Do you have a favourite poem? If so, what is it?

It's by e.e cummings:

if up's the word;and a world grows greener
minute by second and most by more-
if death is the loser and life is the winner
(and beggars are rich but misers are poor)
-let's touch the sky:
with a to and a fro
(and a here there where)and away we go

in even the laziest creature among us
a wisdom no knowledge can kill is astir-
now dull eyes are keen and now keen eyes are keener
(for young is the year,for young is the year)
-let's touch the sky:
with a great(and a gay
and a steep)deep rush through amazing day

it's brains without hearts have set saint against sinner;
put gain over gladness and joy under care-
let's do as an earth which can never do wrong does
(minute by second and most by more)
-let's touch the sky:
with a strange(and a true)
and a climbing fall into far near blue

if beggars are rich(and a robin will sing his
robin a song)but misers are poor-
let's love until noone could quite be(and young is
the year,dear)as living as i'm and as you're
-let's touch the sky:
with a you and a me
and an every(who's any who's some)one who's we


Usually, I don't quite 'get' poetry. I can love the linguistics and the content, but it doesn't really reach me. I'm trudging my way through A Shropshire Lad at the moment... there are only a few that feel any good.

I'm really into Sylvia Plath right now.

I normally don't care for nor understand poetry -- tends to be too abstract for me. But here are a couple of poems I like, can relate to and understand:

"The fog comes on little cat feet
It sits looking over harbor and city
On silent haunches and then
Moves on."

(Carl Sandburg)

and this one:

"If, as they say, God spanked the town
For being over-friskey --
Why did he burn the churches down
And spare Hotaling's whiskey?"

(Charley Field) -- about the 1906 SF quake.

"Sick" by Shel Silverstein.

"Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allen Poe

and...

Jenny Kissed Me
by Leigh Hunt

Jenny kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in.
Time, you thief! who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in.
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad;
Say that health and wealth have missed me;
Say I'm growing old, but add-
Jenny kissed me!

Avoid ovens until this phase passes.

Oh ha ha.

Now, now, I am sure she is up in heaven listening to your "milf and cookies" podcast shedding tears of joy that you are her white knight on the prime material plane.

I don't really 'get' poetry. But I defy anyone not to be moved by the work of Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime ...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

The last lines of Wordsworth's Splendor in the Grass.

Prometheus by Lord Byron.

I don't. There are a bunch of poems I really like, but not one that I would single out as my favorite.

> Jenny kissed me when we met,
> Jumping from the chair she sat in.
> Time, you thief! who love to get
> Sweets into your list, put that in.
> Say I'm weary, say I'm sad;
> Say that health and wealth have missed me;
> Say I'm growing old, but add-
> Jenny kissed me!
>

Oh my god, I love that poem! I used to read it in my mother's Oxford Book of English Verse all the time when I was little. I think I had the page marked so I could find it easily. I haven't seen it in ages, and I don't think I've ever come across someone else who mentioned it, if they knew it. Is it a very well-known poem, or is it just a coincidence that we both know it and like it?

I always got the gist of it when I was little, but I didn't really understand "Time, you thief! who love to get/Sweets into your list, put that in" until now.

Thank you for posting this poem!

This is weird. Because I used to read it in my mother's little book of poetry. In fact, as soon as I posted this on SC, I sent my sister an IM, asking if she still had mom's little gray poetry book.

We had the page for this one marked too. Though, initially... it might just have been because my sister's name is Jenny. I love the poem and read it all the time when I was a kid.

Maybe this mutual appreciation roots back to our Anne thing.

After I posted this poem, I realized that I seem to have a thing for poems and songs that are odes to women, made by men. It's kind of disturbing... what that could mean psychologically.

The Untold Want
by Walt Whitman (from Leaves of Grass)

The untold want, by life and land ne'er granted,
Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.

I dislike poetry. It makes no sense.

This certainly is a funny coincidence. I thought of the Anne thing, too. Maybe we're distantly related!

I don't think you're secretly a lesbian or anything! Especially if you had a strong mother, I think it's pretty common for women to identify with women and to appreciate things like poems about them.

I think it might say something about a strong father instead. Maybe I seek men's approval so much that it even shows in my poetry/lyric preferences.

I prefer song lyrics to regular ol' written poetry. I like clever stuff that rhymes.

Huh--interesting! I seek men's approval, too, but I also had a very strong mother.

Robert Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay":

Nothing Gold Can Stay.

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.

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

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; 5

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, 10

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. 15

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. 20



and
Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe

Whatever it was last time...

Willim Butler Yeats

The Song of Wandering Aengus

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.


I can recite The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere or Brutus's speech, as those were assignments.

Oh wait, Jabberwocky is a favorite I can recite that with theatrical spell power.

Mary had a little lamb or Twinkle twinkle little star!

Don't have one

No cannot think of one my poor brain needs a rest

Robert Frost's, "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening"

1 little monkey
was goin' 2 the store
when he saw a banana 3
he'd never climbed be4.
By 5 o'clock that evenin'
he was 6 with a stomach ache
'cause 7 green bananas
was what that monkey 8.

By 9 o'clock that evenin'
that monkey was quite ill,
so 10 we called the doctor
who was 11 on the hill.
The doctor said, "You're almost dead.
Don't eat green bananas no more."
The sick little monkey groaned and said,
"But that's what I 1-2 the 3-4."

I memorized it in 6th grade..I still have most of it memorized. I'm only kind of being serious.