To ask you to tell me your favourite poet/poem

[Ethelfleda]

I’ve always been quite dense on the topic
I till recently reading ‘The Road Not Taken’ which I loved! I have started to read a little more and am really getting in to it!
So thought I would ask the great MN collective about favourite poets/poems/anthologies

@Artus - I know what you mean! I was greedy and gave 3 suggestions, which are all on there now.

His reading of “Good Bones” by Maggie Smith (not one of my suggestions!) is beautiful. It’s a less well-known poem, written after the Pulse nightclub shooting, which went viral. I’d want this read at my funeral (if it weren’t for the sweary bit!)

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
BY ROBERT FROST
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.

f I should die before the rest of you,
Break not a flower nor inscribe a stone.
Nor, when I'm gone, speak in a Sunday voice,
But be the usual selves that I have known.
Weep if you must,
Parting is hell.
But life goes on,
So........ sing as well.

by Joyce Grenfell

Dulce et Decorum Est
BY WILFRED OWEN
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 gas-shells dropping softly 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

All very powerful... ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

My favourite poems are -

The Second Coming by WB Yeats I have a thing about falcons and falconing

Adlestrop by Edward Thomas It makes me think of a favourite area of England and happy times spent there

Cargoes by John Masefield Learned it by heart as a child and loved visualising the different ships

Timothy Winters by Charles Causley We learned this at school and my friend and I were talking about it recently and how emotive it was and it's 40 years since we were at school

Timothy Winters by

I have so many favourites...here are two not yet on this thread.

Piano, D. H. Lawrence

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

Thursday, Edna St. Vincent Millay (so brief, so brutal!)

And if I loved you Wednesday,
Well, what is that to you?
I do not love you Thursday—
So much is true.

And why you come complaining
Is more than I can see.
I loved you Wednesday,—yes—but what
Is that to me?

@RincewindsHat I love Edna St Vincent Millay, and had forgotten that one. I always picture her declaiming poetry in a Parisian nightclub with a long cigarette in her hand. Which is probably why this is one of my favourite of her poems

Only until this cigarette is ended,
A little moment at the end of all,
While on the floor the quiet ashes fall,
And in the firelight to a lance extended,
Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended,
The broken shadow dances on the wall,
I will permit my memory to recall
The vision of you, by all my dreams attended.
And then adieu,farewell!the dream is done.
Yours is a face of which I can forget
The colour and the features, every one,
The words not ever, and the smiles not yet;
But in your day this moment is the sun
Upon a hill, after the sun has set.

Ahh there's too many but love this Yeats poem.

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

And this Carol Ann Duffy one Miles Away

I want you and you are not here. I pause

in this garden, breathing the colour thought is
before language into still air. Even your name
is a pale ghost and, though I exhale it again
and again, it will not stay with me. Tonight
I make you up, imagine you, your movements clearer
than the words I have you say you said before.

Wherever you are now, inside my head you fix me
with a look, standing here whilst cool late light
dissolves into the earth. I have got your mouth wrong,
but still it smiles. I hold you closer, miles away,
inventing love, until the calls of nightjars
interrupt and turn what was to come, was certain,
into memory. The stars are filming us for no one

THE BOY WHO DANCED WITH A TANK
Adrian Mitchell

It was the same old story
Story of boy meets State
Yes the same old story
Story of boy meets State
The body is created by loving
But a tank’s made of fear and hate

Armoured cars and heads in helmets
Rank on rank on rank on rank
The hearts of the soldiers were trembling
But the eyes of the soldiers were blank
And then they saw him swaying
The boy who danced with a tank

The tank moved left
The boy stepped right
Paused like he was having fun
The tank moved right
The boy stepped left
Smiled at his partner down the barrel of a gun

You remember how we watched him
Dancing like a strong young tree
And we knew that for that moment
He was freer than we’ll ever be
A boy danced with a tank in China
Like the flower of liberty

A WOMAN YOUNG AND OLD

W.B.YEATS

II. BEFORE THE WORLD WAS MADE
If I make the lashes dark
And the eyes more bright
And the lips more scarlet,
Or ask if all be right
From mirror after mirror,
No vanity's displayed:
I'm looking for the face I had
Before the world was made.
What if I look upon a man
As though on my beloved,
And my blood be cold the while
And my heart unmoved?
Why should he think me cruel
Or that he is betrayed?
I'd have him love the thing that was
Before the world was made.

www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44628/the-childrens-hour-56d223ca55069

The Childrens' Hour by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ❤️

And this one which speaks to me about motherhood and the struggle...
Catrin
I can remember you, child,
As I stood in a hot, white
Room at the window watching
The people and cars taking
Turn at the traffic lights.
I can remember you, our first
Fierce confrontation, the tight
Red rope of love which we both
Fought over. It was a square
Environmental blank, disinfected
Of paintings or toys. I wrote
All over the walls with my
Words, coloured the clean squares
With the wild, tender circles
Of our struggle to become
Separate. We want, we shouted,
To be two, to be ourselves.
Neither won nor lost the struggle
In the glass tank clouded with feelings
Which changed us both. Still I am fighting
You off, as you stand there
With your straight, strong, long
Brown hair and your rosy,
Defiant glare, bringing up
From the heart’s pool that old rope,
Tightening about my life,
Trailing love and conflict,
As you ask may you skate
In the dark, for one more hour

Can I ask fellow Wilfred Owen fans -I recall the lines “deaf, even to the hoots of tired out-stripped five-nines that dropped behind” from school, now is seems to be “gas shells dropping softly behind”.

I know there were several variations of Owen’s poetry eg I think Anthem for doomed youth was originally For dead youth until Sassoon had some ideas. But I can’t find the outstrippped five nines bit anywhere. I even recall my teacher explaining what they were so sure I’m not making it up. Any ideas anyone?

That’s Dulce Et Decorum Est Life

www.laphamsquarterly.org/states-war/dulce-et-decorum-est

Another favourite:

On Waterloo Bridge by Wendy Cope

“On Waterloo Bridge where we said our goodbyes,
the weather conditions bring tears to my eyes.
I wipe them away with a black woolly glove
And try not to notice I've fallen in love

On Waterloo Bridge I am trying to think:
This is nothing. you're high on the charm and the drink.
But the juke-box inside me is playing a song
That says something different. And when was it wrong?

On Waterloo Bridge with the wind in my hair
I am tempted to skip. You're a fool. I don't care.
the head does its best but the heart is the boss-
I admit it before I am halfway across”

Sorry, they were artillery shells! Posted too soon.

Love 'At Lunchtime' by Roger McGough too - although I never remember what it's called and always refer to it as 'the bus poem'!

When the busstopped suddenly to avoid
damaging a mother and child in the road, the
younglady in the greenhat sitting opposite
was thrown across me,
and not being one to miss an opportunity
I started to makelove
with all my body.
At first, she resisted saying that it
was tooearly in the morning and too soon
after breakfast and that anyway she found
me repulsive. But when I explained that
this being a nuclearage,the world was going
to end at lunchtime, she tookoff her
greenhat, put her bus ticket into her pocket
and joined in the exercise.
The buspeople, and therewere many of
them, were shockedandsurprised, and amused-
andannoyed, but when word got around
that the world was coming to an end at lunchtime,
they put their pride in their pockets
with their bustickets and madelove one with the other.
And even the busconductor, feeling left
out climbed into the cab and struck up
some sort of relationship with the driver.

Thatnight, on the bus coming home,
wewere all alittle embarrassed, especially me
and the younglady in the green hat, and we
all started to say in different ways howhasty
and foolish we had been. Butthen, always
having been a bitofalad, i stood up and
said it was a pity that the world didn't nearly
end every lunchtime, and that we could always
pretend. And then it happened . . .

Quick asa flash we all changed partners,
and soon the bus was aquiver with white
mothball bodies doing naughty things.

And the next day
and everyday
In everybus
In everystreet
In everytown
In everycountry

People pretended that the world was coming
to an end at lunchtime. It still hasn't.
Although in a way it has.

The hitcher -Simon Armitage

I'd been tired, under
the weather, but the ansaphone kept screaming:
One more sick-note, mister, and you're finished. Fired.
I thumbed a lift to where the car was parked.
A Vauxhall Astra. It was hired.

I picked him up in Leeds.
He was following the sun from west to east
with just a toothbrush and the good earth for a bed. The truth,
he said, was blowin' in the wind,
or round the next bend.

I let him have it
on the top road out of Harrogate - once
with the head, then six times with the krooklok
in the face - and didn't even swerve.
I dropped it into third

and leant across
to let him out, and saw him in the mirror
bouncing off the kerb, then disappearing down the verge.
We were the same age, give or take a week.
He'd said he liked the breeze

to run its fingers
through his hair. It was twelve noon.
The outlook for the day was moderate to fair.
Stitch that, I remember thinking,
you can walk from there.

The Listeners by Walter de La Mare is my all time favourite.
Just for fun, Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll.

From A Railway Carriage by Robert Louis Stevenson as well. Really easy to read out loud and captured my imagination as a child.

There are some great settings to music of Yeats poems eg come away stolen child by the Waterboys. I have a whole album somewhere from about 20 years ago with setting by different Irish artists to commemorate him - including ‘before the world was made’ and ‘tread softly because you tread on my dreams’.

Wonderful music and amazing poems.

Here it is - I love this CD. Anyone who loves Yeats should get a copy.

www.amazon.co.uk/Now-Time-Be-Various/dp/B0000083ND?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below

We are the Dead, Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders Fields

Take up your quarrel with the foe;
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch, be yours to hold it high
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders Fields

After all the adult poems, here's a couple for the child within us, both anonymous.

After the ball was over,
She lay on the sofa and sighed.
She put her false teeth in salt water
And took out her lovely glass eye.
She kicked her wood leg in the corner,
Hung up her wig on the wall,
She closed her real eye and sang softly
"After the Ball."

FROG
A frog once went out walking,
In the pleasant summer air,
He happened into a barber's shop
And skipped into the chair.
The barber said in disbelief;
"Your brains are surely bare,
How can you have a haircut
When you haven't got any hair?"

I can thoroughly recommend this children's poetry book that these poems come from. There are fun, deep and meaningful, traditional poems from around the world, excellent and beautiful poems in it. My children are teenagers now but I will never throw this book out, I love it so.

Another vote for The Raven. I did a bike tour of the Bronx and we visited Poe's house. The tour leader read it outside the house. I loved it as did the locals who were walking by.

Also the Toad by Larkin. It was my favourite when I was young.