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Favorite poetry/poets

slobake

slobake

resident ... something
Aug 6, 2011
1,904
25,886
Somewhere to the left of "Whoopie"
smowles01.wordpress.com
#1
There may be a few of us who like poetry. Here is one of my favorites.

Piute Creek
One granite ridge
A tree, would be enough
Or even a rock, a small creek,
A bark shred in a pool.
Hill beyond hill, folded and twisted
Tough trees crammed
In thin stone fractures
A huge moon on it all, is too much.
The mind wanders. A million
Summers, night air still and the rocks
Warm. Sky over endless mountains.
All the junk that goes with being human
Drops away, hard rock wavers
Even the heavy present seems to fail
This bubble of a heart.
Words and books
Like a small creek off a high ledge
Gone in the dry air.
A clear, attentive mind
Has no meaning but that
Which sees is truly seen.
No one loves rock, yet we are here.
Night chills. A flick
In the moonlight
Slips into Juniper shadow:
Back there unseen
Cold proud eyes
Of Cougar or Coyote
Watch me rise and go.

Gary Snyder
 
#3
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner" or is it "Rime"...i have forgotten

davesignatureII-1.png
 
#4
GrumpiusMaximus said:
Ted Hughes' 'Crow', if anybody's read it?

I quite like that Snyder, I'll have to check some more out.
Click to expand...

Haven't read "Crow" I will check it out.
Here is another poem from and old friend and co-worker. We used to install/repair phones together.


Telephone Repairman

All morning in the February light
he has been mending cable,
splicing the pairs of wires together
according to their colors,
white-blue to white-blue
violet-slate to violet-slate,
in the warehouse attic by the river.

When he is finished
the messages will flow along the line:
thank you for the gift,
please come to the baptism,
the bill is now past due :
voices that flicker and gleam back and forth
across the tracer-colored wires.

We live so much of our lives
without telling anyone,
going out before dawn,
working all day by ourselves,
shaking our heads in silence
at the news on the radio.
He thinks of the many signals
flying in the air around him
the syllables fluttering,
saying please love me,
from continent to continent
over the curve of the earth.


Joseph Millar
 
#5
For me, poetry kind of begins and ends with Bukowski. Not very diverse or worldly of me I know, but I generally do not like poetry however Bukowski's I love...

Working Out

Van Gogh cut off his ear
gave it to a
prostitute
who flung it away in
extreme
disgust.
Van, whores don't want
ears
they want
money.
I guess that's why you were
such a great
painter: you
didn't understand
much
else.
 
#7
One of my own, on the death of my second cat (shortly after her sister):

The Absent Friend
'He was part of my dream, of course -- but then I was part of his dream, too.' — Lewis Carroll

So now she sleeps a dreamless sleep
And will do longer than I’ll keep
The dreams I dream of her awake
And able yet to give and take
Such feelings as we once could share
Feelings that now without her there
Are mine alone. She cannot see
As I still can the time that we
Spent here together for a while
And seeing this again still smile.

The sleep that she sleeps now is new
And nothing like the sleep all through
The nights when she was here through which
I’d feel her breathe, and stir, and twitch.
Such sleep can end if one can wake
And yawn and stretch and rise to take
Just one more day alive. But now
The last of those has gone somehow
Though it’s not us that when we die
Get blasted all across the sky.

The blasted stuff leaves far behind
The beauty of the living mind
That makes us each a thing alert
And not just walking, breathing dirt
That’s why no power exists to take
Her stuff to repair and remake
My friend. But if that could be done
By any method, I’d wish one
More night for her to still be free
To breathe, and twitch, and dream of me.
 
#10
What would a poetry thread be without:

Jabberwocky
by Lewis Carroll


'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
 
#12
slobake said:
What would a poetry thread be without:

Jabberwocky
by Lewis Carroll


'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Click to expand...

I remember doing a show years ago. I learned large parts of that poem backwards. I still only know it backwards!
 
#14
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away

Shelley - Ozymandias
 
#15
I wander'd 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
Out-did 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.
 
#16
Lonesomedave said:
i believe Swinburne had something to say about that:

that no life lives forever
that dead men rise up never
and even the weariest river, winds somewhere safe to sea
(sic...as best as i can remember it)

davesignatureII-1.png
Click to expand...

I also like "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
 
#17
One of my other favourites, especially at New Year - Hardy's "The Darkling Thrush"

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land’s sharp features seemed to be
The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited ;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware
 
#18
All The Mad Ones

All the mad ones
Sailing off into unknown kingdoms
Have they lost their minds?
Headed straight towards unseeable visions
Old men with no strength
Doing the impossible
Old women
Shining though like glorious starlight
No more hiding in fearful lumps of surety
Gone like an old cocoon


Here is another by the same person, it doesn't have a title: :hiding:


Angry jets of war scream over the mud huts
A desperate junkie shoves a spike waiting for relief the never comes
She cries helpless 10-year-old tears as he leaves her ravaged and broken
Where Lord, where is the shelter?
I cry and scream into the silence
WHAT? I scream
I CAN’T HELP THEM, YOU PICKED THE WRONG GUY
The phone rings like a shot of cold water to the face
It’s Frank next door he needs a ride to the hospital
I forget about everything else and rush out the door.
 
#19
slobake - I think your poetry quotes show how you need to be able to follow rules before you can break them. Kind of like music, really.

Poetry is not random. Quite the reverse. Random jottings are random (and sometimes interesting). But they're not necessarily poetry.
 

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