Quotations and Literature Forum

I've been searching for a favorite poet. I realize that the answer to this quest involves mostly my personal beliefs and the style of writing I enjoy, but, I would like to hear yours. Maybe I agree with you.
Thankyou.
(p.s. I do like Naomi Shihab Nye...but I can't decide if I really want her to be my favorite. It's like choosing a religion. At least to me. Anyway, if you like her too, tell me. We could talk. Or if you know a poet that writes like her, that would be cool too.)

I'm not much for poetry and when I started thinking back on the poetry I liked in high school, all I could come up with were beautiful poems about war, the Crimean War, Revolutionary War, WWII. Poets were so good at that.

Les Miserables, the musical, has some beautiful songs about the French Revolution.

Some of the poems are sad, some are filled with noble thoughts. It's no wonder we go to war--aside from boundary desputes, religion, revenge, greed...

Even though he's a song writer, Leonard Cohen, has some beautiful poetry in his music...a lot of religious references that I can't quite figure out and wonderful images like Suzanne.

I do seem to ramble but those are my thoughts about poetry.

"Searching for a favorite poet" strikes me as an interesting thing to say. Shouldn't this be a life-long quest? I used to freely declare my favorite author to be Joseph Conrad and my favorite poet to Thomas Hardy, but now I can only say that I am very fond of the writings of these authors. What does it really mean to have a favorite?

I’d have to agree with thenostromo here. It IS a lifelong quest and what appeals or resonates with you changes as you have different experiences, moods or ideas about life. Not to mention there may be some works by a poet that appeal to you while other works by the same poet do not.

How about we all pick a few poems we particularly like (at the moment) and post them here? Maybe with a link to them and a shorter quote if they are lengthy? It could be interesting – I’ll confess my ignorance as I don’t think I have ever read anything by Naomi Shihab Nye and certainly not all of the hundreds of Hardy poems.

Picking a "favorite" anything limits one's horizons. I like the early English poets, but I have a particular fondness for the Beat poets as well. Things change as one's tastes, age, or emotion changes from moment-to- moment or year-to-year and why should we set boundaries? What may be a favorite at the moment is yesterday's news tomorrow.

I say broaden your horizons as TN and Flametree suggest. On the spur of the moment I took a Womens Poets course and found it totally refreshing.

People do have favorites that sweep them away or appeal to their ideology, whether authors, movies, philosophers, music, TV shows or other topics and I don't mind committing a few to the threads for comparison. Or some might want to share a new discovery that they hope to discuss under a certain heading that is generic - like a favorite...though "at the moment" does appeal to me in the header line.

It depends on a person then. Some like to identify or be identified with specific things while others prefer to have no tag attached to them. Who's to say which one is right, you might prefer either but is it better?

Perhaps you could suggest a poem (or provide a quote from a poem) of Naomi Shihab Nye that you would recommend for those who have not read her work to start on?

Okay. Here goes with a few poems I like ("at the moment" Fairsix ) and thought of first. Actually a couple of these are an example of liking an individual poem where much of the poet's work is not to my taste. Probably why I don't have a favourite poet!

ALONG THE ROAD
I walked a mile with Pleasure;
She chattered all the way,
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say.

I walked a mile with Sorrow
And ne'er a word said she;
But oh, the things I learned from her
When Sorrow walked with me.
Robert Browning Hamilton

SONNET
FLESH, I have knocked at many a dusty door,
Gone down full many a midnight lane,
Probed in old walls and felt along the floor,
Pressed in blind hope the lighted window-pane,
But useless all, though sometimes when the moon
Was full in heaven and the sea was full,
Along my body's alleys came a tune
Played in the tavern by the Beautiful.
Then for an instant I have felt at point
To find and seize her, whosoe'er she be,
Whether some saint whose glory doth anoint
Those whom she loves, or but a part of me,
Or something that the things not understood
Make for their uses out of flesh and blood.
John Masefield

SPIRIT'S HOUSE
FROM naked stones of agony
I will build a house for me;
As a mason all alone
I will raise it, stone by stone,

And every stone where I have bled
Will show a sign of dusky red.
I have not gone the way in vain,
For I have good of all my pain;

My spirit's quiet house will be
Built of naked stones I trod
On roads where I lost sight of God.
Sara Teasdale

Thanks. They're beautiful--for more than just the moment. And I have now some poetry I like beyond "If", "The Charge of the Light Brigade" and "Paul Revere's Ride".

Interesting poems, Fairsix. Thanks. I have read “If” and “Charge of the Light Brigade” before but they’re always good for a repeat read. I hadn’t read “Paul Revere's Ride” so I was interested to do so.

“A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo for evermore!”
~Paul Revere's Ride, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Inspiring!

Other poetry;
The Sun Rising, John Donne
http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem680.html

Idea LXI, Michael Drayton
http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem716.html

Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam, Ernest Dowson
http://poetry.elcore.net/CatholicPoets/ ... son01.html

The Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto Sixth, Sir Walter Scott
http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/canto06.html

RECIPROCITY, John Drinkwater
http://www.bartleby.com/103/126.html

SONNETS 1923, XIX, Edna St Vincent millay
http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/disp ... m1432.html

Anybody got some other poems to recommend?

I am responding to this question more niave than most have already answered, for I am not even out of high school, but I am going to share my thoughts to you.

Poetry is a complex from of writting, with all the different rhyme schemes, rhythme, and styles. Each poet has there own way of writting. Some write sonnets, odes, cinquains, qutrains, haikus, etc. For me I like poets who write free style. Like Emily Dickinson. She has her own style, but you still never know what to expect. She shows you her feelings, so that in the process of trying to figure out what her poems mean we get to know her on a personal level, even though she has been dead for a long time.

One other poet I have grown fond of is Robert Frost. He tells us what he sees, which enables us to veiw the world in a new perspective. Through his poems, we, or at least I, have began to understand my view while begining to understand somebody elses.

We read this in English class and I love it!

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, -- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! -- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

My fave for now.
Webbratz

I'm just beginning to get into poetry, but I've found that I like Emily Bronte's work. Here a couple of the poems that turned me on to her:

She dried her tears and they did smile
To see her cheeks' returning glow
How little dreaming all the while
That full heart throbbed to overflow

With that sweet look and lively tone
And bright eye shining all the day
They could not guess at midnight lone
How she would weep the time away
Emily Bronte

Methinks this heart should rest awhile
So stilly round the evening falls
The veiled sun sheds no parting smile
Nor mirth nor music wakes my Halls

I have sat lonely all the day
Watching the drizzly mist descend
And first conceal the hills in grey
And then along the valleys wend

And I have sat and watched the trees
And the sad flowers how drear they blow
Those flowers were formed to feel the breeze
Wave their light leaves in summer's glow

Yet their lives passed in gloomy woe
And hopeless comes its dark decline
And I lament because I know
That cold departure pictures mine
Emily Bronte

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"The unexamined life is not worth living for man" Socrates

I'm also developing an interest in Poe.

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow --
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand --
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep -- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
Edgar Allan Poe

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"The unexamined life is not worth living for man" Socrates

I would like to know what the title of the poem Tuscany shared is. The reason for this being that I have been intrigued for the longest time by Poe's Writing:



I first saw this quote on a poster of Poe that hung on the outside of my 11th grade English teacher's door, but never had the sense to inquire about it.
Thanks in advance!

_________________
"Nothing is impossible unless you strongly believe it is, and in a case such as this you have no confidence"~ Me

Jennifer