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[SD-Ness]

What are everyone's favorite poems? Here's one of mine:

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.

 

[White Man]

What are everyone's favorite poems? Here's one of mine:

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.

Okay, Mr. Oklahoma City Bomber.

My favorite is either Lamia or Hyperion by Keats. Short form: La Belle Dame Sans Merci, by Keats.

 

[MC Safety]

"A Miracle for Breakfast" by Elizabeth Bishop

or...

"Love Calls us to the Things of This World," by Richard Wilbur

I'd type them out, but yeah ...

 

[Deleted member 4784]

Lost til I found you

I remember the days
Before you entered my shores
I was strong in my ways
Had my own to live for
I was invincible
Or so it would seem
Until I lay down my head
And woke up in a dream

I could harness the skies
I could fly without wing
But if you looked into my eyes
You could read everything
An image of unity
In the face of alone
Always challenging fate
If only I had known

That I needed someone to believe in me when I don't believe myself
Someone to have faith in me when I lose faith in someone else
And I need someone to speak for me when an answer is due

Undiscovered and strange
These emotions so bare
But with each sign of change
Something always stood there
The need for a hero
A delicate clue
Didn't know I was lost
Until I found you

And all I need is someone to pray for me when I haven't a prayer
Someone to breath me life when I'm gasping for air
And I need someone to love me when forever is through

 

[Attack You]

Well, Waychel, who wrote that?

 

[Jim Bowie]

Lives from The Illuminations by Rimbaud. Particularly the 2nd stanza.

 

[Lucky Forward]

As the poets have mournfully sung,
Death takes the innocent young,
The rolling-in-money,
The screamingly-funny,
And those who are very well hung.

-- W. H. Auden

 

[lilraylewis]

My favorite is either Lamia or Hyperion by Keats. Short form: La Belle Dame Sans Merci, by Keats.

As a fellow Keats fan I applaud your taste. "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" is one of my favorites, although I prefer his Odes, especially "Ode to a Grecian Urn." Still though, I've never been able to make much sense out of the whole "beauty is truth, truth beauty" thing.

EDIT:Also, that Auden poem is great.

 

[Litigation Manuel]

James Tate! James Tate!

Long-Term Memory

I was sitting in the park feeding pigeons
when a man came over to me and scrutinized my
face right up close. "There's a statue of you
over there," he said. "You should be dead. What
did you do to deserve a statue?" "I've never seen
a statue of me," I said. "There can't be a statue
of me. I've never done anything to deserve a
statue. And I'm definitely not dead." "Well,
go look for yourself. It's you alright, there's
no mistaking that," he said. I got up and walked
over where it was. It was me alright. I looked
like I was gazing off into the distance, or the
future, like those statues of pioneers. It didn't
have my name on it or anything, but it was me.
A lady came up to me and said, "You're looking at
your own statue. Isn't that against the law, or
something?" "It should be," I said, "but this is
my first offense. Maybe they'll let me off light."
"It's against nature, too," she said, "and bad
manners, I think." "I couldn't agree with you
more," I said. "I'm walking away right now, sorry."
I went back to my bench. The man was sitting there.
"Maybe you're a war hero. Maybe you died in the
war," he said. "Never been a soldier," I said.
"Maybe you founded this town three hundred years
ago," he said. "Well, if I did, I don't remember
it now," I said. "That's a long time ago," he
said, "you coulda forgot." I went back to feeding
the pigeons. Oh, yes, founding the town. It was
coming back to me now. It was on a Wednesday.
A light rain, my horse slowed . . .


The Memories of Fish

Stanley took a day off from the office
and spent the whole day talking to fish in
his aquarium. To the little catfish scuttling
along the bottom he said, "Vacuum that scum,
boy. Suck it up, that's your job." The skinny
pencil fish swam by and he said, "Scribble,
scribble, scribble. Write me a novel, needle-
nose." The angel executed a particularly
masterful left turn and Stanley said, "You're
no angel, but you sure can drive." Then he broke
for lunch and made himself a tuna fish sandwich,
the irony of which did not escape him. Oh no,
he wallowed in it, savoring every bite. Then
he returned to his chair in front of the aquarium.
A swarm of tiny neons amused him. "What do you
think this is, Times Square!" he shouted. And
so it went long into the night. The next morning
Stanley was horribly embarrassed by his behavior
and he apologized to the fish several times,
but they never really forgave him. He had mocked
their very fishiness, and for this there can be
no forgiveness.

 

[mrkapawutzis]

I've always been a sucker for Coleridge's epigram poem

"What is an epigram? A dwarfish whole; Its body brevity, and wit its soul."

And Marvell's To His Coy Mistress.

 

[Drinky Crow]

Everything ever written by William Blake.

 

[Hitokage]

I never really exposed myself to much poetry, but here's one that I used to like:


Ozymandias

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 upon 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 Bysshe Shelley

 

[White Man]

And Marvell's To His Coy Mistress.

Coleridge is pretty much fucking awesome, but that Andrew Marvel poem is AMAZING. One of my all-time favorites. He has another really incredible one but I forget what it is.

EDIT: Speaking of metaphysical poets, Donne's Elegies are pretty awesome.

 

[chaostrophy]

Elm

I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root;
It is what you fear.
I do not fear it: I have been there.

Is it the sea you hear in me,
Its dissatisfactions?
Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness?

Love is a shadow.
How you lie and cry after it.
Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.

All night I shall gallup thus, impetuously,
Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf,
Echoing, echoing.

Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons?
This is rain now, the big hush.
And this is the fruit of it: tin white, like arsenic.

I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.
Scorched to the root
My red filaments burn and stand,a hand of wires.

Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs.
A wind of such violence
Will tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek.

The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me
Cruelly, being barren.
Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her.

I let her go. I let her go
Diminished and flat, as after radical surgery.
How your bad dreams possess and endow me.

I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

Clouds pass and disperse.
Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?
Is it for such I agitate my heart?

I am incapable of more knowledge.
What is this, this face
So murderous in its strangle of branches? ----

Its snaky acids hiss.
It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults
That kill, that kill, that kill.

-Sylvia Plath

 

[Triumph]

I'm a Keats man myself(Hyperion probably being my favorite by him), but my all time favorite poem is definitely The Waste Land by TS Eliot.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

 

[White Man]

I'm a Keats man myself(Hyperion probably being my favorite by him), but my all time favorite poem is definitely The Waste Land by TS Eliot.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

More like The Waste Land as saved by Ezra Pound. I still don't buy into the hype (Waste Land == The End bossfight in MGS3), but The Waste Land is at the very least interesting. Outside of The Burial of the Dead, A Game of Chess, and. . .the 4th (I believe) section that I can't recall the name of, I find The Waste Land to be somewhat scattershot and all over the map. The pre-Pound version of the poem is just about completely incomprehensible without annotation.

But you like Keats, and I love you anyway.

 

[Triumph]

More like The Waste Land as saved by Ezra Pound. I still don't buy into the hype (Waste Land == The End bossfight in MGS3), but The Waste Land is at the very least interesting. Outside of The Burial of the Dead, A Game of Chess, and. . .the 4th (I believe) section that I can't recall the name of, I find The Waste Land to be somewhat scattershot and all over the map. The pre-Pound version of the poem is just about completely incomprehensible without annotation.

But you like Keats, and I love you anyway.

I also like to drink and try to read James Joyce novels.

 

[SD-Ness]

I also like to drink and try to read James Joyce novels.

Ah, c'mon, Ulysses is easy man.

:lol Anyway, some others I like:

Valediction, by John Donne
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

I could give all to Time, by Robert Frost
I could give all to Time except - except
What I myself have held. But why declare
The things forbidden that while the Customs slept
I have crossed to Safety with? For I am There,
And what I would not part with I have kept.

Directive, by Robert Frost
I have kept hidden in the instep arch
Of an old cedar at the waterside
A broken drinking goblet like the Grail
Under a spell so the wrong ones can't find it,
So can't get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn't.
(I stole the goblet from the children's playhouse.)
Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.

Postcript, by Seamus Heaney
You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

 

[hXc_thugg]

I actually thought Miyuru was posting, and not White Man. The voice in my head said "Miyuru knows a lot about poetry, surprisingly!" Then all of my fantasies were dashed by my uncanny ability to read.

 

[dog$]

We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

 

[Varian]

I went outside to take a piss
Imagine Wordsworth telling this