What is your favourite poem (s)

[RuqeeD]

I think one of my favourite Heaney poems would be Digging. It's so strong and how he shows his divergence from tradition in his family.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.

from "Digging", Death of a Naturalist (1966)

[sweetpea]

I think Heaney's poems are so powerful because they are based on true events. That last line of Mid-Term Break has always stayed with me. I remember the first time we read it in school and the absolute silence in the room afterwards.

[Bighuey]

Thats a good one. A real tear-jerker.

[Trcapro]

Shakespeare's Sonnet XVIII hands down. It's the reason i began to appreciate poetry in the first place.

[celinerm29]

I have to agree with some of you who like Robert Frost. I always loved his poem, "Stopping in the Woods on a Snowy Evening". I also like his other poem about "Two Roads". I also like to read Shakespeare and I like to read a lot of the poetry of the masters. I write a lot of poems and have had many of them published. The next time I post here I will put one of my poems up.

Celine Rose Mariotti

-- 04 Feb 2012, 21:48 --

I wanted to post one of my poems. I hope it gives everyone hope and inspiration.

Only Dreaming Will Do



If you feel sad and blue,
Life is mean to you,
Don’t get down,
Don’t wear a frown,
Think of better days,
Something good will come your way,
It will all come true
Only dreaming will do

If you get another rejection
And it gives you indigestion,
Don’t get down,
Don’t wear a frown,
Think some happy thoughts,
What you seek, will be sought,
It will all come true,
Only dreaming will do


If time seems to be passing too fast,
And you feel like God has put you last,
Don’t get down,
Don’t wear a frown,
Think of big time happenings,
Thing of happy endings,
It will all come true,
Only dreaming will do.


Celine Rose Mariotti

[RuqeeD]

I'm reading through the collection of poems by Martin Bell in 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' and came across this one about the London Riots that happened last year.

Riotous Illiteracy

In the rioting that spread across London in August 2011 only the bookshops were left untouched

They looted clothes and trainers, mobile phones,
All goods of glitz and value and utility,
But never even paused at Waterstones,
Seeing its books as objects of futility:

Shakespeare's undrinkable,
Kipling's unthinkable,
Milton's unwearable
Wordsworth's unbearable
(This one at least we'd make allowance for,
The Sage of Lakeland being such a bore).

And as for our inflammatory writers,
Trotsky, Karl Marx and Chomsky - all in vain.
Not even they attracted London's rioters,
Being judged not worth a broken window pane.

So here's the Law of Lawlessness immutable:
Books are declared redundant and unsuitable,
Their words unread, their worth unsung,
Unwanted and unlootable,
By these our feckless and illiterate young.

I love the British humour

[Trcapro]

Also forgot to mention a few others.

"Seal Lullaby" by by Rudyard Kipling and "Cross" by Langston Hughes

[LoveMusic_AK]

My sister wrote me a poem. It was the most beautiful poem I have ever received. Actually it was the only poem I ever received. It was so thought out and amazing. It is my favorite poem in the whole world! <3 I love you Ciana! <3

[W-Harbinger]

My favorite poem is a little silly. I found it in the first book of poems I ever read and every time I read it now, I'm reminded of my childhood.

Where The Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

[Jilayalith]

the mother
BY Gwendolyn Brooks
Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.
I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches, and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.
Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.