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Would anyone be able to recommend me their favourite poem?

175 replies

Purplturpl · 15/01/2025 21:09

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

OP posts:
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5
Diversion · 15/01/2025 21:42

One of my favourites, but perhaps too deep and adult for a 14 year old!

Death Asked Me to Join Him for Dinner

Death asked me to join him for dinner
so I slipped into my favorite black dress
that I had been saving for a special occasion
and let him walk me to our candlelit tryst.
He ordered a ribeye, extra rare
I ordered two desserts and red wine
and then I sipped
and wondered
why he looked so familiar
and smelled like earth and memory.
He felt like a place both faraway
and deep within my body
A place that whispers to me
on the crisp autumn breeze
along the liminal edges of dusk and dawn
somewhere between dancing
and stillness.
He looked at me
with the endless night sky in his eyes
and asked
‘Did you live your life, my love?’
As I swirled my wine in its glass
I wondered If I understood the thread I wove into the greater fabric
If I loved in a way that was deep and freeing
If I let pain and grief carve me into something more grateful
If I made enough space to be in awe that flowers exist
and take the time to watch the honeybees
drink their sweet nectar
I wondered what the riddles of regret and longing
had taught me
and if I realized just how
beautiful and insignificant and monstrous and small we are
for the brief moment that we are here
before we all melt back down
into ancestors of the land.
Death watched me lick buttercream from my fingers
As he leaned in close and said
‘My darling, it’s time.’
So I slipped my hand into his
as he slowly walked me home.
I took a deep breath as he leaned in close
for the long kiss goodnight
and I felt a soft laugh leave my lips
as his mouth met mine
because I never could resist a man
with the lust for my soul in his eyes
and a kiss that makes my heart stop.
~ Gina Puorro:

Oh I Wish I'd Looked After Me Teeth - Pam Ayres - More suitable for age 14 and has always made me laugh.

Warning (When I am old I shall wear purple) - Jenny Joseph

ponia · 15/01/2025 21:42

JasmineTea11 · 15/01/2025 21:35

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!

I've never read this poem before, that's absolutely beautiful!

I'd add:

Child by Sylvia Plath
Questions of Travel by Elizabeth Bishop
Travel by Edna St Vincent Millay
Titch Miller by Wendy Cope (teenager me found this devastating)

localhere · 15/01/2025 21:45

Louis MacNeice 'A Prayer Before Birth' god it hits me in the guts every time.

Parratha · 15/01/2025 21:46

First of all if you want your child to enjoy language/poetry then please realise that your opening question "would anyone be able to recommend me their favourite poem" is utterly, utterly incorrect english. You can not recommend yourself ("me") in that way.

This is a big bugbear of mine but I see it regularly on MN.

EdithStourton · 15/01/2025 21:46

Maboscelar · 15/01/2025 21:12

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.

Edited

I came on to recommend him.

The Windhover is one of his best, but his work might a bit dense for a 14 yr old.

Or maybe get a good anthology and sift it for ones you'd think he'd like.

Lesina · 15/01/2025 21:48

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death - WB Yeats. Simply stunning poem

DrFosterWentToGloucester23 · 15/01/2025 21:48

Simon Armitage is great. His collection of poems inspired by the lives of soldiers (especially those suffering from PTSD), called ‘The Not Dead’, is incredibly powerful. There is a C4 documentary of the same name. That being said, my favourite poet is Wilfred Owen. Some of his poems bring me to tears. As a previous poster said, so many of the soldiers were teenagers. “What passing bells for those who die as cattle …”

yummytummy · 15/01/2025 21:49

This one is more probably for you than for him but it's one of my favourites

Flight of the Firstborn - Peggy Carr

He streaks past his sixteenth year,
small island life stretched tight
across his shoulders
his strides rehearsing city blocks
college brochures
airline schedules
stream excitedly through his
newly competent hands
his goodbyes blurred like neon
on a morning suddenly gone wet

I'm left stranded
on a tiny patch of time
still reaching
to wipe the cereal from his smile.

RubyTuesday10 · 15/01/2025 21:49

The Trouble with Snowmen

'The trouble with snowmen,'
Said my father one year
'They are no sooner made
than they just disappear.

I'll build you a snowman
And I'll build it to last
Add sand and cement
And then have it cast.

And so every winter,'
He went on to explain
'You shall have a snowman
Be it sunshine or rain.'

And that snowman still stands
Though my father is gone
Out there in the garden
Like an unmarked gravestone.

Staring up at the house
Gross and misshapen
As if waiting for something
Bad to happen.

For as the years pass
And I grow older
When summers seem short
And winters colder.

The snowmen I envy
As I watch children play
Are the ones that are made
And then fade away.

Roger McGough

Carriemac · 15/01/2025 21:49

I love this . Maybe not for a14 year old but it speaks to me

Would anyone be able to recommend me their favourite poem?
ElvenPowers · 15/01/2025 21:51

Just don't anyone mention the Two Headed Calf unless you want us all to be painfully undone

Maboscelar · 15/01/2025 21:55

EdithStourton · 15/01/2025 21:46

I came on to recommend him.

The Windhover is one of his best, but his work might a bit dense for a 14 yr old.

Or maybe get a good anthology and sift it for ones you'd think he'd like.

I studied his work for GCSE I think though it might have been A level. I think teens could enjoy it, his language is so evocative.

iwillfollowyou · 15/01/2025 21:57

I carry you heart is beautiful

bellocchild · 15/01/2025 21:58

The Listeners by Walter de la Mare

housemaus · 15/01/2025 22:00

FRIENDLY ADVICE TO A LOT OF YOUNG MEN - Charles Bukowski

Go to Tibet
Ride a camel.
Read the bible.
Dye your shoes blue.
Grow a beard.
Circle the world in a paper canoe.
Subscribe to The Saturday Evening Post.
Chew on the left side of your mouth only.
Marry a woman with one leg and shave with a straight razor.
And carve your name in her arm.
Brush your teeth with gasoline.
Sleep all day and climb trees at night.
Be a monk and drink buckshot and beer.
Hold your head under water and play the violin.
Do a belly dance before pink candles.
Kill your dog.
Run for mayor.
Live in a barrel.
Break your head with a hatchet.
Plant tulips in the rain.
But don’t write poetry.

That would be my addition!

Onceuponatimethen · 15/01/2025 22:01

Sad one:

Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying—
He had always taken funerals in his stride—
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble'.
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four-foot box, a foot for every year.

MissyB1 · 15/01/2025 22:01

Donna Ashworth “Sadness Comes”

Would anyone be able to recommend me their favourite poem?
ocelot3 · 15/01/2025 22:03

This one’s pretty good for 14 year old boys - they need to read the title and instruction at the end. (I’m not sure my personal favourites would resonate with him.)

Would anyone be able to recommend me their favourite poem?
GrumpySparkler · 15/01/2025 22:03

Benjamin Zephaniah could be a good shout. I bet there's some good videos on YouTube of him reciting his poetry.

Mmmkaay · 15/01/2025 22:03

Tittat50 · 15/01/2025 21:26

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!

They tuck you up, your Mum and Dad.
They read you Peter Rabbit, too.
They give you all the treats they had
And add some extra, just for you.

They were tucked up when they were small,
(Pink perfume, blue tobacco-smoke),
By those whose kiss healed any fall,
Whose laughter doubled any joke.

Man hands on happiness to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
So love your parents all you can
And have some cheerful kids yourself.

  • Adrian Mitchell
RubyTuesday10 · 15/01/2025 22:04

The Dash Linda Ellis

I read of a man who stood to speak at the funeral of a friend.
He referred to the dates on his casket from beginning to the end.
He noted that first came the date of his birth, and spoke of the following date with tears,
But he said what mattered most of all was the dash between those years. For that dash represents all the time that he spent alive on earth,
And now, only those who loved him know what that little line is worth.
For it matters not, how much we own, the cars, the house, the cash, What matters is how we live and love and how we spend our dash.
So think about this long and hard; are there things you would like to change? For you never know how much time is left that can still be rearranged.
If we could just slow down enough to consider what is true and real
And always try to understand the way other people feel.
And be less quick to anger and show appreciation more
And love the people in our lives like we have never loved before.
If we treat each other with respect and more often wear a smile, Remembering that this special dash might only last a little while.
So when your eulogy is being read, with your life’s actions to rehash,
Would you be proud of the things they say, about how your spent your dash?

Dappy777 · 15/01/2025 22:07

I love the following:

Blake: The Chimney Sweep (makes me cry)
Shelley: Skylark
Keats: When I have Fears
Tennyson: Lotos Eaters
Thomas Hardy: The Great Western
Walter de La Mere: The Scarecrow
Wilfred Owen: Exposure
Ted Hughes: The Daffodils
Philip Larkin: Here

There is also a poem by Geoffrey Hill, but I can’t think of the title.

username299 · 15/01/2025 22:10

I have lots of favourites but here are two:

Amusing Myself
Li Bai

Facing my wine, I did not see the dusk,
Falling blossoms have filled the folds of my clothes.
Drunk, I rise and approach the moon in the stream,
Birds are far off, people too are few.

Drunk as Drunk
Neruda
Drunk as drunk on turpentine
From your open kisses,
Your wet body wedged
Between my wet body and the strake
Of our boat that is made of flowers,
Feasted, we guide it - our fingers
Like tallows adorned with yellow metal -
Over the sky's hot rim,
The day's last breath in our sails.

Pinned by the sun between solstice
And equinox, drowsy and tangled together
We drifted for months and woke
With the bitter taste of land on our lips,
Eyelids all sticky, and we longed for lime
And the sound of a rope
Lowering a bucket down its well. Then,
We came by night to the Fortunate Isles,
And lay like fish
Under the net of our kisses.

SalmonWellington · 15/01/2025 22:11

Anthologies rather than poems, but the Rattle Bag and School Bag, both edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes, are aimed at teens. There's no explanation nor context, you're just left alone with the poem.

Here's one:

Robert Penn Warren

Long ago, in Kentucky, I, a boy, stood
By a dirt road, in first dark, and heard
The great geese hoot northward.
I could not see them, there being no moon
And the stars sparse. I heard them.
I did not know what was happening in my heart.
It was the season before the elderberry blooms,
Therefore they were going north.
The sound was passing northward.

Tell me a story.
In this century, and moment, of mania,
Tell me a story.
Make it a story of great distances, and starlight.
The name of the story will be Time,
But you must not pronounce its name.
Tell me a story of deep delight.

Zoraflora · 15/01/2025 22:11

Onceuponatimethen · 15/01/2025 22:01

Sad one:

Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying—
He had always taken funerals in his stride—
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble'.
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four-foot box, a foot for every year.

I always remember this poem from primary school. Its so sad.