I thought, just to complete the set, that we could do with a 'favourite poems' thread, since we seem to have something for most of the other genres here.

Feel welcome to post either your top 3 all time greats, or just things you come across in your day to day life, or even things you hate - just so long as you say why you're putting them up.* I always used to get frustrated at school when we'd be doing something great in class and then nobody around me would satisfyingly go, 'Oooo yeah that one's FAB - specially this bit...did you read this person? You should check them out, he does the same thing in a slightly different way...' Here's your chance to enthuse with (hopefully) a few like minded people!

Things in non-English are fair game too, though a translation of sorts would be greatly appreciated. If the poem is around sonnet length (14 lines) or shorter, then go ahead and post the whole thing, but any longer try and find a link to it on the internet and post that, or the list will get HUGE. Bartleby.com is a great place to start, but otherwise google it - you'll be surprised how much poetry there is on the net, of all ages and types! Even if you only know a bit of a line and can't remember the title, the internet is your friend...

To start the ball rolling, my top three:

My all time favourite poem, as I think I mentioned on the favourite novels thread, is The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock by T S Eliot. It has some really unusual imagery, like the 'patient etherised upon a table', to describe the evening - which sort of suggests that the speaker is thinking of the evening ahead with as much trepidation as he would if he were undergoing an unpleasant operation... It conjures up the insecurities that everyone feels - of not being the central player, but 'an attendant lord', or your mind changing second by second, or feeling useless - that you've 'measured out your life with coffee spoons'. It illustrates quite how much sometimes things grow so out of proportion - in this case, the guy is trying to pluck up the courage to ask a woman out, and the question gets bigger and bigger and in the end seems to engulf him in his own tortuous decision-making. See what you think!

My second is one from one of my all-time favourite poets, Sylvia Plath (though I've picked a 'nice' one for here...she wrote some really really dark stuff - have a look at Daddy or Lady Lazurus if you're interested!). Morning Song is about a mother giving birth, and the way that the child seems almost of another world - it is perfect, but the world that it's born into has some dark and clumsy overtones. It is described as a 'drafty museum', and the mother as being 'cow-heavy'. It sort of sums up what I can imagine feeling like about a new baby - amazed and scared at the same time, and hoping that the world will be kind to the baby.

My third poem is by another favourite author - Wendy Cope. She has written some extremely funny poems, usually very very short, with almost nursery-rhyme like rhyme. They're quite often on serious subjects, a little like the one below, but they invariably bring out the funny side and bring you back to earth a bit. Flick through and see what you think - she also did some parodying of other famous poets (have a butcher's at the link to her biography!) which is HILARIOUS if you've ever studied any of them.

Loss

The day he moved out was terrible -
That evening she went through hell.
His absence wasn't a problem
But the corkscrew had gone as well.

It has a great Bridget Jones ring to it, though I think she pre-dates that!

*All the usual things hold though - dynamic and reasoned discussion is great, but let's not get insulting here. Anyone's choice is valid, remember, even if you personally don't agree!

We have a poetry forum, pretty active lately too, so you would get better answers there. I am moving it there.

Ah, ok. I think this might work over here as a trading thoughts/discussion thread on poetry. A nice switch and a first for the forum! Go Poetry!

Jazz, I'm going to add a "Discussion" tag to the thread title. After that, I'll go compile a list of my favorites to add to the discussion. Yayshire!

I found this poem the other day while looking for Shakespear's "Shall i compare thee to a summers day", and it just hit me where i live.

One Wish.
If I could have just one wish,
I would wish to wake up everyday
to the sound of your breath on my neck,
the warmth of your lips on my cheek,
the touch of your fingers on my skin,
and the feel of your heart beating with mine...
Knowing that I could never find that feeling
with anyone other than you.

(Soppy ain't it. )
Deep down i guess the thought of meeting someone who makes me feel that way, and who feels the same towards me, is what i really want.
But hey! "You can't always get what you want."

And on a lighter note.
I love this poem by british poet/limerick author Pam Ayres:
THE WONDERBRA
I bought myself a Wonderbra
For fourteen ninety nine,
It looked so good on the model girl's chest,
And I hoped it would on mine,
I took it from the packaging
And when I tried it on,
The Wonderbra restored to me
All I believed had gone

It gave me such a figure,
I can't believe it's mine,
I showed it to my husband
And it made his eyeballs shine,
And when I served the breakfast,
The kids cried out, 'Hooray!
Here comes our darling mother,
with her bosom on a tray!'

I didn't really need one,
my present bra, it's true,
Had only been in constant use
Since nineteen eighty-two,
But the silhouette I dreamed about,
Is mine, is mine at last,
And builders on the scaffolding,
Drop off as I walk past.

EDIT: Imagine it being said by a female Hagrid.

It just tickles me! lol !

I LOVE the wonderbra poem! She's SO right *loves the wonderbra* I've not read any Pam Ayres, but maybe I ought to... She fits well alongside Wendy Cope, anyway. In a sort of similar mode, try this by Jenny Joseph. I believe it was the nation's favourite 20th century poem...or at least somewhere up in the top few!

Wow I have so many favorites to share!
First off is the Cookie Thief, which is such a great poem...I constantly go back to read it! It shows not to jump to conclusions-all may not be what it seems!

Also, I looooooooove shel Silverstein's poems! Here's one that is so sweet:

HUG O' WAR
I will not play at tug o'war.
I'd rather play at hug o'war,
Where everyone hugs
Instead of tugs,
Where everyone giggles
And rolls on the rug,
Where everyone kisses,
And everyone grins,
And everyone cuddles,
And everyone wins.

I love this poem by Seamus Heaney and ye might too. It's called 'Mid Term Break' and the simplicity of this poem is really touching. After you have read this i suggest you think more of what is not said than what is said within this poem. Anyway here it is:


[b]Mid Term Break



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 furnerals in his stride-
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laugh 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 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 know its long but i do love this poem and i hope everyone else liked it.

Oh Faith that's lovely! Well, it isn't, but it's still beautiful. Reminds me a bit of this by WH Auden. Apparently that one is about the poet's father, but the emotion is very similar; equally beautifully expressed. Your one does deal very well with the juxtaposition of life continuing opposed to life ending, which Auden doesn't, which perhaps makes it feel even more tragic. Auden's is a poem of desperation, in many ways.

*mmmmm poems* Have had a night of culture, returning from the theatre (where I saw Death and the Maiden by Ariel Dorfman, which was FAB) to read poems I haven't seen before...yay!

I like that poem. It bittersweet. The thing i find about 'Mid Term Break' is that he never says his feelings about his brothers death but focuses on everyone elses. I think we can all relate to this, as when our world shatters we don't like to focus on our own feelings but others.
I like the poem you linked as again we can all relate to it as life still goes on as ours are about to break.
I would also recommend 'Our Father' by Ray Matthews. I'll write it out tomorrow as i'm too tired now and don't have link.
I'm glad you liked the poem and i hope you'll like the next.

Love Faith xxxxxxxxxxxx

Hello i know i said i'd post the poem by 'Our Father' by Ray Mathew, but i'm in a happy mood and that poem is full of contempt and sadness. Instead i've decided to post this poem, it's called 'The Daffodils' by William Wordsworth. Hope you like it anyway here it is:

The Daffodils

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once i saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay;
Ten thousand saw I at a glance
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company:
I gazed- and gazed- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

I hope you liked and sorry it so long but i don't know how to link. Anyway this poem always cheers me up and i hope it made you a bit happier.

Love from Faith xxxxxxxx

I love that one - it's easy to see why it's such a famous piece. I get to study Wordswirth later this term...woohoo!! SOOO looking forward to it and getting out of the philosophy mire.

On another note, to make a link take the spaces out of the following:

[ url = "(copy and paste what it says in the address bar of the page you want to link to)" ] (whatever word you want to be highlighted to be clicked on, like 'this' in my last post) [ / url ]

Hmm now I need to think of a great feel good poem to post as well.

*ponders*

Ah. Perfect. In keeping with the Romantic theme, I present Sonnet 43 from Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett-Browning


How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.


Enjoy!

I know this probably looks like I'm just posting to myself, but I assure you Faith asked me to find her another poem, so I am doing.

This one fits in with the earlier part of the thread, about loss, really. I'm in a reflective mood and it's All Saints (well, it was 20 minutes ago), so it's a good one. I found it in an anthology of 20th century British stuff...love books like that; you can just dip in and find all the classics people taught you at school and that you've heard bits of and can't place, and you find things like this that just seem to chime with something...


Long Distance II


Though my mother was already two years dead
Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas,
put hot water bottles her side of the bed
and still went to renew her transport pass.

You couldn't just drop in. You had to phone.
He'd put you off an hour to give him time
to clear away her things and look alone
as though his still raw love were such a crime.

He couldn't risk my blight of disbelief
though sure that very soon he'd hear her key
scrape in the rusted lock and end his grief.
He knew she'd just popped out to get the tea.

I believe life ends with death, and that is all.
You haven't both gone shopping; just the same,
in my new black leather phone book there's your name
and the disconnected number I still call.


Tony Harrison

Jazz great poem. I really liked it I have another poem. Don't worry it's short. It's called 'Base Details' by Siegfried Sasoon.

Base Details

If I were fierce, and bald and short of breath,
I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
And speed glum heroes up the line to death.
You'd see me with my puffy petulant face,
Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,
Reading the Roll of Honour. ''Poor young Chap''
I'd say - ''I used to know his father well;
Yes we've lost heavily in this last scrap.''
And when the war is done and youth stone dead,-
I'd toddle safely home and die - in bed.

Ok that's it. I hope you liked it. I thought of it while watching 'Farenheit 9/11'. Any way thanks for the other poem it was beautiful.

Love from Faith xxxxxxxxxxx

If we're doing sonnets, I have to post what I believe to be the two greatest sonnets ever written, the first by Shakespeare and the second, my own personal favorite poem in the universe, by the great Edmund Spencer.

Sonnet 91
[iby William Shakespeare

Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,
Some in their wealth, some in their body's force,
Some in their garments though new-fangled ill;
Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse;
And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure,
Wherein it finds a joy above the rest:
But these particulars are not my measure,
All these I better in one general best.
Thy love is better than high birth to me,
Richer than wealth, prouder than garments' cost,
Of more delight than hawks and horses be;
And having thee, of all men's pride I boast:
Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take
All this away, and me most wretched make.


And the greatest poem ever written:


Sonnet 75
by Edmund Spencer

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away;
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
"Vain man," said she, "that dost in vain assay"
A mortal thing so to immortalize!
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eke my name be wiped out likewise."
"Not so," quod I, "let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heaven's write your glorious name;
Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.

I have to say that I'm not generally a huge poetry fan - probably due to the stuff they made us study for my English Lit GCSE & A Level (e.g. Philip Larkin. I'm afraid I never really 'got' him.)

However, I do love the WWI Poetry of Wilfred Owen, he so completely captures the futility and desperation of the trenches. My total favourite is Mental Cases. It was written early in 1918, after the unimaginable horror of the Third Battle of Ypres (also known as Passchendaele) and is about those shell-shocked soldiers who returned home to a society where no-one knew how to cope with them and their suffering. The imagery is incredible, the alliteration and onomatopoea extremely effective, but it is very depressing:

Mental Cases - Wilfred Owen
Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?
Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,
Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,
Baring teeth that leer like skulls' teeth wicked?
Stroke on stroke of pain - but what slow panic
Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
Ever from their hair and their hands palms
Misery swelters. Surely we have perished
Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?

- These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.
Memory fingers in their hair of murders,
Multitudinous murders once witnessed.
Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,
Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.
Always they must see these things, and hear them,
Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,
Carnage incomparable, and human squander
Rucked too thick for these men's extrication.

Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented
Back into their brains, because on their sense
Sunlight seems a blood-smear; night comes blood-black;
Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh.
- Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous,
Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses.
- Thus their hands are plucking at each other;
Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging;
Snatching after us who smote them, brother,
Pawing us who dealt them war and madness.


On a lighter note, I also like Robert Browning's dramatic monologues, especially Andrea del Sarto - which contains what I think is the most inspiring line in poetry, and one by which I try to live my life:
'Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a Heaven for?'
...in other words, you should always find something to strive and hope for, be aiming to achieve something, or you may as well give up now...

Finally, I also find Invictus by William Ernest Henley inspiring:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

So in other words, 'You can throw what crap you like at me, I am strong, and I will get through it'.

Thank you for this thread, it's great to find out about other works that inspire you all, and I hope I've not caused anyone to slit their wrists with my selection...

P.S. Ali Bashir I love those sonnets - but it's Edmund Spenser with an 's', not a 'c'. I love John Donne's works too.