Have we had a favourite poem thread?

[turquey]

Or is that a bit pretentious?

Well the favourite classics thread got me thinking so here's mine:

Bat - DH Laurence
'The expense of spirit in a waste of shame' sonnet - Shakespeare
Dulce et Decorum Est - Wilfred Owen
Lament - Dylan Thomas
The Waste Land - TS Eliot

How about Warning: when I am old I shall wear purple.. (Jenny joseph)

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
: With a red hat which doesn't go and doesn't suit me.
: And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
: And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
: I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
: And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
: And run my stick along the public railings
: And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
: I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
: And pick the flowers in other people's gardens . . .

and a total favour - partly for the last line....e.e.cummings....

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

any experience,your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and

my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility:whose texture

compels me with the color of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens;only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

What a lovely thread, I wish I had time to read all the poems. Does anyone else like "Prayer Before Birth" by Louis MacNeice?

cant wait till i have time to read the rest of this thread its great half my favorites are already on here prufrock- yeats cloths of heaven -the robert frost poem and auden all old faves have read the one about the plums too jan h its a lovely poem -ive its so long since i read any poetry id almost forgotten about it used to like c day lewis too some of the magnetic mountain is good reading (yes i 'did' it at school ! )
heres two i remember liking

shelley -music

music when soft voices die
vibrates in the memory
odours, when sweet violets sicken
live within the sense the quicken

rose leaves, when the rose is dead
are heap'd for the beloved's bed
and so thy thoughts, when thou art gone
love itself shall slumber on

used to love that

this is a poem philip larkin wrote for a new born

born yesterday

tightly folded bud
i have wished you something
none of the others would
not the usual stuff
about being beautiful
or running of a spring
of innocence and love
they all wish you that
and should it prove possible
then youre a lucky girl

but if it doesnt
may you be ordinary
have like other women
an average of talents
not ugly not good looking
nothing uncustomary
to pull you off balance
that unworkable itself
stops the rest from working
in fact may you be dull
if that is what a skilled
vigilant flexible
unemphasised enthralled
catching of happiness is called

im gonna dust off those old poetry books and enjoy reading them again !

saadia yes i like prayer before birth - let not the blood sucking bat or the club footed ghoul or the rat or the stoat come near me UUUrggghhh i always remember that bit

dinosaur who wrote that that it reminds me of betjemin

Yes lunachic, that line sticks in my head too. Here's the rest:

Louis MacNeice - Prayer before Birth

I am not yet born; O hear me.
Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the club-footed ghoul come near me.

I am not yet born, console me.
I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.

I am not yet born; provide me
With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light in the back of my mind to guide me.

I am not yet born; forgive me
For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words when they speak me, my thoughts when they think me, my treason engendered by traitors beyond me,my life when they murder by means of my
hands, my death when they live me.

I am not yet born; rehearse me
In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountains frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white waves call me to folly and the desert calls me to doom and the beggar refuses my gift and my children curse me.

I am not yet born; O hear me,
Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God come near me.

I am not yet born; O fill me
With strength against those who would freeze my
humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton, would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with one face, a thing, and against all those who would dissipate my entirety, would
blow me like thistledown hither and thither or hither and thither like water held in the hands would spill me.

Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.
Otherwise kill me.

beautiful its a poem that demands to be heard ! can remember my english teacher reading it in her refined yorkshire accent !

prayer before birth is lovely. except for the last line

Yes, that't true. I really like the idea of the "White light in the back of my mind to guide me".

Sea-Fever
by John Masefield

I must go down to the seas again,
to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and the
stars to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the
wind's song and the white sail's skaking,
And a gray mist on the sea's
face and the gray dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again,
for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume,
and the sea-gulls crying
Robert Browning
Home Thoughts, from Abroad
O, to be in England
Now that April 's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England?now!
And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossom'd pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops?at the bent spray's edge?
That 's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower
?Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

hatstand, could it be Edwin Morgan? I'm going to the library later and will have a look.

Blackduck, isn't ee cummings brilliant

and snafu, that's Emily Dickinson, isn't it? Another genius. Here's one of my favourites of hers, about a snake ...

A NARROW fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him,?did you not?
His notice sudden is.

The grass divides as with a comb,
A spotted shaft is seen;
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on.

He likes a boggy acre,
A floor too cool for corn.
Yet when a boy, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,

Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
Unbraiding in the sun,?
When, stooping to secure it,
It wrinkled, and was gone.

Several of nature?s people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality;

But never met this fellow,
Attended or alone,
Without a tighter breathing,
And zero at the bone.

I really like this one:

Let's Go Over It All Again ~ James Fenton

Some people are like that.
They split up and then they think:
Hey, maybe we haven't hurt each other to the uttermost.
Let's meet up and have a drink.

Let's go over it all again.
Let's rake over the dirt.
Let me pick that scab of yours.
Does it hurt?

Let's go over what went wrong--
How and why and when.
Let's go over what went wrong
Again and again.

We hurt each other badly once
We said a lot of nasty stuff.
But lately I've been thinking how
I didn't hurt you enough.

Maybe there's more where that came from,
Something more malign.
Let me damage you again
For the sake of auld lang syne.

Yes, let me see you bleed again
For the sake of auld lang syne.

Forgot this one by Maya Angelou

"Phenomenal Woman"

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

that's a great one hmb!

hatstand I was wrong about the horses, twice over: first I was thinking of Muir, not Morgan; and secondly there's no frost in The Horses. sorry.

There is a surreal little cabinet outside the Poetry Library in the South Bank Centre where people put up typed fragments of poems they're trying to track down. I wonder if there's a website version - there must be?

and there is - lost quotATIONs (please)

This one really 'got' me when I first read it for O Level English when I was 13. I still think it's haunting. It's called Conquerors, by Henry Treece:-

CONQUERORS

By sundown we came to a hidden village
Where all the air was still
And no sound met our tired ears, save
For the sorry drip of rain from blackened trees
And the melancholy song of swinging gates.
Then through a broken pane some of us saw
A dead bird in a rusting cage, still
Pressing his thin tattered breast against the bars,
His beak wide open. And
As we hurried through the weed-grown street,
A gaunt dog started up from some dark place
And shambled off on legs as thin as sticks
Into the wood, to die at least in peace.
No one had told us victory was like this;
Not one amongst us would have eaten bread
Before he'd filled the mouth of the grey child
That sprawled, stiff as stone, before the shattered door.
There was not one who did not think of home.
by Henry Treece

I have really enjoyed this thread. I love Robert Frost and Maya Angelou. I have always loved this one.

"Valentine" by Carol Ann Duffy
--------

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.

Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or a kissogram.

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring,
if you like.

Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

I love my car,
It's red and sporty.
It Doesn't matter if i am bald and shorty
'Cos every woman in every land,
Wants a man with the keys to a Prche in his hand.

love that poem

another ee cummings fan here. Anyone lived in an anyhow town is wonderful

My mum asked for this to be read at her funeral

Life Goes On
If I should go before the rest of you
Break not a flower
Nor inscribe a stone
Nor when I am 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
Joyce Grenfell
1910-1979

(*my favourite poem to help me thru rough times...)

After a while...

After a while you learn
the subtle difference between
holding a hand and chaining a soul
and you learn
that love doesn't mean leaning
and company doesn't always mean security.
And you begin to learn
that kisses aren't contracts
and presents aren't promises
and you begin to accept your defeats
with your head up and your eyes ahead
with the grace of woman, not the grief of a child
and you learn
to build all your roads on today
because tomorrow's ground is
too uncertain for plans
and futures have a way of falling down
in mid-flight.
After a while you learn
that even sunshine burns
if you get/lean too much
so you plant your own garden
and decorate your own soul
instead of waiting for someone
to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure
you really are strong
you really do have worth
and you learn
and you learn
with every goodbye, you learn...

-by Veronica A. Shoffstall

(*my favourite poem to cry to..)

Before I was a Mom
I made and ate hot meals.
I had unstained clothing.
I had quiet conversations on the phone.

Before I was a Mom
I slept as late as I wanted
And never worried about how late
I got into bed.
I brushed my hair and my teeth everyday.

Before I was a Mom,
I cleaned my house each day.
I never tripped over toys
or forgot words to lullabies.

Before I was a Mom,
I didn't worry whether or not my
plants were poisonous.
I never thought about immunizations.

Before I was a Mom,
I had never been pooped on,
Spit up on,
Chewed on,
Peed on,
Or pinched by tiny fingers.

Before I was a Mom,
I had complete control of myself;
My thoughts,
My body,
And my mind.
I slept all night.

Before I was a Mom,
I never held down a screaming child
so that doctors could do tests or give shots.
I never looked into teary eyes and cried.
I never got gloriously happy over a simple grin.
I never sat up late hours at night watching a baby sleep.

Before I was a Mom,
I never held a sleeping baby just because I didn't
want to put it down.
I never felt my heart break into a million pieces
when I couldn't stop the hurt.
I never knew something so small could affect my
life so much.
I never knew that I could love someone so much.
I never knew I would love being a Mom.

Before I was a Mom,
I didn't know the feeling of having my
heart outside my body.
I didn't know how special it could feel
to feed a hungry baby.
I didn't know that bond between a
Mother and her child.
I didn't know that something so small
could make me feel so important.

Before I was a Mom,
I had never gotten up in the middle of
the night every ten minutes to make
sure all was okay.
I had never known the warmth,
The joy,
The love,
The heartache,
The wonderfulment,
Or the satisfaction of being a Mom.

I didn't know I was capable of feeling so
much before I was a Mom.

(a poem about the town of my upbringing and the conflict between my working class origins and the middle class status conferred upon me by a university education)
I remember Luton
As I'm swallowing my crouton
by John Hegley