Ask HN: What are your favorite poems?
17 comments
I don't really "get" poetry. I consider myself to be reasonably intelligent and well-read, but I've just had a hard time wrapping my head around poetry as a medium.
That said, I do enjoy Robert Frost (cliche, I know). The only poem I can recite in totality is "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allen Poe, and part of why I really liked that one is that it tells a short story, and a vivid one at that.
Beyond that, I'm not sure. I'd be interested in a "Understanding Poetry's Awesomeness for Dummies" course, though...
That said, I do enjoy Robert Frost (cliche, I know). The only poem I can recite in totality is "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allen Poe, and part of why I really liked that one is that it tells a short story, and a vivid one at that.
Beyond that, I'm not sure. I'd be interested in a "Understanding Poetry's Awesomeness for Dummies" course, though...
Poetry is like visual art or music, sometimes there is nothing to "get". Of course there are ways to approach analytically, but I don't believe that's where the awesomeness can be found.
To me its about connecting to a particular phrase, image, perspective, or description. Once you feel that connection to a certain poem its a lot easier to feel like you understand it.
The poem I always go back to when people say they don't get poetry is: " so much depends upon
a red wheel barrow
glazed with rain water
beside the white chickens. " - William Carlos Williams
It's simple and effective. A single image, a specific point in time and place, are being described with only a few lines and yet you can almost reach onto the page and touch it. You can try to see it as an extended metaphor, or take it completely at face value. Either way - it's beautiful.
To me its about connecting to a particular phrase, image, perspective, or description. Once you feel that connection to a certain poem its a lot easier to feel like you understand it.
The poem I always go back to when people say they don't get poetry is: " so much depends upon
a red wheel barrow
glazed with rain water
beside the white chickens. " - William Carlos Williams
It's simple and effective. A single image, a specific point in time and place, are being described with only a few lines and yet you can almost reach onto the page and touch it. You can try to see it as an extended metaphor, or take it completely at face value. Either way - it's beautiful.
I love William Carlos Williams. I'm not an avid poetry reader, but I always loved going through his work. Another favorite is Alfred Tennyson.
don't try to 'get' it. a poem is like a song. just listen or read it, and the words have meaning or they don't.
eventually you will want more, so you will listen/read with closer attention etc.
poetry is an inside joke.
eventually you will want more, so you will listen/read with closer attention etc.
poetry is an inside joke.
I'm Brazilian, so my poem favorite poem is in portuguese, its called A Máquina do Mundo (The World's Machine).
Wikipedia as an assert about it: The most prominent of these later metaphysical poems is A Máquina do Mundo (The World's Machine). The poem deals with an anti-Faust referred to in the first person, who receives the visit of the aforementioned Machine, which stands for all possible knowledge, and the sum of the answers for all the questions which afflict men; in highly dramatic and baroque versification the poem develops only for the anonymous subject to decline the offer of endless knowledge and proceed his gloomy path in the solitary road. It takes the renaissance allegory of the Machine of the World from Portugal's most esteemed poet, Luís de Camões, more precisely, from a canto at the end of his epic masterpiece Os Lusíadas.[0]
[0] Wikipedia about Drummond, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Drummond_de_Andrade
Wikipedia as an assert about it: The most prominent of these later metaphysical poems is A Máquina do Mundo (The World's Machine). The poem deals with an anti-Faust referred to in the first person, who receives the visit of the aforementioned Machine, which stands for all possible knowledge, and the sum of the answers for all the questions which afflict men; in highly dramatic and baroque versification the poem develops only for the anonymous subject to decline the offer of endless knowledge and proceed his gloomy path in the solitary road. It takes the renaissance allegory of the Machine of the World from Portugal's most esteemed poet, Luís de Camões, more precisely, from a canto at the end of his epic masterpiece Os Lusíadas.[0]
[0] Wikipedia about Drummond, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Drummond_de_Andrade
The Frog and the Nightingale (Vikram Seth) - https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-frog-and-the-nightingale...
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening - Robert Frost https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42891/stopping-by-woo...
Mending Wall - Robert Frost https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44266/mending-wall
The Second Coming - W.B.Yeats http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html
The Mountain and the Squirrel - Emerson https://sites.google.com/site/rainydaypoems/poems-for-kids/c...
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening - Robert Frost https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42891/stopping-by-woo...
Mending Wall - Robert Frost https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44266/mending-wall
The Second Coming - W.B.Yeats http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html
The Mountain and the Squirrel - Emerson https://sites.google.com/site/rainydaypoems/poems-for-kids/c...
pity this busy monster, manunkind,
not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond)
plays with the bigness of his littleness
--- electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
A world of made
is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh
and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical
ultraomnipotence. We doctors know
a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go.
There are the rushing waves
mountains of molecules
each stupidly minding its own business
trillions apart
yet forming white surf in unison
Ages on ages before any eyes could see year after year thunderously pounding the shore as now. For whom, for what? On a dead planet with no life to entertain.
Never at rest tortured by energy wasted prodigiously by the Sun poured into space. A mite makes the sea roar.
Deep in the sea all molecules repeat the patterns of one another till complex new ones are formed. They make others like themselves and a new dance starts. Growing in size and complexity living things masses of atoms DNA, protein dancing a pattern ever more intricate.
Out of the cradle onto dry land here it is standing: atoms with consciousness; matter with curiosity.
Stands at the sea, wonders at wondering: I a universe of atoms an atom in the Universe.
Feynman
Ages on ages before any eyes could see year after year thunderously pounding the shore as now. For whom, for what? On a dead planet with no life to entertain.
Never at rest tortured by energy wasted prodigiously by the Sun poured into space. A mite makes the sea roar.
Deep in the sea all molecules repeat the patterns of one another till complex new ones are formed. They make others like themselves and a new dance starts. Growing in size and complexity living things masses of atoms DNA, protein dancing a pattern ever more intricate.
Out of the cradle onto dry land here it is standing: atoms with consciousness; matter with curiosity.
Stands at the sea, wonders at wondering: I a universe of atoms an atom in the Universe.
Feynman
Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child leaving his bed wander’d alone, bareheaded, barefoot,
Down from the shower’d halo,
Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as if they were alive,
Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,
From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,
From your memories sad brother, from the fitful risings and fallings I heard,
From under that yellow half-moon late-risen and swollen as if with tears,
From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the mist,
From the thousand responses of my heart never to cease,
From the myriad thence-arous’d words,
From the word stronger and more delicious than any,
From such as now they start the scene revisiting,
As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,
Borne hither, ere all eludes me, hurriedly,
A man, yet by these tears a little boy again,
Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,
I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,
Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them,
A reminiscence sing.
(First verse of Whitman's Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking)
Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child leaving his bed wander’d alone, bareheaded, barefoot,
Down from the shower’d halo,
Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as if they were alive,
Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,
From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,
From your memories sad brother, from the fitful risings and fallings I heard,
From under that yellow half-moon late-risen and swollen as if with tears,
From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the mist,
From the thousand responses of my heart never to cease,
From the myriad thence-arous’d words,
From the word stronger and more delicious than any,
From such as now they start the scene revisiting,
As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,
Borne hither, ere all eludes me, hurriedly,
A man, yet by these tears a little boy again,
Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,
I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,
Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them,
A reminiscence sing.
(First verse of Whitman's Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking)
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.I like this guy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bukowski#Poetry_collec...
"War all the time" is a good place to start.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bukowski#Poetry_collec...
"War all the time" is a good place to start.
Lost
by Carl Sandburg
Desolate and lone
All night long on the lake
Where fog trails and mist creeps,
The whistle of a boat
Calls and cries unendingly,
Like some lost child
In tears and trouble
Hunting the harbor's breast
And the harbor's eyes.
by Carl Sandburg
Desolate and lone
All night long on the lake
Where fog trails and mist creeps,
The whistle of a boat
Calls and cries unendingly,
Like some lost child
In tears and trouble
Hunting the harbor's breast
And the harbor's eyes.
Anything by Shel Silverstein, it's all gold.
Pathedy of Manners - Ellen Kay
Curiosity - Alistair Reid
Curiosity - Alistair Reid
The long night;
The sound of the water
Says what I think.
-Gochiku
The sound of the water
Says what I think.
-Gochiku
"Cynthia"
-Jonah Hill
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening - Robert Frost, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42891/stopping-by-woo...
Emily Dickinson!
Here is one
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!