Would anyone be able to recommend me their favourite poem?

[Purplturpl]

Particularly if it evokes strong emotions. I want to convince my teenager poetry can be amazing

Almost anything by Gerard Manley Hopkins, I love his work.

But maybe look at Carrion Comfort because it's kind of dark and a teen might like that.

After my husband took his own life, I read a lot of poetry. I LIVED this section of An Exequy by Peter Porter. I learned it by heart.

The words and faces proper to
My misery are private – you
Would never share our heart with those
Whose only talent’s to suppose,
Nor from your final childish bed
Raise a remote confessing head –
The channels of our lives are blocked,
The hand is stopped upon the clock,
No one can say why hearts will break
And marriages are all opaque:
A map of loss, some posted cards,
The living house reduced to shards,
The abstract hell of memory,
The pointlessness of poetry –
These are the instances which tell
Of something which I know full well,
I owe a death to you – one day
The time will come for me to pay
When your slim shape from photographs
Stands at my door and gently asks
If I have any work to do
Or will I come to bed with you.
O scala enigmata,1
I’ll climb up to that attic where
The curtain of your life was drawn
Some time between despair and dawn –
I’ll never know with what halt steps
You mounted to this plain eclipse
But each stair now will station me
A black responsibility
And point me to that shut-down room,
‘This be your due appointed tomb.’

Also, I heard Biz Bond performing on the radio the other day. Fantastic.

Spike Milligan all the way!

I found this in a book belonging to my mum when she died. Her and my father divorced when i was very young but she always said he was the love of her life.
It's an 8th century Japanese haiku.

‘A thousand years, you said,
As our two hearts melted.
I look at the hand you held
And the ache is too hard to bear

English was my worst subject at school (both grades and enjoyment) but I bought this book for myself when I was in my late teens and began to appreciate poetry.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nations-Favourite-Poems-Griff-Jones/dp/0563387823

The boy stood on the burning deck
His body all a quiver
He gave a cough
His leg fell off

And floated down the river..
. Absolutely no idea why dm taught me this as a dc...
She was an odd dm.

What are you trying to convey? And how old is your son?

The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock by Eliot

Son is 14.

My favourite is Birches, by Robert Frost. It’s not too long and is about not forgetting what it’s like to be a child.

www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44260/birches

I like

• This be the verse by Philip larkin
• a busy day by Michel Rosen
• complete works of Dorothy Parker
• please Mrs Butler

This poem is legendary. I think you either like it or you don't and you can't force it. I studied English Lit and it put me off reading for pleasure for years!

Great minds! 😆

Donal Og
To his mistress going to bed
Dover Beach
hope is a thing with feathers

I'm.not sure teenagers would like any of them. Probably something like Kae Tempest would be a better intro.

Came on to say this one - total legend.

Roger McGough… Adrian Henie & Brian Patten we’re known as The Mersey Sound..I have no knowledge of English literature apart from going to a school where a diffferent Shakespeare play was studied every term &I fecking hated it! These poets showed me what poetry could be. Their works speak to everyone!

What about some of John Cooper Clarke's performance poetry? I remember seeing him perform as a teen and being awed by him.

He wishes for the cloths of Heaven - Yeats

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

How about some of the World War 1 poets like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon? Teenagers often respond to these because so many of the soldiers were teenagers themselves. Try The General by Sassoon for starters: ‘ He did for them both by his plan of attack’.

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver. I wrote it out for my teen DS on his last birthday. Its stunning, with excellent 'advice' on life. It moves me to tears and I think loads of poetry is meh!

The Orange, by Wendy Cope

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange—
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—
They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.
This is peace and contentment. It’s new.

The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all the jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I’m glad I exist.

Good call. His humour would be appreciated by a teen I think.

When I am sad and lonely
And I think all hope is gone
i walk along high holborn
and think of you with nothing on

Adrian Mitchell

Teenage boys tend to like

crude innuendo

To His Coy Mistress ('my vegetable love shall grow') perhaps not from Mum though?

Or, Simon Armitage is a great poet

Without a doubt, Edwin Muire, The Horse. I've known it's lines for over 50 years, but still, it brings a tear.

Others of his are also worth a read.

Lines that stick (for a lot of years) in my head include

"And the killing beast that cannot kill
Swells with fury, until
You'd almost think it was despair"

the predator (or something similar)

And

"That I can go out
Go out without a doubt, my father says is the miracle"

On a child dying, I think.
But there are so many poems and poets, that your child could look at. Benjamin Zachary poems were reproduced around a city I once worked in. They were also magic.