I think about this often.
I do not belong here.
I was looking for this one I never was much of a poem person but this one. I love this one
It is one of the most bittersweet things I've ever read.
Really resonates with me in a huge way. Gets me every time.
This reminds me of The Four Leaved Clover
Beware that four leaved clovers can also be seen as a sign of good luck.
Invictus by William Ernst Henley
When I was younger I clung to it's message of perseverance. It ended up being the first poem that I ever memorized.
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.I was just trying to remember this today, thank you!
Dolce et Decorum est - Wilfred Owen. A grim, anti-war masterpiece written by a soldier fighting in the trenches in WW1
Ozymandias - Percy Shelley. A reminder of human transience and hubris
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night - Dylan Thomas. Helps me to endure when things seem bleak or hopeless.
I really like all of Wlfred Owen's work. So fucking sad. And I dont mean just the poetry but his life. When I found about him I read his biography and it made me cry a little. You probably already know this but not only did he fought and wrote his poetry in the first WW but he also died there with only 25 years. Just writing this Im starting to tear up, trully heartbreaking.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44049/a-man-said-to-the-universe
A man said to the universe: “Sir, I exist!” “However,” replied the universe, “The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation.”Written in like the 1890s. So straight forward. Feels modern.
Subh Milis (Sweet jam). It's a short and powerful Irish poem reminding parents to be kind to their kids.
English translation below. Can't seem to get the formatting correct on mobile...
Bhí subh milis ar bháscrann an doras
ach mhúch mé an corraí
ionaim a d’éirigh
mar smaoinigh mé ar an lá
a bheadh an bháscrann glan
agus an lámh beag – ar iarraidh…”
There was jam on the door handle
But I quelled the anger
That rose inside me
Because I thought of the day
That the handle would be clean
And the little hand - longed for
Where The Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein.
I also love Masks by Shel.
I really like the Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge. I first encountered it as a result of reading Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently novels, but one day I saw the original in the library and just read it from start to finish. It's fantastic, so weird, so compelling.
I also like his Kubla Khan, the imagery of the "caverns measureless to man" and the "sunless sea" have always stuck with me.
It's not DNS,
There’s no way it’s DNS,
It was DNSThis hurts to read :-(.
I'm partial to To make a prairie by Emily Dickinson:
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee. And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few.
I enjoy the simplicity. Also, there's a great choir setting by Rudolf Escher which I really enjoy.
Ozymandias, because it's one of the very few I've read, and I liked it.
This Bread I Break by Dylan Thomas
It’s a short, beautiful poem that laments man’s destructive relationship with nature.
A Supermarket in California by Ginsberg. Idk why it just always has stuck with me
Li Bai - Quiet Night Thought
床前明月光
疑是地上霜
举头望明月
低头思故乡Before my bed bright moonlight pools
Almost like frost on the ground
Raising my head I see the shining moon
Bowing my head I think of homeRichard Cory
A surprising poem on a dark subject matter. Perhaps one of the best poems that demonstrate how mysterious other people are and how hard it is to truly connect with strangers.
The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost
That's the first one that popped into my mind upon reading the question.
Then there's this bad boy:
"The View From Halfway Down" by Alison Tifel has always resonated with me:
The weak breeze whispers nothing
The water screams sublime
His feet shift, teeter-totter
Deep breath, stand back, it’s timeToes untouch the overpass
Soon he’s water bound
Eyes locked shut but peek to see
The view from halfway downA little wind, a summer sun
A river rich and regal
A flood of fond endorphins
Brings a calm that knows no equalYou’re flying now
You see things much more clear than from the ground
It’s all okay, it would be
Were you not now halfway downThrash to break from gravity
What now could slow the drop
All I’d give for toes to touch
The safety back at topBut this is it, the deed is done
Silence drowns the sound
Before I leaped I should’ve seen
The view from halfway downI really should’ve thought about
The view from halfway down
I wish I could’ve known about
The view from halfway downBojack
Yeah, Alison Tifel wrote the episode "The View From Halfway Down", which is what this poem is from and shares the same name with.
If-, by Rudyard Kipling.
Different stanzas of the poem have given me strengths through different challenges and I keep coming back to it.
Mark Strand - Keeping things whole. It helps me deal with depression. I find it very soothing when I'm feeling down. It's one of the few I know by heart.
Teeny tiny axolotl
There is really not a lotl
Of you. Not a jot or tittle
So I'll call you axolitl
— anon
We Wear the Mask by Paul Lawrence Dunbar. I remember reading it in middle school. Poetry hadn’t done much for me at that point of my life but that one got through to me and helped me appreciate the medium much more in general
"No te salves " from Mario Benedetti. It's beautiful in Spanish. Does not translate well to English but here it is
I can't remember the number but it's a sonnet by (of course) Shakespeare but it's the one where he's ruminating about how he's eventually going to die.
It starts off by comparing the fleeting short existence of a person to the summer season.
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? (18)
Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. It always struck me as both humble and proud and it only becomes more meaningful as I age.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Der Panther/ The Panther.
(I don't really feel the english translation does the poem justice. In german the words create a certain rhythm, nearly like a melody, that I find utterly enchanting)_His gaze against the sweeping of the bars has grown so weary, it can hold no more. To him, there seem to be a thousand bars and back behind those thousand bars no world.
The soft the supple step and sturdy pace, that in the smallest of all circles turns, moves like a dance of strength around a core in which a mighty will is standing stunned.
Only at times the pupil’s curtain slides up soundlessly — . An image enters then, goes through the tensioned stillness of the limbs — and in the heart ceases to be._
----- The original German‐------
_Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehn der Stäbe so müd geworden, daß er nichts mehr hält. Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe und hinter tausend Stäben keine Welt.
Der weiche Gang geschmeidig starker Schritte, der sich im allerkleinsten Kreise dreht, ist wie ein Tanz von Kraft um eine Mitte, in der betäubt ein großer Wille steht.
Nur manchmal schiebt der Vorhang der Pupille sich lautlos auf –. Dann geht ein Bild hinein, geht durch der Glieder angespannte Stille – und hört im Herzen auf zu sein._
I find it almost impossible to pick a favorite poem of hers, but if I had to it'd probably be "Tutaj" ("Here" in English) by Wislawa Szymborska.
https://medium.com/illumination/here-671e29357dcc
"Starvation Camp Near Jaslo" and "Foraminifera" are two other favorites and Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak have done an amazing job at the translations.
Futility by Wilfred Owen.
Im not really too much into poetry, Im more of a song person, so obviously I found about it through a song that uses the poem as lyrics. I think I somewhat relate to to it, the feeling of futility expressed in it, even tho I havent seen the horrors he must have seen. All of his poetry is quite good, and it was written during WWI and from the trenches which makes it way more powerfull and sad IMO
I also like The Sleeper by Edgar A. Poe but that its mostly because I was a bit of a goth kid and its also been turned into a song
Oh freddled gruntbuggly,
Thy micturitions are to me,
As plurdled gabbleblotchits,
On a lurgid bee,That mordiously hath blurted out,
Its earted jurtles,
Into a rancid festering confectious organ squealer. [drowned out by moaning and screaming]Now the jurpling slayjid agrocrustles,
Are slurping hagrilly up the axlegrurts,
And living glupules frart and slipulate,
Like jowling meated liverslime,Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turling dromes,
And hooptiously drangle me,
With crinkly bindlewurdles,
Or else I shall rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon,See if I don't.
-- Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz
As I walked out one evening by W.H. Auden
https://poets.org/poem/i-walked-out-one-evening
Or for the lazy who want to hear the poet himself read it:
The why is that long ago, when I was in college in Maine, my girlfriend's English step-dad read it to his wife after attempting to prove he was American by driving their VW Jetta around the garden in the snow. Alcohol was involved and when everyone assembled finally convinced Tony to come back inside, an English teacher friend compelled him to read a poem as proof that he had come to terms with the car stuck in the snow out back. A life-long fan of Auden he chose As I Walked Out One Evening. As it opens, the imagery and fantastic feats of love are obviously spoken by a young man, but "time coughs when you would kiss" signalling that "time will have his fancy, tomorrow or today." You can break down what it means to you but the undeniably great lines I continue to quote on a weekly basis, albeit in my head so as not to annoy others. As I get older I stare in the basin and wonder what I've missed, but I also know that I will love my best friend, and wife 'till the salmon sing in the street.
Not particularly original, but I’m a sucker for William Blake. I love a neurodivergent radical. And I’m also am not particularly well read in poetry, so if there are any other poets that fit that description I always love to hear about more!
The Tyger is probably my favorite of his. I can feel the rhythm of it in my heart, and it’s made so much more tangible in its fear and awe when you know that he wrote it after seeing a young man killed by a tiger.
Porphyria's Lover by Robert Browning just rolled around in my head for day after I first read it. It’s really dark but feels so completely human at the same time.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46313/porphyrias-lover
I love Robert Browning. Love Among the Ruins has always been my favorite, although I'm not sure why. I honestly don't think it's his best work.
London
By William Blake
I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow.
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear
How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls
But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse
Pale Fire, because I'm a try hard poser I think
lighght
because it messes with my brain just righght
I like these two a lot. Mainly because they're the only two that stuck with me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L(a
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Love_Song_of_J._Alfred_Prufrock
The Charge Of The Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson!
Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die. Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.
It's been my mantra and my battlecry for the past few years now. Love it.
So wie die Ordnung stets in Chaos geht, wenn keine Kraft dagegen steht, so herrscht das Chaos nie allein: Es braucht die Ordnung, um zu sein.Das Chaos, das sich selbst bezwingt, indem es langsam Ordnung bringt, gebiert aus Dunkelheit und Dreck schön langsam, aber stetig, Form und Zweck, kurz: Leben, das sich selbst erhält, und auch im Sturme Kraft behält, um nach dem Regen neu zu blühn, so wie auch wir es alle tun.
Little potato when it is born Spreads its branches on the ground Little girl when she sleeps Puts her hand on her heart I am tiny The size of a button I carry daddy in my pocket And mommy in my heart The pocket got a hole And daddy fell on the ground Mommy who is the dearest Stayed in my heartHeh, my lemmy client is formatting this poem like it’s SQL code
It's a tie tbh.
Between "the bells" for sheer joyous onomatopoeia, and "oh captain, my captain" because of the flow of it.
Both of them are poems I read out loud to myself, and there's not many of those. They both resonate inside me in different ways, and both are associated with my initial exploration of poetry.
I've never been able to pick one over the other.
And yeah, they're pretty basic poems rather than some more deeply personal things. It isn't an emotional connection to them, it's more of a sensory thing, if that makes sense (pun intended).
But, they both represent the way words can affect us, move our minds. They're an experience when you hear them. They're immersive and fulfilling, though in different ways.
Schiller's song of the Bell is his longest poem, a 430 stanza epic about building a church bell that describes the process in technical detail and uses it as a metaphor for society. Here's an English translation:
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89081025074&seq=13My favorite poem is the condensed version. Loosely translated:
dig a hole
pour bronze in
bell is done
ding dong dingNo man is an island, Entire of itself. Each is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. As well as if a promontory were. As well as if a manor of thine own Or of thine friend’s were. Each man’s death diminishes me, For I am involved in mankind. Therefore, send not to know For whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee.
Baudelaire- la beauté
It's a beautifully worded sonnet on the nature of beauty, but meta as in how the poet is swayed by it and how he both loves that and is annoyed by the ease with with he's enthralled
The poop that took a pee - Butters
"The Chaos"
Because English will fuck you up.
Here I sit, same as ever. Took a dump, pulled the lever. The toilet clogged. The water flowed. Look out world, it's a motherload!.
Why is it my favorite? I have no idea... Probably because I'm awful.
How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood.
How much shit could a dipshit dip if a dipshit could dip shit.
Billy Connolly's "Mary Rose"
Mary Rose
Sat on a pin
Mary roseThere was a young lady from Venus, Whose body was shaped like a - DATA!
-Star Trek TNG & Picard
