Posted by MaggieH (admin)
Mar 30, 2009 11:22 am

Replies (27)

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• My favorite poem, Emily Dickinson's "Hope"
  
  Hope is the thing with feathers
  That perches in the soul,
  And sings the tune--without the words,
  And never stops at all,
  
  And sweetest in the gale is heard;
  And sore must be the storm
  That could abash the little bird
  That kept so many warm.
  
  I've heard it in the chillest land,
  And on the strangest sea;
  Yet, never, in extremity,
  It asked a crumb of me.

  Mar 30, 2009 11:22 am
  by MaggieH (admin)

• "Love after Love" by Derek Walcott is my favorite poem. I love the last line, especially:
  
  The time will come
  when, with elation,
  you will greet yourself arriving
  at your own door, in your own mirror,
  and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
  
  and say, sit here. Eat.
  You will love again the stranger who was your self.
  Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
  to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
  
  all your life, whom you ignored
  for another, who knows you by heart.
  Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
  
  the photographs, the desperate notes,
  peel your own image from the mirror.
  Sit. Feast on your life.

  Mar 30, 2009 11:43 am
  by mkwgirl

• My favourite poem is Leonard Cohen's "As the Mist Leaves No Scar":
  
  As the mist leaves no scar
  On the dark green hill,
  So my body leaves no scar
  On you, nor ever will.
  
  When wind and hawk encounter,
  What remains to keep?
  So you and I encounter,
  Then turn, then fall to sleep.
  
  As many nights endure
  Without a moon or star,
  So will we endure
  When one is gone and far.

  Mar 30, 2009 11:46 am
  by originaloflaura

• Walt Whitman's "To a Stranger." Perfect blend of wonder and longing and unreasonable certainty.
  
  Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,
  You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me
  as of a dream,)
  I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
  All is recall'd as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate,
  chaste, matured,
  You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me,
  I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours
  only nor left my body mine only,
  You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you
  take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,
  I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or
  wake at night alone,
  I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
  I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

  Mar 30, 2009 1:47 pm
  by mweston314

• Yeats' He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven:
  
  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.

  Mar 30, 2009 3:21 pm
  by cresswga

• for me, the red wheelbarrow by william carlos williams:
  
  so much depends
  upon
  
  a red wheel
  barrow
  
  glazed with rain
  water
  
  beside the white
  chickens
  
  there's something beautiful in its simplicity, and its picturesque description of something commonplace, but beautiful in its commonness.

  Mar 30, 2009 4:16 pm
  by wsimpson3144

• My candle burns at both ends;
  It will not last the night;
  But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
  It gives a lovely light

  Mar 30, 2009 8:51 pm
  by EDITHJWHARTON

• Once again-Forgot to give credit! Edna St Vincent Milay-but you all knew that...

  Mar 30, 2009 8:53 pm
  by EDITHJWHARTON

• nothing gold can stay
  by robert frost
  
  Nature's first green is gold,
  Her hardest hue to hold.
  Her early leaf's a flower;
  But only so an hour.
  Then leaf subsides to leaf.
  So Eden sank to grief,
  So dawn goes down to day.
  Nothing gold can stay.

  Mar 31, 2009 2:53 pm
  by tarakeeny

• Wild Geese
  by Mary Oliver
  
  You do not have to be good.
  You do not have to walk on your knees
  for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
  You only have to let the soft animal of your body
  love what it loves.
  
  Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
  Meanwhile the world goes on.
  Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
  are moving across the landscapes,
  over the prairies and the deep trees,
  the mountains and the rivers.
  Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
  are heading home again.
  
  Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
  the world offers itself to your imagination,
  calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
  over and over announcing your place
  in the family of things.

  Apr 1, 2009 9:33 am
  by cschauper

• My favorite poet and my favorite poem, very patriotic.
  ~ The Gift Outright ~
  
  The land was ours before we were the land's.
  She was our land more than a hundred years
  Before we were her people. She was ours
  In Massachusetts, in Virginia.
  But we were England's, still colonials,
  Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
  Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
  Something we were withholding made us weak.
  Until we found out that it was ourselves
  We were withholding from our land of living,
  And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
  Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
  (The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
  To the land vaguely realizing westward,
  But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
  Such as she was, such as she would become.
  
  ~ Robert Frost; 1874-1963 ~

  Apr 1, 2009 1:41 pm
  by butterfly53

• In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
  I found the fresh rhodora in the woods
  Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
  To please the desert and the sluggish brook:
  The purple petals fallen in the pool
  Made the black waters with their beauty gay,--
  Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
  And court the flower that cheapens his array.
  Rhodora! If the sages ask thee why
  This charm is wasted on the marsh and sky,
  Dear, tell them, that if eyes were made for seeing,
  Then beauty is its own excuse for being.
  Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose,
  I never thought to ask; I never knew,
  But in my simple ignorance suppose
  The selfsame Power that brought me there brought you.
  
  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Apr 1, 2009 6:01 pm
  by Sunnie

• Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas. Too long to post the whole thing. Here's the last stanza.
  
  Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
  Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
  In the moon that is always rising,
  Nor that riding to sleep
  I should hear him fly with the high fields
  And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
  Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
  Time held me green and dying
  Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

  Apr 1, 2009 8:01 pm
  by NinaBerry

• My favorite is Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe. I love his poetry in general, and this is my favorite of all his poems. I love the bittersweet romance, the beauty of the rhythm, and just everything about it! It’s too long to post the entire thing, but here’s the first part.
  
  It was many and many a year ago,
  In a kingdom by the sea,
  That a maiden there lived whom you may know
  By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
  And this maiden she lived with no other thought
  Than to love and be loved by me.

  Apr 2, 2009 10:20 am
  by terpsgirl02

• Robert Frosts, The Road Not Taken
  
  Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
  And sorry I could not travel both
  And be one traveler, long I stood
  And looked down one as far as I could
  To where it bent in the undergrowth.
  
  Then took the other, as just as fair,
  And having perhaps the better claim,
  Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
  Though as for that the passing there
  Had worn them really about the same.
  
  And both that morning equally lay
  In leaves no step had trodden black.
  Oh, I kept the first for another day!
  Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
  I doubted if I should ever come back.
  
  I shall be telling this with a sigh
  Somewhere ages and ages hence:
  Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
  I took the one less traveled by,
  And that has made all the difference.

  Apr 2, 2009 8:56 pm
  by waterrose

• CHOICES, by Nikki Giovanni
  
  if i can't do what i want to do
  then my job is to not do what i don't want to do
  it's not the same thing
  but it's the best i can do
  
  if i can't have what i want . . . then my job is to want what i've got
  and be satisfied that at least there is something more to want
  since i can't go where i need to go . . . then i must . . .
  go where the signs point through always
  understanding parallel movement isn't lateral
  
  when i can't express what i really feel
  i practice feeling what i can express
  and none of it is equal
  
  i know but that's why mankind alone among the animals learns to cry

  Apr 3, 2009 10:53 am
  by fxybrown2

• Clown in the Moon:
  
  My tears are like the quiet drift
  Of petals from some magic rose;
  And all my grief flows from the rift
  Of unremembered skies and snows.
  
  I think, that if I touched the earth,
  It would crumble;
  It is so sad and beautiful,
  So tremulously like a dream.
  
  -Dylan Thomas-

  Apr 3, 2009 4:38 pm
  by diamondgirlmel

• My favorite poem is "Little Boy Blue" by Eugene Field. I first read it while in my teens and there was something about its bittersweet tone that really appealed to me. The book belonged to the family library but just a few years ago I found the same book (101 Famous Poems), bought it and am now reunited with my "Little Boy Blue."

  Apr 4, 2009 5:39 pm
  by LIMO

• Robert Frost
  
  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
  
  The wood is lovely dark and deep
  But I have promises to keep
  And miles to go before I sleep
  And miles to go before I sleep

  Apr 4, 2009 5:58 pm
  by jmaranvi

• The Fish by Marianne Moore
  
  http://plagiarist.com/poetry/8130/

  Apr 9, 2009 1:30 pm
  by jdoublep

• Lucille Clifton
  I Am Running into a New Year
  
  i am running into a new year
  and the old years blow back
  like a wind
  that i catch in my hair
  like strong fingers like
  all my old promises and
  it will be hard to let go
  of what i said to myself
  about myself
  when i was sixteen and
  twenty-six and thirty-six
  even thirty-six but
  i am running into a new year
  and i beg what i love and
  i leave to forgive me
  
  from Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980

  Apr 11, 2009 11:45 am
  by Murasaki

• The Beautiful Snow

  Apr 20, 2009 1:20 pm
  by Christiana

• i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)-by e.e.cummings

  Jun 7, 2009 8:36 am
  by dreamdust

• The Cross of Snow
  by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
  In the long, sleepless watches of the night,
  A gentle face--the face of one long dead--
  Looks at me from the wall, where round its head
  The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.
  Here in this room she died, and soul more white
  Never through martyrdom of fire was led
  To its repose; nor can in books be read
  The legend of a life more benedight.
  There is a mountain in the distant West
  That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines
  Displays a cross of snow upon its side.
  Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
  These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
  And seasons, changeless since the day she died.
  ----{----@ i love it....

  Jun 7, 2009 3:06 pm
  by roaming_smile

• I can't commit to one poem, but this is definitely tops in my all-time favorites: "Cargoes," by John Masefield. The language and the rhythm seem brand-new and amazing, each time I come back to it.
  
  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.

  Jun 7, 2009 10:24 pm
  by EFSlattery

• Why, let the stricken deer go weep,
  The hart ungalled play;
  For some must watch, while some must sleep:
  So runs the world away.

  Jun 8, 2009 8:54 am
  by MANICHAEAN

• I have ventured,
  This many summers in a sea of glory,
  But far beyond my depth.

  Jun 9, 2009 1:31 am
  by MANICHAEAN