Favourite poet and poem

[Adam J. M. Eagleton]

Right, I think we should get some discussion going on here. Firstly, who is your favourite poet, and why? Secondly, what is your favourite poem by that poet? Post the poem here if you can.

[Adam J. M. Eagleton]

Plath's journals, from February 1956. She also writes of Hughes then: ". . . that big, dark, hunky boy, the only one there huge enough for me . . . the one man in the room who was as big as his poems, huge, with hulk and dynamic chunks of words; his poems are strong and blasting like a high wind in steel girders. And I screamed in myself, thinking: oh, to give myself crashing, fighting, to you."

[Megan]

Ah, I see. That's very interesting.

[Ashlastic]

Wonderful poem, and thank you for posting it because I'm attempting to build up my poetry library and Tales from Ovid is definately on my list of what to buy with my next paycheck :]

[Megan]

Those were great. I remember The Highwayman well, I think we did it in primary school in year six.

[Mia Howes]

T.S Eliot :D
I dont have a favorite of his, I think everything he writes is brilliant.
Also like Edgar Allen Poe. Gotta love the classics (:

[Laura]

oh god why oh why did I click on this?? i might possibly have an annurism trying to pick just ONE favourite poet. and my favourite poem??? aieee!1

but one poem I love is called
'Summer On' by Gord Downie, who is of the Canadian band (woo canada!1) The Tragically Hip. check them out!1
it's summer right now, so hopefully this poem is at least timely.

Summer On
There's a fragrance before the storm.
I know it's June because there are kids laughing in the night at nothing for no reason,
and your skin's so soft I can barely tell I'm touching it.
A dog drinking down the hall finally interrupts us--
oh yeah, and the storm:
clouds full of dimes
threaten the dream
and the dream's architect.

People are becoming their essence
and the calm is verging on excessive.

[Laura]

sorry, just couldn't resist adding a second one!1 It's by the amazing (sometime womanizer, sometime wonderful lover) Leonard Cohen.
ooh also:
DISCLAIMER -->the word 'breasts' is in this poem...sorry if that offends people, for that is not my intention

Beneath My Hands

Beneath my hands
your small breasts
are the upturned bellies
of breathing fallen sparrows.


Wherever you move
I hear the sounds of closing wings
of falling wings.


I am speechless
because you have fallen beside me
because your eyelashes
are the spines of tiny fragile animals.


I dread the time
when your mouth
begins to call me hunter.


When you call me close
to tell me
your body is not beautiful
I want to summon
the eyes and hidden mouths
of stone and light and water
to testify against you.


I want them
to surrender before you
the trembling rhyme of your face
from their deep caskets.


When you call me close
to tell me
your body is not beautiful
I want my body and my hands
to be pools
for your looking and laughing.

[capt. cockatiel]

My favorite poet is Frank O'Hara because I love the personality of his poems and his subject matter. Lots of his poems are just letters to his friends... but they are so interesting because he just wrote them and forgot them.
My favorite poem by him is "Having A Coke With You":
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDLwivcpFe8)

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles


and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse
it seems they were all cheated of some marvellous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it