Poems anyone?

[jaydee]

For my communication arts class, I need to read 5-6 minutes of poem(s). I was wondering what everyone liked, and what's good, because I know jack about poems. I looked at some Frost, but his are all short, and I'd need to read aquite a few of them. Poe is being used quite a bit already, and I don't want to use him too. I don't know much other than those two guys, any help is appreciated. Thanks guys.

 

[BigJohnKC]

If you want dark, disturbed poetry, try some Emily Dickinson.

 

[Novgrod]

If you want to impress people, go with Ginsberg--look at "howl". Other options are your modernists, e.g. wc williams, miriam moore, ezra pound . . . the only problem is that their poems are all tiny

You could read Whitman; just a section of Leaves of Grass would be fine.

Otherwise, Coleridge (Kubla Khan [sp]) or Tennyson can't be beat.

Oh, on second thought--on the topic of impressing people, you could go for T. S. Eliot--the wasteland isn't so grand imho, but the love song of J alfred prufrock is fantastico.

 

[Theslowone]

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Homer, his are a little long but good stuff, sir Walter Raleigh, Shakespear, Walt Whitman.

 

[littlezipp]

Shakespear. Do a good section of Julius Ceasar. Here is a section...
"Friends, Romans, Countrymen lend me your ears,
I come to bury Ceasar not to praise him,
The evil that men do lives after them, the good is
oft interred with their bones,
so let it be with Ceasar!"
Pretty good for something I did four years ago!

 

[bigalt]

hahaha read some Charles Bukowski. He's just about the only poet I can stand to read/listen to.

 

[linuxboy]

I was wondering what everyone liked, and what's good

Well, my tastes are certainly not really ordinary or good but I like reading works by these people:

Wordsworth is good
Wislawa Szymborska (If you know Polish, the poems are much richer but translations work just as well)
Yeats (a given, good writing)
Pablo Neruda (really cool stuff)
Blake is a genius. Like a madman fused with a saint
Milton is good but older...
gotta read Dante
Langston Hughes wrote well
William Carlos Williams is a good example of modernism...
WH Auden was also a genius, very good work.
ee cummings was different, but very good.

I guess you need to tell us what period you like or if you just want a wide variety to understand poetry in general. Those provide you with a pretty good overview though and are a short list of my personal favorites.

Cheers !

 

[chickendinner]

Anne Sexton. confessional poetry is the best. "all my pretty ones" is a favorite.

 

[djheater]

How about Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A Stately Pleasure Dome Decree
Where Alph the sacred river ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea
.....

Coleridge was an opium (mainly Laudanum) addict who wrote down his hallucinations

or certain Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
....

Sylvia Plath

Mystic

The air is a mill of hooks---
Questions without answer,
Glittering and drunk as flies
Whose kiss stings unbearably
In the fetid wombs of black air under pines in summer.

I remember
The dead smell of sun on wood cabins,
The stiffness of sails, the long salt winding sheets.
Once one has seen God, what is the remedy?
Once one has been seized up
.....
Lesbians and women (and men who enjoy witty poetry) like
Edna St. Vincent Millay

I, Being Born a Woman, and Distressed

I, being born a woman, and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body's weight upon my breast
So subtly is the fume of life designed
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind
And leave me once again undone, possessed


Think not for this, however, this poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn with pity - let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.


Need more?

 

[Azraele]

Coleridge The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

or Coleridge's Christabel .

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe
All mimsy were the borogoves
And the mome raths outgrabe

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch
Beware the Jubjub bird and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch"

He took his vorpal blade in hand
Long time the manxome foe he sought
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought
And as in uffish thought he stood
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood
And burbled as it came

One, two, one, two
And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker snack
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock
Come to my arms, my beamish boy
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe
All mimsy were the borogoves
And the mome raths outgrabe.


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[djheater]

<< Blake is a genius. Like a madman fused with a saint
>>


Where should I start with Blake? There's too much....

~~edit spelling

 

[Azraele]

Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience.

 

[fatalbert]

try "Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen

 

[linuxboy]

Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience.


She beat me to it. . Read some of that. It's enough and has his best selections. At the very least, read "Tyger" as that's one of those mandatory poems everyone reads.

fatalbert, really good piece, thanks for reminding me.


Cheers !

 

[jaydee]

Wow, thanks guys, lots of stuff. Keep them coming while I check out the ones given.

 

[tweakmm]

you could check out
F.U.C.K.
Its hosted by attrition.org