favorite poem of all time, eh steve? gosh, now you made me feel bad cause i'm one of those that can never limit it to just one. i suppose i'd have to go with "October Dawn" by Ted Hughes. more than attention-grabbing linguistics, this poem has a feeling and a mood. not that i'm an instant fan of all fatalistic fimbulvintr poetry, but this poem is one that won't let you go. it's a nagging suspicion of imminent apocalypse.

On dA, again, so many to choose from, but i'll go with "Marble Myth" by ~untangling. The brilliance of this poem is that its form is so subtle i didn't even notice how regular it was until someone else mentioned it. This only strengthens the poem with its allusions to classical (Greek) literature and scupture.

for me, there's only one sure way for a poem to become a "favorite." "good" poetry, ultimately, is poetry that speaks to me. chances are i'll recognize some worth in it if it accomplishes what it sets out to do, but then again, i might not. i'm a very fickle reader. it could be a non-sense poem, a rigid formalistic poem, an erotic spoken word poem, whatever, it should broaden my horizons and speak to me in a way that i can understand and enjoy on more than one level.

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Tots and Teens: The Children's Literature Contest --Amazing literature and amazing prizes!!

I am a fork

I've got four points

Am tall and straight

I've got no joints

And if you ask me

What I do

I pick up food

And bring it to you


I like this one best cuz some poop head actually +faved it

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fear is the mantra of invention...

MORTAL COIL is a poetic term that means the troubles of daily life and the strife and suffering of the world. It is used in the sense of a burden to be carried or abandoned.

-critmass 12/11/09

My favourite poem was written by a Romanian poet called Nichita Stanescu. Don't think that his poems were ever translated in English but who knows. I'll have to check it. The poem is called "Ploaie in luna lui Marte" (roughly translated as Rain in March). Why is my fav? Why some like red, others blue and so on? This is the result of a sum of things combined. Too intricate and complicate to follow. But basicaly, the poem spoke to me ever since i first read it, I can't have enough of it and if i were to write it, I would do it the same (that's if i were capable of such a thing, of course ).

found a translation of said poem here [link]

Wow, that's one heck of a question, and one I think I tend to avoid. Why I remember a poem can vary, something about it will just tick, and it doesn't necessarily have to be something that I like. For instance, "Dulce Et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen is not a poem that I particuarly like, but it sticks in my mind and I do go back and read it from time to time. Another poem that sticks in my head is Theodore Roethke's "Root Cellar." Not a pretty poem but also one I happen to remember, perhaps because of the atypical image it creates. One of the poems that I love is Poe's "The Raven." I've never really taken the time to try to understand it, I just love the sound. I think it's best to say that I like a poem for its form but I remember one for its content.

My favourite poem is a toss up between "Ode to a Nightengale" by John Keats and "The Land of Counterpane" by Robert Louis Stevenson, with Keats' "When I have fears that I may Cease to Be" running really close behind. These are my favourites because while I like the form and can anjoy them for that reason, they also have in them something I can relate to.

"...Counterpane" I read as a child so there's some sentimental value and nostalgia attached to it, along with the fact that when I was a child I was ill quite frequenlty and spend much time in bed. Back then I read it for fun; now I find the impression of imagination within imagination (the town within the poem) gets me thinking about poetry and the creative process and where it might come from.

Both of Keats' works, apart from being nicely written, dwell on thoughts that I can relate to. In the latter years of my illness I developed not only a rather close relationship with death but also a sort of ambiguous notion of the reality I was in. I'd get days where I'd have to touch things to convince myself that the world was still tangilble.

"The Land of Counterpane" [link]
"When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be" [link]
"Ode to a Nightengale" [link]

and just for fun:
"Dulce Et Decorum Est" [link]
"Root Cellar" [link]

(I'll have to get back to you on the DA poem. )

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The little devil on everyone's shoulder.

I have many favourites, but one I keep returning to is T. S. Eliot's "The Journey of the Magi". It's in the form of a dramatic monologue by one of the Magi who journeyed to see the newborn Christ. He's speaking long after the fact, and instead of telling of a joyous occasion, he describes his world, the world of pre-Christian religion, dying (I won't call it the pagan world; the Magi were probably Zoroastrian, specifically Zurvanist, priests and not pagan in any sense I'd use the word).
    It's a very sad poem. The narrator is one of the many alienated figures in Eliot's poetry — alienated this time by the, so to speak, shadow-side of religion. In the final stanza, the narrator tells us how the birth of Christ was also the death of his (old) world. He says that, after they returned to their Kingdoms, they were "no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, / With an alien people clutching their gods." After Christ's birth, he's suddenly a stranger to the world — both the world he knew and the one that's replacing it.
    I've always been fascinated by how our beliefs shape our perception of the world, and by characters whose beliefs are in the process of change — lost in that strange borderland between two world-views. There's also something sympathetic about a Christian poet writing from a non-Christian perspective, and having such empathy towards it. The Magi's journey of course also mirrors Eliot's own journey to faith, but I doubt Eliot himself would've liked such an author-centric reading.

Another of my favourites is Tomas Tranströmer's "Schubertiana" (the link is to a PDF of my translation, which is compiled from a bunch of partial translations I've done over the years, so it might be a bit uneven). It is, I think, representative of the mysticism in a lot of Tranströmer's work; there is in his poetry often that "something else" which to trust. It's rarely explicitly said to be God; I get the feeling that this stems from a sort of apophasis — the realisation that God, being ineffable, can only be described through his works (his energeiai as the Greek Orthodox say).
    The poem is also a beautiful explication of the power of music. And as he often does, Tranströmer again contrasts music and mystery with "the men of action", "those who buy and sell people." The same kind of thing can be seen in, for example, "Allegro", where Haydn's music "tells us that freedom exists / and that someone isn't paying the emperor's taxes". There is, I think, something very appealing about music (and art, mystery) as a counter-weight to ugliness and tyranny. Tranströmer is rarely, if ever, explicitly political in his work, but he often displays a, to my mind, attractive resistance to power. It's the resistance to, and contempt for, power of someone who is concerned with much more important things. Of one who is, in Lao Tze's words, "nourished by the great mother."

On dA, a poem I often think of is one by !vivus, called "L'Enfer". I remember it mostly because of its reckless elitism; it was pretty much incomprehensible without a good grounding in Dante, and a knowledge of (or access to dictionaries in) French and Italian. But if you had those things, it had a wonderful punchline. I like it when a poem makes me work a bit (within reason, of course; there's a difference between requiring some knowledge of classical literature, and demanding an understanding of, say, Ancient Persian). The poem died with the man (metaphorically), but if `Bringa hasn't wiped the Vineyard's databases, it exists in the dark hinterland of those unused MySQL tables.

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Thebes: The cyborg would not recognize the Garden of Eden; it is not made of mud and cannot dream of returning to dust.

That Eliot poem is one of my favourites, too.

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Literature Gallery Moderator

For Writers: Resource Central: Part One | Resource Central: Part Two

I'm no good at picking just one of anything, I've tried too many times and failed. Instead, I'll pick three.

My three favorite poems of all time...
"Ode on Melancholy" by John Keats: [link]
"The Uncertainty of the Poet" by Wendy Cope: [link]
"The Hollow Men" by T.S. Eliot: [link]

I'm a mainstream poetry reader, I admit it. I'm working on that, though. As more of a prose than poetry person, my knowledge of poetry is still rather limited.

On dA..

"The Foundling Boy" by `PoeticWar: [link]
"The Nights I Cannot Sleep" by *poisonedrose: [link]
"Growing Pains" by ~mossi-mo: [link]

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"HeHeHe. Lit Community. We are our own brand of Special." `GeneratingHype

*Adopt-A-Writer | =DailyDeviants | *Writers-Workshop

Awesome avatar by =neekko

I have trouble picking other than current favorites, I always find another one I love before too long. Currently I like Bones by Ormsqueak [link]
and though sometimes I am in a more morose or complicated mood, today Valerie Worth is one of my favorite poets. She writes mostly for children, but I adore her conciseness:

STARS

While we
Know they are
Enormous suns,
Gold lashing
Fire-oceans,
Seas of heavy silver flame,

They look as
Though they could
Be swept
Down, and heaped,
Cold crystal
Sparks, in one
Cupped palm.

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"To avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, be nothing."