Favorite Poem?

[Trenton.]

There are thousands of millions out there. My favorite is of the famous Edgar Allen Poe. His "Raven" and "Annabel lee" has been an instant likable classics to me. How 'bout you?

[Cairo Jim]

I've only heard a tiny fraction of it, but classical Scottish poetry. It's hilarious.

[SamSniped]

I've always loved this one by Robert Browning for the history behind the poem.

 

Quote:

Through The Metidja To Abd-El-Kadr

 

As I ride, as I ride,

With a full heart for my guide,

So its tide rocks my side,

As I ride, as I ride,

That, as I were double-eyed,

He, in whom our Tribes confide,

Is descried, ways untried

As I ride, as I ride.

 

As I ride, as I ride

To our Chief and his Allied,

Who dares chide my heart's pride

As I ride, as I ride?

Or are witnesses denied---

Through the desert waste and wide

Do I glide unespied

As I ride, as I ride?

 

As I ride, as I ride,

When an inner voice has cried,

The sands slide, nor abide

(As I ride, as I ride)

O'er each visioned homicide

That came vaunting (has he lied?)

To reside where he died,

As I ride, as I ride.

 

As I ride, as I ride,

Ne'er has spur my swift horse plied,

Yet his hide, streaked and pied,

As I ride, as I ride,

Shows where sweat has sprung and dried,

Zebra-footed, ostrich-thighed

How has vied stride with stride

As I ride, as I ride!

 

As I ride, as I ride,

Could I loose what Fate has tied,

Ere I pried, she should hide

(As I ride, as I ride)

All that's meant me---satisfied

When the Prophet and the Bride

Stop veins I'd have subside

As I ride, as I ride!

 

Post #XI of the challenge

[Student of Trinity]

I expect Browning won a beer for that. But Trurl's machine was better:

 

Originally Posted By: Stanislaw Lem, in Cyberiad

[Trurl has created a poetry machine. His rival Klaupacius gives it a challenge:]

 

"Have it compose a poem — a poem about a haircut! But lofty, noble, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, and quiet heroism in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed ... and every word beginning with the letter s!!"

 

"And why not throw in a full exposition of the general theory of nonlinear automata while you're at it?" growled Trurl. "You can't give it such idiotic —"

 

But he didn't finish. A melodious voice filled the hall with the following:

Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.

She scissored short. Sorely shorn,

Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed.

Silently scheming,

Sightlessly seeking

Some savage, spectacular suicide.

 

You have to know the Biblical story of Samson and Delilah to understand that the poem makes perfect sense. I've always wondered what this episode was like in the original Polish. Someone told me that it was quite different but just as clever.

[BMA]

W.Wordsworth's Ode to the Daffodils (?) is about the only English poem that I know of, having been asked to recite it at school.

 

But the one which had caught my fancy involved a knight jumping into a lion's pit to retrieve his lover's kerchief, and then jumping out and throwing the kerchief at her face (thus breaking up with her) with everyone watching. I wish I remember what it was.

[nikki.]

I think, at the moment (since it changes pretty often), I'd have to say something by John Clare. Maybe 'The Flitting'. There are also a couple of H.D. poems I love.

 

'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' also deserves an honourable mention, as do Plath's better works.

[Actaeon]

I tend to favor of the works of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Robert Frost, and Robert Service, but Poe, Yeats, Donne, Neruda, and Eliot all have at least one poem that approaches the level of "favorite". If I was nailed down to a single one, I'd probably end up going with Tolkien, just to get you off my back. Or perhaps the Robert Coffin's rather obscure piece "The Pines".

[Callie]

Bob Dylan - "Desolation Row"

[Actaeon]

Oh, if we're counting songs, Paul Simon tops my list.

[Callie]

How could you not count Bob Dylan as a poet?

[Actaeon]

I'm not arguing. I paid top dollar to see the man at Red Rocks.

[Prince of Kitties]

Masters of War is quite possibly the best rant ever.

 

Now I think I'll take Hoary Cliches for the next one please.

 

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure dome decree

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea...

 

Those first five lines have inspired people ranging from Paul Linebarger to Neal Peart to yours truly.

 

In a way I take those lines out of context; I find they conflict, in a way, with the rest of the poem. But the measureless caverns, and especially the idea of a "sunless sea," create an atmosphere that I would almost describe as post-apocalyptic.

 

(I always imagined a sea on which the sun never rises, because it has been dead for a billion years; and the sky overhead filled with the murky light of supernova remnants. A sea at the end of the universe. But that's just me being an incurable SF fan.)

[Dintiradan]

I said in a thread not too long ago that Robert Service's The Cremation of Sam McGee was the best poem to read aloud. Kubla Khan comes close, though. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Frost at Midnight are also Coleridge poems I enjoyed.

 

I think I have a really shallow knowledge of poems. Other favourites are Ozymandias, The Charge of the Light Brigade, and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. But these are all really well-known. In an attempt to be more of a poetry hipster, I liked Al Purdy's Baffin Island poetry, though I can't find any of the ones that stick out in my mind on the 'Net (doesn't help that I can't remember any of the titles). Can't find On the Decipherment of Linear B or The Last of the Dorsets, either.

[Cairo Jim]

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner...are also Coleridge poems I enjoyed.

 

That came from this Coleridge fellow? You learn something new everyday.

[Dintiradan]

(Hey, a certain member had recorded a reading of Kubla Khan, among other poems. I can't find a link to the reading; if said member is reading this, could a link be posted?)

[Aran]

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

(Hey, a certain member had recorded a reading of Kubla Khan, among other poems. I can't find a link to the reading; if said member is reading this, could a link be posted?)

If you mean me, then it sucks. However, it can probably be found on the internet archive.

Edit: Oh yes, there it is.. The internet is forever. (At least you didn't ask about the R.E. Howard stuff.)

[nikki.]

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

Kubla Khan [...] Frost at Midnight [...]

YES! I just did a module on Romantic-period Poetry, and of course I was familiar with most of the texts, but 'Frost at Midnight' is probably the one that sticks with me most. 'Kubla Khan' is another; I think Coleridge is probably in my top three poets of that era. He didn't have the output of some of the others, but what he did write was just better. 'The Lime Tree Bower My Prison' is another Coleridge poem that just hooks me in no matter how many times I read it - there's always something new to take from it.

Anyway, before I get far too carried away, here is a poem by HD. Probably not my favourite, but certainly the one I know the best:

Click to reveal.. ( Leda)

Where the slow river
meets the tide,
a red swan lifts red wings
and darker beak,
and underneath the purple down
of his soft breast
uncurls his coral feet.

Through the deep purple
of the dying heat
of sun and mist,
the level ray of sun-beam
has caressed
the lily with dark breast,
and flecked with richer gold
its golden crest.

Where the slow lifting
of the tide,
floats into the river
and slowly drifts
among the reeds,
and lifts the yellow flags,
he floats
where tide and river meet.

Ah kingly kiss --
no more regret
nor old deep memories
to mar the bliss;
where the low sedge is thick,
the gold day-lily
outspreads and rests
beneath soft fluttering
of red swan wings
and the warm quivering
of the red swan's breast.

[Aran]

Quote:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea...

I kind of want to boot up Minecraft and build that.

[Men are from Slars]

Quote:

Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea...

Do these lines always remind anyone else of Tolkien's descriptions of the underdeeps of the world?

[Aran]

You mean this?

 

Quote:

Far, far below the deepest delving of the Dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things. Even Sauron knows them not. They are older than he. Now I have walked there, but I will bring no report to darken the light of day.

 

(There is also some other quote about "roots of the world" and "beyond time" or something. Can't find it.)

[Aran]

Originally Posted By: BMA

W.Wordsworth's Ode to the Daffodils (?) is about the only English poem that I know of, having been asked to recite it at school.

But the one which had caught my fancy involved a knight jumping into a lion's pit to retrieve his lover's kerchief, and then jumping out and throwing the kerchief at her face (thus breaking up with her) with everyone watching. I wish I remember what it was.

Schiller, "The Glove". ("Der Handschuh") A translation and the original are here.

[Triumph]

I like a number of the poems mentioned already, so I'll note another I really like that hasn't come up yet: The Hunting of the Snark, by Lewis Carroll. "For the Snark WAS a Boojum, you see." Not as thought-provoking as Rime of the Ancient Mariner or Ozymandias, but lots of fun!

[BMA]

Originally Posted By: ARAN

Originally Posted By: BMA

But the one which had caught my fancy involved a knight jumping into a lion's pit to retrieve his lover's kerchief, and then jumping out and throwing the kerchief at her face (thus breaking up with her) with everyone watching. I wish I remember what it was.

Schiller, "The Glove". ("Der Handschuh") A translation and the original are here.

Yes, that's the one. I didn't know it was a German translation, and it was good to read it again. I've heard a lot about Carroll's Snark too, I'm going to dig it up.

[Lauren CW]

I have 2, they are a bit long.

Richard Siken's Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out

Click to reveal..

Every morning the maple leaves.

Every morning another chapter where the hero shifts

from one hoof to the other. Every morning the same big

and little words all spelling out desire, all spelling out

You will be alone always and then you will die.

So maybe I wanted to give you something more than a catalog

of non-definitive acts,

something other than the desperation.

Dear So-and-So, I’m sorry I couldn’t come to your party.

Dear So-and-So, I’m sorry I came to your party

and seduced you

and left you bruised and ruined, you poor sad thing.

Your want a better story. Who wouldn’t?

A forest, then. Beautiful trees. And a lady singing.

Love on the water, love underwater, love, love and so on.

What a sweet lady. Sing lady, sing! Of course, she wakes the dragon.

Love always wakes the dragon and suddenly

flames everywhere.

I can tell already you think I’m the dragon,

that would be so like me, but I’m not. I’m not the dragon.

I’m not the princess either.

Who am I? I’m just a writer. I write things down.

I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure,

I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow

glass, but that comes later.

And the part where I push you

flush against the wall and every part of your body rubs against the bricks,

shut up

I’m getting to it.

For a while I thought I was the dragon.

I guess I can tell you that now. And, for a while, I thought I was

the princess,

cotton candy pink, sitting there in my room, in the tower of the castle,

young and beautiful and in love and waiting for you with

confidence

but the princess looks into her mirror and only sees the princess,

while I’m out here, slogging through the mud, breathing fire,

and getting stabbed to death.

Okay, so I’m the dragon. Big deal.

You still get to be the hero.

You get magic gloves! A fish that talks! You get eyes like flashlights!

What more do you want?

I make you pancakes, I take you hunting, I talk to you as if you’re

really there.

Are you there, sweetheart? Do you know me? Is this microphone live?

Let me do it right for once,

for the record, let me make a thing of cream and stars that becomes,

you know the story, simply heaven.

Inside your head you hear a phone ringing

and when you open your eyes

only a clearing with deer in it. Hello deer.

Inside your head the sound of glass,

a car crash sound as the trucks roll over and explode in slow motion.

Hello darling, sorry about that.

Sorry about the bony elbows, sorry we

lived here, sorry about the scene at the bottom of the stairwell

and how I ruined everything by saying it out loud.

Especially that, but I should have known.

You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together

to make a creature that will do what I say

or love me back.

I’m not really sure why I do it, but in this version you are not

feeding yourself to a bad stallion

against a black sky prickled with small lights.

I take it back.

The wooden halls like caskets. These terms from the lower depths.

I take them back.

Here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed.

Crossed out.

Clumsy hooves in a dark room. Crossed out. There is something

underneath the floorboards.

Crossed out. And here is the tabernacle

reconstructed.

Here is the part where everypony was happy all the time and we were all

forgiven,

even though we didn’t deserve it.

Inside your head you hear

a phone ringing, and when you open your eyes you’re washing up

in a stranger’s bathroom,

standing by the window in a yellow towel, only twenty minutes away

from the dirtiest thing you know.

All the rooms of the castle except this one, says somepony, and suddenly

darkness,

suddenly only darkness.

In the living room, in the broken yard,

in the back of the car as the lights go by. In the airport

bathroom’s gurgle and flush, bathed in a pharmacy of

unnatural light,

my hooves looking weird, my face weird, my hooves too far away.

And then the airplane, the window seat over the wing with a view

of the wing and a little foil bag of peanuts.

I arrived in the city and you met me at the station,

smiling in a way

that made me frightened. Down the alley, around the arcade,

up the stairs of the building

to the little room with the broken faucets, your drawings, all your things,

I looked out the window and said

This doesn’t look that much different from home,

because it didn’t,

but then I noticed the black sky and all those lights.

We walked through the house to the elevated train.

All these buildings, all that glass and the shiny beautiful

mechanical wind.

We were inside the train car when I started to cry. You were crying too,

smiling and crying in a way that made me

even more hysterical. You said I could have anything I wanted, but I

just couldn’t say it out loud.

Actually, you said Love, for you,

is larger than the usual romantic love. It’s like a religion. It’s

terrifying. No one

will ever want to sleep with you.

Okay, if you’re so great, you do it—

here’s the pencil, make it work . . .

If the window is on your right, you are in your own bed. If the window

is over your heart, and it is painted shut, then we are breathing

river water.

Build me a city and call it Jerusalem. Build me another and call it

Jerusalem.

We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not

what we sought, so do it over, give me another version,

a different room, another hallway, the kitchen painted over

and over,

another bowl of soup.

The entire history of pony desire takes about seventy minutes to tell.

Unfortunately, we don’t have that kind of time.

Forget the dragon,

leave the gun on the table, this has nothing to do with happiness.

Let’s jump ahead to the moment of epiphany,

in gold light, as the camera pans to where

the action is,

lakeside and backlit, and it all falls into frame, close enough to see

the blue rings of my eyes as I say

something ugly.

I never liked that ending either. More love streaming out the wrong way,

and I don’t want to be the kind that says the wrong way.

But it doesn’t work, these erasures, this constant refolding of the pleats.

There were some nice parts, sure,

all lemondrop and mellonball, laughing in silk pajamas

and the grains of sugar

on the toast, love love or whatever, take a number. I’m sorry

it’s such a lousy story.

Dear Forgiveness, you know that recently

we have had our difficulties and there are many things

I want to ask you.

I tried that one time, high school, second lunch, and then again,

years later, in the chlorinated pool.

I am still talking to you about help. I still do not have

these luxuries.

I have told you where I’m coming from, so put it together.

We clutch our bellies and roll on the floor . . .

When I say this, it should mean laughter,

not poison.

I want more applesauce. I want more seats reserved for heroes.

Dear Forgiveness, I saved a plate for you.

Quit milling around the yard and come inside.

 

And Jeffrey McDaniel's Archipelago of Kisses

Click to reveal..

We live in a modern society. Husbands and wives don't

grow on trees, like in the old days. So where

does one find love? When you're sixteen it's easy,

like being unleashed with a credit card

in a department store of kisses. There's the first kiss.

The sloppy kiss. The peck.

The sympathy kiss. The backseat smooch. The we

shouldn't be doing this kiss. The but your lips

taste so good kiss. The bury me in an avalanche of tingles kiss.

The I wish you'd quit smoking kiss.

The I accept your apology, but you make me really mad

sometimes kiss. The I know

your tongue like the back of my hoof kiss. As you get

older, kisses become scarce. You'll be driving

home and see a damaged kiss on the side of the road,

with its purple thumb out. If you

were younger, you'd pull over, slide open the mouth's

red door just to see how it fits. Oh where

does one find love? If you rub two glances, you get a smile.

Rub two smiles, you get a warm feeling.

Rub two warm feelings and presto-you have a kiss.

Now what? Don't invite the kiss over

and answer the door in your underwear. It'll get suspicious

and stare at your toes. Don't water the kiss with whiskey.

It'll turn bright pink and explode into a thousand luscious splinters,

but in the morning it'll be ashamed and sneak out of

your body without saying good-bye,

and you'll remember that kiss forever by all the little cuts it left

on the inside of your mouth. You must

nurture the kiss. Turn out the lights. Notice how it

illuminates the room. Hold it to your chest

and wonder if the sand inside hourglasses comes from a

special beach. Place it on the tongue's pillow,

then look up the first recorded kiss in an encyclopedia: beneath

a Babylonian olive tree in 1200 B.C.

But one kiss levitates above all the others. The

intersection of function and desire. The I do kiss.

The I'll love you through a brick wall kiss.

Even when I'm dead, I'll swim through the Earth,

like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.

 

Jeffrey McDaniel is probably my favourite poet.

 

Edit: I'm too lazy to change this, some of the words may have been ponified by my browser. You can look up the poems really easily if you for some strange reason want to see them un-ponified.

[Alorael at Large]

"La canción del pirata" by José de Espronceda

Click to reveal..

Con diez cañones por banda,

viento en popa, a toda vela,

no corta el mar, sino vuela

un velero bergantín.

Bajel pirata que llaman,

por su bravura, el Temido,

en todo mar conocido

del uno al otro confín.

La luna en el mar rïela,

en la lona gime el viento,

y alza en blando movimiento

olas de plata y azul;

y va el capitán pirata,

cantando alegre en la popa,

Asia a un lado, al otro Europa,

y allá a su frente Stambul:

 

Navega, velero mío,

sin temor,

que ni enemigo navío

ni tormenta, ni bonanza

tu rumbo a torcer alcanza,

ni a sujetar tu valor.

 

Veinte presas

hemos hecho

a despecho

del inglés,

y han rendido

sus pendones

cien naciones

a mis pies.

 

Que es mi barco mi tesoro,

que es mi dios la libertad,

mi ley, la fuerza y el viento,

mi única patria, la mar.

 

Allá muevan feroz guerra

ciegos reyes

por un palmo más de tierra;

que yo aquí tengo por mío

cuanto abarca el mar bravío,

a quien nadie impuso leyes.

 

Y no hay playa,

sea cualquiera,

ni bandera

de esplendor,

que no sienta

mi derecho

y dé pecho

a mi valor.

 

Que es mi barco mi tesoro,

que es mi dios la libertad,

mi ley, la fuerza y el viento,

mi única patria, la mar.

 

A la voz de «¡barco viene!»

es de ver

cómo vira y se previene

a todo trapo a escapar;

que yo soy el rey del mar,

y mi furia es de temer.

 

En las presas

yo divido

lo cogido

por igual;

sólo quiero

por riqueza

la belleza

sin rival.

 

Que es mi barco mi tesoro,

que es mi dios la libertad,

mi ley, la fuerza y el viento,

mi única patria, la mar.

 

¡Sentenciado estoy a muerte!

Yo me río;

no me abandone la suerte,

y al mismo que me condena,

colgaré de alguna entena,

quizá en su propio navío.

 

Y si caigo,

¿qué es la vida?

Por perdida

ya la di,

cuando el yugo

del esclavo,

como un bravo,

sacudí.

 

Que es mi barco mi tesoro,

que es mi dios la libertad,

mi ley, la fuerza y el viento,

mi única patria, la mar.

 

Son mi música mejor

aquilones,

el estrépito y temblor

de los cables sacudidos,

del negro mar los bramidos

y el rugir de mis cañones.

 

Y del trueno

al son violento,

y del viento

al rebramar,

yo me duermo

sosegado,

arrullado

por el mar.

 

Que es mi barco mi tesoro,

que es mi dios la libertad,

mi ley, la fuerza y el viento,

mi única patria, la mar.

 

Brilliant poetry? I don't know, but I like it. I'll also put in for "Romancero gitano" by Lorca, a bunch of Emily Dickinson, and the redoubtable Ogden Nash.

 

—Alorael, who can put an an entire Nash poem, Further Reflections on Parsley, in this very signature: "Parsley/Is gharsley.'

[Dantius]

For you comp sci people out there:

 

A poem that proves the Halting Problem is undecidable.

[Dintiradan]

I changed my mind on what my favourite poem is.