Favorite poets and their works

Discussion in 'Poetry' started by Deidre, Jul 1, 2018.

  1. Deidre

    Deidre Follow thy heart

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    Share yours, here is one of mine.

    E.E. Cummings

    I like my body when it is with your
    body. It is so quite new a thing.
    Muscles better and nerves more.
    I like your body. I like what it does,
    I like its hows. I like to feel the spine
    of your body and its bones,and the trembling
    -firm-smooth ness and which I will
    again and again and again
    kiss, I like kissing this and that of you,
    I like, slowly stroking the,shocking fuzz
    of your electric furr,and what-is-it comes
    over parting flesh….And eyes big love-crumbs,

    and possibly I like the thrill

    of under me you so quite new
     
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  2. wooleeheron

    wooleeheron Brain Damaged Lifetime Supporter

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    Thanks for sharing. Despite its elegant simplicity, that poem is so mathematically and philosophically complex I can only begin to fathom its depths. I may have to include it in my own collection, or come up with something similar, because the sentiment expresses a fundamental truth about what it means to be an adult child of God. I suspect, its impossible to do much better than the author already has, assuming its even possible.

    I just looked him up real quick, and he was a Harvard intellectual, explaining the mathematical complexity of the poem. His work must be of particular interest to modern mathematicians who analyze such things for tid-bits of useful fuzzy logic. I'm sure they've analyzed his to death already but, if I'm right, this poem expresses a multidimensional multifractal, and the academics are not through analyzing it yet. All that might sound like just so much silly mathematical weirdness, but you can think of it as meaning that this poem contains a really elaborate story that is hidden within its depths.
     
    Last edited: Jul 1, 2018
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  3. Aerianne

    Aerianne Lifetime Supporter Lifetime Supporter

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    Poetry makes me sad, mostly.
     
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  4. Deidre

    Deidre Follow thy heart

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    E.E. Cummings was a boss. ;)

    I can see that. I like writing poetry, as if I'm feeling sad, it serves as healing.
     
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  5. Meliai

    Meliai Banned

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    William Blake
    The Grey Monk

    ‘I die , I die!’ the Mother said,
    ‘My children die for lack of bread.
    What more has the merciless tyrant said?’
    The Monk sat down on the stony bed.

    The blood red ran from the Grey Monk’s side,
    His hands and feet were wounded wide,
    His body bent, his arms and knees
    Like to the roots of ancient trees.

    His eye was dry; no tear could flow:
    A hollow groan first spoke his woe.
    He trembled and shudder’d upon the bed;
    At length with a feeble cry he said:

    ‘When God commanded this hand to write
    In the studious hours of deep midnight,
    He told me the writing I wrote should prove
    The bane of all that on Earth I love.

    ‘My brother starv’d between two walls,
    His children’s cry my soul appalls;
    I mock’d at the wrack and griding chain,
    My bent body mocks their torturing pain.

    ‘Thy father drew his sword in the North,
    With his thousands strong he marchèd forth,
    Thy brother has arm’d himself in steel,
    To avenge the wrongs thy children feel.

    ‘But vain the sword and vain the bow,
    They never can work War’s overthrow.
    The hermit’s prayer and the widow’s tear
    Alone can free the world from fear.

    ‘For a tear is an intellectual thing,
    And a sigh is the sword of an Angel King,
    And the bitter groan of the martyr’s woe
    Is an arrow from the Almighty’s bow.

    ‘The hand of Vengeance found the bed
    To which the purple tyrant fled;
    The iron hand crush’d the tyrant’s head,
    And became a tyrant in his stead.’
     
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  6. Meliai

    Meliai Banned

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    There is some dispute as to whether or not this is truly by my bae Edgar Allen, but it is one of my favorite poems either way

    Alone

    From childhood’s hour I have not been
    As others were—I have not seen
    As others saw—I could not bring
    My passions from a common spring—
    From the same source I have not taken
    My sorrow—I could not awaken
    My heart to joy at the same tone—
    And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—
    Then—in my childhood—in the dawn
    Of a most stormy life—was drawn
    From ev’ry depth of good and ill
    The mystery which binds me still—
    From the torrent, or the fountain—
    From the red cliff of the mountain—
    From the sun that ’round me roll’d
    In its autumn tint of gold—
    From the lightning in the sky
    As it pass’d me flying by—
    From the thunder, and the storm—
    And the cloud that took the form
    (When the rest of Heaven was blue)
    Of a demon in my view—
     
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  7. Deidre

    Deidre Follow thy heart

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    He’s one of my faves, too. You’ll be happy to know that although that poem wasn’t published while he was alive, it was considered to be an authentic poem of his.
     
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  8. Deidre

    Deidre Follow thy heart

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    I recently discovered Rupi Kaur.

    I want to apologize to all the women i have called beautiful
    before i’ve called them intelligent or brave
    i am sorry i made it sound as though
    something as simple as what you’re born with
    is all you have to be proud of
    when you have broken mountains with your wit
    from now on i will say things like
    you are resilient, or you are extraordinary
    not because i don’t think you’re beautiful
    but because i need you to know
    you are more than that

    I love this poem so much. <3 It's not that being called ''pretty'' or ''beautiful'' isn't a nice compliment when it's given to me, but we are more than just how we appear on the outside.
     
  9. Irminsul

    Irminsul Valkyrie

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    Snorri Sturluson, the man responsible for writing the poetry of the Norse. Without him, it most likely would have vanished into the abyss like most ancient cultures scriptures etc.
    Though Snorri was a Christian, he definitely felt like, his culture needed to be recorded.
     
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  10. Meliai

    Meliai Banned

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    The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock by T.S Eliot is probably my absolute favorite poem. Its a long one so i'll just post a couple of stanzas rather than the whole thing

    And indeed there will be time
    To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
    Time to turn back and descend the stair,
    With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
    (They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
    My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
    My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
    (They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
    Do I dare
    Disturb the universe?
    In a minute there is time
    For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

    For I have known them all already, known them all:
    Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
    I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
    I know the voices dying with a dying fall
    Beneath the music from a farther room.
    So how should I presume?

    And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
    The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
    And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
    When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
    Then how should I begin
    To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
    And how should I presume?

    I wish I could write like Eliot
     
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  11. Meliai

    Meliai Banned

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    Also i really like the E.E Cummings poem in the OP. I dont think i've read his poetry since high school and didnt care for it then but i may have to reconsider
     
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  12. hotwater

    hotwater Senior Member Lifetime Supporter

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    Massachusetts Poet Henry Beston

    Civilization has fallen out of touch with night. With lights, we drive the holiness and the beauty of night back to the forests and the seas; the little villages, the crossroads even, will have none of it. Are modern folk, perhaps, afraid of the night? Do they fear the vast serenity, the mystery of infinite space, the austerity of stars?
     
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  13. hotwater

    hotwater Senior Member Lifetime Supporter

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    Henry Beston

    We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creatures through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth
     
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  14. hotwater

    hotwater Senior Member Lifetime Supporter

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    I’d say this is my favorite


    It is only when we are aware of the earth and of the earth as poetry that we truly live. Ages and people which sever the earth from the poetic spirit, or do not care, or stop their ears with knowledge as with dust, find their veins grown hollow and their hearts an emptiness echoing to questioning. For the earth is ever more than the earth, more than the upper and the lower field, the tree and the hill. Here is mystery banded about the forehead with green, here are gods ascending, here is benignancy and the corn in the sun, here terror and night, here life, here death, here fire, here the wave coursing in the sea. It is this earth which is the true inheritance of man, his link with his human past, the source of his religion, ritual, and song, the kingdom without whose splendor he lapses from his mysterious estate of man to a baser world which is without the other virtue and the other integrity of the animal. True humanity is no inherent right but an achievement; and only through the earth may we be as one with all who have been and all who are yet to be, sharers and partakers of the mystery of living, reaching to the full of human peace and the full of human joy.


    Henry Beston
     
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  15. Deidre

    Deidre Follow thy heart

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    I’m not familiar with his work, hot water so I googled his name. I would like to read his book “Herbs and the Earth.” That looks interesting.
     
    Last edited: Jul 1, 2018
  16. hotwater

    hotwater Senior Member Lifetime Supporter

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    Then you must read The Outermost House (1928) which chronicles a year he spent on the outer beaches of Cape Cod.

    It’s long been recognized as an American classic
     
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  17. YouFreeMe

    YouFreeMe Visitor

    Was going to post Prufrock but Meliai beat me to it. I have always loved that poem, it struck a special chord with me from day 1.
     
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  18. 6-eyed shaman

    6-eyed shaman Sock-eye salmon

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    Richard Corey
    by Edwin Arlington Robinson


    Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
    We people on the pavement looked at him:
    He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
    Clean favored, and imperially slim.

    And he was always quietly arrayed,
    And he was always human when he talked;
    But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
    'Good-morning,' and he glittered when he walked.

    And he was rich - yes, richer than a king -
    And admirably schooled in every grace:
    In fine, we thought that he was everything
    To make us wish that we were in his place.

    So on we worked, and waited for the light,
    And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
    And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
    Went home and put a bullet through his head.





    This one blew my mind when I read it the first time. The moral of the story, is that money, wealth, fame, and elegance, cannot buy happiness.
     
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  19. Please read

    Dead Are My People

    Gone are my people, but I exist yet,
    Lamenting them in my solitude...
    Dead are my friends, and in their Death my life is naught but great
    Disaster.
    The knolls of my country are submerged
    By tears and blood, for my people and
    My beloved are gone, and I am here
    Living as I did when my people and my
    Beloved were enjoying life and the
    Bounty of life, and when the hills of
    My country were blessed and engulfed
    By the light of the sun.

    My people died from hunger, and he who
    Did not perish from starvation was
    Butchered with the sword; and I am
    Here in this distant land, roaming
    Amongst a joyful people who sleep
    Upon soft beds, and smile at the days
    While the days smile upon them.

    My people died a painful and shameful
    Death, and here am I living in plenty
    And in peace...This is deep tragedy
    Ever-enacted upon the stage of my
    Heart; few would care to witness this
    Drama, for my people are as birds with
    Broken wings, left behind the flock.
    ***
    If I were hungry and living amid my
    Famished people, and persecuted among
    My oppressed countrymen, the burden
    Of the black days would be lighter
    Upon my restless dreams, and the
    Obscurity of the night would be less
    Dark before my hollow eyes and my
    Crying heart and my wounded soul
    .
    For he who shares with his people
    Their sorrow and agony will feel a
    Supreme comfort created only by
    Suffering in sacrifice. And he will
    Be at peace with himself when he dies
    Innocent with his fellow innocents.

    But I am not living with my hungry
    And persecuted people who are walking
    In the procession of death toward
    Martyrdom...I am here beyond the
    Broad seas living in the shadow of
    Tranquillity, and in the sunshine of
    Peace...I am afar from the pitiful
    Arena and the distressed, and cannot
    Be proud of ought, not even of my own
    Tears.

    What can an exiled son do for his
    Starving people, and of what value
    Unto them is the lamentation of an
    Absent poet?

    Were I an ear of corn grown in the earth
    of my country, the hungry child would
    Pluck me and remove with my kernels
    The hand of Death form his soul. Were
    I a ripe fruit in the gardens of my
    Country, the starving women would
    Gather me and sustain life. Were I
    A bird flying the sky of my country,
    My hungry brother would hunt me and
    Remove with the flesh of my body the
    Shadow of the grave from his body.
    But, alas! I am not an ear of corn
    Grown in the plains of Syria, nor a
    Ripe fruit in the valleys of Lebanon;
    This is my disaster, and this is my
    Mute calamity which brings humiliation
    Before my soul and before the phantoms
    Of the night...This is the painful
    Tragedy which tightens my tongue and
    Pinions my arms and arrests me usurped
    Of power and of will and of action.
    This is the curse burned upon my
    Forehead before God and man.

    And oftentimes they say unto me,
    'The disaster of your country is
    But naught to calamity of the
    World, and the tears and blood shed
    By your people are as nothing to
    The rivers of blood and tears
    Pouring each day and night in the
    Valleys and plains of the earth...'

    Yes, but the death of my people is
    A silent accusation; it is a crime
    Conceived by the heads of the unseen serpents...
    It is a Sceneless tragedy...And if my
    People had attacked the despots
    And oppressors and died rebels,
    I would have said, 'Dying for
    Freedom is nobler than living in
    The shadow of weak submission, for
    He who embraces death with the sword
    Of Truth in his hand will eternalize
    With the Eternity of Truth, for Life
    Is weaker than Death and Death is
    Weaker than Truth.

    If my nation had partaken in the war
    Of all nations and had died in the
    Field of battle, I would say that
    The raging tempest had broken with
    Its might the green branches; and
    Strong death under the canopy of
    The tempest is nobler than slow
    Perishment in the arms of senility.
    But there was no rescue from the
    Closing jaws...My people dropped
    And wept with the crying angels.

    If an earthquake had torn my
    Country asunder and the earth had
    Engulfed my people into its bosom,
    I would have said, 'A great and
    Mysterious law has been moved by
    The will of divine force, and it
    Would be pure madness if we frail
    Mortals endeavoured to probe its
    Deep secrets...'
    But my people did not die as rebels;
    They were not killed in the field
    Of Battle; nor did the earthquake
    Shatter my country and subdue them.
    Death was their only rescuer, and
    Starvation their only spoils.

    My people died on the cross....
    They died while their hands
    stretched toward the East and West,
    While the remnants of their eyes
    Stared at the blackness of the
    Firmament...They died silently
    ,
    For humanity had closed its ears
    To their cry. They died because
    They did not befriend their enemy.
    They died because they loved their
    Neighbours. They died because
    They placed trust in all humanity.
    They died because they did not
    Oppress the oppressors. They died
    Because they were the crushed
    Flowers, and not the crushing feet.
    They died because they were peace
    Makers. They perished from hunger
    In a land rich with milk and honey.
    They died because monsters of
    Hell arose and destroyed all that
    Their fields grew, and devoured the
    Last provisions in their bins....
    They died because the vipers and
    Sons of vipers spat out poison into
    The space where the Holy Cedars and
    The roses and the jasmine breathe
    Their fragrance.

    My people and your people, my Syrian
    Brother, are dead....What can be
    Done for those who are dying? Our
    Lamentations will not satisfy their
    Hunger, and our tears will not quench
    Their thirst; what can we do to save
    Them between the iron paws of
    Hunger? My brother, the kindness
    Which compels you to give a part of
    Your life to any human who is in the
    Shadow of losing his life is the only
    Virtue which makes you worthy of the
    Light of day and the peace of the
    Night....Remember, my brother,
    That the coin which you drop into
    The withered hand stretching toward
    You is the only golden chain that
    Binds your rich heart to the
    Loving heart of God.....
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 2, 2018
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  20. ^I forgot...it's by Khalil Gibran

    He, an immigrant to the US, wrote it about his people back home who died during the Great Famine of 1915-1918.
     

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