Please share your favorite poems with me. I'm trying to do a lesson for high school students, so keep in mind that these poems can't be TOO harsh.

9/28/2006 8:02:15 PM

There once was a man names Enos

9/28/2006 8:08:39 PM

Quote :

"I will put Chaos into fourteen lines And keep him there; and let him thence escape If he be lucky; let him twist, and ape Flood, fire, and demon --- his adroit designs Will strain to nothing in the strict confines Of this sweet order, where, in pious rape, I hold his essence and amorphous shape, Till he with Order mingles and combines. Past are the hours, the years of our duress, His arrogance, our awful servitude: I have him. He is nothing more nor less Than something simple not yet understood; I shall not even force him to confess; Or answer. I will only make him good."

edna st. vincent millay

9/28/2006 8:12:19 PM

Quote :

"Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. "

Dylan Thomas.

9/28/2006 8:20:17 PM

Quote :

" NIGHT SCHOOL from Dangling In the Tournefortia in the drunk driver's class assigned there by division 63 we are given tiny yellow pencils to take a test to see if we have been listening to the instructor. questions like: the minimum sentence for a 2nd drunk driving conviction is: a) 48 days b) 6 months c) 90 days there are 9 others questions. after the instructor leaves the room the students begin asking the questions: "hey, how about question 5? that's a tough one!" "did he talk about that?" "I think its 48 days." "are you sure?" "no, but that's what I'm putting down." one women circles all 3 answers on all questions even though we've been told to select only one. on our break I go down and drink a can of beer outside a liquor store. I watch a black hooker on her evening stroll. a car pulls up. she walks over and they talk. the door opens. she gets in and they drive off. back in class the students have gotten to know each other. they are a not-very-interesting bunch of drunks. I visualize them sitting in a bar and i remember why I started drinking alone. the class begins again. it is discovered that I am the only one to have gotten 100 percent on the test. I slouch back in my chair with my dark shades on. I am the class intellectual."

Charles Bukowski

9/28/2006 8:22:59 PM

Remember, remember 11 September
Explosions, and Towers, and plots.
I can think of no power, that could seize the hour
And have its involvement forgot.

- Anonymouse

9/28/2006 8:46:28 PM

Quote :

"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?"

Poe

9/28/2006 8:47:56 PM

I have many, mainly from Neruda (Drunk as Drunk), T.S. Eliot (The Waste Land), Tennyson (The Lady of Shalott, Ulysses, ) and Baudelaire (bascially all of Les Fleurs du Mal).

[Edited on September 28, 2006 at 9:47 PM. Reason : .]

9/28/2006 9:39:49 PM

The Shield of Achilles, Auden
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15547

9/28/2006 10:29:27 PM

Quote :

"somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond any experience,your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near your slightest look easily will unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skilfully,mysteriously) her first rose or if your wish be to close me,i and my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending; nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility: whose texture compels me with the color of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing (i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands"

ee cummings

I can think of a lot more, but this is what comes to mind for high school.

9/28/2006 11:04:06 PM

Quote :

"You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time-- Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal And a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off beautiful Nauset. I used to pray to recover you. Ach, du. In the German tongue, in the Polish town Scraped flat by the roller Of wars, wars, wars. But the name of the town is common. My Polack friend Says there are a dozen or two. So I never could tell where you Put your foot, your root, I never could talk to you. The tongue stuck in my jaw. It stuck in a barb wire snare. Ich, ich, ich, ich, I could hardly speak. I thought every German was you. And the language obscene An engine, an engine Chuffing me off like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew. The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna Are not very pure or true. With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack I may be a bit of a Jew. I have always been scared of you, With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. And your neat mustache And your Aryan eye, bright blue. Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You-- Not God but a swastika So black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you. You stand at the blackboard, daddy, In the picture I have of you, A cleft in your chin instead of your foot But no less a devil for that, no not Any less the black man who Bit my pretty red heart in two. I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do. But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue. And then I knew what to do. I made a model of you, A man in black with a Meinkampf look And a love of the rack and the screw. And I said I do, I do. So daddy, I'm finally through. The black telephone's off at the root, The voices just can't worm through. If I've killed one man, I've killed two-- The vampire who said he was you And drank my blood for a year, Seven years, if you want to know. Daddy, you can lie back now. There's a stake in your fat black heart And the villagers never liked you. They are dancing and stamping on you. They always knew it was you. Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through."

Sylvia Plath "Daddy"

Quote :

"Go and catch a falling star, Get with child a mandrake root, Tell me where all past years are, Or who cleft the Devil's foot, Teach me to hear the mermaids singing, And find What wind Serves to advance an honest mind. If thou beest born to strange sights, Things invisible to see, Ride ten thousand days and nights, Till age snow white hairs on thee, Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me All strange wonders that befell thee, And swear No where Lives a woman true, and fair. If thou find'st one, let me know, Such a pilgrimage were sweet; Yet do not, I would not go, Though at the door we might meet; Though she were true when you met her, And last till you write your letter, Yet she Will be False, ere I come, to two, or three."

John Donne "Song: Go and Catch a Falling Star"

I also agree with StillFuchsia that Baudelaire is great. I'm more of a fan of Prufrock from Eliot though. (Best class evar!)

[Edited on September 28, 2006 at 11:35 PM. Reason : the first one is harsh but it would get their attention]

9/28/2006 11:25:09 PM

I'm not too big on ee cummings, however I will say that "somewhere i have never travelled.."
has always been my favorite from him.

One of my all time favorites:

Quote :

"Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he'd call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house, speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know of love's austere and lonely offices? "

9/28/2006 11:34:03 PM

^ I like that one too. For some reason it reminds me of

Quote :

"The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother's countenance Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt."

9/28/2006 11:37:26 PM

^ I've read that before, but can't place who wrote it. Was it Langston Huges? or is it another from Robert Hayden? I don't know.

9/28/2006 11:41:00 PM

Roethke, sorry.

9/28/2006 11:48:36 PM

Quote :

"Remember -John Lennon Remember when you were young? How the hero was never hung Always got away Remember how the man Used to leave you empty handed? Always, always let you down If you ever change your mind About leaving it all behind Remember, remember, today And don't feel sorry The way it's gone And don't you worry 'Bout what you've done Just remember when you were small How people seemed so tall Always had their way Do you remember your Ma and Pa Just wishing for movie stardom Always, always playing a part If you ever feel so sad And the whole world is driving you mad Remember, remember, today And don't feel sorry 'Bout the way it's gone And don't you worry 'Bout what you've done No, no, remember, remember The fifth of November"

9/28/2006 11:56:41 PM

Hhmmm... oh

9/28/2006 11:56:50 PM

Quote :

"I also agree with StillFuchsia that Baudelaire is great. I'm more of a fan of Prufrock from Eliot though. (Best class evar!)"

Best class evar!

Baudelaire sometimes makes me really depressed, but it's worth it.

9/29/2006 12:55:49 AM

The Red Wheelbarrow
William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.


In a Station of the Metro
by Ezra Pound

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

9/29/2006 1:47:24 AM

you people are fucking pussies. i suggest you all follow the lead of Sylvia Plath

9/29/2006 5:46:41 AM

aww thunderbear, thats one of my favorites!

9/29/2006 6:19:19 AM

^^^ Balaban's poetry class?

9/29/2006 9:34:17 AM