To ask for your favourite poem

[Rebeccaslicker]

I was just going to post this on the "middle aged woman is too old for fairy lights" thread - but it's being zapped for GF-ery!

So here is one of my favourite poems:

www.barbados.org/poetry/wheniam.htm

I like it because I think the imagery and the humour are fantastic. Anyone else like poetry? What do you like - I love reading poetry so would be great to find some new stuff :)

The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe

This many times over. Absolutely wonderful poem - and if you can find the recorded version spoken by Richard Burton it's even better.

The Listeners by Walter de La Mare

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,

Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses

Of the forest’s ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,

Above the Traveller’s head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;

‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;

No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,

Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners

That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight

To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,

That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken

By the lonely Traveller’s call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,

Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,

’Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even

Louder, and lifted his head:—
‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,

That I kept my word,’ he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,

Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,

When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Source: The Collected Poems of Walter de la Mare (1979)

I was introduced to this poem at junior school and have made up many different reasons for the house being empty over the years. It raises so many questions and possibilities.

I love this short poem/letter Keats wrote to Fanny -
“I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days - three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.”

And I love Anna Akhmatova’s Requiem, Amy Levy’s Omnibus, and I will always adore Eliot’s writing - I just think The Waste Land is one of the most amazing, clever texts ever written.

I also like Donne’s “The Flea” just because it’s fun...

This sends shivers down my spine every time - that line about the phone book and disconnected number is actually literally, not metaphorically, heart breaking!

m.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/long-distance-ii

I must go down to the pub again
To The Ship in Ripley town
And all I ask is a pint of beer
And a whisky to follow it down

And a gang of mates and good craic
And a tall tale to hear
And a game of pool when the table's free
And another round of beer.

I must go down to the pub again
For the call to booze is strong
A wild call and a clear call
That I cannot resist for long,

And all I ask is space at the bar
While we raise our glasses
And a friendly landlord to lock us in
After last orders passes.

I must get back to my home again
For my head is spinning madly
And my mate is trying to start a fight
And it looks like it might end badly

And all I ask is a bag of chips
And a taxi to take me away
And a long sleep to rest my head
I'll be back in the pub next day.

I also love this:

Westron wind when will thou blow
The smalle rayne down shall rayne
Christ, if my love were in my arms
And I in my bedde agayne.

Sometimes - Sheenagh Pugh

Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss, sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.

OP I didn't know that Tony Harrison poem but it's wonderful.

Philip Larkin's "First Sight"

Lambs that learn to walk in snow
When their bleating clouds the air
Meet a vast unwelcome, know
Nothing but a sunless glare.
Newly stumbling to and fro
All they find, outside the fold,
Is a wretched width of cold.

As they wait beside the ewe,
Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies
Hidden round them, waiting too,
Earth’s immeasurable surprise.
They could not grasp it if they knew,
What so soon will wake and grow
Utterly unlike the snow.

WILD GEESE BY MARY OLIVER
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

This, which is an except from the Sylvia Plath poem/play "Three Women". FIL sent it to me after DS1 was born and it still makes me emotional.

Who is he, this blue, furious boy,
Shiny and strange, as if he had hurtled from a star?
He is looking so angrily!
He flew into the room, a shriek at his heel.
The blue color pales. He is human after all.
A red lotus opens in its bowl of blood;
They are stitching me up with silk, as if I were a material.

What did my fingers do before they held him?
What did my heart do, with its love?
I have never seen a thing so clear.
His lids are like the lilac-flower
And soft as a moth, his breath.
I shall not let go.
There is no guile or warp in him. May he keep so.

Excerpt, obviously

So many of the choices here are about mysterious journeys. This one captures the tension and anticipation of what is about to happen just after the poet's journey on 24th June 1914:

Adlestrop
BY EDWARD THOMAS
Yes. I remember Adlestrop—
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop—only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

Solitude by Ella Wheeler Wilcox. V famous first line...'Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone...'

The rest of the poem is beautiful, and full of meaning for me personally, the end of the final stanza in particular....

'There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a large and lordly train.
But one by one we must all file on,
Through the narrow aisles of pain'

Sounds a bit depressing, but it really isn't if you read the full poem. Helps me keep things in perspective.

Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe. So very beautiful and tragic

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea—
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Mine is If. My Dad's favourite poem. When I was younger I used to think it was stupid, who on earth could be that selfless, that noble etc. Then I realised it's about trying to be like that. My Dad tried very hard. I miss him especially at Christmas.

I think my top 5 have to be (in no particular order)
12 O'Clock, Fairy Time by William Shakespeare
Litany by Langston Hughes
The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes
The Listeners by Walter de la Mare
Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti

The Night Before Christmas
www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43171/a-visit-from-st-nicholas
My copy is a beautifully illustrated little book that belonged to my great grandmother

Eddi's Service by Rudyard Kipling:
www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_eddi.htm

A Poison Tree
BY WILLIAM BLAKE
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 waterd it in fears,
Night & 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 veild the pole;
In the morning glad I see;
My foe outstretched beneath the tree

Dulce et decorum est- Wilfred Owen
Vultures- Chinua Achebe

I read 'If' at least once a day, and recite chunks of it to myself on a regular basis! It's the most insightful and ingeniously written poem ever.

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!

They fuck you up, your Mum and Dad,
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with he faults they had,
And add some extra, just for you.

Pablo Neruda writes such sensual poetry.

I crave your mouth
I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

Favourite is The Song Of Wandering Aengus by WB Yeats. Those last lines - And pluck till time and times are done, The silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun.