's always a ring in your bathtub your telephone is covered with grease and half the crap in your refrigerator is rotten. you never wash your car. you've got newspapers a week old on the floor. you read dirty magazines and you don't have a tv but you order deliveries from the liquor store and you tip good. and best of all you don't push a woman to go to bed with you. you seem hardly interested and when I talk to you you don't say anything you just look around the room or scratch your neck like you don't hear me. you've got an old wet towel in the sink and a photo of Mussolini on the wall and you never complain about anything and you never ask questions and I've known you for 6 months but I have no idea who you are. you're like some pulled down shade but that's what I like about you: your crudeness: a woman can drop out of your life and forget you real fast. a woman can't go anywhere but UP after leaving you, honey. you've got to be the best thing that ever happened to a girl who's between one guy and the next and has nothing to do at the moment. this fucking Scotch is great. let's play Scrabble." Favourite poets: Rumi, Neruda, Herrick, Byron, Keats, Frost...
• gebt 12y ago
  Hafez, Rumi, Adunis, Paz, Forough, Elliot, Qabbani, Passolini, Lorca, Ginsberg, Blake. :)
• bhuyvo 12y ago
  Loving the discovery of poets here. I'd like to point out: http://www.reddit.com/user/Poem_for_your_sprog http://www.reddit.com/user/Poem_for_your_sprog All the comments he/she posts are poems in response to the post or comment. The comments usually are guilded.
• throwaway000002 12y ago
  L'infinito - Giacomo Leopardi http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mdt26/poems/leopardi1.html http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mdt26/poems/leopardi1.html Always dear to me was this lonely hill, And this hedge, which from me so great a part Of the farthest horizon excludes the gaze. But as I sit and watch, I invent in my mind endless spaces beyond, and superhuman silences, and profoundest quiet; wherefore my heart almost loses itself in fear. And as I hear the wind rustle through these plants, I compare that infinite silence to this voice: and I recall to mind eternity, And the dead seasons, and the one present And alive, and the sound of it. So in this Immensity my thinking drowns: And to shipwreck is sweet for me in this sea.
• supriyap 12y ago
  Robert Frost The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.
• supriyap 12y ago
  Robert Frost The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.