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

I learned both of these at school and always remembered...

Everyone Sang
By Siegfried Sassoon
Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark-green fields; on - on - and out of sight.

Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun:
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror
Drifted away ... O, but Everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

And

The Eagle
By Alfred, Lord Tennyson
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

'Cargoes'
Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amethysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rails, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

John Masefield

Used to be the only one I remembered but now I only remember bits of it!

Time was, every schoolchild would be familiar with The Eagle and Cargoes!

"Five ways to kill a man" is fabulous, thanks @TonstantWeader , never come across it before. That's hit me in the right place.

so pleased you like it, @BosworthBosworth ! My mum had a load of old copies of New Penguin Poets collections dating back to the 60s and 70s and I found it in one of those randomly one day. And it hit me so strongly too that it's been a favourite ever since then.

I loved the rhythm of Cargoes.

I think it is time to get a poetry book!

‘Here,’ by Philip Larkin.

Also, ‘The Scarecrow’ by Walter de la Mare, ‘Slough’ by John Betjeman and Shelley’s Skylark.

I am enjoying looking these up and ds is mildly interested. Let’s me read out the odd one! I am going to add one of my fav from when I was a child.

roger mccough

out of work,
divorced,
usually pissed,
he aimed low in life,
and missed

I came on to recommend This Be The Verse by Philip Larkin but I see others have already done so.
My second favourite is by Robert Frost;

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

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.

I discovered Matthew Arnold as a result of reading The French Lieutenant's Woman as a teenager and this was my favourite. Maybe not the best for a teenage boy though!

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43609/to-marguerite-continued

Also loved Edna St Vincent Millay at that age (as well as Sylvia Plath); this one is fabulous:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46557/what-lips-my-lips-have-kissed-and-where-and-why

Sylvia Plath's Daddy is a good one for teenagers I think.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48999/daddy-56d22aafa45b2

And Stevie Smith "Not waving but drowning" worth a shout?

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46479/not-waving-but-drowning

I could go on but that's probably enough!

We used to sing "Cargoes" at school!

@Purplturpl if you like Roger McGough, have you seen '40 - Love'? It's so clever and your DS might like it. The Night Mail is also beautifully rhythmic, especially if you watch the old BFI footage on YouTube.

We also did Cargoes at primary! Another one we did at school was 'Snakecharmer' by Sylvia Plath, which is much better being read aloud IMO.

Great post OP!

Mine is "If" by Rudyard Kipling.

Hope your daughter embraces something from this thread 👌🏻

Luke Wright possibly for a teenager?

Are Murmarations Worth It? is a brilliant poem.

Also John Cooper Clark of course.

Larkin's The Whitsun Weddings is a fave of mine and I loved TS Eliot as a teen but was a bit extra, not sure it's a good gateway for a teenager new to poetry.

I'm going to guess that rather than badgering a teen by showing poems to prove a point, you just include a gorgeous anthology of poetry among the Christmas gifts.

Some beautiful poems here, some new to me and some well-loved favourites. What a wonderful thread!

Two that I think are beautiful and that I haven't seen mentioned:

The Waking, by Theodore Roethke
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

Adelstrop 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.

I'd try him with the Irish poet Paul Durcan, who died recently, sadly. His poetry is very surreal and frequently laugh-out-loud funny. I loved reading him as a teen.

I think he might find war poems interesting.
I remember looking at these two in English way back when.

Drummer Hodge by Thomas Hardy.

I
They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
Uncoffined—just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around;
And foreign constellations west
Each night above his mound.

II
Young Hodge the Drummer never knew—
Fresh from his Wessex home—
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
Strange stars amid the gloam.

III
Yet portion of that unknown plain
Will Hodge for ever be;
His homely Northern breast and brain
Grow up a Southern tree,
And strange-eyed constellations reign
His stars eternally.

RUPERT BROOKE
The Soldier
IF I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by the suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

I have lots of favourites, but here is one:

A Prayer for Sleep (Michael Hartnett)

Grant me one good rest tonight, O Lord;
let no creatures prowl
the tangled pathways in my skull:
wipe out all wars,
throw guilt a bone;
let me dream, if I dream at all,
no child of Yours has come to harm.
I know, of course, that death’s the norm,
that there are people who have yet to climb
the Present’s rungs, who lag behind
(hyenas at the rim of civilization’s light),
whose laughing hides a Stone Age howl,
who wait till darkness comes to pounce
and tear the guts of progress out.
Yet, grant me good rest tonight, my Lord,
blind my internal eyes;
guard my anxious baffled years
with Your protecting arm
and let me dream, if I dream at all,
no child of Yours has come to harm.

Yes, so did we.

Another vote for WB Yeats - clogs of heaven and I also love Raglan road by Patrick Kavanagh

https://allpoetry.com/On-Raglan-Road

Have a look at Brian Bilston

Also Shakespeare’s sonnets, I like “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge”

Lol

I like Ozymandias,

But its hard to convince a 14 Yr old to like poetry. I couldn't convince my kids.

Emily Dickinson-

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

yeates - wild swans of coole