Favourite Poet?

[Zanahoria_Picante]

>:O

That poem is too good! Thank you for postin'. It seems to be one of those poems that you can read o'er and o'er again and never lose the tremendous feeling and beau'y of it--as with the Shakes''* creations also.

*Enraptured sigh* In short, I agree. ;P

Of course, also, this:

To be, or not to be--that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep--
No more--and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep--
To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprise of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action. -- Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia! -- Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered.

If you can get passed the "banality" (perhaps, due to its excessive use in media) of the first line, its soliloquawesomeness unfolds anew.

* Yes, the anathematic double-apostrophe. It just seemed cruel--almost tyrannical--to make one apostrophe do so much work, possessin' and shortenin' at once. No punctuation deserves that kind of fate; not in a society free, in which all creatures should have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of grammaticalness.

[Tala]

^ You and your Hamlet *sigh*

Nah, Shakespeare's ok, ya know? ;-)

I submit to you this:
Ode – Arthur O’Shaughnessy

We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.

[Zanahoria_Picante]

Originally Said by Tala

^ You and your Hamlet *sigh*

Nah, Shakespeare's ok, ya know? ;-)

I submit to you this:
Ode – Arthur O’Shaughnessy

We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.

[Emo voice] Why, yes. It appeals to mine dark soul. HEL-LO!

Now off to read some Ed-gar Allan Poe. [/voce Emo] (Not really...though he is cool, also in his dark way.)

That is simply EPIC. I think if one Gene Wilder had read that entire poem, it might have changed the tone of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory a bit. Just a bit. That is so awesome, though....

On another Shakespearean note:

Macbeth Act 1, Scene IV:

MACBETH [Aside.]
48 The Prince of Cumberland! that is a step
49 On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap,
50 For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires,
51 Let not light see my black and deep desires;
52 The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be
53 Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.

Seriously, Shakespeare?

(Again, absolutely no reason for posting that bit. )

And lines from this one (on a sharply less Shakespearean note) resurface in my mind out of nowhere and get stuck in my head:

After Love
by Sara Teasdale

There is no magic any more,
We meet as other people do,
You work no miracle for me
Nor I for you.

You were the wind and I the sea—
There is no splendor any more,
I have grown listless as the pool
Beside the shore.

But though the pool is safe from storm
And from the tide has found surcease,
It grows more bitter than the sea,
For all its peace.

The break-up poem? o.O

[Zanahoria_Picante]

Speaking of Yeats:

Never give all the heart

Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.

And this V was linked to that ^ poem on poets.org. William Carlos Williams:

A Love Song

What have I to say to you
When we shall meet?
Yet—
I lie here thinking of you.

The stain of love
Is upon the world.
Yellow, yellow, yellow,
It eats into the leaves,
Smears with saffron
The horned branches that lean
Heavily
Against a smooth purple sky.

There is no light—
Only a honey-thick stain
That drips from leaf to leaf
And limb to limb
Spoiling the colours
Of the whole world.

I am alone.
The weight of love
Has buoyed me up
Till my head
Knocks against the sky.

See me!
My hair is dripping with nectar—
Starlings carry it
On their black wings.
See, at last
My arms and my hands
Are lying idle.

How can I tell
If I shall ever love you again
As I do now?

I like his Imagism stuff, as well, though I know many people don't.

[Jenn and tonic]

You ever decide you really, really hate a poet after thinking you like them?

I'm that way with Shelley now. I used to hate Shelley, grew to love him, and now I'm reading some Shelley poetry....and I realized I really, really, really abhor it. Why I ever decided I liked Shelley I will never know.

At any rate, I'm moving on to Melville.

I love this poem, because it's believed to be written to Nathaniel Hawthorne, after his death:

Monody

To have known him, to have loved him
After loneness long;
And then to be estranged in life,
And neither in the wrong;
And now for death to set his seal--
Ease me, a little ease, my song!

By wintry hills his hermit-mound
The sheeted snow-drifts drape,
And houseless there the snow-bird flits
Beneath the fir-trees; crape:
Glazed now with ice the cloistral vine
That hid the shyest grape.

[Zanahoria_Picante]

Originally Said by Jenn and tonic

You ever decide you really, really hate a poet after thinking you like them?

I'm that way with Shelley now. I used to hate Shelley, grew to love him, and now I'm reading some Shelley poetry....and I realized I really, really, really abhor it. Why I ever decided I liked Shelley I will never know.

At any rate, I'm moving on to Melville.

I love this poem, because it's believed to be written to Nathaniel Hawthorne, after his death:

Monody

To have known him, to have loved him
After loneness long;
And then to be estranged in life,
And neither in the wrong;
And now for death to set his seal--
Ease me, a little ease, my song!

By wintry hills his hermit-mound
The sheeted snow-drifts drape,
And houseless there the snow-bird flits
Beneath the fir-trees; crape:
Glazed now with ice the cloistral vine
That hid the shyest grape.

Yes. Me.

That pretty much describes how I feel about every poem I've ever attempted to write: I work on one until I think, "yeah, this isn't horrible. I don't want to punch myself in the face every time I read this anymore." I might even imagine I like it. Then years, even months, later, I find myself hating it more than my present job (yeah, that's a lot). But then I'm not a poet the way Shelley is a poet; there's no comparison. (The only poets I might resemble are Jack Kerouac and Emily Dickinson--biographically. )

But I'm sure I'd find the same thing happening if I devoted enough time to studying poetry as you have, but, as it is, there seems to be at least one poem I like from every poet I've read (even if I generally dislike his/her work), and no one poet I avoid entirely; save for perhaps "the beat poets." But then Walt Whitman was technically a beat poet, right? But a lot of the work from that movement just comes off to me as senseless and ribald. Perhaps with good reason (considering when the movement occurred), but it still often fails to appeal.

Anyway, that one by Melville is beau-ee-ful.

*Sniff*

I've had the last four lines of this one stuck in my head, simply because of Persuasion, Sir Walter Scott:

CCXXXIV. Coronach

He is gone on the mountain,
He is lost to the forest,
Like a summer-dried fountain,
When our need was the sorest.
The font reappearing
From the raindrops shall borrow;
But to us comes no cheering,
To Duncan no morrow!

The hand of the reaper
Takes the ears that are hoary,
But the voice of the weeper
Wails manhood in glory.
The autumn winds rushing
Waft the leaves that are searest,
But our flower was in flushing
When blighting was nearest.

Fleet foot on the correi,
Sage counsel in cumber,
Red hand in the foray,
How sound is thy slumber!
Like the dew on the mountain,
Like the foam on the river,
Like the bubble on the fountain,
Thou art gone—and for ever!

[Jenn and tonic]

Oh, my poetry doesn't even merit mention; I used to write it all the time, to my eternal embarrassment. That stuff is junk! Blech!


Walt Whitman came waaaaay before the beat poets. I'd call him transcendentalist/realist.

I love Sir Walter Scott!

[Zanahoria_Picante]

Originally Said by Jenn and tonic

Oh, my poetry doesn't even merit mention; I used to write it all the time, to my eternal embarrassment. That stuff is junk! Blech!


Walt Whitman came waaaaay before the beat poets. I'd call him transcendentalist/realist.

I love Sir Walter Scott!

Wow, I'm all kinds of fail for not knowing that. Oops. No wonder I like him, then! <:D

Yes. Reading one's own poetry is: Agony. Absolute agony. (To quote Hugh Grant.) There is no purer form of humiliation. Well, maybe one or two. *Sigh*

But I'm sure your poetry is still just infinitely better than mine. Far less wince-worthy. Far less physically painful to read. *Genuine groan of disgust*

And yet...I will still continue to write it, no doubt, because I am a platonic masochist (a "vice" which explains simply everything about my existence) and a literary terrorist, apparently.

...

Yes, he is great. :) And again, so is The Yeats:

When You Are Old

When you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

[Zanahoria_Picante]

Not to be confused with Yeats, John Keats:

Bright Star

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art —
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors —
No — yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft swell and fall,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever — or else swoon to death.

Kinda cool:



"...written in the book 'The Poetical Works of William Shakespeare.' The last draft was transcribed into the book in late September 1820 while they were aboard the ship the Maria Crowther traveling to Rome."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright_...st_as_thou_art

[Zanahoria_Picante]

Originally Said by Jenn and tonic

William Butler Yeats

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet,
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams



Love, love, love LOVE Yeats!

This one keeps popping into my head, for some reason. Such a good one.

Robert Frost is always a good default, as well (if one defaults to poems):

To Earthward
by Robert Frost

Love at the lips was touch
As sweet as I could bear;
And once that seemed too much;
I lived on air

That crossed me from sweet things,
The flow of--was it musk
From hidden grapevine springs
Downhill at dusk?

I had the swirl and ache
From sprays of honeysuckle
That when they're gathered shake
Dew on the knuckle.

I craved strong sweets, but those
Seemed strong when I was young;
The petal of the rose
It was that stung.

Now no joy but lacks salt,
That is not dashed with pain
And weariness and fault;
I crave the stain

Of tears, the aftermark
Of almost too much love,
The sweet of bitter bark
And burning clove.

When stiff and sore and scarred
I take away my hand
From leaning on it hard
In grass and sand,

The hurt is not enough:
I long for weight and strength
To feel the earth as rough
To all my length.

[Jenn and tonic]

For my Victorian Lit class I've been re-reading Tennyson and Browning. I had forgotten how snarky Browning could be:

To Edward FitzGerald

I chanced upon a new book yesterday;
I opened it, and, where my finger lay
'Twixt page and uncut page, these words I read -
Some six or seven at most - and learned thereby
That you, Fitzgerald, whom by ear and eye
She never knew, "thanked God my wife was dead."
Aye, dead! and were yourself alive, good Fitz,
How to return you thanks would task my wits.
Kicking you seems the common lot of curs -
While more appropriate greeting lends you grace,
Surely to spit there glorifies your face -
Spitting from lips once sanctified by hers.

This was written after he read letters of Edward FitzGerald, a writer whose friends published his letters after his death. Even though she was dead he was still so in love with his wife, which I find so endearing.

[Zanahoria_Picante]

^ Ha, wow, that is extremely snarky.

But I agree that "back story" is quite endearing. That kind of devotion is as rare as (something), but quite touching. <:)

[Canadian_Kumquat]

I would have to say Edgar Allen Poe.

[Zanahoria_Picante]

Originally Said by Canadian_Kumquat

I would have to say Edgar Allen Poe.

Good choice. You appear to be human, so... welcome to the forum! :)

[Zanahoria_Picante]

This Living Hand
by John Keats

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calmed--see here it is--
I hold it towards you.

[Zanahoria_Picante]

A Hand
by Jane Hirshfield

A hand is not four fingers and a thumb.

Nor is it palm and knuckles,
not ligaments or the fat's yellow pillow,
not tendons, star of the wristbone, meander of veins.

A hand is not the thick thatch of its lines
with their infinite dramas,
nor what it has written,
not on the page,
not on the ecstatic body.

Nor is the hand its meadows of holding, of shaping—
not sponge of rising yeast-bread,
not rotor pin's smoothness,
not ink.

The maple's green hands do not cup
the proliferant rain.
What empties itself falls into the place that is open.

A hand turned upward holds only a single, transparent question.

Unanswerable, humming like bees, it rises, swarms, departs.





http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/563

I heart all her poems now. <:)